ALT.SF4M

  Amusements 8/21/2000

   • j********o@***.com
     22/08/2000 05:18:37 UTC

     SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

     SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

     SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

     This has been stuck in my craw for years and I'm finally bothering to
     disgorge

     it (in your laps). Both of the above novels suffer from a profound
     attack of

     stupid feminism at the end. At the end of the Postman, the narrator
     observes

     with pride the co-ed army they've marshalled to go fit the bad guys. Oh,

     hooray! Healthy young, *fertile* women sent off to die instead of
     staying home

     to repopulate the Earth. It's not certain if humanity can even survive
     the

     nuclear winter and plagues, or beat the fascists, or restore
     civilization while

     they still remember what it was - but the truly important thing is
     gender

     neutrality. (I'm theorizing an epilogue written from a *neo-Holnist*

     perspective, after their victory, noting the excesses of the early
     movement but

     also citing this sort of idiocy in its critique of the society they
     replaced!)

     Now consider Realtime: at the end, they recover the stash of zygotes so
     that

     the surviving 200 humans can restore the species without deadly
     inbreeding. And

     the story makes a point of observing the audible sigh of relief from the

     womenfolk that they won't have to spend the rest of their lives making
     babies.

     Once again, the important thing isn't repopulating the Earth, but women

     avoiding their reproductive functions! I don't think they had gestation

     machines, only zygotes, and someone's got to *raise* the children! It's
     by no

     means guaranteed that they can rebuild low-tech society before the
     high-tech

     runs out. I imagine another post-script set 200 hundred years later,
     wherein

     the original survivors have done nothing but dithered along, still
     trying to

     find themselves as their teeth fall out, pathetic perpetual adolescents
     (like

     Forumites). If they couldn't find ideal mates when the population was
     three

     billion, what are their chances in a town of 200?! Or, one can imagine a

     discontinuity in the human race, where the autons are programmed to rear
     a new

     generation (with traditional values) because the previous one is too
     lazy,

     self-centered, modern. It's a point well noted that given current
     trends,

     humanity's going to dwindle anyway! If we project modern habits into the
     next

     few centuries (the time period the survivors date from), the only people
     still

     having children will be the Amish, devout Catholics, and ultra-Orthodox
     Jews!

     Another amusing possibility for Realtime is that despite the zygotes, a
     century

     after the colony effort, most of the population is the deeply inbreed
     spawn of

     the few technophobic, traditionalist breeding couples of these
     varieties, with

     some of the other original survivors still bitterly dottering around, a

     pathetic reminder of a doomed lifestyle. One might very well connect
     this

     modernism, a turning from biological reality, with the Singularity
     itself. Of

     course, Vinge views human beings are mere pawns in technosociological

     evolution, and therefore, the Singularity is both inevitable and
     desireable,

     and the only real tragedy is that the survivors missed the boat this
     time

     around.

     Gorno

       • Gary McCammon
         06/09/2000 16:24:32 UTC

         "JohnGorno" wrote in message

         news:2*************.*****.********8@n**-**.***.***....

         > SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

         > SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

         > SPOILERS for the Postman and Marooned in Realtime

         > the story makes a point of observing the audible sigh of relief
         from the

         > womenfolk that they won't have to spend the rest of their lives
         making

         babies.

         > Once again, the important thing isn't repopulating the Earth, but
         women

         > avoiding their reproductive functions! I don't think they had
         gestation

         Yeah, you know them damned feminists. They're always running around
         trying

         to act like normal

         human beings when NATURE designed them for one purpose, namely
         popping fetii

         out for their

         menfolk, who are the rightful Doers Of Things like in "Doc" Smith
         novels.

         Yup, those wimmun outta be PROUD, damn it, PROUD that they get to
         play Suzy

         Homemaker while the guys go out and

         rebuild civilization. Us men do it all, urk urk grunt. YOU WIMMUN!
         WE MAKE

         BAYBEEZ!!

         :)

         --Tog (us lefties can be satirists, too)