«See, here's the thing that stands out to me the most: Atlas Shrugged should be judged, not as an economic textbook or a sermon, but as what it also clearly is: a 1957 science fiction novel.»—"Never Mind Important, Is It Any Good?"
This reminds me of something I remember MJD once saying, to the effect that the most interesting reading of the Star Trek shows/movies is that they are a story within a story: the outermost story is that the Federation actually is the Evil Alternate Universe Federation, with the knives and the evilness– and those guys make absurdly cloying propaganda about how nice they are, and that propaganda is what we're watching.
October 12 2007, 20:54:47 UTC 5 years ago
Distressingly bloodless
My guess is that the discussion was so sedate because everyone was stunned, practically concussed, by the fact that the original poster, Brad Hicks, actually managed to make it thru that mess of a book.I mean, off and on for seven years now, I've been green- and red-penning technical manuscripts that are often a poorly expressed muddle at points; and, as a side effect, I'm just beginning to get to where I can stand reading bad books that are non-technical but: short, and still non-fiction.
But put a bad ten-page short story in front of me, and maybe I'll just barely make it to page five, and I'll be screaming and sobbing all the way. So I stand in Lovecraftian awe of Brad Hicks's, uh, "patience with the work"; and of how he came out the other end of the book with the ability to write about it at length, instead of going and drinking himself to death to escape the pain of living in this world in which such a book can even exist, much less be (supposedly) widely read.
And about delivery systems, you're completely right. 1984 isn't just a low-key suspense thriller about a guy who runs into trouble with the cops.