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DEAD_PLOTS
September 22, 2020
A great blog post from Charles Stross from last month,
I wish I'd noticed it sooner:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2020/08/dead-plots.html#comments
I like this bit a lot, I'm very interested to see where
Stross can take this line of thought:
"Fantasies of agency are a drug. We live in an age where
individuals almost *never* get to make a significant
difference. [...] And I have a feeling that sooner or
later we're going to need to go cold turkey and come down
off the pleasant high of imagining that we *can* fix global
climate change, or colonize Mars, or punch the Joker, on
our own and without collaboration."
Later he expands on the point:
"We live in an age where the low-hanging fruit have been
plucked, so in the absence of new fields opening up, it
takes teamwork to hold a whole stack of ladders up to the
remaining fertile branches."
I've talked about the same issue years ago (and did
some of it at Charles Stross' blog). My suggestion
there was to try to hybridize "male" adventure
fiction (which exaggerates human agency) with
"female" romance fiction (which downplays it):
HUMAN_AGENT One approach might be the
diplomat as hero rather
than the more typical
military/cop/vigilante--
but preferably not one
like Keith Laumer's Retief.
However, the bulk of the post--and surrounding
discussion-- is about plots that have been
invalidated by things like the advent of mobile Interestingly, Stross
phones. A subject near-and-dear, of course-- doesn't mention the
effect of pervasive
Stross exaggerates a bit how hard video surveillance.
it is to contrive a character
that doesn't carry a phone
"Indeed, the only way I can see to
write a novel set in North America or There's a lot of variations
Europe with a protagonist aged under Stross skips: e.g. you
70 who doesn't have a mobile phone or realize the bad guys (the
use the internet is to make them cops, the feds?) is tracking
either a criminal on probation (who's your phone, so you "go paleo"
been forbidden from using those for a while to lose them.
everyday tools on pain of going back
to prison) or to give them some sort
of disabling condition-- a neurotic
terror of 5G radiation, perhaps, or
locked-in syndrome."
I of course, will point out that
that you might just be some sort of Their usefulness is often
eccentric fellow (like myself) who exaggerated, and they
doesn't want to deal with them. strike me as dangerously
addictive.
One of my ideas is a different
sort of eccentric character I think it's funny I would
that's living retro as a even need to explain to
cultural experiment. anyone why I wouldn't want
to bother with them.
I'm sitting at a desk with ethernet
and phone lines-- losing connectivity
when I get up strikes me as more of a
feature then a drawback.
Stross also exaggerates how hard it
is to find places and people with
weak connectivity-- and a number of
people (e.g. Heteromeles) chide him
about this. It seems Stross had
temporarily forgotten how backward
the United States can be.
Charles Stross indulges in the now prevalent
contemporary usage of the term "conspiracy
theory", using it to refer to insanity like
chem trails and QAnon and such.
He makes the claim you can't write about conspiracy
scenarios as a joke any more, you're inadvertantly
giving support to the psychological impulses
underlying the alt right crazies.
(1) I like a good conspiracy theory,
it's just that there's lots of
bad ones these days.
(2) Conspiracies really can happen
and really do exist: in advance Though these days a lot of the
of evidence, you have theory. corruption is so *out in the
open* is doesn't qualify.
(3) The term was put on the map
circa the JFK-assassination,
which really and truly looks
like a conspiracy, and the It could be we need a new
government really and truly catchy phrase to describe what
tried to hide it-- and someone people mean when they say
*still is* trying to hide it, "conspiracy theory". It could
which in itself is interesting. do wonders to improve our
clarity of thought.
(4) The point that Stross makes
about conspiracy encouraging Can we categorize CTs by
bad think has multiple problems. level of insanity?
Suppressing stories that play up
to a widely shared mental quirk
is at best a weak tool to fix
the problem. I would suggest
that *poking a finger in the
wound* with a tale of conspiracy Some other commenters
that cuts in more than one go in that direction as
direction would be more sensible. well-- tell a story about
someone that lives in a
CT induced panic that
Myself, I think I like the begins to wake up and
idea of CT believers that crawl back toward sanity.
inadvertantly provide cover
for the *real* conspiracy.
(Interestingly, I've
seen that one in the AN_INCONTINENT_TRUTH
wilds already.)
Another thing: it's extremely common for
asian pop culture thrillers to portray
a world in the grip of old boy's network
cronism.
This seems all-too-plausible to me,
and I don't think that this theme
deserves to be shrugged off as a "Serial killers"
mere stale trope. on the other
I would prefer
to never ever
hear about again.
Ditto,
amnesia.
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