Which he picked up from a soviet commisar while fighting fascists in the 30s in spain. Known for his talent with grenades. Suffered sone pretty severe injuries.

pro british imperialism

Okay so i don't know everything abput the man but did you read his account of being a colonialist shitbag 'on the occasion of the killing of an elephant'? It's not a fucking endorsement.

not SCIENCE fiction

Sure, yeah, psychology and sociology don't count. Le'guinn never wrote a scifi novel except the fairy tale about the princess who didn't understand the difference between general and special relativity, which was peak sci-fi.

It's the lasers and rocket ships that make the stories good, not the new relations and forms of person and society rgat they enable stories of or lense a speculative technology might allow us to see ourselves through. Obviously. Star wars is the most sci-fi sci-fi because it has ALLTHETHINGS.

talking about how he sucked as a person to criticize an idea an author expressed, then citing asimov

So do you hate women and think rape is fine and asimov was just a cool guy, or are you the dumb kind of tankie who never learned to think for yourself and just repeats shit to sound smart and indicate group membership without ever actually understanding what any of it means?

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Even on a literary level, asimov had some great ideas and concepts, but the actual writing isn't particularly gripping stuff.

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Even the ideas were nothing too special¹. His writing was fine, but yeah, not really more than 'fine'

And he was, to put it mildly: extremely shitty to women, whom he did not consider to be people, to a degree that stood out even in the like 1950s.

Might've also done some huac snitching? But definitly check that, low confidence. Extra 'what the fuck is wrong with you?' to this tankie if he did.

¹but i am remembering his 'foundation' novels, the premise of which is fucking hilarious in context of him saying '1984 isnt scifi'-the point of the books being all the lasers and shit aren't the real technology being brought back, and the descendents of the sociology department dirt farming in the ruins of the old capital whose communication with each other is so advanced nobody else can even tell they're doing it (its grosser than that, in the context of how rapey he was) are thr real drivers of everything going on and this rim colony full of physicists and engineers was essentially their puppet.

[–] balderdash9@lemmy.zip -3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I don't know why people write these emotionally charged comments that are dripping with sarcasm. Your entire comment is a series of strawman misrepresentations that you've erected to unceremoniously "dunk" on the opposition instead of actually arguing with any nuance. You give one piece of evidence in your favor and conclude that you've had the final say on the matter. This sort of discourse boils down to "You're an idiot!" ... "No, YOU are!!"

My point is that Orwell is more anti-Stallin than pro-leftist. People on the left may be tempted to interpret Orwell as arguing against right-wing fascism. But he is actually depicting a fascistic socialism. This explains why our governments are so quick to hail 1984 as some literary achievement. In reality, the novel slows to a crawl in the middle and is not inventive at all; especially when compared to the great works of science fiction such as The Time Machine, The Dispossessed, Roadside Picnic, Necromancer, etc. (Manual surveillance of millions of people through their TVs? Seriously? 1984 is not fit to be compared with any of Ursula Le Guin's works. As a fan of the genre, I question whether you actually read science fiction at all.)

By the tone of your comment I can see that you're pretty entrenched in your position and don't care about Orwell's character or motivations. Everyone else can make up their own minds:

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I want to take this apart piece by piece because i think every singke thing you say here is wrong, but reading this i get the impression you haven't read a single fucking one of the things you're talking about, including my comment.

Still skipping the asimov thing too, while you retreat into 'rationality bro' and defer to someone else.

You're not correct, but you're not even wrong; you're just parroting.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I've read one of their links, and although it shows Orwell to be an asshole, racist, bigot, and anti-Stalin; it still doesn't make sense as a ground for other statements, especially him being imperialist.

I would think that the whole thing comes from conflating communism and whatever the Soviets were doing, and if anyone thinks that USSR was not the heaven on earth, they are damned

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

Well yeah, communism is when stalin.