another group read?

Who's up for one? Suggestions? Oakes?

I'd love to do it. :) I leave suggestions to the rest of you, though I'm happy to vote.

Cool :)

In the absence of other comment, let me take up a book mentioned in the main thread: Eric Frank Russell's The Great Explosion. It's mentioned as a libertarian classic - and one Oakes hasn't read. (For those of us who don't have a great used bookstore nearby: there are more inexpensive copies on Abe than either Amazon or Ebay, by far. Total cost, with shipping, about $5 - rising to $8 or so, if we buy them out of the cheap ones.)

Amazon's recommendations for this book are two in number: Anarchism: a Very Short Introduction and The Undercover Economist...

Naturally, I'm up for other suggestions. There was some talk about Dhalgren, which I do now own and have only dipped into; but it's almost five-and-a-half times as long as The Great Explosion. I'd meant to get to it this year, though; so if enough people haven't read it and want to, I'm willing.

My ears are open, ready to hear other ideas. I only hope we can interest Oakes, Ben, and company in reading something. :)

Incidentally: the Amazon reviews of The Great Explosion make it sound like tremendous fun - as well as illuminating about how libertarian cultures could work. I, at least, am sold. :)

Excellent, I'm game, I'll give you first dibs on the cheap copies at Abe's then I'm going to order one up for myself.

Done! You're up. Thanks for first pick. :)

:) Just placed my order. Will post back when media mail gets around to delivering it in a week or two!

Sounds great. Hopefully by then we'll also have company. :)

Yeah, some company would be cool... come on people, don't be shy ;)

Sounds like a winner. I'll do my part to hound Oakes as well.

Yay!!! Glad you think so. As for Oakes: with you on the hounding job, and in the read, also, I'm sure we'll prevail. ;)

Well, that gives you the advantage over at least two of us, as I suspect we are both still waiting for our copies to arrive. :) I'm delighted you'll be in on it.

I do, I do! I continue to envy you. :) - In a thoroughly non-malignant way. You don't even have, as we suggested once before, hundreds of knitting pattern 'books'. Personally, I'm impressed by that. And the absence of VHS tapes in your collection is simply stunning. ;)

You have nearly as many science fiction and fantasy volumes as I have books. Impressive and unfair. :)

LOL. God forbid (as it were)! But yes... you should meet some of my family. We used to have tapes (probably still do) of the Olympics, presidential inaugurations, soap commercials; and, yes.... news. (But I believe our tapes of classic Star Trek episodes ran a close second. In my mind this exonerates us.)

I wish you grateful children, as weirdly fascinated by the past as I was. - Or even a minor historian, not content with the network archives, 50 years from now (your mind still sharp as a tack, and your saving instincts intact, whatever time's other depredations). ;)

Anyway, it's not fair to have individuals up against groups, organizations, businesses, or even couples. Your books are your own accomplishment, with only the usual accretions from friends like yon Ben, and laudable parents. Divide the other libraries up on a per-person basis, and see how they fare!

We should. Your Star Treks are clearly superior to ours, and the difficulty of transporting them all would be more than compensated by our pleasure. We can follow the Fall of Communism with our tapes of Gulf War coverage (which in those two years you may not have watched), provided no imp got rid of them on the sly.

(Question: How can anyone be a network and a single person at once?)

I forgot Ben's depredations :), never mind Time's. Would you rather have a mind still sharp as a hypodermic? It sounds antiseptic to me, and even equivocal, but take what you will. Or I could make it a thin and piercing blade, fitted for the exacting search for truth, cutting through obscurity, separating truth from lies, probing the past and the recesses of memory. :) A little baroque, but I like it.

Great Explosion, available to all it appears :-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Explosion

which leads to here :-

http://tmh.floonet.net/books/tge/tgetoc.html

which would mean there are likely other varieties out there that people have made into text, or palm, or whatever.

Thanks, bluetyson! I'll be glad to have a copy of it, but it's good to know its arriving late would not deter our beginning. And I'm glad to see that looks like you, also, might lend us some company.

Just one question... when do you all sleep? ;-)

Welcome Oakes, I'm delighted to see that you are still around! Don't feel you owe text, participating in the group read bears no obligation for book reports.

bluetyson, thanks for the online link, good deal. Personally I'm going to hold out for the hard copy, I sit in front of this thing enough as it is.

Speaking of hard copies, mine just arrived. I snagged a slightly beat-up 1963 paperback, and am repaid by the cover. It needs a little inner reinforcement, but I love it.

Turbosaab, I'd like to suggest I simply didn't sleep, but if I told you when, it might cause heart attacks and general shunning. ;) Thankfully I am not the only one who's a little eccentric. :)

Yeah, reading a whole book on the screen is not good. Best thing to do is compile it for a Palm/PDA/Phone/ebook reader or whatever, and read it in comfort. I am just doing that now! :)

I have never to my memory seen that book in a bookshop here, either. That old, quite possibly it wasn't released here at the time, being American.

There's a definite beauty in short books.The Great Explosion was quite a lot of fun (at least for me). I'll look forward to discussion when everybody's ready.

Cool, I am looking forward to the book but the mailman didn't come through with it today.

No hurry. I was surprised mine came yesterday. But I am, as it were, ready when you are.

My copy has arrived... time for me to get reading :)

Fabulous! I hope you enjoy it.

Why don't I get the ball rolling with some Oakes-style questions:

1. Are the Gands a plausible society?
2. What point, if any, is being made by the implicit contrast of the three planets visited?
3. What makes the bandit planet and Gand planet different?
4. Is there meant to be any plausible justification for the ship's stated mission? If yes, is that right? If no, is that right?
5. Did the book feel more like a novel, a thought experiment, or a linked series of short stories?

I've been considering a couple of these and will actually type out some responses in the morning. Apologies for the time lag, and thanks for starting us off!

Good questions! Just finished and will post soon as well.

Here are a few random thoughts centered around the odd numbered questions (don't ask why... those are just the ones I felt like answering!)

1. I had a hard time with the Gands society. The story they told about the bad kid that starved to death attempted to illustrate what happens if individuals don't play fair with their obs, but didn't leave me convinced. I guess this comes down to the nature vs. nurture question and whether one believes that in an ideal society there'd still be a criminal element. I'd think there would be, and that the Gands seemed a bit vulnerable.

3. Win/lose vs. win/win, I think. At first glance your question seems like it should be easy, but I find myself struggling to pinpoint the difference.

5. A very short novel. I thought the character development was lacking; I could never remember who was who on the ship. Pace was good, some of the dialogs were quite entertaining.

Well, now that I feel suitably ashamed for not answering as promised.... :)

1. Are the Gands a plausible society?

I don't know. Like turbosaab, I keep considering the elements I believe we would have to deal with - of human evil, of hunger for power, of crime, of mental and physical illnesses - and don't see that Russell offered sufficient ideas on how to deal with them - or perhaps didn't even recognize their natural, inborn elements adequately. Much as the society might do to minimize some of these issues, it could not eradicate them. Lonely starvation and suicide at the end are good bogeymen, like Jack Ketch (a London executioner turned legendary threat), but whether either one catches up with you - or deters others - is anyone's guess. Shame does a great deal, of course. Alternate communities of outlaws are also perfectly possible, which might cause real problems. (Outlawry, here, obviously being more figurative than literal.)

There's also the issue of cooperation and organization: can they really muster enough to produce the things they're shown as having, within the limits of obs and voluntary work? It's not quite as rustic a society as you might expect, on these terms. Regardless, I also find it more attractive than not only the other planets, but the few other imagined, libertarian societies I've dipped into thus far. For a small community, as posited, it might work.

2. What point, if any, is being made by the implicit contrast of the three planets visited?

That many human societies are possible - and, in a sense, partially exist within the larger ones; that there are many ways in which we can (and do) successfully triumph over others' attempts to impose control over us; and that, ultimately, some of these options are far more desirable than others.

3. What makes the bandit planet and Gand planet different?

Both eschew others' authority in a significant way, but modest trust, openness, trade, reasonable respect for others, non-violence, and willingness to work to improve one's own standard of living seem pivotal in separating the "free" but squalid, brutish life of the prisoners' descendants from the semi-utopian life of the Gands. Both societies seem to believe in human freedom, but the Gands also concieve of human dignity.

4. Is there meant to be any plausible justification for the ship's stated mission? If yes, is that right? If no, is that right?

I'm a little confused by the questions, but if you mean, 'is the ship's mission merely a pretext for what follows?', then I'd agree it is, even if it is also meant to exemplify a threat. Likewise, if the question is whether it's acceptable that Eric Frank Russell engineered a none-too-subtle pretext for his cultural exploration, I have to say I think it's so transparent that it doesn't bother me. Better the honest contrivance than a shoddy attempt at concealment. :)

5. Did the book feel more like a novel, a thought experiment, or a linked series of short stories?

It reads like a series of sketches or vignettes to me. So, yes; thought experiments. They're not really 'stories', as such, but illustrations.... Hogarthian, if you will, in offering moral tales with entertainment value but somewhat limited movement. :) Again: written with clarity, no verbal waste, and great humor, this does not bother me. Generally, a lack of pretension on the author's part about their aims insulates them from much criticism on my part. :) Those aims don't have to match someone else's.

Edit: As promised, I've finally cleaned up some of my worst offenses against clear writing - though without adding anything significant.

Gentlemen, don't let me feel I've killed the conversation. ;)

While not personally bothered by what could be taken as weaknesses in the book, I am not so much its partisan as to mind disagreement; nor so little that I might not enjoy argument. Unfortunately, I'm also novice enough not to easily pose questions about any more important weaknesses in Russell's ideas, or their implications - beyond Ben's question of plausibility. Anyone want to take this on?

Hey all:

Apologies for the delay. Work, family, the usual excuses apply.

5. Did the book feel more like a novel, a thought experiment, or a linked series of short stories?

Perhaps this is simply the effect of reading under the auspices of a libertarian science fiction group, but the longer I read, the more it felt like a thought experiment. The novel was populated by types rather than by characters, and this contributed to the sense that the author was turning over ideas and seeing where they went.

2. What point, if any, is being made by the implicit contrast of the three planets visited?

The wild card here is the nudist planet, which does not seem much of a piece with the rest. I still don’t know what to make of it. The contrast between the Gand planet and the bandit planet, however, seemed to me an exploration of how a stateless society could go well or go wrong.

3. What makes the bandit planet and Gand planet different?

Turbosaab is right to call out the structural difference between win-win cooperation and win-lose competition as the structural difference. The bandit society embodies what Edward Banfield described as ‘amoral familism’ an ethic of clan competition that precludes large scale cooperation and gains from trade. They’re also lazy, and have no (literally, no) respect for property. The Gands, as Eurydice points out, are distinguished by their dignity: they are respectful, honest, and brave people. The bravery is crucial, as their defense against tyranny is non-resistance and the fact that you can’t get much work out of corpse. Stated that way, it seems like the Gand/bandits distinction is a matter of culture, or individual values. I found myself wondering how these values were originated and how they are sustained. Is it meant to be as simple as a founder effect? A self-selected group liberates themselves from authority, and they form a utopia; a bunch of thugs has authority withdrawn, and they descend into banditry. Does Russell imagine that some corner of the Gand planet could degenerate into banditry or some section of the bandit planet evolve into Ganditry?

5. Is the Gand planet plausible

Not really, I think. It’s implausible in small things (they’d get off the barter system), but the larger problem is that Ghandi’s strategy works great against people with scruples, or who require your cooperation. It works poorly against those who simply want to take your stuff and are willing to kill you or torture you. What would the Mongol horde do with the Gand society? What wouldn’t they do?

4. Is there meant to be any plausible justification for the ship's stated mission? If yes, is that right? If no, is that right?

What I had in mind here is the actual mission of the ship – the desire to form a human organization for self-defense. As the ambassador says in the first chapter:

“there is no knowing what formidable antagonists our own lifeform may be called upon to meet at any time in the future and before that happens Earth must reclaim its own so that we can present a common front to the foe.”

There is little doubt we are meant to view this enterprise with skepticism. If it is not self-evidently absurd, it is at least in this case a smokescreen for imperial ambition and the gratification of a primitive desire to rule.

This feels to me too quick. What is being proposed is a coalition for self-defense, perhaps one that has the power to compel contributions so as to avoid free-rider problems. As Russell notes, this arrangement sounds like a justification for authoritarianism; the difficulty is that such an arrangement also seems like a very rational response to the danger of external threats.

Eury & Ben, my apologies for going AWOL. I'll stop by for a chat this weekend.

Oakes, I won't ask.

Oakes, as this is a family book club I can't even tell the joke that "I left my copy of The Great Exposion in a men's locker room" sounds like the punchline to.

As I read most of The Great Explosion very quickly, ensconced in a warm bath, I may have been more than a little indulgent to it. Still, I did often like the Gands in concept, despite the irritating elements. As for the Spalding Library Loan System, I feel that obligations to Oakes are consistent with my dignity, and therefore may, at some point, indulge.

Meanwhile, compliments to Ben, Oakes, and turbosaab on comments which remind me - mostly pleasantly - of how much a novice in this area I am. I'll try to reply more pertinently later on.

LOL. Right. I think we discussed the shower-v-bath issues, but I'll let that pass. As for your bubble-tired hovercart, I question your taste, and am taken aback at you, of all people, stocking 'heavy bags of feed', but I am willing to exercise my freedom as well as my muscles (such as they are) in accepting... :)

I likewise found the absence of money perplexing. As Oakes notes, even with no state, money is useful as (cannonically) a means of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account. Barter is painfully imprecise. I prefer the Probability Broach solution of enabling anyone to mint currency.

As you say, barter's terribly imprecise. Still, I think it has some virtues outside of actual use. Read in its own context as an early, (objectionably?) light, 'thought-provoking' entertainment:

Barter arrests the attention of a novice (as I ought to know :) ). It suggests the possibility of doing something both radically different from the current system, based on history, and (unlike private coining) without the taint of current illegality. If your goals as an author are more to suggest possibilities than define fully-fleshed and ideal solutions, and to captivate the interest of readers to whom such ideas will usually be new, these are all good things. They mark out difference and possibility and extend the parameter of what can be imagined - not what's ideal in daily use.

Which is probably painfully obvious. But I do think Russell (like others) would advance a given solution for the sake of the reader (with whom he is concerned) as much as the ideas and scenario involved (the essence of which probably mattered a great deal more to him than the details).

Thank you. :) Yes, I remember seeing it in your catalogue. Taxation on a less-agrarian society using barter would be difficult, to put it mildly! I do find something appealing, if only emotionally, about being able to simply walk up and do a job for something you wanted, for instance, without necessarily having had something to trade, binding oneself to anything, or enjoying the shame that, say, washing dishes for a meal would normally evoke, now. Need would make the situation more of a disadvantage, but there's a relative directness and simplicity which, however utopian and idyllic, appeals to me. Perhaps this reflects childhood reading (in which barter was not uncommon), or my own odd situation. I don't expect anyone to sympathize, much less agree; don't worry. Only, we don't always respond most strongly to what's most efficient. Which I suppose supports the point that barter is more useful in literature than life...

OK, so I feel like an ass for proposing the group read and then neglecting the message board. My apologies!

By now my mushy brain has forgotten most of the book... but that' won't keep me from posting a thought or two

On "obs".. to me, this is just another form of currency, backed by confidence in the individual, as opposed to the dollar being backed by confidence in the government, or gold being backed by its intrinsic value.

Also found your discussion on barter interesting and share with Oakes' impression that one of the main points is to avoid taxes. I've thought about trying out our local barter system. Otherwise a system of currency really simplifies the exchange process. Here in Maine there is some kind of "time dollar" network to facilitate barter... I have no idea whether it works well or not, but now I am curious.