Geoffrey D. Wessel ([info]gdwessel) wrote,
@ 2008-03-26 16:30:00
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Today's "You Decide" Topic
Read this article, detailing a group of SF writers speaking to a Homeland Security conference. Pay close attention to comments by Larry Niven.

Is Niven a "racist fuckhead" as someone here on LJ opined? Is he making a bad attempt at a Johnathan Swift pisstake? Or, even, both?

YOU DECIDE

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[info]benchilada
2008-03-26 08:42 pm UTC (link)
*sigh*

Time to separate the art and the artist again...

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[info]jfargo
2008-03-26 09:00 pm UTC (link)
Kind of what I'm thinking.

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[info]draggonlaady
2008-03-26 08:49 pm UTC (link)
Eh. So much context lost on things like that. But I'm gonna go with he's not a "racist fuckhead", based on the types of inter-racial/inter-species/inter-societal interactions that have been pretty prominently demonstrated in all of the books of his I've read. My guess is that those statements were part of a longer list of possible ways to address certain issues, most of which weren't controversial enough to warrant 'sound biting' into the article.

Then again, it's not like I actually know him--I've only met him once, at a convention, very briefly. He seemed nice enough, but it's not like we were actually discussing these topics.

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[info]thetathx1138
2008-03-27 12:19 am UTC (link)
He might well be a racist fuckhead. But, on the other hand, if you presented somebody with a problem like the above, and they were asked to approach it from a non-emotional, purely logical standpoint, informational warfare is probably one of the answers they'd come back with.

And, wow, David Brin...kind of scary!

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[info]infinitarian
2008-03-27 10:00 am UTC (link)
Haha -- brilliant link. I may have to steal it.

My guess is that Niven's premise regarding "illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway" is sincere and, yes, borderline racist -- I've always got a bit of a reactionary vibe from his SF. His suggested solution does look like an attempt at Swiftian satire, however.

My favourite paragraph:

"Instead the writers used their time to pontificate on a variety of tangentially related topics, including their past roles advising the government, predictions in their stories that have come to pass, the demise of the paperback book market, and low-cost launch into space."

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[info]kylegarret
2008-03-28 05:56 pm UTC (link)

I'm going with pisstake. Why? Because it appears from the article that the entire panel was ridiculous. It also seemed that they were taking tiny grains of current social trends and blowing them up to insane proportions.

Had he been the only one acting out, perhaps I'd be more concerned. But I think he was just trying to be inflammatory, I don't know that he really believes it.

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