avevale_intelligencer: (self-evident)
[personal profile] avevale_intelligencer
Paul asked, so here I am.

I've been reading the Long Earth series, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter. I'd been putting it off, because, you know, this is the last of the scumble, but you can't do that indefinitely. I'm on the third volume, and there's a lot to like here (two Doctor Who references in one chapter, followed brazenly by a mention of the programme just in case we missed the namedrops) and I'm enjoying it...

...but I'm really getting tired of That Character.

You'd know her if I named her. She's an extreme example of a type of character that's becoming more and more prevalent in stories, or so it seems to me. They're hard. It's their defining characteristic. They think, or rather they know, because they're far too sure of themselves ever to just think anything, that being hard and cold is the right way to be, and they look on the rest of us with barely-concealed contempt. They have all the answers to all the important questions, and if they don't happen to have an answer then the question obviously isn't important. They have no capacity for emotional perception or expression and call it "intelligence." They are studiedly offensive to people around them and call it "honesty." And they can always be recognised in a crowd, because the author is behind them jumping up and down and waving a placard saying S/HE'S RIGHT YOU KNOW. That's the most annoying part, really; that the story is invariably stacked in these characters' favour. They are never wrong, never embarrassed, never taken down the several pegs they so richly deserve.

And in the Long Earth series, people like that (there are several, and they're all the same) are the next stage in human evolution. I wasn't aware that arrogance and egocentrism were survival traits, though perhaps in our society we have made them appear to be so.

This character has a clear line of descent from, e.g., Heinlein's Grumpy Old Genius types, who also sounded much the same from one book to the next, but Heinlein managed to make his mouthpieces tolerable and even sometimes endearing. I don't know which half of Praxter was responsible for the ones in Long Earth, though I have my suspicions, but I am hoping (though not very much) that in the final book they will be shown up as the immature, self-deluded posers they truly are.

The next stage in human evolution will be human. It will have all the passions and desires, hopes and dreams, that humans have now, though maybe more highly developed. It will not be infallible, and if it makes fewer mistakes than we do it will not be because it has cut out half of its nature and thrown it away. And it will have empathy, because that is the greatest part of what makes us human, and it is only when we knowingly discard empathy that we become less than human.

In other news, I'm still here, and I owe heartfelt thanks to a lot of people who have helped me. I hope they will forgive my dilatoriness in rendering such thanks.

How are things with you?

Date: 2016-02-29 11:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mundungus42.livejournal.com
I'd argue that character type goes back at least as far as Arthur Conan Doyle, though at least Doyle had the good sense to have him fail every now and then and get shown up on occasion. Lesser imitators always forget that. Not that I'm saying PTerry is a lesser imitator. I hope you're right about the character(s) getting a comeuppance in the final book.

Agreed wholeheartedly about empathy, and well said.

Also *waves* Delighted you're still here!

Things are nice with me (it sounds like a deadly word but it's a good way to describe the average of dealing with joyful side jobs and an obnoxious day job that pays the bills).

Date: 2016-02-29 11:30 pm (UTC)
howeird: (Howard The Duck)
From: [personal profile] howeird
Characters we are meant to hate. Reminds me of Ming The Merciless. And there's a young woman in the current iteration of the TV series The Magicians who is like that. I don't think they are immature, self-deluded posers, just corrupted by the sense of their own power. And I want to see them brought down by skill and cunning and maybe a touch of brute force.

Date: 2016-03-01 08:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
No, not brute force. That's obvious and it's been done (see any film with "Damned" in the title). What would bring them down (if I were writing it) would be the discovery that despite their pretensions they do still have all the emotional apparatus that humans have, and because they put no value on it they have never learned to govern and use it properly. Sir Terry knew that you couldn't have two Grannies Weatherwax, and here we would have a whole (alleged) new species of them. They would be at each other's throats (in a thoroughly coldly rational way) as soon as the novelty of finding people like them wore off.

I expect that in these books they will turn into godlike beings of ultimate enlightenment (by their own lights) and go off to create a new and much more efficiently run universe somewhere. One thing that even these authors cannot escape is that writing about such creatures successfully interacting with each other, without any leavening of actual humanity, would be BORING. Imagine an all-Vulcan Enterprise.

Date: 2016-03-01 08:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alun dudek (from livejournal.com)
There was a all-Vulcan ship of the same class as Enterprise, which was killed by - if memory serves - a giant space-going amoeba. Mr Spock caught the edge of the crew's death scream and described it a s mostly being surprise.

The people you refer to - there woman isn't one of them, though she behaves a lot like them - strike me as suffering some sort of autism. But that may be just me. And autism is definitely not a likely path of evolution for our species.

Good to hear you are doing better, and I hope that the same is true for Janet - give her my regards, by the way, if she remembers me. We did meet, but I suspect I was too much in the background of her life for her to remember me.

Getting along is probably the best way to describe my current status. Currently trying to change my eating habits to lose weight - with mixed success (habits changing, weight not). Thanks for asking.

Date: 2016-03-02 12:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
I remember the Intrepid. I also remember that we never actually saw it or its crew.

No, she's not one of them, but she's definitely cut from the same cloth. She's just as sure that the human race is irredeemably stupid except for her. I've been watching the human race for a lot longer than she has, and I have come to no such conclusion.

I did wonder about autism, but I don't know enough about it to judge.

Sometimes getting along is the best we can hope for. *hugs*

Date: 2016-03-03 05:22 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pbristow.livejournal.com
Well, *I* know enough about it from "just inside the boundary" to say: *Appropriately educated* autists have no greater lack of empathy than *appropriately educated* neurotypicals.

...And with regard to your follow-up point... Are you *sure*? =:o}

Date: 2016-03-01 12:12 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] filkerdave.livejournal.com
Glad to see you!

I'm doing well, other than achy from a snowboarding fall yesterday :)

Date: 2016-03-01 07:23 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] coth.livejournal.com

Good to see you. And glad.


I'm okay. Living with the consequences of being me, as usual. So a bit mixed, but basically okay. And very grateful for my friends.

Date: 2016-03-01 07:27 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dickgloucester.livejournal.com
*hugs you hard*

I'm considering reading those books myself. We have the first, but it was a gift to Mr D, so by the time it was free, I'd moved on to other things.

One of the reasons why I like your stories so much is because That Character doesn't appear. There's an essential kindness to your fiction that I, at least, find utterly beguiling.

Date: 2016-03-01 08:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] zanda-myrande.livejournal.com
Thank you! *hugs back*

Date: 2016-03-01 10:11 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] themis1.livejournal.com
Good to see you. Still chasing around after builders, here - we're really going to miss them when they finish!

Date: 2016-03-02 03:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sam armitage (from livejournal.com)
Haven't read them yet -- and your description may lead to a *short* delay in making the experiment.

On the "How are things ... " front, relieved that you are back, and anxious, at a suitable moment, to discourse with you on the subject of Books and their Dissemination, and whether Lulu do library discounts.

Date: 2016-03-02 03:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sam armitage (from livejournal.com)
BTW I shall carry on leaving these irritating messages till we *do* manage to talk, so ....

Date: 2016-03-02 03:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sam armitage (from livejournal.com)
PS Binnacle fine, thank you. Also golf flags. All the best to Jan.

Date: 2016-03-07 07:42 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sam armitage (from livejournal.com)
Where are you ?

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