Tropers' fiction - always "fantastic"?

Actually, a better way to phrase it is that George Orwell was right—but he was right about the wrong people.

Orwell's theories apply very much so to what happens in the Second and Third Worlds. But Huxley more correctly predicted the ultimate fate of the First World.

Also, the idea that Orwellian totalitarianism will always be seen as a threat (and is hence self-denying) is incorrect; the first step in any such system is always to find an outside threat (whether it's actually a threat or not is immaterial) and start fear-mongering. If people think they're being defended they'll take a remarkable amount of abuse.

One might argue that Huxley's vision is compatible with the world presented by Ninteen Eighty-Four, at least to some degree. How does the Inner Party keep the proles happy? With lotteries, films, football matches, alcohol, appeals to patriotic sentiment, meaningless songs, pulp novels and pornography. There's that line in the book, about how proles and animals are free.

It kind of reminds me of Foucault's notions of biopower and panopiticism, that sort of thing.

edited 22nd Jan '12 4:41:21 PM by TheGloomer

Ah, the old Orwell-versus-Huxley argument. Strangely enough, anyone who ever brings up this comparison seems to be on Huxley's side; I've never heard anyone say, 'Ooh, Nineteen Eighty Four is so much more believable than Brave New World!'

But that's beside the point. The trouble with this comparison is that it seems to assume the two works are directly arguing against each other. They're not. Both writers observed society, saw things in it that worried them, and imagined what would happen if those worrying things were taken Up To Eleven. That's what Dystopia is all about, really. But Huxley and Orwell worried about different things. Their books don't argue against each other; they are concerned with entirely different subjects.

What did Orwell see around him? Totalitarianism. Hypocrisy. Power-worship. Dishonest use of language. Completely made-up news. People changing their beliefs overnight. He wrote extensively on these topics, and much of that is cold hard journalism, not speculation. If you really think Nineteen Eighty-Four isn't 'believable', go read some books about Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or any Communist dictatorship ever.

edited 22nd Jan '12 4:49:59 PM by MidnightRambler

Hm. That is true, Gloomer.

A mix of Orwell's and Huxley's visions fits the US well, at the very least.

@midnight: I can. I have. I'm reasonably certain I know more about autocracy than you do, otherwise you wouldn't describe Orwell's work as journalistic.

Anyone who actually understood the mechanisms of Godwinland, for example, would see a government populated by street hoods in a land of social darwinism gone mad, where nothing can be accomplished because the lines of responsibility and authority are hopelessly muddled, where keeping public order is accomplished by the inertia of the populace rather than the mechanisms assigned to actually control them, which have instead been co-opted to do other things like round up Jews. There are wonderful case studies in backstabbing and deliberate malfeasance by the great (Krupp's sabotage of the Tiger tank design to ensure they got the contract for the gun) and the small (numerous officers who made spot decisions not to cooperate with or to interfere with the einsatzkommando teams) that were never punished, and the whole system was a mess. It is a case study in how not to run an Orwellian system.

Fascist Italy was destroyed by the people it tried to eliminate. There's a famous scene from a movie, perhaps you've seen it, about Mussolini announcing war with Britain to a crowd, and getting dead silence. It's not fiction. Italy was never even partially under that sort of control. Pretending it has anything to do with Orwell's work except in Mussolini's head is a terrible argument.

The Soviet Union is a better argument but even then it begins to fall apart once you look at the nitty-gritty problems nature and problems of the system as well the resources it really had. And in the end, it burned out; it lost not only the means (sometime in the sixties) but also the will (sometime in the eighties) to impose its will, which has been my argument all along. Orwell was a poor prophet because his predictions will defeat themselves over time.

The only truly Orwellian government the world has ever seen is North Korea, and even this is a perception and not a statement of facts, as there are too few facts available to make a judgement either way.

So how did we get from a discussion on how Most Tropers Are Young Nerds to debating the relative merits of Orwell and Huxley?

I think it falls under Things Man Was Not Meant to Know.

I blame this post

@142: ...if I'm reading that image right, then basically what it's saying is "Orwell was WRONG! We shouldn't be afraid of censorship, we should embrace it to save ourselves from having to listen to stupid people talk." That's an awfully nihilistic and short-sighted view of the world.

Never really gotten that sense from him myself. I find him clever, and amazingly skillful with his use of subtext, and I like the sparsity of his prose.

I think you're correct, but there is an immediacy between reading and thought (and thus, expression) that does not exist in visual art. The more you read, and the more aware you are of the quality of what you read, the more you will internalize how you'd want to sound, and what to avoid sounding like.

But why? As was pointed out, being objective about yourself is quite hard, so shouldn't you see it as exceptionally admirable when done right?

See, that's the problem again. I don't believe it's quite hard, I believe it's impossible. The various books you cite may be good books, but I do not believe that the authorial self-inserts in them are objective any more then I would say that a teenager's fanfiction Marty Stu is (although they're almost certainly closer to objectivity).

You may believe that on principle, but how would you be able to tell? And why is complete objectivity relevant? It's impossible either way, whether you're writing about yourself or the outside world.

edited 22nd Jan '12 7:54:41 PM by Gwirion

But like I said, writing about yourself carries that self-indulgent air that writing about the outside world doesn't.

I heavily disagree that it's impossible to write about oneself properly, considering the best book I've ever read had a self-insert character.

Only if your goal is to show everyone what an amazing and profound chap you are. As we have said many a time already, a self-insertion need not be the focal point of a work.

Which one?

edited 22nd Jan '12 8:04:57 PM by Gwirion

The one by Joyce. Specifically A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. iirc the character is in Ulysses too, but I haven't the chance to read that one yet.

edited 22nd Jan '12 8:09:00 PM by Culex3

Gotcha.

Nrjxll, have you read The Master and Margarita?

edited 22nd Jan '12 8:11:36 PM by Gwirion

Author Avatar is another flavor of self-insert.

I wrote an Author Symbol once, but that's different.

No.

Well, if you ever get around to it, you must tell me which of the characters you thought was the self-insert, and whether he appeared glorified or self-indulgent in any way.

edited 22nd Jan '12 8:16:43 PM by Gwirion

I think if you have a healthy-sized ego (not too big), you can probably write an objective self-insert. Some people are just humble like that.

Not to be a downer, but to get this discussion back on track, I came up with an idea. I'm gonna finish my damn book, first of all. All of it's Urban Fantasy, Shonen-inspired, over-the-top Shout-Out-laden awesomeness.

And then I'm gonna rewrite it. In a completely mundane setting, changing as little as possible, to make it believable. Fascist labor camps become school, prison is detention, kidnapping is still... well, kidnapping, but without the whole "ancient mage conspiracy" behind it. Should turn out fun.

Perhaps you misunderstood me... When I said that 'Orwell wrote extensively on these topics', I meant besides Nineteen Eighty-Four. I was referring to his essays and his nonfiction books, such as Homage To Catalonia. Those certainly do contain journalism, even if he often uses it as input for a subjective argument.

And I agree that 1984-style dictatorship isn't sustainable. All its approximations in Real Life eventually crumbled under their own weight; Dystopia Is Hard, after all. That does not mean, however, that such a society couldn't exist in the first place. If the many accounts of Soviet citizens who got hold of a clandestine copy of the book and were astonished at how accurately it matched their own experiences are to be believed, we've come frighteningly close at times.

Also, sorry to bring this up again after so many posts... guess I'm in the wrong time zone.