Feb. 4th, 2009

randy_byers: (powers expdt)
Remember when I said recently that I'm generally not a fan of utopias or dystopias? Well, here's a case in point: I stopped reading this book after about 80 pages because it was boring the shit out of me. It was a great load off my mind when I realized last night that I didn't actually have to finish the book if I didn't want to. I mean, I *did* want to finish it, but my experience was that I kept having to reread paragraphs because my mind was completely uninterested in understanding the content. The flesh was willing, but the spirit was weak.

I'm not saying it's the fault of the book either. I actually found the opening section interesting, as the narrator falls asleep and wakes up in the far flung future. However, at that point it became a series of conversations about economics, and I stopped finding it interesting. Theoretically I could be interested in reading about a 19th century view of a socialist paradise, but in practice I find this kind of thing so bloodless and abstract that there's no hook for me.

Now, I've been uninterested in this book for years and years. As I say, utopias have never been my cuppa. The thing that finally got me to give it a try was learning that Homer Eon Flint was a huge fan and considered it a big influence. I certainly got the impression that Flint was something of a socialist, or as least interested in socialist ideas. It comes out most directly perhaps in the novella "The Devolutionist," which is about a binary planet system in which the ruling class lives in luxury on one planet and the working class lives in penury on the other. There is a revolution. However, when describing his own socialist utopia in "The Planeteer," it's much more of a techno-utopia along the lines of John Jacob Astor's A Journey in Other Worlds. Bellamy is not interested in technology at all, as far as I could tell. It's all industrial relations for him, and, probably more importantly, no conflict or drama. "Oh no, we've solved that problem, old boy, and here's how."

Bellamy seems like a pretty interesting writer when he's describing the narrator's feelings of alienation and confusion about losing the old world and confronting the new, but the economic discussions are just deadly to me. Ah well, on to William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland (1908). More of a weird tale, from what I've read about it.

Ducks

Feb. 4th, 2009 07:10 pm
randy_byers: (uo)
I'm pretty sure I mentioned in my Thanksgiving report that my brother was the one who got drunk this year. He started needling my niece's husband, Jake, about how they were leaving the country before the Civil War game between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. Jake and Jolie were headed to Portugal to spend ten days vacating, and they were going to miss the game. Lonnie just couldn't BELIEVE that Jake was fleeing the country because he was afraid that the UO was going to lose the game, etc etc and on and on. Jake and I both already had money bets with Lonnie on the game, but he wanted to talk some shit. Jake likes to talk shit too, it must be said, but he refused to take the bait this time. Instead he offered Lonnie another wager. If the Beavers won, Jake would wear the OSU shirt of Lonnie's choice at Xmas; if the Ducks won, Lonnie would wear the UO shirt of Jake's choice.

Here's the photographic evidence from Xmas. I hadn't brought a UO shirt (and actually don't own any), but my nephew had a Eugene waffle house shirt that worked very nicely. From left to right, that's Jake, Lonnie, and me:




What's the sign that Jake's making? C is for Chump?

Profile

randy_byers: (Default)
randy_byers

September 2017

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
10 111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Sep. 9th, 2025 06:29 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios