the vibes have actually never been better, and i have a general contempt for doomers like the residents of /r/collapse and other weird subreddits like that
i am familiar with okdoomer and i think it’s indicative of the sort of goofy goober shit most doomers have to work themselves up about to even get in the mindset in the first place, which is hyperfixate on anything which validates their priors and ignore the overwhelming body of evidence which contradicts or actively rejects their priors. even people on /r/collapse sometimes complain about how most of what the subreddit does is post poorly sourced suicide-bait and i think okdoomer is the tenuous but logical conclusion of that
in my mind, the resistance is just a common sense thing. active nihilism is dumb and brain poison. you will simply never do anything useful if your starting position is “this doesn’t matter and i don’t think there’s anything anyone can do to make it matter”–in any case this is a completely falsifiable and illogical position. a whole lot of shit does matter even on the margins. 2.9C of climate change is not an academic distinction versus 3C of climate change.
from a practical and crude standpoint, the conclusion of the position is you might as well kill yourself because it’ll never get better–but conspicuously, the vast majority of self-IDed doomers don’t do this and instead continue to do what amounts to malingering in a world they believe is going to eventually be characterized by resource wars, mass famine, and a climate that wants to kill them. that makes no real sense unless you think these are exaggerations, which i think many of them do actually recognize deep down.
from a personal standpoint, engaging in doomerism will just ruin all your relationships–nobody likes to hang around a complete downer.
Yeah, I don’t actively engage in that and try to avoid it, but pathologically I tend to get lost in doubt and dread. This occasionally spirals me in the direction of doom, with or without doing Google searches on climate change.
Admittedly it’s a much less of an issue since I stopped using Reddit so that’s probably got something to do with it. Beehaw has been a godsend.
imo the most productive way to deal with the inherent anxiety is just to do something or be engaged in something, however small–being in an organization you can devote even a few hours to a month is usually a godsend in this regard, whether that’s DSA or Sunrise or Food Not Bombs, or a non-American equivalent to these groups. it’s so, so much harder to default to assuming nothing will get better if you surround yourself with people and groups fighting to make things better
I couldn’t get into Beloved when I attempted it (I definitely will try it again, though), but I read Song of Solomon this last year and really enjoyed it!
A little pulpier in tone, but still very well put together, I’d suggest as well the Wayfarers series by Becky Chambers, and especially the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir. The latter is a bit more fantastic space opera as opposed to some of the harder sci-fi you’ve mentioned, but Muir knows how to write a setting that is absolutely dripping in gothic horror, and still take you on an emotional roller coaster fully of highs, lows, and humor as you read it. It seems to be a bit of a love-it-or-hate-it series from the other conversations I’ve had about it, but I love it and I’d be remiss not to suggest it.
I’d also suggest, if you’re not averse, dipping your toe into the fantasy genre as well. There’s a broad range of authors there who have done excellent work building fantasy worlds that are structurally deep and compelling, and have many science-fictional qualities. Along these lines I’d suggest Robert Jackson Bennett’s Founders trilogy, or N. K. Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy – though, fair warning, both of these broke me in the end emotionally. Worth it, though!
The Red Rising Saga. I’m working through book 6 right now as an audiobook and I’m sneaking in a few minutes wherever I can. Definitely expands its scope as the series goes on and while I feel like I’m losing context for some of the new/returning characters at this point, I can follow enough to go along with it. The main character is born into the lowest caste of the society and works to infiltrate the highest caste. It’s a long ride and ebbs and flows from hopelessness to triumph throughout the course of it.
The Combat Codes Saga. Probably closer to science-fantasy then fiction, but an interesting idea about nations using hand-to-hand combat to settle wars, territory, etc…I have only read the first book so far but I enjoyed it a lot.
Alex Benedict - I would encourage this more as a filler or inbetween books series. Binging all of the books can make them feel very samey. The core idea is that all of the books except the first one are told from the perspective of a colleague/assistant/“jill of all trades” woman who works with one of the most famous artifact hunters in the far future. Each book is essentially chasing an archeological mystery of some sort.
The Jubilee Cycle - I found the first book a long time ago at random in one of those discount bookstores and picked it up based on the cover alone. It’s about a future where everything you do costs you money, to the point where political parties debate whether or not autonomic functions like breathing should cost money. The prose is a little dry and the author works as a translator, but I enjoyed the world that he built up as the main character peels back the layers of this society after he gets essentially bankrupted by a mysterious and unknown transaction.
Teixcalaan - Can’t link the series for some reason. The main character is an ambassador to the ruling empire of the galaxy, trying to figure out who killed her predecessor and a conspiracy surrounding him. It felt very dense when I started it but I enjoyed it a lot!
Thanks! All of these stories sound interesting. Red Rising has actually been on my bucket list for a while now, but I’ve been hesitant to try it because the summary sounded like the “stumbling from one flawed decision to the next” thing I was mentioning earlier. Having another person suggest it here, makes me want to try it now.
I think the flaws of the characters decisions either come from gambles that don’t pay off or there are levels and movements they don’t see happening (and sometimes both). Their failures feel…earned if that makes sense? To be fair, it’s been a few years since I started the series so it can mush all together in my head :)
For sure give Red Rising a shot. First book gets going pretty quickly and I like the sci-fi with spaceships, energy weapons/shields, but also some fantasy elements mixed in. I haven’t found a series like it so far.
No spoilers, but yeah Blood Meridian is a strange book. It felt like a sort of apocalyptic fever dream or something. I pretty quickly stopped trying to apply the logic of our world to it and just went wherever it was taking me lol. It’s a story from some other place I think.
100 per cent agree with this! The book is so knotty and interesting, there’s all these ways you can read into it that the popular understanding, and all the media, just do not engage with.
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy is a great little collection of some central texts, with minimal but helpful commentary. Some, like the Analects and the Daodejing, are short enough to be printed in full, and others have selections.
For Indian philosophy, I don’t have any immediate recommendations. I’ve heard good things about Edward Conze’s books on the history of Buddhism, but have never read them myself. Odds are they might be a bit dated, but still a strong introduction.
For a general overview, Peter Adamson’s podcast and book series History of Philosophy Without any Gaps is usually great, and his strong suit is in medieval islamic thought.
If we let conservatives ban 1984, they will be forced to stop pretending they have read it, and comparing everything irrelevant to it, while we can still illegally access it.
Even the people who seem to be in favor of it all seem to be talking about how they’ll write going forward.
With that said, editing older works to fit different contexts isn’t new at all. I remember reading my grandmother’s collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and cable companies routinely overdub curse words in movies and cut out sex scenes. Different edits for different audiences. It’s weird (it’s not weird) how we only start getting pissy about it when it comes to editing out slurs and stuff.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing for completely banning books that use shitty stereotypes and nasty racial language. The “unabridged” versions, much like the “theatrical releases” of movies, aren’t being thrown into a giant shredder. If someone wants to read an anti-semetic rant by Dahl, it’s out there. But we’ve never once at any point in the past gave two shits about editing content to make different editions for different people, and I haven’t heard an argument about why we should care when it comes to this specific version of the practice.
I tend to agree with this. Why not have multiple editions of a book available, one that is the original and the other that has received some edits to reflect modern values?
I’ve been reading HP Lovecraft recently. A lot of his stories are horrendously racist, and I’ve found that more uncomfortable to read than the actual horror. I’d have quite happily purchased a version (rather than downloading a free ebook) that had received a light touch of editing, of the kind that removed the racist slurs while keeping everything else intact. I genuinely can’t see that the actual story or vibes of “The Rats in the Walls” would have been any different if the cat had a different name.
I also find it bizarre how many people get pissy about sensitivity readers being “censorship”, while also insisting that editors are absolutely essential to making a book as good as it can be. Surely if a sensitivity reader is “censoring” a book by giving some suggestions (not orders or demands) on how to make a book better, then an editor is also “censoring” a book when they do the exact same thing? The truth is authors have always had fellow authors, beta readers and editors who read their work, react to it, and give suggestions on how to improve it. A wise author should seek out feedback, and getting feedback from people who actually know the subject matter is pretty damned valuable.
I’m not really making an argument, but describing something I’ve heard and seems like a reasonable point to consider: One potential issue with “cleaning up” stuff like HP Lovecraft is that a lot of his horror is, in fact, horror about race. So cleaning it up would interact weirdly with that topic — would it mask the racial nature of it by making it less overt? Would it make it a different story? Or would it still basically be intact, but less immediately distracting, just because our modern ear recoils when we read certain words? (I don’t know which of these it would be; it probably varies depending on the story)
I actually think the stories would be stronger without the racial elements, because a common theme in many of the stories I’ve read so far (bearing in mind I’ve only read about 25% so far) has been the discovery of something hideous and bestial within the human. I’ve actually not interpreted the horror as being exclusively about race, because Lovecraft assumes all characters are white unless explicitly stated otherwise (as most authors do), and ghastly heritage is not reserved only for the non-white characters. I suppose one could argue that it’s intended to be a metaphor for discovering that one’s “bloodline” isn’t as pure as they believe (I wonder if Lovecraft had, or feared he had, non-white ancestors?), and that’s where the racial horror comes into it.
The interesting thing is that so many of the stories I’ve read so far don’t even mention race (except in passing), which makes racism stand out even more in the stories it suddenly appears in. The “what if we aren’t who we think we are?” and “what knowledge would drive us mad if we learned it?” themes stand just fine on their own in the stories where race isn’t mentioned; and these themes would be maintained if the racist slurs were edited out of other stories. Lovecraft’s horror is cosmic and existential, and is more so when presented as racially neutral, because it leaves all humans equally powerless in the face of the unnameable.
shrugs That’s just my interpretation, anyway, which is of course 100% subjective. I may change my mind when I get to Lovecraft’s later works. The dude is absolutely an awful racist, and my experience with bigots is they become more extreme, and less cautious about hiding their hatred, as time goes on. So we’ll see. But as it stands, the stories I’ve read so far would not change significantly if the racism was removed, and they’d be better reads without that enormous distraction.
Key point - rights to certain royalties were given by the author to the leading children’s hospital in the UK. This makes it very different indeed. Helping fund Great Ormond Street Hospital is the far greater good.
Is it though? I’d frame it as “government robs children of new Peter Pan stories in order to pay for childrens’ hospital” – it’s like those ‘feel-good’ stories in the news about children laboring at lemonade stands to raise funds for their mother’s cancer treatment. It’s easy to forget that these are scenarios with only bleak options because of the unstated premise that the rich will never pay their share.
Yes, the rich should pay more, a hell of a lot more. I’ll go further and say that in a perfect world they shouldn’t be allowed to become so wealthy in the first place because the only way to do that is through exploitation of collective resources and other people’s labour.
Yes, Great Ormond Street should be fully funded via the government, as should the rest of the NHS. Yes, it should be stable and not subjected to party politics, disaster capitalism or grift. We’re a very long way from any of that though and we are talking about children’s lives. And even in a perfect world, more money will still be of use.
Children need new stories but they don’t need new Peter Pan stories specifically. Moreover, writers and other creators who want to write new Peter Pan stories can still do so. They just have to pay a percentage of the income from the use of this particular IP in the UK as royalties.
Maybe a better framing would be “Rich would rather censor children’s story than pay for children’s hospital” - its understandable to not feel outrage over this based on all the worse things that are going on in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s not deserving of outrage. I don’t think this is a case of perfect being the enemy of good, but rather the shock doctrine aspect of disaster capitalism; it’s difficult to gather sympathy for the principle of free speech when children are literally dying.
It’s important to look at this from a principled perspective; though isolated the Peter Pan, the case enshrines in law that what can be published can be restricted if there’s a sufficiently sympathetic non-sequitur issue. This isn’t even the “yelling fire in a crowded theatre” justification that was used to imprison anarchists for telling the truth about WWI, where the justification is related to the effect of the speech. Peter Pan stories have no natural connection to children’s health, but allowing sentimental framing to trump principled proceedure perpetuates a lack of care in British society for the principle of free speech. It’s a slippery slope that has been borne out in the ways censorship of journalism harm modern British society much more than ~1.5M yearly funding for a children’s hospital can justify.
This is also an inaccurate and misleading framing.
It’s not censorship or a free speech issue. Neither GOSH nor the government control who can create derivative works. It’s just that a percentage of book or ticket sales have to be paid as royalties to GOSH.
Thank you continuing this dialogue; I saw your bio, and though we disagree on this particular issue, I think we have a lot in common, and I appreciate your participation here.
Neither GOSH nor the government control who can create derivative works.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. They used their position to selectively control publication of works they didn’t approve. That’s clearly censorship.
But even if they only collected royalties, it would still be a free speech issue. Selectively assigning monetary costs to certain speech is an abridgement of free speech, for the same reason SLAPP lawsuits are a free speech issue.
"As a result, the hospital is still entitled to royalties for uses of Peter Pan in the country. However, these rights have several key limitations: “Royalties Only: The provision only allows the hospital to collect royalties, not to grant permission for uses. This came up in 2007 when the pornographic graphic novel Lost Girls was delayed in the UK until 2008, after the copyright Barrie’s work expired.”
From your “this is not the case” wiki entry: “On 23 June 2006, officials for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) —which was given the copyright to Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie in 1929—asserted that Moore would need their permission to publish the book in the UK and Europe… [Top Shelf] delayed publication of Lost Girls in the UK until after the copyright lapsed at the end of 2007.”
So two of YOUR sources note the 2007 change in status. Until the end of 2007, GOSH held copyright control in the UK. They no longer do. Barrie died in 1937, 2007 was 70 years after his death. Normal UK copyright law.
<Selectively assigning monetary costs to certain speech is an abridgement of free speech,> Are you saying that ALL royalties for derivative works/use of IP are an abridgement of free speech in your view? I’m not keen on that redefinition of the term.
Are you saying that ALL royalties for derivative works/use of IP are an abridgement of free speech in your view?
I do believe copyright, its continued extensions in favor of rights-holders, and associated attacks on the fair use doctrine are abridgements of free speech. I also believe each addition of complexity to copyright law is a gift to copyright law firms and the consolidated publishing corporations who can easily afford to employ them, as well as an attack on small publishers and authors to whom employing solicitors and barristers is an onerous burden. But that’s not what I’m arguing here.
I’m saying that granting eternal royalties from Peter Pan to GOSH creates a monetary disincentive for anyone but GOSH to publish derivative Peter Pan works. This creates a chilling effect on the republication of Barrie works and re-use of Peter Pan characters, and is worthy of outrage. This is similar in effect to the intractable libel laws that financially disincentivize publishing negative news about powerful figures and institutions in Britain, which is even more outrageous. I’m also saying that the special copyright status of Peter Pan and larger problems like the libel law situation are evidence of the same underlying issue: Britain’s relative disinterest in protecting free speech.
Because an explicit graphic novel which invented childhood pasts of sexual abuse and exploitation for three famous fairy tale girls was delayed in its UK publication by two years?
Why do you assume because I listed the most prominent example of GOSH’s censorship, that it was the only one? GOSH also litigated against Canadian author J. E. Somma. In both cases, GOSH settled out of court, and in both cases GOSH enforced a lack of transparency over the settlement as part of the terms. The point of these examples is to demonstrate that GOSH went beyond the bounds of mere royalty collector when they saw the chance, not to demonstrate chilling effect.
Chilling effect is not about the books that survived the gauntlet of publication to make it to the litigation stage; it’s about all the ideas that never had a chance to blossom because the threat of copyright enforcement nipped them in the bud. Part of what makes this kind of corporate theft so insidious is that it is impossible to count the works it prevented from existing, or judge the social good they would have done.
Oh look, another one BEFORE the 2007 change in status.
I’m really don’t have the spoons for your lack of understanding on this basic fact. Besides your bizarre instance that authors require the free use of someone else’s characters to express their ideas instead of, oh I don’t know, creating their own characters to express those ideas.
Anything by Stephen King, for me. I also like quick-paced techy/sci-fi novels for when I’m in the mood for something easier. I’m a re-reader, so I will sometimes pick up something I’ve already read and enjoyed before.
Fun, feel-good fantasy stories, like Legends and Lattes. Bonus points if there’s a heist, a fun group of quirky characters, or well-built romance story.
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