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This is your daily reminder that we are living in emergency times.
Shit’s not “about to” hit the fan — it already has, and it’s just not evenly distributed yet. As things accelerate, I’ve found myself shifting what I read. Less escapist sci-fi, more grounding in the moments before things cracked open — before the boots came down.
This week I borrowed Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell from the library. Felt like time to revisit what resistance looked like in the face of rising authoritarianism.
Anyone else making similar shifts in your reading? Got any titles that have helped you stay sharp, stay grounded, or just feel less alone? Drop 'em in the replies.
@franklinlopez
@lulu recently shares this one: The Language of the Third Reich by Victor Klemperer
https://archive.org/details/klemperer-victor-j-auth-language-of-the-third-reich-lti-lingua
@grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
Thank you for signal boosting :)
@lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
The 1940 Robert Heinlein story "If This Goes On...", from the book "Revolt in 2100", depicts a society in which a charismatic preacher, elected President in 2012, manages to turn the US into a theocratic dictatorship. Heinlein's depictions of romantic relationships are dated and somewhat clumsy, but the plot, set about 90 years later, shows how little freedom is left for the citizens, and what they eventually do about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22
@Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
In the book is also a short essay "Concerning Stories Never Written", outlining the rise of Nehemiah Scudder who established a religion dictatorship in the United States.
When I first read it in the 1960s I found it entertaining but unlikely.
With each passing decade I found it more and more terrifying...
@nyrath @Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez Wasn't a draft passage published as "Stone Pillow"?
@60sRefugee @Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
Yes, something like that.
@60sRefugee @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
Both the Heinlein Society and Wikipedia call Stone Pillow one of his unwritten stories, part of the outline for his Future History timeline. Have you seen it published anywhere?
@Anne_Delong @60sRefugee @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
He wrote specifically that he did not write it. Here's a substantial chunk of the postscript to Revolt in 2100:
The first of these unwritten stories, The Sound of His Wings, starts shortly before Logic of Empire and continues for several years beyond the ending of Logic; it would have recounted the early life, rise as a television evangelist, and subsequent political career of the Reverend Nehemiah Scudder, the “First Prophet,” President of the United States and destroyer of its Constitution, founder of the Theocracy.
The second story, Eclipse, parallels somewhat both the American Revolution and the break-up of colonialism taking place on this planet today, for it is concerned with the colonies on Mars and on Venus becoming self-sufficient and politically mature and breaking away from Mother Earth, followed by almost complete cessation of interplanetary travel. Logic of Empire suggests some of the forces that led to the breakdown. Interplanetary travel will be tremendously expensive at first; if the home planet is no longer in a position to exploit the colonies, trade and communication might dwindle almost to zero for a long period—indeed the infant nations might pass “Non-Intercourse Acts.”
The Stone Pillow was intended to fill the gap between the establishment of the Theocracy and its overthrow in the Second American Revolution. It was to have been concerned with the slow build-up of a counter-revolutionary underground. It gets its name from the martyrs of the underground, those who rested their heads on pillows of stone—in or out of prison. These revolutionaries would be in much the same nearly hopeless position that anti-Communists have found themselves in these thirty years past in the U.S.S.R., but the story would have concerned itself with the superiority of the knife to the atom bomb under some circumstances and with the inadvisability of swatting mosquitoes with an axe.
These three stories will probably never be written. In the case of Eclipse I have dealt with the themes involved at greater length in two novels which were not bound by the Procrustean Bed of a fictional chart; it would be tedious for both you and me to deal with the same themes again. As for the other two stories, they both have the disadvantage of being “down beat” stories; their outcomes are necessarily not pleasant. I am not opposed to tragedy and have written quite a bit of it, but today we can find more than enough of it in the headlines. I don’t want to write tragedy just now and I doubt if you want to read it.
@Anne_Delong @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez What I'm remembering is a very short passage– a page or two– depicting Scudder gloating on the eve of his election and his own backers muttering under their breath about 'what have they done?'. My searches aren't helping because they're insisting that there is a Heinlein novel titled "The Stone Pillow" with a completely different subject and plot; something about the stars going out and women abandoning the Earth?
@60sRefugee @Anne_Delong @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez Sounds like a hallucination by an AI. No novel like that I can recall, written or plotted by RAH.
@FredKiesche @Anne_Delong @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez The short I read before the advent of AI; it might have been included in a collection of posthumously released stuff? And by short I mean excerpt length.
The other novel I referenced turned out to be an old April Fool's gag (which in my defense MULTIPLE cites linked to).
@60sRefugee @Anne_Delong @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez Ummmm…check the date.
@60sRefugee @Anne_Delong @nyrath @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez “Stars going out” might be a published story where the Sun is found to be a variable star? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Year_of_the_Jackpot
@Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
An earlier version of that theocratic government was also in the backstory of "For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs" his first written novel, only published posthumously.
The novel is in a later utopian society based on Social Credit economic theory.
@Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
The novel suffers greatly from being a series of lectures about Social Credit Theory, how jealousy and sexual possessiveness are stupid, and how crime should be treated as a mental health issue. The plot and love story are rather secondary, if not tertiary.
@cptbutton @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez
Yes, the first time I read it, as a teenager, those ideas were new and interesting to me, but I have to admit that when I read it again I skipped over some of that. I remember being impressed when the characters tried make the impoverished citizens doubt their leader by obsequiously praising his extreme wealth and lavish spending...
@Anne_Delong @lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez I started to re-read IF THIS GOES ON and couldn't get past the first few pages. When I read it in High School in the early 70s, I didn't have this problem.
A friend as a similar problem with Atwood's A HANDMAIDEN'S TALE. He says it's to close to the truth to be comfortable.