[ SECRET POST #4912 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4912 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 17 secrets from Secret Submission Post #703.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

03. https://i.imgur.com/u6w9ly8.png

[(Anonymous)]

I haven't read The Three Body Problem, so I can't speak to the content of the book specifically.

But I think expecting people to judge books based exclusively on their politics - and not just on their politics, but on how the most basic, broad descriptions of their politics align with the plot summary of a book - is absolutely silly.

It does sometimes happen that people read things that they would politically disagree with without paying enough attention to notice the parts that they disagree with. But there's also just about a million other explanations for what's going on here, and even if they did politically disagree with it, it doesn't mean that every single reader would turn and dismiss it out of hand. That's absolutely a stereotype.

[(Anonymous)]

There's also the reality that science fiction often involves thought experiments and shouldn't necessarily be read literally as direct advocacy.

[(Anonymous)]

Tbh I just read books and rarely care enough to look up any RL info about the author. You could've told me that George RR Martin was actually the soul of a demon encased in a tree with supernatural word processing capabilities and I, well actually I wouldn't have believed that one but you get the jist.

[(Anonymous)]

I've read books by people whose gender I didn't know until well after the fact because they went by a first initial. Race isn't always apparent in a name, either.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly. Unless I've been recced something, it's the blurb and cover that usual draw me in.

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is more on the sliding scale of cynicism vs optimism. Liberals don't think that problems or bad actors won't exist (I assume you're talking about American liberalism), otherwise things like regulations would be pointless. That's why things need to be written into the general framework - because humans deserve certain rights that other humans would deprive them of.

[sabotabby]

The politics of alien invasion and first contact stories are always a bit...weird. They're often, unconsciously, an allegory for immigration, and sometimes about colonization, and sometimes really they are just about aliens (Blindsight by Peter Watts is a great example of a book where aliens aren't an allegory for any human group).

The politics of The Three Body Problem are pretty complex, and Chinese politics don't fit into an American liberal-conservative dichotomy. It's absolutely a political book but I think there's a lot of room for nuance and debate there.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I didn't finish the book (thus never read the sequels either), but there was a lot going on that had to do with Communism and Chinese politics that I would have had to admittedly make time to do research on if I wanted to even begin understanding the nuance of it.

People tend to have a habit of putting things in categories that align with or approximate something they experience in order to understand it. Sometimes, tha can be helpful, other times, it can be a very limiting way of reaching/attempting to reach an understanding.

[(Anonymous)]

You're missing a lot of the debate if you think that's the only axis of contention! There's also the HARD HARD SF (written by MEN (and also women but let's just say MEN)) and SQUISHY FEEEEELINGS SF (which is also written by men but let's not count them???) and also GROSS GIRLY FANTASY NOVELS written by CHICKS but also TOUGH MANLY FANTASY NOVELS written by HARD MEN and also scary novels that look like HARD HARD SF but really have anti-colonialist points and omg what if I read a GAY BOOK by ACCIDENT?

[philstar22]

This.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, but the MANLY dudes usually have names like Weber and Ringo, not Liu. I guess Correia might not be considered white?

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

He is Hispanic, which for some means white if politically convenient, otherwise POC.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

He's Portuguese-American, which means he's white by both European and American standards (and also means he's not Hispanic, since that word refers to people of specifically Spanish ancestry). The reason Latinos are considered POC isn't because of their Southern European origins, but because present day Latinos have both Iberian and indigenous American ancestry.

[meadowphoenix]

I wouldn't trust a western POV alone about anything from the east, but I think in the type of shallow cultural divide you're talking about it's less about his book than about the typically white rage that also doesn't care about his book but wouldn't necessarily like him to success regardless.

That said, leftist and liberals in the US are particularly weird about China and Chinese material no matter if you're left or liberal so.....

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not sure I understand the point you're making here, would you mind elaborating a bit?

[meadowphoenix]

Sure, when you have a cultural divide along one axis from one perspective, here racism/sexism/homophobia and transphobia in the US, a lot of time people aren't really examining content so much as drawing lines on who they think is most vulnerable. So regardless of who this guy is and what he writes, the ~liberal side is going to see him as more vulnerable to the way some super racists SF content creators have targeted what they see as non-traditional books (non-traditional because the subjects or the authors are marginalized). The subject of the books aren't really what is being protected so much as it is marginalized voices in SF. eta: and this is marginalization as understood in a US context.

As for the last sentence, leftists tend to take a dim view of capitalism and imperialism which as of now tends to be spearheaded by the US in the West. China is very obviously resistant to Western but also US-ian presence in the East, so you'll see some leftists praise say, the government's response to Covid-19 in comparison to the US for instance (not necessary the response as a whole, but in comparison). You'll also get a group of leftists who will actually go into validating the Chinese government with far less criticism than the Chinese government deserves. Like overkill for US-ian ills. Liberals on the other hand tend to focus China as an authoritarian government so they will talk about the massacre of the Uyghurs and be supportive of the Hong Kong protests (so will so leftists, but I'm talking about the weirdness), but also will do no critical thought on the sources they're getting their information from about China and will sometimes verge into repeating US-ian propaganda or straight up anti-asian racism. There are plenty of leftists and liberals who are more thoughtful about all of this, but at the shallower end of the pool it's like people can't reconcile how a country can be very ethically complicated AND that you have to be careful about how you talk about such complications when you're in different environments where people have bad faith about those conversations.

[(Anonymous)]

Please stop saying US-ian. It makes it impossible to take you seriously.

[(Anonymous)]

People flipping out over "USian" is so weird and overly defensive to me. It's not any more artificial or made up than any other demonym. I don't use it myself but it's incomprehensible to me that people seriously object to it.

[meadowphoenix]

bb, if you don't want to take me seriously, I absolve you of having to, lol.

[(Anonymous)]

It's a mockery of a word we already have, "Asian." The damage is usually being done by white people lacking self awareness too.

[(Anonymous)]

I have always found it wierd just how US readers tend to treat works of created in spaces where Asians are absolutely the privilaged majority as representations of minority voices. Of course, when such works get to the "West", they face racis assumptions, but that does not in any way negate the fact that their authors do not create from the underprivilaged minority POV.

/And if Liu Cixin was to be criticised for anything, I would start with more basic "carbon-cut characters and in some palces almost cartoonish male-centricity" than any "is his proposed vision of alien-human relations not liberal enough". (But I haven't read the third book in the trilogy)

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, my friend liked his first book but hated the second one because (spoilers) the main character had his staff go out and find him a perfect wife who fit all the criteria he personally specified, who when they found this woman she had no reason to love this dude but for some reason she just did. Because she's just there to be the perfect wife, who cares about making her act like a real person. And then she was fridged to motivate him. Now go to the reviews of the book and find a billion stans defending this writing because it's only misogynistic from a western perspective and you shrill wimmins who don't like it are all racist actually.

[meadowphoenix]

It's a viewpoint which centralizes US social dynamics for sure, but I do understand a bit of this when it comes to US awards and commendations, because the US social dynamics there are actually relevant.

[(Anonymous)]

I really want to know what plant is behind him
Probably some Chinese plant

It is cute