Radio War Nerd EP #64—Sci-Fi & Fascism

God I enjoyed this episode - thanks!

Man, I could talk about sci-fi and history, politics, personalities all day. What a great chat to listen to, thank you.

There's quite a few people on here praising this episode, so i hope this is still able to ring through to you guys: I thought this episode was really hard to listen to all the way through and I thought that the result was a couple hour long interview light on substantive thoughts other than "these authors' politics are retrograde and they are bad people and writers as a result". While the subject matter here is a bit of a detour in relation to the subjects you often discuss, I do think an opportunity was lost here to actually engage with the ideas being criticized (what do they think, why would they think these things/historical context, what is the end goal of the ideas etc). I get that some attempt at this was made with the entire "wish fulfillment" angle, but I don't think that this is a very charitable interpretation (we're just ridiculing them as immature) and it doesn't drive discussion. Instead we wind up drawing lines in the sand, pointing at the other guy, and saying he's obviously terrible/ridiculous and never showing why. I thought a couple of opportunities were missed in this regard. JBS & new deal stealth communists is an interesting concept that can involve a lot of history and political/philosophical discussion. Instead we just dismiss JBS as crazy for seeing communists in every closet and every bed. Similary, a few mentions are made of a-historicity with regard to the vietnam war (which i am not an expert on) and the causes for our loss and there's absolutely no follow through on this claim. Christ, i would have really enjoyed a discussion on reasons why we lost the vietnam war and how having an authoritarian political system would have changed or not changed these. Even within the context of literary criticism, this episode is very light. Outside of the one observation re: kubrick and the need for diversity in order to drive imagination/innovation there was little engagement with any text/work outside of some sort of trite dismissal. Honestly if i wanted a masturbatory bull session with a particular political perspective, there are countless examples of this already on the internet. What i initially found interesting about the War Nerd was his ability to engage with ideas, events, and concepts. The way he was able to provide history for the sunni-shia conflict, for the US civil war, or for british imperial expansion and explain his view without necessarily vilifying the other side or even taking a side at all. This may be difficult to do when we're describing a particular subject as a nazi, a fascist, a racist, part of the patriarchy, or whatever. In this regard, I think it would be helpful to consider that history may not be a path that we progress along - it may just be a dialogue between different ideas. Might also be helpful to not have guests whose identities are so wrapped up in their politics that they can only engage with material in a political light. That or have someone play the antagonist (even if a devil's advocate) so that the conversation can go somewhere productive. My two cents. P.S. Republican Rome was very...republican, and yet they would elect a dictator in times of stress. Maybe the libertarian/authoritarian affinity comes from the same place.

Great episode! I could listen to The War Nerd and David Forbes go on for hours. I'd be really curious to hear what you guys think of Le Guin, especially.

Ever thought about doing an episode on the 'Song of Ice and Fire' series? Pretty interesting take on a lot of the topics you discuss"

Fact or fantasy? "Evidence of an Extraterrestrial Nuclear Massacre" video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd6xa5VivaE&t=35s" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zd6xa5VivaE&t=35s</a> and of course the book <a href="http://amzn.to/2iY5xoA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://amzn.to/2iY5xoA</a>

Regarding the position of science fiction in the american literature establishment, Pournelle recounted in his blog a few years ago how Vonnegut was once open to being associated with the science fiction community. However, someone (Farmer I think it was) wanted to write some Kilgore Trout stories and asked Vonnegut's permission, which was refused. The author went ahead anyway and the association with Vonnegut and, by extention, american letters, was lost forever. This was something Pournelle regretted.

Great episode. Since this was focused exclusively on Anglo-SF it would be great if you'd do a similar episode about Warsaw pact SF. The Strugatsky brothers and Stanislaw Lem would make for a great podcast.

The travel account newsletters are simply the best, but next time you might wanna lower your exposure to Serbian sandwich germs by flying wizz air Milan-Skopje directly, or vice versa. They fly twice a week for 10 euro + extras.

With respect to 2001, I'd point out that while the stewardess is pretty retrograde, the film has an interesting thing to say about gender roles elsewhere. When Dr. Floyd is waiting to board his shuttle to the moon, he meets and has a discussion with a group of Russians, three women and one man. Interestingly, all of the women in that group are legitimate scientists (the man is also introduced as a scientist, but it becomes clear as the scene progresses that he's actually in the intelligence community).

What a great discussion. Thank you! I was a bit surprised that Orwell didn't come up in the discussion of liberals writing sci-fi in the dystopian/post-apocalyptic genre (or William Morris, whose novella "News from Nowhere" is an examination of a politically post-apocalyptic society that is almost unbelievably progressive and socialist to the point of anarchy). I'd also love to hear more discussion regarding Lovecraft, given his truly titanic (and apparently expanding) impact on sci-fi and horror. He had a very interesting take on these issues. Lovecraft clearly felt that society peaked in 18th century England and that New England WASPS were qualitatively superior to everyone else on this side of the pond (until, as you point out, towards the end of his life), but he was ruthless in his treatment of this class. They were often doomed to "degenerate" (see "The Dunwich Horror", "The Rats in the Walls"). More interestingly, they were often portrayed as being particularly clueless and just plain wrong about the nature of reality and the future. As Kenneth Hite points out, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" is an inverted cargo cult story in which the "primitives" have the far more accurate and sophisticated myth-system and knowledge base than the "civilized" WASPS (and, incidentally, the protagonist ends up embracing and celebrating his true lineage as an inhuman creature, which is unique for Lovecraft). "The Strange, High House in the Mist" all but states that bourgeois values and beliefs are invalid.

Kubrik was an american. He lived in the UK though.

Very disappointed with your choice of guest this week. Did you not catch David Forbes pretty much calling for authors to be blacklisted because he doesn't like their politics? Does that sound familiar? People are getting tired of this SJW shit trying to worm its way into all media - now they want to ruin sci-fi too. Times are changing and people like Forbes are being taken less seriously and will soon go the way of the do-do.

Re: the Daily News editorial - NYDN is owned by Mortimer Zuckerman, who was domestically left of center but has moved increasingly to the right since 2008. He's also a fervent Zionist and has packed whatever passes for foreign policy commentary in that rag to Likudniks and neo-cons. It is a bizarre mix of NYC vaguely left populism domestically because it has to be in order to retain its readership, but is solidly hard-right on foreign policy.

Great episode! You guys might want to seek out Joe Haldeman for any future interview on the subject of Sci-fi and war. Haldeman has edited anthologies on military sci-fi (from an anti-war perspective) <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Study-War-More-Selection-Alternatives/dp/0380405199" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Study-War-More-Selection-Alternatives/dp/0380405199</a> and is a lively interview subject (Wired, Real News Network) on war and futurism. He also has written a direct sequel to the Forever War and a few that could be considered indirect descendants.

Also William Gibson's latest novel The Peripheral depicts life during and after -as he states "a multi-generational apocalyptic confluence of events" that seems like what we are currently hurtling towards...

Octavia Butler wrote a sequel to Parable of the Sower called Parable of the Talents that is also excellent and keeps on the same track of a honest depiction of apocalypse. Also The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi gives probably one the most believable depictions of a possible dissolution of the United States, and what a mega drought would do to the South West.

Great show. I love hearing about this stuff and the podcast format means I can listen to it over again for the bits I missed or mis-heard. I read a lot of Heinlein as a boy and loved it, so much so that I read Stranger in a Strange Land several times on the trot. However, there came a point in the 80's when I couldn't read his stuff any more. Farnhams Freehold should have caused me to raise an eyebrow, but I was into his fiction so much that I blotted it out of my mind. For a book that deals with societal collapse and how quickly it might happen, Alex Scarrow's "Last Light" is very good. He also wrote the Time Riders series of time travel books for teenagers which I found very enjoyable as an adult. For alternate realities, I enjoyed Kim Stanley Robinsons "The Years of Rice and Salt" I came across an interview with Daniel Suarez who has written some good scifi-ish thrillers (Daemon). His latest book is about drones and he says that the drone-operators are very much in the position of armoured knights in that they cannot be touched easily by enemies. That reminded me of a book by Ernle Bradford on the siege of Malta where he says that the knights if St John were almost invulneralble in their armour. I think there were a small number of actual knights at the start of the siege and only two left at the end. Their armour was good protection but they were not invulnerable, unlike the drone operators. I was thinking that the story of that siege might make a good episode.

PS: this is excellent

I'm not a big sci-fi fan, which I'm aware is to my detriment. I am, however, a rabid Mobile Suit Gundam fan (especially the original and Zeta Gundam), which is as much a political soap opera as it is about warring factions fighting in space and dealing with the meeting of technology and forced evolution. I highly recommend it, in part b/c there's a quote in the first series that is something like "technology has come so far that we've back to fighting hand-to-hand." It's an odd reflection of the way in which the same sorts of tropes repeat themselves, even in what ostensibly was an anime about a WWIII scenario fused with people taking to space.

It's interesting comparing someone who cares about and enjoys the genre of science fiction despite disagreeing with a lot of the politics with someone who has such a pathological need to seperate it into the acceptable and unacceptable that he descibes the man in the high castle as a vaccine. When Forbes was talking about white men ranting online he wasn't talking about himself was he?

Outstanding shows - thank you for all your work. #64 is particularly interesting. I bought "The Old Iron Dream" but can't find much else out there by or about David Forbes. He blog seems to be dead? Would love to read his stuff in depth. Thanks again - keep up the good work!