Thursday, July 15, 2010

Blind Spots

It always amazes me how ignorant people are at times...in reality or as part of their "face". I came across two examples of this recently, one in terms of science fiction and politics and one in terms of science and politics.

In the world of science fiction, James P. Hogan recently died. Hogan got his start writing fairly "hard" science fiction in the late 1970's for Del Rey, with Inherit the Stars (free electronic version available via that link), and attained moderate mid-list success before Del Rey imploded. He eventually moved many of his titles over to Baen Books, where he published a number of reprints, new books, fiction and non-fiction.

As time went by, either Hogan adapted more and more weirdness or allowed weirdness that he always had become more and more public. Even in Inherit the Stars you can see how he rebelled against "the establishment" by incorporating elements of Immanuel Velikovsky's theories on the formation of the solar system. In his essays and on his website, you could see rantings against history and politics, especially when it intersected with science.

Now anybody moderately active in science fiction...attending conventions, reading message boards, visiting websites and the like, should have been aware of Hogan's beliefs. But it astounds me how several prominent members in the field have said things along the lines of "Gee, I should have confronted him on this" or "I never knew what a slime he was"...is this reality folks, or are you pushing an agenda? Are you really as pure as you are implying you are? Have you no sin?

I don't particularly hold with many (any perhaps) of Hogan's views, but it seems to me that we're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. First, you can separate the person from his books and still enjoy the books. Second, while several people have been telling tales out of school, others have said how nice he was, how he gave advice to new writer's, how he helped one person or the other get started in a writing career.

Sigh... What is the reality? What is the real face of Hogan? Of his detractors?

In other news, it seemed that Charlie Bolden, NASA Administrator was charged with reaching out to the Muslim World (wherever that is) and getting them involved. Or maybe he wasn't. In any case, something that was "broken" a while back was seized by one political faction, spun wildly out of control and then simmered while the White House failed to act and react. And when they reacted, they did so badly, as they have done with just about everything related to NASA this past year (just scroll through NASA Watch for a number of examples). What is the reality? What was the real directive? We'll probably never know. In the meantime, the shuttle is being shut down, Constellation is canned, no return to the Moon, we have a manned spaceflight "gap" again, commercial space is fractured and we'll soon be overpaying the Russians for taxi service to a station we mostly built because of political stupidity...which has been around for years, and overlooked by all those screaming about alleged directives.

Sigh. Again.

3 comments:

John Lambshead said...

The trouble with Hogan is that he was a 'spannerhead' (English slang). He left school at 16 with little formal education to become an engineering apprentice with The RAE at Farborough (a sought after position). This type of career path for engineers was commonplace in 1957 when engineering was a low-status profession. Often, senior staff came up from apprentices who left school at the lowest legal age. The impact on British engineering was disastrous. By the 70s the heads of British engineering companies were notoriously non-academic, 'practical', highly conservative men who resisted change and innovation.

Hogan married and had chldren young. This was a shame because he was clever and could have been sponsored to go to university - something that would have changed his life.

Hogan thought he understood science but, in practice, knew absolutely nothing about it. Intelligence is not on its own a substitute for knowledge.

He was not going to learn either. He was a bright, uneducated man with a huge chip on his shoulder. He was very anti-authoritarian so research scientists with their qualifications and professional credits were to be despised.

He championed every loony pseudoscience going; a short cut to a reputation. In particular he was a denialist.

1. Modern physics is all nonesense and Velikovsky was a genius with an insight denied to four generations of mathematicians and physicists, who are all fools and frauds.
2. Evolution is a fraud, all the world's biologists and molecular biologists are fools and frauds.
3. The holocaust is a fraud perpetrated by Jews and the allies.
4. Aids is not caused by the HIV virus but by modern drugs, the chemists, virologists and docters are all fools and frauds.
5. Ozone depletion is a fraud.....
6. Global climate change science is a fraud.....

Hogan claimed to follow the scientific method of empiracal research but always ignored evidence in favour of opposing what he perceived to be authority.

His last essay, in March of this year, was on holocaust denial "claims that are wildly fantastic, mutually contradictory, and defy common sense and often physical possibility." (Wikipedia).

A sad, bitter man, and a terrible indictment of an English class system that betrayed him, and which fortunately is no more. He could have been so much more.

My generation was lucky. I went to state school in the 60s and on to an engineering university. Compared to Hogan, I had it lucky.

John Lambshead said...

The trouble with Hogan is that he was a 'spannerhead' (English slang). He left school at 16 with little formal education to become an engineering apprentice with The RAE at Farborough (a sought after position). This type of career path for engineers was commonplace in 1957 when engineering was a low-status profession. Often, senior staff came up from apprentices who left school at the lowest legal age. The impact on British engineering was disastrous. By the 70s the heads of British engineering companies were notoriously non-academic, 'practical', highly conservative men who resisted change and innovation.

Hogan married and had chldren young. This was a shame because he was clever and could have been sponsored to go to university - something that would have changed his life.

Hogan thought he understood science but, in practice, knew absolutely nothing about it. Intelligence is not on its own a substitute for knowledge.

He was not going to learn either. He was a bright, uneducated man with a huge chip on his shoulder. He was very anti-authoritarian so research scientists with their qualifications and professional credits were to be despised.

He championed every loony pseudoscience going; a short cut to a reputation. In particular he was a denialist.

1. Modern physics is all nonesense and Velikovsky was a genius with an insight denied to four generations of mathematicians and physicists, who are all fools and frauds.
2. Evolution is a fraud, all the world's biologists and molecular biologists are fools and frauds.
3. The holocaust is a fraud perpetrated by Jews and the allies.
4. Aids is not caused by the HIV virus but by modern drugs, the chemists, virologists and docters are all fools and frauds.
5. Ozone depletion is a fraud.....
6. Global climate change science is a fraud.....

Hogan claimed to follow the scientific method of empiracal research but always ignored evidence in favour of opposing what he perceived to be authority.

His last essay, in March of this year, was on holocaust denial "claims that are wildly fantastic, mutually contradictory, and defy common sense and often physical possibility." (Wikipedia).

A sad, bitter man, and a terrible indictment of an English class system that betrayed him, and which fortunately is no more. He could have been so much more.

My generation was lucky. I went to state school in the 60s and on to an engineering university. Compared to Hogan, I had it lucky.

John Lambshead said...

Fred,
I intended to make a comment but it is too long so I have put it on the Bar.
J