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[alnilam]

This book ("Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir) is more political, or heavily politicized leaning left, than “pure wonderful sci-fi” everybody and his dog pretends it to be. The king-author is naked, and it takes praise singing choruses all around to keep the pretense of clothes, to maintain the facade and charade, to some extent anyway.

What we have here in a nutshell: climate alarmism writ large, a mysterious non-intelligent cosmic plague appeared from nowhere and started consuming the energy of the Sun, acting as a very high density energy sponge, making global cooling of epic proportions inevitable, harsh measures required right now or otherwise we will all die, making everything and anything justifiable and permissible ("to save the humanity"), on the way denigrating and bashing all things America and American (the expression "It sucks to be American scientist!" in this context can hardly be interpreted other than "It sucks to be American!"), while grovelling and tail-wagging before China and Russia (apparently, the left never met a tyrant they did not like), messing with and redefining traditional morality, thinly veiling it with clownish self-deprecating demeanor (to paraphrase the author, while keeping the exact meaning intact “to get important things done one must dispense with the traditional morality, period!”, it reminds me another infamous mantra of the Left “to make the omelette one must break a few eggs!”), and buried somewhere deep underneath of it all a semi-decent sci-fi story for children and teenagers, almost unrecognizable under many layers of political brainwashing, heavy exaggerations, creative borrowing or recycling ideas from various sources, unrestrained wild fantasy leaps and inconsistencies.

Among other things, having radio (all spacecrafts do), and not bothering to try something resembling a first contact protocol, sending back and forth physical objects in a jar instead (what if that jar the protagonist was eager to catch was made of antimatter)? … borrowing from (the spider alien character) and rewarding-praising back his sci-fi author buddy (adrian-adrian-adrian ad nauseam)? … and creatively borrowing “grand music language” idea from Spielberg’s first contact movie?

All of it lumped together, I guess it was designed to provoke a wow-effect in enthusiastic left-leaning readers, also no doubt to be televised, to make it to a Hollywood movie next. It didn’t work quite like that for me though.

They say “Half a loaf of bread is better than none” — juxtaposed against truly great sci-fi books, I never imagined it may come to this level of pitiful crumbs, pretending to be bread, to this kind of dry desert pretending to be oasis (ditto the surreal amounts of false praise “bread, wonderful bread!” and “water, wonderful water!”).

[Lieve]

Ugh, I really enjoyed his The Martian book, but this kinda puts me off. Nothing ruins a book so fast as when authors inject their political views into their books. I'm not reading a book to be subjected to more current day American politics. In fact it's quite the opposite of what I'm wanting when reading a book.

I don't care if they lean one way or the other, but for fucks sake, just keep it out of the book altogether. Or failing that, at least keep it to an absolute minimum, and don't go all in on the vilifying of the other side.

I'll still read it, because well.. as I wrote, I highly enjoyed The Martian, but after the lukewarm "meh" that was Artemis, I was hoping he'd hit another home run with this one.

[alnilam]

@dadtaxi | June 1st, 2021 | BOOK COMMENTS
alnilam. Ever thought about actually reviewing the book rather than politicizing this comment area from your pulpit?

I'm not sure what makes you think that full book review may somehow weaken my argument, and not to the contrary, just strengthen it. In other words, what can possibly make this blatant in your face leftist propaganda, thinly disguised as science fiction, somehow look better than it really is. But, since you asked so nicely, for your benefit I will briefly review one small, but significant episode:

...
He looked at her as if she’d grown another head. “What are you saying? This isn’t some optional outcome. This is happening. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Humanity has been accidentally causing global warming for a century. Let’s see what we can do when we really set our minds to it.”
He drew back. “What? Are you kidding?”
“A nice blanket of greenhouse gases would buy us some time, right? It would insulate Earth like a parka and make the energy we are getting last longer. Am I wrong?”
“Wha—” he stammered. “You aren’t wrong, but the scale... and the morality of deliberately causing greenhouse-gas emissions...”
“I don’t care about morality,” Stratt said.
“She really doesn’t,” I said.
“I care about saving humanity. So get me some greenhouse effect. You’re a climatologist. Come up with something to make us last at least twenty-seven years. I’m not willing to lose half of humanity.”
Leclerc gulped.
She made a shooing motion. “Get to work!”
...

In this episode, for the protagonist it's still all fun and games, as long as it involves somebody else — until later he found himself on the receiving end of the very same “She really doesn’t [care about morality]”, when he was drugged and thrown into the departing spacecraft forcibly, against his will, also on mighty Stratt's orders.

In the book, in the end it all worked out well (in final pages, the protagonist almost grudgingly agrees that she was right about doing that to him, kind of, or at least hints at that).

However, in real life, when such character gains unlimited and unchecked power (or any character, for that matter), there's usually no such happy ending. If history is any indication, similar rationalizations "for the greater good" typically both led to and were utilized to justify mass murder of innocent people on unimaginable scale ("You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs"). Not to mention that to date nobody on the left managed to provide a good answer to the famous rhetorical Orwell's question "So, where's the omelette?"

The real, hiding in plain view leftist propaganda lesson for young malleable readers' minds here is as follows: "Saving humanity is good and proper, and some silly morality can only get in the way, so one would be wise to discard it as something useless or harmful to the grand cause".

The traditional Judeo-Christian absolute biblical morality is all about the importance of reasoned, sensible self-imposed limitations, based on common sense, accumulated knowledge and experience of people (The Commandments, The Golden Rule). And the left hate the very idea of such limitations, hence their endless messing with and redefining morality.

UPDATE: "saving humanity from a mortal threat" is indeed right, noble, and above all HIGHLY MORAL thing to do, i.e. in a sane world there should be no contradiction of any kind to begin with (between "saving humanity" and "morality") — and the fact that the author artificially creates such a contradiction out of thin air speaks volumes to me.

[alnilam]

@zaphoid_b | June 2nd, 2021 | BOOK COMMENTS
It worries me that people like alnilam get offended by the very idea that problems could come up that require cooperation.

I'm not offended by anything, it is not true. When it comes to "cooperation", it's always some teeny-weeny details that matter, like "voluntary" or "by force" (in other words, who gets to decide on my behalf — me myself, or the other guy, who knows better).

> How can we make any progress in a world that is full of people like that?

This cuts closer to what I'm talking about. According to @zaphoid_b, it is certain PROBLEMATIC PEOPLE, and not certain PROBLEMATIC IDEAS that require his select collective-group attention and actions. He cannot (or unwilling to) restrain-limit himself to the realm of IDEAS, and would readily go after PEOPLE instead (remember, the left hate the very idea of reasoned self-imposed limitations). I did not go as far as to suggest arresting the author of the book in question, or to burn the book everywhere it can be found, nothing of the kind (likely because I can restrain-limit myself to the realm of ideas). And @zaphoid_b "cannot make any progress in a world that is full of people like that". I guess it's because his beloved PROGRESS (the proverbial magical OMELETTE, a.k.a. UTOPIA) is more important than PEOPLE (the proverbial FEW EGGS he and comrades can't help but break on the way). Call me Nostradamus, in the end no answer to the proverbial "Where's the omelette?" question will be forthcoming, just crickets.

[Lieve]

You seem to be talking to yourself here, and answering people who aren't posting here. Are you quite alright?

[alnilam]

You seem to be talking to yourself here, and answering people who aren't posting here. Are you quite alright?

Unfortunately, the overall ABB books/forum design is rather very confusing, with two places to conduct conversations with other forum members, namely BOOK COMMENTS and FORUM, instead of just one, no one really knows what is supposed to be where and why, myself included, not to mention no transition mechanism between the two places (if somebody intentionally designed it to be that way, very confusing, I have to admit they succeeded). As for members who first engaged under BOOK COMMENTS, and later opted not to continue the same conversation I moved to FORUM (or tried to, to avoid abusing limited BOOK COMMENTS space), I do not hold it against them, they are free to act either way. As for me personally, apart from the discussion at hand, I'm interested to learn more about the FORUM part, if it can work along the lines of me pursuing my own book interests the way I see it might. So far it does not look very promising, and not necessarily because of my mental state you so eloquently hinted at.

[Lieve]

It isn't that hard to figure out, surely. The forum is separate from the main site comment section for the books. They even require separate accounts

[alnilam]

The forum is separate from the main site comment section for the books. They even require separate accounts

I figured that part out. However, your information still does not answer one simple question: "Why?"

If you try follow my logic: somebody posts a book, then some people may like it and some may dislike it etc, so they comment and express their related thoughts in the BOOK COMMENTS section — only to find out soon enough that it is not really suitable or conducive for meaningful two way conversations (for starters, there's no quoting, members cannot edit or delete their own comments, should that be necessary, with that in mind many are unlikely to comment at all). Seeking solutions, some may go to the FORUM part (it's still the very same ABB, right?), only to find out that even though it may be perfectly suitable for such conversations, there's not much happening like new books-torrents appearing and people reacting in real time, and there's no transition mechanism from one forum to another to speak of.

I guess for paranoid types it would be hard to imagine someone inventing a better solution for the hypothetical "how to diffuse and dilute and stop long conversations and debates, without resorting to apparent and obvious censorship" problem, than this very confusing two-tier forum, with quite different objectives and functionality sets.

So, in case you can provide the answer (no need to reiterate things I know already, like two accounts etc, I'm only interested in the underlying logic): why more complicated and confusing two forums system, or "main site" and "secondary site" (again, inside of the very same ABB), when all-encompassing single one would do nicely?

[Lieve]

No need to tell me what I can and can't tell you. Not sure why you're taking this somewhat arrogant approach, but hey, you do you.

I'm not responsible for the site, nor forums, nor do I know anything about how it was setup, or with what reasoning went into it. As far as I know, the main site is holding together with scotch tape, and any change is much feared by the global mods, as it's apparently just as likely to break something as to fix something.

[alnilam]

No need to tell me what I can and can't tell you. Not sure why you're taking this somewhat arrogant approach

I meant absolutely no disrespect, and it puzzles me to no end what could possibly be interpreted as "arrogant" in my part of the conversation.

Anyway, thank you for your reply.

[Lieve]

Was the tone of your last reply. I'm glad I misunderstood you, for what it's worth.

In any event, I find it a bit of a shame there isn't more conversation about books on here, and wish something could be done to make things a bit more seamless in regards to book comments and forum, but I fear that'll never happen.

The forum could be thriving with a ton of users discussing books, but I don't know how that would be achievable. Only a fraction of users bother creating forum accounts, and only a fraction of that fraction are people who aren't just doing it to make a request for a book and nothing else.

[Dallis24F]

For perspective:
The website came first. The forum was added later as a message board for people to discuss torrents, audio book related things, make requests, etc. It may not meet everyone's expectations but it "checks most of the boxes" for most people. And it's free.

[alnilam]

On a side note, I cannot find the article where some distinguished specialist (likely in the field of cognition) makes a few important related points, namely “morality is the most complex thing for the human brain to process, it requires enormous amounts of brain computational power” and “part of the brain responsible for processing moral questions is called frontal lobes” and “the future of America depends on numbers of well developed frontal lobes of Americans and decisions they make” — those who happened to read that article and can recall the details, like the author’s name and/or the article title, or in possession of the web link, please let me know.

[Dallis24F]

Locking this topic because... it's ok to critique a book or the site but please sir, pick a topic and rant on that. I won't tolerate random bashing.

Only specific bashing for me.