Nowhere@All

In Regards to Chapters 11 and 12 of

Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica



briankessler@nowhereatall.net

http://bmkold.ipfox.com/index.html



30 March 1999



In regard to some supposed contradictions:

I have heard speculation that "Oriental" is not a politically correct term. Political correctness seems a bad joke to me, relabeling everything under the sun rather than removing the power of labels. Labels are inherantly false, but they are necessary for communication. Rather than obscuring issues by renaming things, the wise would do better to unload labels and see things for what they are. What does "Oriental" say? From the Orient. Nothing more, nothing less. But the objects are twofold. First, there are those who will are because "Orient" means East which is egocentrically defined by England and Europe. But how many people know that now? How many people care? Maybe England isn't the centre of the world, but what is wrong with coming from the East? Secondly, there is a claim that Oriental can somehow only refer to things. I know not where this claim comes from or why. Why must people make things so complemented. If from the Orient, then from the Orient. Whether the noun is a person, place, or thing, it still remains of or from the Orient. Accept it. Call a spade a spade. If characterized by the Orient he, she, or it is Oriental.

I don't see "Val's latest romantic interest" as being any sort of contradiction. Heros such as James T. Kirk often fly from one woman to the next. Why impose a higher or different standard upon women? Or do you suggest raising the standard for men as well or instead? I have written at length on the virtues of free love and the chimera of monogamy elsewhere. Enough said that Val's self-determination over the style of her love life is a tribute to her strength of character and to woman's liberation, not at all a contradiction of Robinson's ideas.

I agree that at this time them book really picks up the pace, but I don't think there was anything wrong with the slower pace taken earlier. I don't think this section of the book could be appreciated properly without the background provided by the earlier chapters of the book.

In Antartica we find an alternative people attempting to become indigenous to the harsh climate. This was another simularity to Dune. A hidden people with their own needs and methods of survival.

But this was not exactly like Dune. The Fremen of Dune seemed to have a relatively homogenous culture. The Antarticas were a divided people, between the "Prags" and the "Fundies" and I can see how this is similiar in some ways to the division of the Jews in Israel, although the issues of the Jews are much more complicated and divided. But the issue of where to draw the line in adapting to a new terrain is a very valid issue. While the issue in Israel is obscured by religious, political, and sociological clashes, there too people have had to learn to live on the land and in doing so they teraformed a desert into an oasis. In Antartica, they wish to decide how they may adapt to the land or how they may adapt the land to themselves, and these are not the same question. In a sense it's the question of whether human evolution shall continue and if so, what does that mean? Man no longer adapts to his environment, he adapts his environment to him, thus in the biological sense he has stopped evolving... and as a species he deteriates because he has overruled survival of the fittest with medical and capitalistic institutions. On the other hand, our technology evolves and our technology is a part of ourselves, so in that sense, we evolve with it. Will Antartica remain a frozen desert or shall it become another industrial wasteland? That is the bottom line of this schism.

As for humans being alien, this is nothing new. Unless humanity ever developes a homogenous culture which is probably not to be desired, even for all the violence it might save us, unless he develop this superculture, there will always be those who are "other" and therefore alien. And human aliens being found in unexpected places within science fiction is hardly new. Novels dealing with human galactic empires envariably have alien humans living on the frontier worlds.








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