I'm almost done with my journey through the Eternal Champion cycle, but there's a few I haven't read, if you've read any of these please jump in with your thoughts:
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@julieofthespirits this thread sent me down to a rabbit-hole and I read that Moorcock wrote that Lord of the Rings is "a pernicious confirmation of the values of a declining nation with a morally bankrupt class whose cowardly self-protection is primarily responsible for the problems England answered with the ruthless logic of Thatcherism"
(I have only read "Elric of Melnibone" which I liked)
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@galactus oh man he really hated tolkein. he's written multiple essays on the subject, each one angrier than the last
it was mostly a political beef though, he couldn't stand that the great man of fantasy was a tory
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@galactus he has another one were he rants about how he can't believe that his friends in the angry brigade read such reactionary trash I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE REVOLUTIONARIES
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@julieofthespirits @galactus I didn't actually much like Moorcock's teardown of Tolkien. Like, there's a lot to criticize about Tolkien, but I feel like a yearning for a peaceful, bucolic world, is actually a pretty reasonable response to two world wars.
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@foolishowl @julieofthespirits @galactus
i think his teardowns in the style of "here are all the sci-fi writers who supported the vietnam war" are a lot more effective -
@saddestrobots @foolishowl @galactus yeah, I think with tolkein he came at the king and missed, but his takedowns of heinlein and company are extremely well-honed
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@saddestrobots @foolishowl @galactus I think the problem is that even if you take tolkein's bad politics into consideration, there's still quite a lot there in his work, but with heinlein & company that's not really the case
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I'm curious about the Heinlein takedowns now because I absolutely can't stand him after reading Starship Troopers. Still mad that anyone wrote that and thought "yes, this is a good political system, I am glad."
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@aud @foolishowl @saddestrobots @galactus you may be pleased to see that the heinlein takedown is literally titled starship stormtroopers
Starship Stormtroopers: Michael Moorcock
An essay by Michael Moorcock on the saturation of Fascistic and authoritarian themes and messages in Science Fiction literature.
libcom.org (libcom.org)
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Asta [AMP]replied to La Quejosa last edited by [email protected]
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] oooooh yes. I am pleased indeed.
also I just woke up from a migraine triptan nap so I am sure this is like, Baby's First Steps into Critical Analysis, but it's both amusing and not surprising (and in fact, remarkably typical) that in order to construct a world where he thought he could present Fascism as good and normal he had to create a enemy that was mindless, vicious, innumerable, filthy, and seemed solely devoted to the elimination of the waaaaait where have we... heard this one... before...
(I am willing to bet this is in the link you sent, if not covered elsewhere by others) -
@aud @foolishowl @saddestrobots @galactus iirc he originally wrote starship troopers because he was angry that another group of scifi writers wrote an open letter opposing atomic testing, a bunch of his other stuff (particularly the puppet masters) is pretty clearly just cold war paranoia
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] I read Tolkien as a kid and I am absolutely sure I missed most everything in the book(s), but this one was so obvious I got it. And even as an adult who has largely preferred cities and has spent time moving to and from them, it's stuck with me. I think "Earth and peace good!" is a pretty... that's a good one.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] what a bag of dicks.