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Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Yea, pretty much any reading from the early part of the 20th century is gonna have some racism issues. It's not exactly like it was hidden back then.

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Silver2195
Apr 4, 2012
I should clarify that I didn't decide to never read another word of the story or anything like that; it just made me roll my eyes. I knew Howard had some odd, racist views; I just didn't expect them to come up so often.

Having said that, the idea that every 30s writer had the same attitudes as Howard seems wrong to me. The only other author of the time still widely read whose views really seem comparable is Lovecraft.

Stupid_Sexy_Flander
Mar 14, 2007

Is a man not entitled to the haw of his maw?
Grimey Drawer
Eh, to be fair Lovecraft hated everyone. I don't think he even liked white people around him in his real life.

But yea, dude was not exactly subtle about it in his writing.

KOGAHAZAN!!
Apr 29, 2013

a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

DeusExMachinima posted:

You'll probably have to avoid most writing then, old or contemporary. Just keep in mind that 80 years from now someone will be trashing our posts for using gendered pronouns or whatever. It comes with the territory.

tooterfish posted:

I personally love reading silver age and pulp science fiction. You'd be surprised at just how prescient some authors were, even going back further than the turn of the century. But to enjoy it you've got to accept that you'll occasionally come across things you don't agree with. Racism in 1930s America was like background radiation, almost impossible to get away from.

Yeeeaah, see, the problem with applying that argument Howard in particular is that the Conan stories aren't just good pulp fantasy with lashings of unfortunate but standard and unavoidable racism. They are exceptionally racist, even by contemporary standards, and hardly subtle about it. The entire series was built around the concept of history as the clash of races, with the refined and civilised Aquilonians pitted against the virile Hyperboreans, savage Picts and degenerate Stygians.

Sorry guys, but I'd probably feel more comfortable recommending someone push through Missee Lee, the Swallows and Amazons book that is 75% crude Orientalism by weight.

KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Sep 4, 2015

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot

Silver2195 posted:

Just started reading this, and wow, Howard is hilariously racist.
whoa you gonna trip when you hear about lovecraft

sourdough
Apr 30, 2012

tooterfish posted:

Yeah, kinda goes without saying. You'll have to try and see past that.

They're not political treatises, they're pulp stories from the 1930s.

Fwiw, I read this as having a very clear implicit if you're going to read it, you'll have to try and see past that. Not saying you should see past it and keep reading.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

tooterfish posted:

Yeah, kinda goes without saying. You'll have to try and see past that.

They're not political treatises, they're pulp stories from the 1930s.

The thing is, Howard's work can well be viewed as one giant political treatise as well as pulp adventure (with some BDSM appeal thrown in to appease Weird Tales's horndog of an editor). It's basically his take on history as informed by his eugenicist, protofascist ideology, describing how various cultures and civilisations shift between decadent civilisation, subhuman savagery, and the ideal middle ground, barbarism, which spends most of its time conning the civilised folk and exterminating the savages in pornographic detail (the remainder is spent with civilised folks exterminating savages when there aren't any useful barbarians to hand). These two articles provide a pretty good (if lengthy) overview.

coyo7e
Aug 23, 2007

by zen death robot
^^^ This is how you talk about racism or other problematic issues in dated topics. Not by getting all goggle-eyed at it.

RVProfootballer posted:

Fwiw, I read this as having a very clear implicit if you're going to read it, you'll have to try and see past that. Not saying you should see past it and keep reading.
when you read hamlet do you post, "hey guys these dudes really talk hella funny!" and then try to pass it off as some kind of bro-trigger warning?

DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

Autonomous Monster posted:

Yeeeaah, see, the problem with applying that argument Howard in particular is that the Conan stories aren't just good pulp fantasy with lashings of unfortunate but standard and unavoidable racism. They are exceptionally racist, even by contemporary standards, and hardly subtle about it. The entire series was built around the concept of history as the clash of races, with the refined and civilised Aquilonians pitted against the virile Hyperboreans, savage Picts and degenerate Stygians.

Sorry guys, but I'd probably feel more comfortable recommending someone push through Missee Lee, the Swallows and Amazons book that is 75% crude Orientalism by weight.

Darth Walrus posted:

The thing is, Howard's work can well be viewed as one giant political treatise as well as pulp adventure (with some BDSM appeal thrown in to appease Weird Tales's horndog of an editor). It's basically his take on history as informed by his eugenicist, protofascist ideology, describing how various cultures and civilisations shift between decadent civilisation, subhuman savagery, and the ideal middle ground, barbarism, which spends most of its time conning the civilised folk and exterminating the savages in pornographic detail (the remainder is spent with civilised folks exterminating savages when there aren't any useful barbarians to hand). These two articles provide a pretty good (if lengthy) overview.

How you could possibly see anybody besides Lovecraft as the King poo poo of SF racism in the 30's is one big :psyduck: to me. The core of Conan the Cimmerian is basically adventure for adventure's sake and oh yeah the author lived in the 1930's so prepare yourself for the baggage. OTOH, Lovecraft's entire concept of Cthulhu/the fishmen/whoever else interbreeding with cultists is pretty core to his entire universe and is 100% an anti-race mixing thing. He's explicit about it in his letters.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

DeusExMachinima posted:

How you could possibly see anybody besides Lovecraft as the King poo poo of SF racism in the 30's is one big :psyduck: to me. The core of Conan the Cimmerian is basically adventure for adventure's sake and oh yeah the author lived in the 1930's so prepare yourself for the baggage. OTOH, Lovecraft's entire concept of Cthulhu/the fishmen/whoever else interbreeding with cultists is pretty core to his entire universe and is 100% an anti-race mixing thing. He's explicit about it in his letters.

Read the articles. Lovecraft and Howard were both insanely racist even by the standards of the time, but Lovecraft could occasionally turn it off and write good horror without significant baggage (The Colour Out Of Space owns, and the Outsider is a pretty good example of an admittedly now-overexposed story), while racism was the ideological underpinning to all of Howard's work, and it just becomes more obvious as you read more of it.

Hieronymous Alloy
Jan 30, 2009


Why! Why!! Why must you refuse to accept that Dr. Hieronymous Alloy's Genetically Enhanced Cream Corn Is Superior to the Leading Brand on the Market!?!




Morbid Hound
Arguing over which of those two is the worst racist is kindof futile, but I'm leering of ascribing too much "philosophy" to Howard -- a lot of his race-history stuff has always seemed more fictional-philosophy than actual worldview.

I'll read the articles but the impression I've always had of Howard is that he was basically just letting his Id run buck-wild on the page, and that meant a lot of incidental racism. Conversely, with Lovecraft, he was just deeply terrified of the Other and that informs a lot of his writing. So both racist, but one out of pants-wetting fear, the other out of testosterone overdose.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Arguing over which of those two is the worst racist is kindof futile, but I'm leering of ascribing too much "philosophy" to Howard -- a lot of his race-history stuff has always seemed more fictional-philosophy than actual worldview.

That kind of goes out the window when he starts writing closer to home, I'm afraid. The Conan stories are specifically supposed to be set in our world's ancient past, and he deploys the exact same civilisation-barbarism-savagery trifecta in his Roman, medieval, and Old West stories (where the frontiersmen are the 'barbarians' - you can probably guess who fills the other two slots).

tooterfish
Jul 13, 2013

DeusExMachinima posted:

How you could possibly see anybody besides Lovecraft as the King poo poo of SF racism in the 30's is one big :psyduck: to me. The core of Conan the Cimmerian is basically adventure for adventure's sake and oh yeah the author lived in the 1930's so prepare yourself for the baggage. OTOH, Lovecraft's entire concept of Cthulhu/the fishmen/whoever else interbreeding with cultists is pretty core to his entire universe and is 100% an anti-race mixing thing. He's explicit about it in his letters.
This is the way I see it. The better Conan stories are just him breaking and entering, and then trying to steal whatever the gently caress isn't nailed down. This epic struggle of races thing just doesn't figure in those that much... I don't know, maybe I'm just wearing the old rose tints.

That article is interesting Darth Walrus, thanks for linking it. I personally don't see the point of dismissing all of the stories out of hand despite their flaws though, and especially despite the flaws of their author. Like I said, leave it to your own conscience. Also, the comments section is full of people saying "yeah, I haven't read any of them BUT I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING YOU SAID", which is pretty loving hilarious, so thanks for a good laugh too.

tooterfish fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Sep 4, 2015

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.
I don't remember any civilization in Conan not being horrible in various ways. Even the Aquilonians come across as racist as hell, but maybe they were just intended to be the advanced White People race and so being racist ancient world Nazis was just a side-effect.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Evil Fluffy posted:

I don't remember any civilization in Conan not being horrible in various ways. Even the Aquilonians come across as racist as hell, but maybe they were just intended to be the advanced White People race and so being racist ancient world Nazis was just a side-effect.

Depends how you're defining 'civilisation', but like I said, Howard doesn't really like civilised societies except when the only alternative is savagery. The real heroes are the virile, harsh-but-noble barbarians who live on the thin line between civilisation and savagery, and the Aquilonians are a decadent civilised society who get redeemed by a barbarian taking over and putting some steel in their spines (sometimes literally).

The parallels to the myth-building of the early fascists are remarkable, and there's good odds that Howard was inspired by many of the same writings - unlike Lovecraft, though, he didn't like Hitler because the guy was too much of a bloody Kraut.

Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Sep 4, 2015

Xotl
May 28, 2001

Be seeing you.
Defining Howard as concerned primarily with race is strange to me, since his letters make so clear he was primarily interested instead in the battle between civilization and barbarism, how civilization empowers a people materially even as it weakens them mentally and spiritually. He and Lovecraft (who takes the side of civilization) exchanged dozens of notes on the topic.

occamsnailfile
Nov 4, 2007



zamtrios so lonely
Grimey Drawer
Howard seemed to have been lightening up on the race thing a bit as he wrote and exchanged letters with a lot of people outside his small town Texas home. Then he killed himself at age 30 so we'll never know how he might have developed. He was pretty feminist and often defended the ladies in his letters, as well as including female characters with some degree of agency. I mean they certainly didn't compare to the mighty thews of Conan and he spent a fair bit of time on their 'attributes' but they also slung swords and double-crossed our hero. Conan's life itself was pretty much a neverending clusterfuck, he was this enormously capable and smart guy but he couldn't keep his finances together, he was constantly on the run, couldn't deal with authority, and was witness (and cause) to constant disaster. Most Howard stories ended with Conan having basically nothing more than he started with, sometimes less--sometimes a lady friend instead of riches, but that was all.

The racism is really apparent if you read the Howard stuff as an adult though. The specific descriptions of 'black races' are...not nice, and Conan even works with the Aquilonians in their attempts to exterminate the 'picts' of Zogar Sag (I don't think he knew what a Pict was) because he couldn't abandon a white race to savagery. He thinks their advance into the savage realms is ill-advised but his principles won't let him leave, at least not until all is truly lost. Aquilonia is Rome through the lens of a writer who probably learned history from the legacy of Gibbons, which attributed Rome's fall to decadent immorality. Conan himself is meant to be not-Irish, as Howard was proud of his Irish heritage, but the visual and a lot of his feats are based on the noble savage ideal of a Cherokee warrior. The thing is, the nobility of 'barbarism' seemed to be reserved primarily for the weird way (to us) that Howard defined whiteness--Conan was a barbarian while the Picts were savages and not of the white races despite being based on a Celtic origin.

Still, for all that, Howard's racism originated less from the frantic fear of basically everything that dominated Lovecraft's life. Reading his stories in the modern era can be tough--I still enjoy them but I am able to do so because the author is dead and not spouting nonsense about half-savages on his blog or whatnot.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Xotl posted:

Defining Howard as concerned primarily with race is strange to me, since his letters make so clear he was primarily interested instead in the battle between civilization and barbarism, how civilization empowers a people materially even as it weakens them mentally and spiritually. He and Lovecraft (who takes the side of civilization) exchanged dozens of notes on the topic.

He was a 1920-30s protofascist, though, which meant that (a) he didn't see much of a dividing line between society and genetics, and (b) he thought genetics were highly mutable over a short timeframe. Civilisation literally weakened your blood as it moved you away from the constant survival-of-the-fittest that kept the barbarians mighty, while savagery literally devolved you into a subhuman animal (there's at least one story featuring oddly intelligent apes who used to be human). Now, this did mean that it was relatively easy for different races to shift between the three stages (the savage Picts, Conan's favourite sword-fodder, actually won the Hyborean Age for a while after ascending to barbarism), but that's never treated as an excuse for barbarians not to dick over the other two groups as much as their wild, proud hearts willed them to. Basically, it wasn't so much that he wasn't a racist as that his ideas on race were really loving weird.

thehomemaster
Jul 16, 2014

by Ralp
Why do people itt get so hung up on racism in old books? I mean, no duh?

Cpt. Mahatma Gandhi posted:

Lies of Locke Lamora unless you deem that too GoT/WoT for you, in which case your loss cause that book is great.

Bought, cheers.

flosofl posted:

Traitor's Blade and Knight's Shadow.

EDIT: ^^^ And Lies, in my opinion one of the best books, period, from the last decade.

Those look interesting.

Fangz posted:

Earthsea.

Got the series, thanks.

Antti posted:

Max Gladstone's Three Parts Dead. It's about necromancer lawyers and a court case against a god who has died and screwed over the city it was protecting by running up a huge divine influence debt.

Something different! Tales about old gods and poo poo are cool, that's why I picked up City of Stairs.

Khizan posted:

China Mieville's Perdido Street Station.

Read it!

Autonomous Monster posted:

Can we count The Book of the New Sun as fantasy for these purposes? tBotNS is always the answer, no matter what the question is. I am also thinking Small Gods (mostly because we just had a dust-up about it in the Britpol thread). Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, too. Perdido Street Station?

I guess the most pertinent question is, what specific elements in fantasy make you think it's childish? Also, what have you already read in the genre? Also, what do you like in sci fi? Also, how exactly are we defining fantasy? Are magical realist books like One Hundred Years of Solitude fantasy?

I am fairly certain that at some point in my life I have read an entirely serious and respectable fantasy book, but I must admit I can't seem to come up with a surefire list of magic bullets at this precise moment in time.

Imajica? The Black Company? American Gods? Actually, American Gods seems to be hated by a lot of people, maybe not that.

There were bits of The Dark Tower I really liked and bits I really hated. Wizard and Glass was the best, I think? And I have a vague sense (this was a long time ago) that you could get away with reading it standalone.

The first half of Songs of Earth and Power I liked, but I was less enthused by the second volume.

Oh, KJ Parker. If you think The Folding Knife is childish then I don't even know. And since we're on historical fantasy, I might as well throw in a rec for The Lions of Al-Rassan, though Guy Gavriel Kay's erstatz-Europe is by far the most obnoxious I've ever seen. Oh, poo poo, and Swordspoint. I just read that and I forgot about it. :(

Maybe The Half-Made World too. And Lavondyss, by Robert Holdstock.

Wow! OK...

Jonathan Strange sounds god awful, no thanks.

Book of the New Sun, that sounds fantastic and exactly the right kind of thing.

Game of Thrones started off great but devolved into trite by the end of book 3. Wheel of Time was super awful-young-male-protagonist-plus-boring-world crap. And I just started a book called A Crucible of Souls, and that is just endless backstory and first person drama. Now, the type of sci fi I like involves philosophical ruminations, an intrigue plot, rounded characters that we discover and aren't told about. Anything that tells and doesn't show is awful, and that's the main problem I have with a lot of fantasy (though I know it's a problem in SF too). Usually it's because it's told in first person and the writer has the plot/world revolve and centre around a character, rather than have a character react to a world. I think that's the key to a good genre fiction book. Less melodrama.

Imajica and Black Company look good.

Dark Tower was meh after the excellent Wizard and Glass. Earth and Power looks OK. KJ Parker is definitely someone on the radar. Half-Made World was excellent, really should read the sequel. Other suggestions are intrgiguing. Cheers!

The Red Knight and The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron isn't particularly childish (and is pretty good).

If what you consider "childish" as actually just straight Tolkien-esque High Fantasy (as opposed to High Fantasy that is more morally grey, I suppose) then there's a lot of fantasy that doesn't fit that mold. We even have an entire thread dedicated to one of the preeminent authors in that genre (Joe Abercrombie). And there's even a fair amount of Tolkien-esque High Fantasy that isn't rubbish.

Anyone pick up Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu? I grabbed it on the strength of the first three chapters (which were pretty drat strong) but haven't had time to get to the rest of it just yet. Still, it's one of those few stories that isn't in a Stock Medieval Europe setting, and with the current "Durr Muslims" attitude in the US it's refreshing to have a protagonist who talks about niqab or abaya like it ain't nothing.
[/quote]

These look OK, will have to check Abercrombie.

Thanks for all suggestions, I will return with my response in 1 year hence.

thehomemaster fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Sep 6, 2015

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

thehomemaster posted:

Why do people itt get so hung up on racism in old books? I mean, no duh?

They think racism is bad and feel uncomfortable when around it. Personally, I am in favor of more people feeling comfortable with calling other people wetbacks or redskins.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

thehomemaster posted:

Why do people itt get so hung up on racism in old books? I mean, no duh?

Some old books are significantly more racist than others. I mean, Fritz Leiber's stuff is right there if you want sword and sorcery from the same time period that's less objectionable than Conan.

Evil Fluffy
Jul 13, 2009

Scholars are some of the most pompous and pedantic people I've ever had the joy of meeting.
ITT: People offended by old books who probably have no problem reading works by guys like Orson Scott Card.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib
Any time someone feels uncomfortable reading or hearing an ethnic slur, that's a failure of liberalism. We will only be free when we call homosexuals fudgepacking faggots without a quiver of guilt.

DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!
Does Card really get a pass though, by and large? I recall the makers of the Ender's Game movie (which was a pretty good adaptation of a pretty good book imho) went to great lengths on the nerd scene to make it clear there was a distance between themselves and the author. Hell, when's the last time Orson's been welcomed to a convention like Comic-Con? Although that'd be pretty funny to see. Any room he was in would probably be non-stop "God Hates Formics" signs held by gender-swapped cosplayers or something.

Darth Walrus posted:

He was a 1920-30s protofascist, though, which meant that (a) he didn't see much of a dividing line between society and genetics, and (b) he thought genetics were highly mutable over a short timeframe.

This describes basically everyone of any influence from the 20's and 30's. Eugenics were really popular back then and it took WW2/the Holocaust to get people to put that particular crack pipe down. Howard really doesn't stand out from his contemporaries in the way some posters itt seem to think he does.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

DeusExMachinima posted:

This describes basically everyone of any influence from the 20's and 30's. Eugenics were really popular back then and it took WW2/the Holocaust to get people to put that particular crack pipe down. Howard really doesn't stand out from his contemporaries in the way some posters itt seem to think he does.

Not familiar with the Harlem Renaissance or Eleanor Roosevelt's reformers then, are you? And that's just the really obvious anti-racists. There were plenty of authors who weren't as enthusiastic about scientific racism as Weird Tales goons like Lovecraft and Howard - poo poo, the Thirties were the decade of Orwell of all people, and even amongst pulp authors there are folks like CL Moore and the aforementioned Leiber who didn't feel the pressing need to insert their weird racial theories into everything they wrote. Another guy worth a shout is Tolkein, who certainly had his problems with racism but really didn't like it, tried to improve, and loving loathed the genocidal bloodlust of the fascists (see also, his letter to the Nazis about whether he had Jewish ancestry).

Suggesting that everyone in the interbellum period was a frothing racist on par with the worst of the Weird Tales crowd is pretty grotesquely historically ignorant.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib
The whole dismissive attitude on display is really weird when it comes to genre fiction, especially when it comes to motherfucking Conan. Like, it's understandable when it comes to someone talking about literary fiction, or even something that's been massively influential like Lovecraft, but Howard's influence is much, much smaller than that of pastiches and homages nowadays, along with reinterpretations like the comics and movies.

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

Xotl posted:

Defining Howard as concerned primarily with race is strange to me, since his letters make so clear he was primarily interested instead in the battle between civilization and barbarism, how civilization empowers a people materially even as it weakens them mentally and spiritually. He and Lovecraft (who takes the side of civilization) exchanged dozens of notes on the topic.

It's what you get when you try to jam something through the lens of modern social activism instead of taking a more insightful and context-based analytical approach.

There were some actual interesting and thoughtful posts like that in the Lovecraft thread if you bother to sift through all the white noise garbage.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

PINING 4 PORKINS posted:

It's what you get when you try to jam something through the lens of modern social activism instead of taking a more insightful and context-based analytical approach.

Oh, never mind, I get it. It's about the dang SJWs, who don't give eugenics the insightful analysis it deserves.

DeusExMachinima
Sep 2, 2012

:siren:This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!:siren:

Put this loser on ignore immediately!

Darth Walrus posted:

Not familiar with the Harlem Renaissance or Eleanor Roosevelt's reformers then, are you? And that's just the really obvious anti-racists. There were plenty of authors who weren't as enthusiastic about scientific racism as Weird Tales goons like Lovecraft and Howard - poo poo, the Thirties were the decade of Orwell of all people, and even amongst pulp authors there are folks like CL Moore and the aforementioned Leiber who didn't feel the pressing need to insert their weird racial theories into everything they wrote. Another guy worth a shout is Tolkein, who certainly had his problems with racism but really didn't like it, tried to improve, and loving loathed the genocidal bloodlust of the fascists (see also, his letter to the Nazis about whether he had Jewish ancestry).

Suggesting that everyone in the interbellum period was a frothing racist on par with the worst of the Weird Tales crowd is pretty grotesquely historically ignorant.

So to boil down what you're saying, a majority of people in the West gave eugenics more than passing thought but wait you guys there were exceptions to that rule! Okay, great. That's not really a rebuttal to the point I made.

Effectronica posted:

Oh, never mind, I get it. It's about the dang SJWs, who don't give eugenics the insightful analysis it deserves.

Are you on a quest to be the SMG of Book Barn? It's pretty obvious that what he's saying is that what stands out to us today may not be the primary motivation of the dude back then. It's not hard to find someone with that motivation though if you want to. His name is Lovecraft and he wrote openly about it.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

DeusExMachinima posted:

So to boil down what you're saying, a majority of people in the West gave eugenics more than passing thought but wait you guys there were exceptions to that rule! Okay, great. That's not necessarily exclusive to the point I made.


Are you on a quest to be the SMG of Book Barn? It's pretty obvious that what he's saying is that what stands out to us today may not be the primary motivation of the dude back then.

No, what he's saying is that it's invalid for people to openly respond negatively to racist things in old stories, because it's trying to jam something through the lens of modern social activism instead of taking a more insightful and context-based analytical approach. Which is bullshit on two levels, because first of all, it's good when people don't like racism and admit that fact, and second, a more insightful and context-based analytical approach is something that Conan cannot really withstand without getting to the point where Robert E. Howard was a pretty racist man and this lay underneath not just Conan, but Bran Mak Morn, Kull, Solomon Kane, etc. as well.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

DeusExMachinima posted:

So to boil down what you're saying, a majority of people in the West gave eugenics more than passing thought but wait you guys there were exceptions to that rule! Okay, great. That's not really a rebuttal to the point I made.

You said that 'basically everyone of any influence in the twenties and thirties' was an enthusiastic scientific racist on par with Howard and Lovecraft. That's pretty badly wrong, and I gave examples to prove it. Unless you think that George Orwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, Langston Hughes, and so on didn't have any cultural influence?

And that's not even getting into the Catholics - Casti Connubii was a huge deal throughout much of the Western world.

Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Sep 6, 2015

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




Well, I guess we have enough info for the original poster to decide whether they want to read Conan or not...

(Read all the Discworld books instead IMO, not because they're less racist but because they're the best.)

Hedrigall
Mar 27, 2008

by vyelkin

Chairchucker posted:

(Read all the Discworld books instead IMO, not because they're less racist but because they're the best.)

Agreed. Read them allllll

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

Effectronica posted:

No, what he's saying is that it's invalid for people to openly respond negatively to racist things in old stories

Wow, no. Not at all. The guy you were responding to was spot on. If you want to get a good measure of the man, I think a good dose of early 1900s nationalism, essentialism and xenophobia needs to get through in along with the racism.

thehomemaster
Jul 16, 2014

by Ralp

Effectronica posted:

Oh, never mind, I get it. It's about the dang SJWs, who don't give eugenics the insightful analysis it deserves.

Goddamn you are one facetious person.

thetechnoloser
Feb 11, 2003

Say hello to post-apocalyptic fun!
Grimey Drawer
Putting one out there for David Walton's Superposition

Quite the quantum murder mystery. While he lost me in a couple points, not because of the science, mind you, but the writing, it was still a page-turner until the end. Would give it a solid B-.

Effectronica
May 31, 2011
Fallen Rib

thehomemaster posted:

Goddamn you are one facetious person.

How dare someone be flippant on a comedy forum.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Hedrigall posted:

Agreed. Read them allllll



So, who had to tell the person that made that poster they hosed up at least one title.

thehomemaster
Jul 16, 2014

by Ralp

Effectronica posted:

How dare someone be flippant on a comedy forum.

At least do it well.

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savinhill
Mar 28, 2010

thehomemaster posted:

At least do it well.

The chances of this happening are very, very slim.

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