swampthing
08-13-2009, 08:14 PM
Just a quick review of a book by S.M. Stirling. The book is Conquistador,and I'm bringing it up as a kind of a hopeful sign. I think that the tide is beginning to turn,and this book just might be an indicator of that.
S.M. Stirling is a fairly well known sci-fi author,and he's been around for quite some time. Some of his stuff I like,some I didn't,but most of it has been readable. Stirling does quite a bit of military themed science fiction,but he's never served in any active duty capacity. It shows. Stirling has a pretty extensive background in martial arts,according to several back-of-the-cover bios I've read,and for some damnfool reason he seems to think that a martial arts black belt gives him some kind of insight in the way a military organization ought to work. He isn't a bad writer,but he's pretty obviously never had to pull CQ duty on a weekend,and put up with a bunch of drunk niggers,drunk mudsharks,drunk GI's about to go flat nuts from testosterone poisoning and all of the other less desirable aspects of a military existence,like KP,work details,etc. As long as he sticks to what he knows about,or makes up stuff out of thin air,he isn't a bad storyteller.
Conquistador is one of his better efforts. It's a kind of alternate history,wherein a medically retired Army captain is fiddling around with a surplus shortwave radio just after the end of WWII.
The captain crosses the right wires,and manages to accidentally open a gate to a kind of a new dimension. He steps through into an Earth that hasn't been touched by western civilization,and-importantly-still has all the gold,platinum,and other good stuff right where it should be. So he rounds up some of his old Army comrades and off they go to build a world of their own.
Fair warning-this book is NOT completely nigger free. In fact,one of the more important characters in the book is a nigger detective from the Old World(the one we're stuck with right now) that was about to stumble on the secret of that brand new world just through a very easy to access dimensional gate. He was caught,and shanghaied to the New World,and will never be allowed back to go running his mouth. So there's a magic nigger,and he does manage to reproduce,but I think that's almost a given in any book published in the past decade.
The interesting part is that in this new world-named "New Virginia",niggers are otherwise not allowed,period. This Army captain decided from the start that importing niggers was a losing proposition,and since it was his very own world,there just weren't going to be any. So there are a few spooks (I believe 23 or something like that),that were about to stumble on the secret and had to be kept quiet,but deliberately importing niggers for cheap labor,or to play on the local niggerball team isn't an option.
I had a hard time believing that this concept was put forth in what's actually a pretty well selling sci-fi title,by a pretty well renowned sci-fi author. And not only put forward at all,but put forward without being the object of a bunch of hand wringing about diversity or any of that crap we're used to having to hear. Just a very matter-of-fact statement that humans and niggers don't get along well,and that having niggers around would not be to the benefit of the humans already there.
So there's my take on it. Go to the library and read it for yourself. You might like it,you might not,and as I've already warned you,this is not a completely nigger free story. But I thought that it was very interesting that an author was able to get a major publisher to go along at all with the idea that having a bunch of niggers around just isn't a very good idea.
S.M. Stirling is a fairly well known sci-fi author,and he's been around for quite some time. Some of his stuff I like,some I didn't,but most of it has been readable. Stirling does quite a bit of military themed science fiction,but he's never served in any active duty capacity. It shows. Stirling has a pretty extensive background in martial arts,according to several back-of-the-cover bios I've read,and for some damnfool reason he seems to think that a martial arts black belt gives him some kind of insight in the way a military organization ought to work. He isn't a bad writer,but he's pretty obviously never had to pull CQ duty on a weekend,and put up with a bunch of drunk niggers,drunk mudsharks,drunk GI's about to go flat nuts from testosterone poisoning and all of the other less desirable aspects of a military existence,like KP,work details,etc. As long as he sticks to what he knows about,or makes up stuff out of thin air,he isn't a bad storyteller.
Conquistador is one of his better efforts. It's a kind of alternate history,wherein a medically retired Army captain is fiddling around with a surplus shortwave radio just after the end of WWII.
The captain crosses the right wires,and manages to accidentally open a gate to a kind of a new dimension. He steps through into an Earth that hasn't been touched by western civilization,and-importantly-still has all the gold,platinum,and other good stuff right where it should be. So he rounds up some of his old Army comrades and off they go to build a world of their own.
Fair warning-this book is NOT completely nigger free. In fact,one of the more important characters in the book is a nigger detective from the Old World(the one we're stuck with right now) that was about to stumble on the secret of that brand new world just through a very easy to access dimensional gate. He was caught,and shanghaied to the New World,and will never be allowed back to go running his mouth. So there's a magic nigger,and he does manage to reproduce,but I think that's almost a given in any book published in the past decade.
The interesting part is that in this new world-named "New Virginia",niggers are otherwise not allowed,period. This Army captain decided from the start that importing niggers was a losing proposition,and since it was his very own world,there just weren't going to be any. So there are a few spooks (I believe 23 or something like that),that were about to stumble on the secret and had to be kept quiet,but deliberately importing niggers for cheap labor,or to play on the local niggerball team isn't an option.
I had a hard time believing that this concept was put forth in what's actually a pretty well selling sci-fi title,by a pretty well renowned sci-fi author. And not only put forward at all,but put forward without being the object of a bunch of hand wringing about diversity or any of that crap we're used to having to hear. Just a very matter-of-fact statement that humans and niggers don't get along well,and that having niggers around would not be to the benefit of the humans already there.
So there's my take on it. Go to the library and read it for yourself. You might like it,you might not,and as I've already warned you,this is not a completely nigger free story. But I thought that it was very interesting that an author was able to get a major publisher to go along at all with the idea that having a bunch of niggers around just isn't a very good idea.