tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post2989377031312355204..comments2024-02-24T00:25:39.415-08:00Comments on Examined Worlds: Ghost Grandma in Space: Blue Remembered Earth by Alastair ReynoldsEthanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13490888839784651097noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post-83449517574075229592017-07-28T06:18:21.326-07:002017-07-28T06:18:21.326-07:00Good comparison. Of course, cultural influence ha...Good comparison. Of course, cultural influence has been going every which way for thousands and thousands of years. This idea some people have of cultures as self-contained units sealed off from everything else has never actually been true. A lot of what we think of as "Western" including the Roman Empire includes plenty of influence from other parts of the world. I prefer to think of ancient Greece and Rome and "ancient Mediterranean" with tons of influence from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. They only became "Western" as a sort of massive ret con job in the last few hundred years (a project that is probably itself a result of Western colonialism). Plato would not have thought of himself as part of the same culture as a bunch of barbarians in Germany or England.<br /><br />Many African countries just gained independence about 50 years ago, so that legacy isn't going away anytime soon. Not that Reynolds talks about that at all in this book. It could have been interesting to explore what the cultures of the future would be like, but that's just not the kind of book this is. It's more the "let's place basically early 21st century Western people in a setting with some cool tech" kind of science fiction, although he starts to get into the cultural effects of near-total surveillance technology and then backs off from really exploring it. This book doesn't have the sort of historical consciousness you get in say, Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning or for that matter in Frank Herbert's Dune books. But hard science fiction is rarely is like that, except maybe for someone like Kim Stanley Robinson.Ethanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13490888839784651097noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2323383105577553414.post-54181340393654979642017-07-27T21:37:54.080-07:002017-07-27T21:37:54.080-07:00Granted, the legacy of Western colonialism may sti...<i>Granted, the legacy of Western colonialism may still be with us in 150 years, which blurs the lines between "Western" and "non-Western"...</i><br /><br />I wonder if this is comparable to the cultural echoes left by the Roman Empire that are still with us today? Commander Zaiushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11000824454124236774noreply@blogger.com