Wis[s]e Words

Miéville on fantasy

Published on May 13, 2005

I know I’m banging on a bit about China Miéville, with two entries on him in one day, but I missed this article in The Independent when it came out last year:

The real distinction between the tourists and what has become the “generic” fantasy tradition shows up in the weaknesses of the mainstream. When writers don’t respect the field from which they borrow, let alone when (cough, Theroux, cough) they despise it, their work doesn’t believe itself. On every page, nervously scrawled in invisible ink, are the words “It’s ok! It’s not fantasy! It’s really about oppression/marginalisation/exploitation/etc!” The curiously philistine and simplistic belief is that fantasy is only “meaningful” so far as it’s narrowly allegorical.

By contrast, writers within genres know perfectly well that they are writing about refugees, or economics, or gender oppression, or whatever else, but they also enjoy the strangeness they create for its own sake. And they always have done. Gulliver’s Travels is a vicious satire on various social ills, but it also revels in the uncanny spectacles it creates: squadrons of tiny people tethering a man to the ground; talking horses; islands floating with a giant lodestone. It trusts the reader to get on with the tasks of understanding, and of enjoying the strange. It is a book that delights in fantasy.

One of the great signs of fantasy’s health is that often these days, those who borrow its tropes from
outside genre, like David Mitchell, the hot favourite to win Man Booker prize, do so with facility and
respect. Mitchell writes brilliantly about human society and emotion, and about ghosts, sentient computers and transmigrating souls, without sneer, anxiety or generic despite.

Those allegations against Galloway

Published on May 13, 2005

So an US Senate committee has accused of having received “allocations” of oil under the “oil-for-food” programme:

The US report concludes: “The evidence obtained by the sub-committee, including Hussein-era documents from the ministry of oil and testimony from senior Hussein officials, shows that Iraq granted George Galloway allocations for millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food programme.

“Moreover, some evidence indicates that Galloway appeared to use a charity for children’s leukaemia to
conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation.”

As the blogger known as Sonic said as well, you’d think this much oil would leave some trace:

[…] If Galloway was allocated “millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food programme” there seems
to me there would be clear evidence of it (transaction records, invoices etc) and if there was were is it?

But it all seems to be a
mishash of earlier accusations, including accusations Galloway already won a libel suit over:

A spokesman for the Telegraph said: “The committee appears to be confusing our documents with a set of alleged receipts that emerged in Baghdad some days after our story appeared. These purported to record direct payments to Mr Galloway in the early 1990s. They were offered to the Daily Telegraph but, as they were clearly crude forgeries, we declined to publish them.”

The committee, which of course had not contacted Galloway before making the accusations, has now deigned to receive him, to which Galloway has responded with his usual charm:

The committee said it would be “pleased” for Mr Galloway to appear at a hearing in Washington on 17 May.

The MP accepted, declaring he would take “them on in their own lions’ den”.

He told the BBC: “I’ll be Daniel and I’ll be triumphant”.

In all, this whole farce smells like a slightly ill timed “october surprise”. Oona King must be pretty miffed this kerfuffle didn’t erupt a week earlier, eh?

Chagos islanders win court victory

Published on May 13, 2005

Three years ago I wrote about the plight of the Chagos islanders, who were kicked out of their archipelo back in the sixties to make way for the enormous US military base of Diego Garcia, located on the largest island of the Chagos archipelo. The Chagos islands were then and still are now a colony of the UK and it was the UK government who forcibly removed, “compensated” and dumped the inhabitants, the Ilois, in Mauritius, recently made independent. That would’ve been the end of it, if not for the incredible determination of the Ilois, who are still fighting for the right to return to their islands.

And that right came a step closer this week when they won a High Court judgment, which ruled that their removal was illegal. However, since it also granted the government the right to appeal, this is not the end of it. Also, even if this judgment is not appealed against, there are still other hurdles for them to jump through: the US has already stated it will not allow any of the islanders to return no matter what the UK courts decide…

China Miéville wins Clarke Award

Published on May 13, 2005

Via Lenin’s Tomb comes the news that China Miéville has won the 2005 Arthur C. Clarke Award for his 2004 novel Iron Council. According to the Clarke Award’s administrator Paul Kincaid:

“Iron Council by China Miéville focuses sharply on political change, but note how many things feed into
that change: wealth and suffering and sexuality and hope. This is the point at which the conflict between the moral and the political which has underpinned his previous books bursts into the open. There are many wrongs in Miéville’s world, but very few rights, and politics in all its forms from simple co-operation to bloody revolution, is shown to be the frail and fallible attempt to find a way in the world. And in the last few dramatic pages, this is a novel about closing Pandora’s Box because of the necessity of preserving hope.

Iron Council is also still up for the Hugo Awards. So far however, not one Clarke Award winner has gone on to win the Hugo as well; might Iron Council be the first?

Living Marxism watch

Published on May 11, 2005

It is interesting how often the erstwhile comrades of Living Marxism manage to be cited in the British media to spout their obsession with risk aversion

Case in point. Here we have Frank Furedi, the ex-Living Marxism, ex-Revolutionary Communist Party guru, on the subject of “smug parents” in last week’s Observer:

‘The situation is compounded because we have privatised childcare. It is no longer the responsibility of
society to look after the next generation but the sole responsibility of individuals who feel that they
must parent all the time.’ […]

‘This means that there is now a threat that this can define you completely. Your personality is no longer comprised of what job you do, what films you like or cultural references — being a parent becomes your whole identity and you live your life through your kids.’

What annoys me is not necessarily there relentless banging of their obsessions, but the fact that the British newsmedia presents Furedi and co as neutral experts on whatever topic they’re asked their opinion on, without acknowledgement of the specific political agenda behind their opinions. (Take for example this potted BBC profile of Claire Fox. Nothing about what her “Institute of Ideas” stands for.)