Muslims, the West and a little short story by Dan Simmons
Here is a link to Dan Simmon's short story about a possible future invovling a 'Century War' between Muslims and the West. Aside from the unfortunate fact that when humans have atomic weapons no war is going to last for one hundred years, I have a few problems with it. As an attempt to visualize a 'future history' - something that is a worthy project - I simply find it lame. I won't to write a longer explanation but for now, here is the link so that anyone who wishes can read it.
posted by Clemens @ 4:49 PM
9 comments
9 Comments:
Hi Clemens,
I read that pathetic excuse for story the first time I saw the link (on Eliot's Blog wasn't it?). What a waste of 15 minutes.
The author has strung together a shirt list of hot-button words -- Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, Sun-Tzu, Dhimmitude, Sirhan Sirhan and such -- none of which he shows any sign of understanding.
He doesn't appear to have even read 'The Peloponnesian War'. This is inexcusable, since it is both a great work of history and a ripping yarn to boot. There are many lessons in political hysteria, military disaster and the impetuous folly of human nature to be taken from this excellent book -- although personally I don't think any are specifically relevant to the War in Iraq or the War on Terror -- but Simmons woefully tries to suggest Thucydides thesis is simply that Athens lost the the war because they didn't prosecute it bloodily enough! This is an infantile interpretation, with no connection to the deep and tragic events in the book I read.
I think he probably just cribbed a few lines of the history from a blog somewhere, possibly VD Hanson's, another historian he doesn't seem to have read, or simply fails miserably to comprehend. (VDH's books are much better than his blog, he's a very good military historian but a pretty average political commentator).
In the middle of Simmons story is a boring bit of drivel about the 'War on Terror' being futile since 'you can't win a war on an emotion'. This is a stupid semantic argument you hear all to often, of the sort only fit for an imbecile or a Marxist (after all we won the 'Cold' War, but it still snows in Winter -- need I say more).
And don't get me started on Sun Tzu (another good writer who deserves better than to have his name misused like this), Dhimmitude or Sirhan Sirhan*. Too many Rightist Blogs are making us conservatives look like idiots with the their historical illiteracy. In our age it is the Commies who mindlessly regurgitate trite slogans based on historical fabrications, our side are meant to the smart ones!
Dan Simmons is an author? Let's try the 'sniff' test shall we? Here is bit of dialogue from his little story:
> “You’re sh#tting me,” I said.
> “I am sh#tting you not,” said the Time Traveler.
Yikes, I put down the HTML Programmer's Reference to read this!? I know which one has the greater literary value!
(* who wasn't even a Muslim, by the way)
Glad to hear from you Kip. I am still going to try to get a little essay up about the story. I am interested in understanding why Simmons writes the story.
And I still can't figure out how he draws the conclusion that Athens wasn't ruthless enough! Some would argue that it was Athens initial ruthlessness with smaller cities that caused other city-states to seek protection from Sparta. If you were going to see any connection between the Syracuse fiasco and now, it would be the mistakes made by an imperial minded democracy in overextending itself into a country that had done it no harm, at the expense of its efforts in a war already underway.
Simmons has written 'Ilium' which was well received and seems to know something about Ancient Greece, but I'll have to see what I think of 'Ilium.' Sloppy use of history drives me crazy.
Victor Davis Hanson, otoh is still one of my favorites. His ancient history work is brilliant. For the first year and a half or so, so were his columns in NRO. When he stuck to war commentary, he was always worth reading because it gave you the best case scenario for the war. After that he began to stray into political and social commentaray and became a lot less interesting.
Oh well. Welcome to Sententiae Kip. I visited your site a few days ago but didn't leave comments. Isn't the Anglosphere wonderful?
Clemens
Hi Clemens,
I like your site. Too many (almost all?) Bloggers on both sides are just pushing a party line. It's great to read someone who thinks for himself, even if I don't agree with all of it.
Lame? I , respectfully disagree
Joey - you would. Lame refers to his argument - and I can assure you it is as lame as they come, as in, not at all convincing.
You, or anyone else, can agree with his general program and conclusion, but the presentation is as lame as his time-traveler frame. But, I have just posted some stuff and have more.
Joey-
Finally got to a computer that could handle your links in less than 5 minutes. The Foundation Triolgy was a classic based, of all things, on Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'
The fact that Asimov did it well doesn't mean that Simmons did it well.
Unless I've misunderstood your post.
No I think it was me that misunderstood your post.
I thought you were saying writing about predicting the future was what was lame.
--Joey
No! Writing about the future is great. Here's one: Tomorrow at 2pm a class of world civ 101 students at my school are going to take a test where they will have to know all about Hannibal and his Elephants. Some will not do so well. A few will do very well.
See? It's easy.
Of course, when you cast out further, say 15 years or so, it gets a little harder.
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