Thank you for this piece, and all the others you've done this year. This one really resonates with me. Like lots of people, I'm struggling with how to proceed after Trump's win. I'm wary of drawing too many lessons from it about who we are as a nation, etc., and what libs should do next to counter and/or respond, etc., but it's not hard to see that the times ahead look dark. The mask is definitely off, as they say. But here, you've set out a good and inspiring framework for carrying on, particularly for someone like me, who's not religious, nor overly fond of rallies and didactic calls to action and the like. Civic humanism. I like it. Thanks so much and all the best, for all of us, for 2025.
What a lovely meditation on what matters, on what we can save. As an avid life-long reader of SF and (some) fantasy, I'm struck by how often the idea of Saving The Book appears in those genres (especially post-War, when they really came into their own): Asimov's Foundation novels; A Canticle for Leibowitz; Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 (though in reverse, of course, in both cases). I wonder what you make of that.
Another question: Do you worry at all about how much of what we might loosely call The Book is now available only digitally and thus subject to being "disappeared"? It would be hard to destroy all physical copies of When the Clock Broke, but under a hostile regime, all your dispatches from the Unpopular Front could just vanish.
You know it occurs to me that aside from a few outliers like A Canticle for Leibowitz, Star Trek, and to some degree the Star Wars saga, most SF creators project an authoritarian future, whilst virtually all fantasy authors show a highly authoritarian fictional present.
In human history, the vast majority of governments have been authoritarian (again with some exceptions). Progressive historians of the United States point out that the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society were all defensive artifacts of global crisis (the Depression, WWII, the Cold War) and once those crises were past elite support for the artifact more or less vanished, these historians have begin to treat the 1933-81 period as an interlude. It could be that democratic governance itself in its US, Western European, etc. form is itself just an interlude.
I sure hope not, but the evidence for what I just wrote is mounting.
It's true that a lot of SF has projected authoritarian futures. It's a sort of subgenre that folks sometimes call "Space Nazis." There are notable counterexamples, though: Ursula K. Leguin's work explores many of ways of organizing societies, including anarchism; James S.A. Corey's Expanse series posits a unified, democratic Earth and a militaristic but still fundamentally democratic Mars (though there are demagogues and authoritarian movements, too!). Kim Stanley Robinson's works, from his Mars Trilogy to his more recent climate fiction (New York 2140, The Ministry for the Future) resolutely resist the idea that democracies will die, even in the face of environmental disaster. And the newer Hopepunk subgenere takes an explicit stance against Grimdark futures (e.g., Becky Chambers' Wayfarers novels).
As to your point about the Interlude: Robert Kagan's excellent book Rebellion recounts the anti-liberal movements that predate the founding and recur throughout history and how they repeatedly rise and fall. What might be new, at least in the United States, is that these forces have taken control of the entire federal government.
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply, as well as your welcome extension to the list of exceptions to the authoritarian bias in a lot of (at least English-language) SF. I'm familiar with LeGuin's work and regret not listing her among the exceptions. Sadly I have read neither Expanse nor KSR. I'm glad that the Hopepunk crew is taking the approach it does. I'll have to find some of their work.
I've been aware of the Illiberal tendency of the United States for a long time. You are right, Starting January 20, proponents of this tendency will be in full control of the U.S, federal government for the first time ever (unless one counts the first two years of Trump's first term). This is not good, to say the least.
A friend of mine wrote this as a response to the many doomsayers out there: "More imaginative thinkers shower the earth with joy, hope, unity consciousness, light, and laughter, not to mention love of all beings. It may take us awhile to dilute your dark cloud, but we are not quitters."
I know you are not an avowed apostle of the community of joy, John, but I like to think you are secretly with us. :)
Even if you can't provide joy, you can help somebody or somebodies in a number of ways. The macro is going to be a nightmare in the near and median future. We can do what we can on the micro and that micro can be as small or large as you're capable.
Lovely words about a dark time. The reflections on Gaza in particular resonate with me. And after 30+ years as a literature prof., the threat of losing "the book" feels both figural and all-to-literal. After the great critic and thinker Frederic Jameson died this year, I revisited some of his work and had this eerie feeling that I was reading something that was going to be unreadable within a decade or so, because there wouldn't be more than a handful of people who could make sense of it even if they wanted to (and no one would want to).
I teach at a university which has some of the best humanities departments in the world. But among the exceedingly smart, driven students who come here from all over the world, the portion who can see any purpose to studying these subjects has been reduced to a very small fraction.
Thank you for this piece, and all the others you've done this year. This one really resonates with me. Like lots of people, I'm struggling with how to proceed after Trump's win. I'm wary of drawing too many lessons from it about who we are as a nation, etc., and what libs should do next to counter and/or respond, etc., but it's not hard to see that the times ahead look dark. The mask is definitely off, as they say. But here, you've set out a good and inspiring framework for carrying on, particularly for someone like me, who's not religious, nor overly fond of rallies and didactic calls to action and the like. Civic humanism. I like it. Thanks so much and all the best, for all of us, for 2025.
What a lovely meditation on what matters, on what we can save. As an avid life-long reader of SF and (some) fantasy, I'm struck by how often the idea of Saving The Book appears in those genres (especially post-War, when they really came into their own): Asimov's Foundation novels; A Canticle for Leibowitz; Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 (though in reverse, of course, in both cases). I wonder what you make of that.
Another question: Do you worry at all about how much of what we might loosely call The Book is now available only digitally and thus subject to being "disappeared"? It would be hard to destroy all physical copies of When the Clock Broke, but under a hostile regime, all your dispatches from the Unpopular Front could just vanish.
You know it occurs to me that aside from a few outliers like A Canticle for Leibowitz, Star Trek, and to some degree the Star Wars saga, most SF creators project an authoritarian future, whilst virtually all fantasy authors show a highly authoritarian fictional present.
In human history, the vast majority of governments have been authoritarian (again with some exceptions). Progressive historians of the United States point out that the New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society were all defensive artifacts of global crisis (the Depression, WWII, the Cold War) and once those crises were past elite support for the artifact more or less vanished, these historians have begin to treat the 1933-81 period as an interlude. It could be that democratic governance itself in its US, Western European, etc. form is itself just an interlude.
I sure hope not, but the evidence for what I just wrote is mounting.
It's true that a lot of SF has projected authoritarian futures. It's a sort of subgenre that folks sometimes call "Space Nazis." There are notable counterexamples, though: Ursula K. Leguin's work explores many of ways of organizing societies, including anarchism; James S.A. Corey's Expanse series posits a unified, democratic Earth and a militaristic but still fundamentally democratic Mars (though there are demagogues and authoritarian movements, too!). Kim Stanley Robinson's works, from his Mars Trilogy to his more recent climate fiction (New York 2140, The Ministry for the Future) resolutely resist the idea that democracies will die, even in the face of environmental disaster. And the newer Hopepunk subgenere takes an explicit stance against Grimdark futures (e.g., Becky Chambers' Wayfarers novels).
As to your point about the Interlude: Robert Kagan's excellent book Rebellion recounts the anti-liberal movements that predate the founding and recur throughout history and how they repeatedly rise and fall. What might be new, at least in the United States, is that these forces have taken control of the entire federal government.
Thank you for the very thoughtful reply, as well as your welcome extension to the list of exceptions to the authoritarian bias in a lot of (at least English-language) SF. I'm familiar with LeGuin's work and regret not listing her among the exceptions. Sadly I have read neither Expanse nor KSR. I'm glad that the Hopepunk crew is taking the approach it does. I'll have to find some of their work.
I've been aware of the Illiberal tendency of the United States for a long time. You are right, Starting January 20, proponents of this tendency will be in full control of the U.S, federal government for the first time ever (unless one counts the first two years of Trump's first term). This is not good, to say the least.
‘“Civic humanism” is not a bad way to describe the tradition I try to carry on with this newsletter’
yes! my brother!!! it feels awfully lonely most of the time. Thanks for the reminder that we aren’t alone
A friend of mine wrote this as a response to the many doomsayers out there: "More imaginative thinkers shower the earth with joy, hope, unity consciousness, light, and laughter, not to mention love of all beings. It may take us awhile to dilute your dark cloud, but we are not quitters."
I know you are not an avowed apostle of the community of joy, John, but I like to think you are secretly with us. :)
Even if you can't provide joy, you can help somebody or somebodies in a number of ways. The macro is going to be a nightmare in the near and median future. We can do what we can on the micro and that micro can be as small or large as you're capable.
The real year was the books we made along the way.
> As the temple burns, we should always seek to save the Book, because within it lies the redemption of mankind
Reading this while downloading the Wikipedia backup.
Lovely words about a dark time. The reflections on Gaza in particular resonate with me. And after 30+ years as a literature prof., the threat of losing "the book" feels both figural and all-to-literal. After the great critic and thinker Frederic Jameson died this year, I revisited some of his work and had this eerie feeling that I was reading something that was going to be unreadable within a decade or so, because there wouldn't be more than a handful of people who could make sense of it even if they wanted to (and no one would want to).
I teach at a university which has some of the best humanities departments in the world. But among the exceedingly smart, driven students who come here from all over the world, the portion who can see any purpose to studying these subjects has been reduced to a very small fraction.