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The author is a Catholic conservative and considers classic science fiction as failed attempts to replace transcendent, divine purpose with mere scientific progress. And yes, I agree with a lot of that. Authors like Arthur C. Clarke, are obviously looking for some new form of transcendence - it shows up again and again, from Childhood’s End to 2001. It’s well-written and sincerely felt. But like a lot of conservative tracts, for me, it only makes sense if you already feel as the author does. If you have a deep longing to be a soldier obeying divine commands it’s obvious, obvious, that Star Trek is hopelessly inadequate. If you imagine that once upon a time, the universe was well-ordered and filled with light, then of course the grey present is disappointing. I had a look at other works by this author. He is particularly ticked off by how “wokeism” infects everything now, especially his beloved sci-fi/game universes. For him, the loss of transcendent meaning in culture is intimately bound up with the traitorous inclusion of women in some aspect of Warhammer that I honestly can’t be bothered to investigate. On a personal note, I too was raised in a very Catholic environment. I do not understand the nostalgia. The worship of science may have produced gods that failed. The gods of religions like Catholicism not only failed, but were never there at all. The thing that this author apparently cherishes the most - a childhood with exciting visions of the future - is itself a product of modernity. There was no sheltered childhood, no books and stories made particularly for the imaginative adolescent, before the modern period. In the bleak husbandry of Christian religions, women, children, and lesser peoples were property. TLDR if the Catholic Church was able to run things the way they truly want, you wouldn’t have Warhammer or video games at all. They’d have slapped you upside the head, given you a book of the lives of the saints, and told you to say thirty Our Fathers in penance for wanting anything more. |