Ted Chiang Explains the Disaster Novel We All Suddenly Live In

April 3, 2020 11:53 PM

What we’re living through is only partly a disaster novel; it’s also—and perhaps mostly—a grotesque political satire. A 1250-word email conversation between Halimah Marcus and Ted Chiang for Electric Literature.
posted by cgc373 (25 comments total)

While there has been plenty of fiction written about pandemics, I think the biggest difference between those scenarios and our reality is how poorly our government has handled it. If your goal is to dramatize the threat posed by an unknown virus, there’s no advantage in depicting the officials responding as incompetent, because that minimizes the threat; it leads the reader to conclude that the virus wouldn’t be dangerous if competent people were on the job. A pandemic story like that would be similar to what’s known as an “idiot plot,” a plot that would be resolved very quickly if your protagonist weren’t an idiot. What we’re living through is only partly a disaster novel; it’s also—and perhaps mostly—a grotesque political satire.

Turns out our reality is written by Armando Iannucci, not Aaron Sorkin.
posted by adrianhon at 2:13 AM on April 4, 2020 [20 favorites]

Watching Avenue 5 and then seeing reports of corvid19-beset cruise ships... yes.
posted by Grangousier at 2:23 AM on April 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

"Why we are living in JG Ballard's world."
posted by cgc373 at 3:11 AM on April 4, 2020 [8 favorites]

After coronavirus passes, nothing will be the same — and that might not be a bad thing
Australian perspective on the absolutely massive changes taking place by a government who would ordinarily campaign against such things.
posted by freethefeet at 3:50 AM on April 4, 2020

I think we're living through Oryx and Crake, except without the hypercompetent Crake. Actually, if you pool together almost all of Atwood's dystopias and then subtract out the competent people, that seems like what we're living through.
posted by benzenedream at 6:31 AM on April 4, 2020 [11 favorites]

A lot of people would rather die than share resources with people who don't look like them, and now some of them are going to get their wish.
posted by The Card Cheat at 7:34 AM on April 4, 2020 [26 favorites]

Watching Avenue 5 and then seeing reports of corvid19-beset cruise ships... yes.

Who'd have thought that silly show would turn out to be rather prescient? It'll be interesting to see how much of real life the showrunners incorporate into the second season. I have a feeling the stereotyped "Karen" character isn't going to be so effective anymore.
posted by fuse theorem at 7:39 AM on April 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

"Aristocrats might have thought the world was ending when feudalism was abolished during the French Revolution, but the world didn’t end; the world changed...
The critic John Clute has said that the French Revolution was one of the things that gave rise to science fiction.)

OK, might want to read some history.
feudalism had pretty much ceased by the 15th century. The revolution was started by aristocrats and the professional/ merchant
class then taken over by the 3rd Estate. Sure, alot of people fled.
People always flee.
posted by clavdivs at 7:45 AM on April 4, 2020 [4 favorites]

Wasn't the Plague one of the contributing factors to the decline of feudalism?
posted by Mogur at 8:28 AM on April 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

What we’re living through is only partly a disaster novel; it’s also—and perhaps mostly—a grotesque political satire.

from my perspective, this has been life in general for almost as long as I remember. It's just that lately, the volume's been turned up. Now even the permanently distracted can't help but notice.
posted by philip-random at 8:33 AM on April 4, 2020 [6 favorites]

My biggest political fear is that the Democrats will wins in November by margins not seen in almost a hundred years, and be led by... Joe Biden, a man whose sole selling point right now seems to be “I’m pretty good at running meetings”

My second biggest political fear is that Trump will get elected again (I refuse to say “win again” because he didn’t win the first time.)
posted by Automocar at 8:37 AM on April 4, 2020 [6 favorites]

The French Revolution gave rise to the despotic Napoleon, over a decade of brutal warfare with millions of deaths, two more French monarchies and almost a century of entrenchment of aristocratic near totalitarianism in most of Europe and colonial expansion in the power vacuum.

Not to mention that in the revanchist frenzy of the Terror French poets, teachers, shopkeepers and intellectuals were just as likely to get the guillotine as nobility.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 8:49 AM on April 4, 2020 [9 favorites]

if I was a betting man, I'd have at least a few dollars on a political near future where Biden doesn't just win in November, the Democrats absolutely wipe the floor of the Republicans in both the House and the Senate, at which point Grand Old Party shall cease to exist -- America becoming a virtual one party state overnight ...

Which will inevitably split right/left into its already divided wings... America being nothing if not a dichotomous affair.
posted by philip-random at 8:57 AM on April 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

at which point Grand Old Party shall cease to exist

I think this grossly underestimates the degree to which the GOP has become a cargo cult for hysterical suburban honkeys terrified of the bogeyman of racial eclipse, and of postmodernity itself.

Nothing - not increasing penury, not pervasive despair, not even the threat of death - is going to turn the Republican base from the path it is on. If anything, constant stress and fear are going to reinforce and amplify their commitment.

But I'm guessing you're hedging that bet.
posted by ryanshepard at 9:11 AM on April 4, 2020 [35 favorites]

Yeah, if I were a bettor, I'd definitely take the counter bet.
posted by glonous keming at 9:13 AM on April 4, 2020 [3 favorites]

But I'm guessing you're hedging that bet.

I did say "a few dollars".
posted by philip-random at 9:20 AM on April 4, 2020

I think this grossly underestimates the degree to which the GOP has become a cargo cult for hysterical suburban honkeys terrified of the bogeyman of racial eclipse, and of postmodernity itself.

They also fail to see the irony that of all the bad things in their lives, the #1 demographic that has fucked them has been the straight, rich, white guy. Their countrymen, their racial brothers-in-arms continually betray them and they keep going back to the immigrant well. The lizards (I use that term semi-facetiously) must be laughing all the way to the bank.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:38 AM on April 4, 2020 [7 favorites]

Nothing - not increasing penury, not pervasive despair, not even the threat of death - is going to turn the Republican base from the path it is on.

This is 100% accurate. With the way information can be siloed and tailored by rightwing outlets to exclude reality I guarantee you 35% of this nation will not waver from the Rightwing suicide cult. I don’t even think the shift in age demographics is going to change that anytime soon. Because there are an alarming percentage of Americans under 40 who buy into the Trumpist cult.

We are on a knifes edge here.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 10:01 AM on April 4, 2020 [10 favorites]

Current situation doesn't remind me of the French Revolution...but it might remind me of the Exode in 1940.

(Not making a definite prediction here, just pondering.)
posted by gimonca at 10:02 AM on April 4, 2020

I generally agree with Chiang's views here, but like so many at this moment, he spends many words hoping that something better will come out of the shock of this disaster, that we will emerge better people having a more progressive, equitable society. I wish I could share those hopes.
posted by Seaweed Shark at 10:48 AM on April 4, 2020 [4 favorites]

Wasn't the Plague one of the contributing factors to the decline of feudalism?

1665-66? no. But the fire sure solidified things. of the black plauge, no, but it reshaped society to ready feudalism a slow demise.
posted by clavdivs at 1:21 PM on April 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

The black plague (the 1347 one) is often credited with the collapse of serfdom in western Europe, rather than the decline of feudalism. And anyway, feudalism didn't exist.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 9:13 PM on April 4, 2020 [2 favorites]

in conservative narratives, there’s a disaster/problem/war. It’s resolved, and everything returns to normal. In progressive narratives, there’s a disaster, it’s resolved, and nothing is the same

David Byrne: The World Is Changing – So Can We - "The pandemic is revealing the many ways our lives intersect. Is this an opportunity for us to reimagine what we can be?"

Connect and Connect and Connect - "This virus is showing us just how tenuous our existence becomes when we distance ourselves from each other."

My show “American Utopia” finished its initial Broadway run, as it turned out, just a few weeks before the theater and all the theaters on Broadway were ordered to close. The idea behind the show had been to present my band and me coming together as one, as evidence—to both myself and the audience—that we humans can forge similar connections in everyday life. My hope was that seeing our collaboration take shape, even on a modest scale, would help the audience to imagine a world in which these kinds of connections take shape just as naturally.

also btw...
Malcom Gladwell Posed a Mind-Blowing Theory About Crime Shows

Gladwell discussed how there are essentially four different genres of entertainment, the Western, which portrays a world without law and order and a man ultimately shows up to impose that law and order, the Eastern, which is where there is a world where law and order does exist but that it has been “subverted” by people working within the system (Gladwell mentioned Hollywood films like Serpico that fit this outline).

The other two genres are the Northern, where law and order exists and is morally righteous — Gladwell pointed to the show Law & Order as an example of a popular show in this category — and the Southern, where the entire “apparatus” of law is corrupt and where someone comes in from the outside to reform the system.

oh and...
-How to Be Futuristic | Bruce Sterling
-A pandemic thriller, once rejected by publishers for being unrealistic, is now getting a wide release
posted by kliuless at 1:27 AM on April 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I'll believe in the possibility of coronavirus Changing Everything when it makes a single person I know in real life, or online, or through their journalism change their mind about anything.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:30 AM on April 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

I've already changed my mind at least five times about whether wearing a mask is appropriate with regard to Covid-19, and don't get me started on what kind of mask.
posted by philip-random at 10:24 AM on April 5, 2020 [3 favorites]