Boku wa baka da yo.
May. 14th, 2009 21:19![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyI went to H&M tonight in an attempt to buy a summer dress for a wedding next month, but the H&M by me brilliantly decided to stock only about 6 pieces from the collection, all XS or S, so no joy. And when the shirt that I paid $8 for at Old Navy two weeks ago was now $15 (different color, of course), I was immediately disinclined to part with my cash.
I'm such a bad capitalist drone. But this way I have more money to spend on things that actually are worth the expense.
In a deeply, deeply tangential way, MammothFail (follow the link tonaraht's archives) has been making me think about the privilege inherent in being able to enjoy authors whose works are in some ways (deeply) problematic but in others are a total gas. Specifically, I'm thinking of David Weber's Honorverse books. I read the most recent, Storm from the Shadows, in March.
Unlike most people (or at least, most people as represented on Amazon.com), I really enjoyed Storm from the Shadows. It's the second "Saganami Island" book within the Honorverse, but as Weber explains, basically all the Honorverse books are telling the same grand story, so people who want to understand the entire story really should read this one, particularly since it introduces at least some of Our Solarian Heroes, Misunderstood, More Sinned Against Than Sinning, and Otherwise. Yes, the Star Empire of Manticore is going to go toe-to-toe with the Solarian League as well as with the "rogue star nation" of Mesa (which is Secretly United and Secretly Manipulating Solaria and Galactic History). Michelle Henke, Honor Harrington's best friend, finally steps up to the plate both as a viewpoint character and as a flag officer (I for one found her a nice change from Honor), and the book zips along between old friends (with a strong focus on the continuing adventures of the protagonists of The Shadow of Saganami) and new characters. Weber's signature info dumps, since they're conveying so much new information about Solaria, the Star Empire, and Mesa, even go down easily. Despite the horrible cliffhanger ending (and the fact that, if you're paying close attention, the general ending of the next book, Torch of Freedom, is completely spoiled), I'd hold it up as the best Honorverse book since Echoes of Honor or Ashes of Victory (except for The Shadow of Saganami, which is basically On Basilisk Station, Twenty Years Later, with a Dude). In some ways it seems that the grand narrative is going to play out like a rewrite of Weber's novel Insurrection and its sequels, which he wrote with Steve White--but hey, I really liked Insurrection, so that works for me.
I started reading the Honorverse books when I was in middle school, and there are a lot of things about them that I love, starting with the absolute, unthinking gender equality of almost all human societies throughout the human diaspora and ending with Weber's endorsement of polyamorous marriage as a valid human relationship. I also think that, by making the royal house of Manticore explicitly black (with the clear explanation that the family's genotype has been modified to retain its family resemblence) and most galactic societies explicitly "post-racial", Weber has done a good thing. I think a legitimate complaint that could be raised, however, is the lack of clear, frequent authorial signposting about both of these facts (except for periodic mentions of Mike Henke's or Queen Elizabeth III's black complexion and kinky hair). Weber addresses the dimensions of race and slavery explicitly in Crown of Slaves, which really introduces the grand narrative's mortal foe, genetic slavery, and its archnemesis, the slaving, manipulating corporations of Mesa. That said, though, the character into whose mouth these meditations are put is kind of an asshole (and an academic, and an escaped slave), at least in my estimation. Another thing I like is Weber's insistence that disabled people do not lead lives that are any less rich than "able-bodied" people.
I also can't say enough about my love for the fact that Weber uses the generic third-person feminine. High five, brother!
But there are also things that I find deeply, deeply troubling, and as I go on, these issues become more obvious to me and not less. Perhaps the most obvious one is the staring lack of gay people in the 41st century. Homosexuality is clearly not unknown, but it's clearly also somewhat scandalous in the Star Kingdom (with the clear implication that one planet in the galaxy, Beowulf, is a total exception of Crazy Risque Goings-On), and there are absolutely no characters who are exclusively homosexual, and indeed, not even any who are actively homosexual--there are a few people with latent bisexual tendencies who nevertheless act heterosexually. Weber is also no stranger to the oldest shortcoming of sff: namely, its unabashed monarchist tendencies. For the first nine books of the series, the Star Kingdom of Manticore was fighting for its life against the People's Republic of Haven, which at first was merely corrupt and then disintegrated into a Reign of Terror-style revolutionary dictatorship (I found a lot of Weber's historical in-jokes amusing at the time, but now they seem rather a bit too cute, or obvious)--and it's clear that the Star Kingdom is the better place to be. Moreover, throughout the series, the readers are made to sympathize with the monarchy abrogating more power to itself rather than less, because The Wrong People got elected. By the same token, the Solarian League, which is slowly becoming the real enemy, is a nightmare of a super-sovereign entity raised both to grandiosity and to absurdity, answerable to no one, not even the bureaucrats who control it.
I also have some fairly specific reservations about the planet of Grayson, the Star Empire's closest ally, which is essentially a benign theocratic monarchy that is slowly transitioning out of patriarchy with the help of a swift kick in the pants in the form of Honor Harrington and Manticore. I have no qualms about the gender politics of this storyline; what I do have problems with is the fact that Weber explicitly equates Grayson with Japan (Graysons even duel with Japanese-style swords!). Honor is cast in the role of Commodore Perry, and Weber essentially writes Grayson's historical background to take the nationalist fantasy of the Meiji Restoration and make it the literal truth of the Mayhew Restoration. The idea that Japan was an officially closed country at any point is more a received fantasy than an actual historical reality, and reports of Perry's agency have been greatly exaggerated. Knowingly or not, Weber has aligned himself with an extremely questionable ideology masquerading as truth.
Indeed, that's a big part of my larger issues with the series' politics. By dressing up (parliamentary) monarchy in feel-good liberal costumes such as gender equality, Weber is able to sneak his deeply Burkean (in the unreconstructed sense of the Marie Antoinette-loving monarchist that Burke was) sympathies well under the radar, thereby transposing the benefits that liberal democratic government has brought us with the undemocratic, monolithic regimes that it supplanted.
All these things taken together leave me deeply uncomfortable at the thought of buying any more Weber books. I will keep reading them, however.
I'm such a bad capitalist drone. But this way I have more money to spend on things that actually are worth the expense.
In a deeply, deeply tangential way, MammothFail (follow the link to
naraht's archives) has been making me think about the privilege inherent in being able to enjoy authors whose works are in some ways (deeply) problematic but in others are a total gas. Specifically, I'm thinking of David Weber's Honorverse books. I read the most recent, Storm from the Shadows, in March. Unlike most people (or at least, most people as represented on Amazon.com), I really enjoyed Storm from the Shadows. It's the second "Saganami Island" book within the Honorverse, but as Weber explains, basically all the Honorverse books are telling the same grand story, so people who want to understand the entire story really should read this one, particularly since it introduces at least some of Our Solarian Heroes, Misunderstood, More Sinned Against Than Sinning, and Otherwise. Yes, the Star Empire of Manticore is going to go toe-to-toe with the Solarian League as well as with the "rogue star nation" of Mesa (which is Secretly United and Secretly Manipulating Solaria and Galactic History). Michelle Henke, Honor Harrington's best friend, finally steps up to the plate both as a viewpoint character and as a flag officer (I for one found her a nice change from Honor), and the book zips along between old friends (with a strong focus on the continuing adventures of the protagonists of The Shadow of Saganami) and new characters. Weber's signature info dumps, since they're conveying so much new information about Solaria, the Star Empire, and Mesa, even go down easily. Despite the horrible cliffhanger ending (and the fact that, if you're paying close attention, the general ending of the next book, Torch of Freedom, is completely spoiled), I'd hold it up as the best Honorverse book since Echoes of Honor or Ashes of Victory (except for The Shadow of Saganami, which is basically On Basilisk Station, Twenty Years Later, with a Dude). In some ways it seems that the grand narrative is going to play out like a rewrite of Weber's novel Insurrection and its sequels, which he wrote with Steve White--but hey, I really liked Insurrection, so that works for me.
I started reading the Honorverse books when I was in middle school, and there are a lot of things about them that I love, starting with the absolute, unthinking gender equality of almost all human societies throughout the human diaspora and ending with Weber's endorsement of polyamorous marriage as a valid human relationship. I also think that, by making the royal house of Manticore explicitly black (with the clear explanation that the family's genotype has been modified to retain its family resemblence) and most galactic societies explicitly "post-racial", Weber has done a good thing. I think a legitimate complaint that could be raised, however, is the lack of clear, frequent authorial signposting about both of these facts (except for periodic mentions of Mike Henke's or Queen Elizabeth III's black complexion and kinky hair). Weber addresses the dimensions of race and slavery explicitly in Crown of Slaves, which really introduces the grand narrative's mortal foe, genetic slavery, and its archnemesis, the slaving, manipulating corporations of Mesa. That said, though, the character into whose mouth these meditations are put is kind of an asshole (and an academic, and an escaped slave), at least in my estimation. Another thing I like is Weber's insistence that disabled people do not lead lives that are any less rich than "able-bodied" people.
I also can't say enough about my love for the fact that Weber uses the generic third-person feminine. High five, brother!
But there are also things that I find deeply, deeply troubling, and as I go on, these issues become more obvious to me and not less. Perhaps the most obvious one is the staring lack of gay people in the 41st century. Homosexuality is clearly not unknown, but it's clearly also somewhat scandalous in the Star Kingdom (with the clear implication that one planet in the galaxy, Beowulf, is a total exception of Crazy Risque Goings-On), and there are absolutely no characters who are exclusively homosexual, and indeed, not even any who are actively homosexual--there are a few people with latent bisexual tendencies who nevertheless act heterosexually. Weber is also no stranger to the oldest shortcoming of sff: namely, its unabashed monarchist tendencies. For the first nine books of the series, the Star Kingdom of Manticore was fighting for its life against the People's Republic of Haven, which at first was merely corrupt and then disintegrated into a Reign of Terror-style revolutionary dictatorship (I found a lot of Weber's historical in-jokes amusing at the time, but now they seem rather a bit too cute, or obvious)--and it's clear that the Star Kingdom is the better place to be. Moreover, throughout the series, the readers are made to sympathize with the monarchy abrogating more power to itself rather than less, because The Wrong People got elected. By the same token, the Solarian League, which is slowly becoming the real enemy, is a nightmare of a super-sovereign entity raised both to grandiosity and to absurdity, answerable to no one, not even the bureaucrats who control it.
I also have some fairly specific reservations about the planet of Grayson, the Star Empire's closest ally, which is essentially a benign theocratic monarchy that is slowly transitioning out of patriarchy with the help of a swift kick in the pants in the form of Honor Harrington and Manticore. I have no qualms about the gender politics of this storyline; what I do have problems with is the fact that Weber explicitly equates Grayson with Japan (Graysons even duel with Japanese-style swords!). Honor is cast in the role of Commodore Perry, and Weber essentially writes Grayson's historical background to take the nationalist fantasy of the Meiji Restoration and make it the literal truth of the Mayhew Restoration. The idea that Japan was an officially closed country at any point is more a received fantasy than an actual historical reality, and reports of Perry's agency have been greatly exaggerated. Knowingly or not, Weber has aligned himself with an extremely questionable ideology masquerading as truth.
Indeed, that's a big part of my larger issues with the series' politics. By dressing up (parliamentary) monarchy in feel-good liberal costumes such as gender equality, Weber is able to sneak his deeply Burkean (in the unreconstructed sense of the Marie Antoinette-loving monarchist that Burke was) sympathies well under the radar, thereby transposing the benefits that liberal democratic government has brought us with the undemocratic, monolithic regimes that it supplanted.
All these things taken together leave me deeply uncomfortable at the thought of buying any more Weber books. I will keep reading them, however.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-15 06:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-15 14:34 (UTC)