[lbo-talk] What are you reading now?

[wrobert at uci.edu]

>
> --- wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
>> Kim Stanley Robinson is a he.  The Mars trilogy is
>> what really returned me
>> to reading SF agaon.  It's such an amazing radical
>> utopia.  The new books
>> on climate change are good, but they focus on
>> Washington, rather than the
>> emphasis on constituent power that you find in the
>> trilogy.  I'm actually
>> reading George Schuyler's Black Empire (Schuyler is
>> a black
>> arch-conservative and anti-communist), which is a
>> pulp SF novel printed in
>> black newspapers in the 1930's.  It's a story about
>> a secretive and
>> authoritarian black nationalist organization
>> decolonizing Africa by force.
>
> Sort of a Black Nationalist version of the Nazi pulp
> hero what's-his-name, the Voelkish version of Doc Savage?
>
>
I'm not sure.  I don't know the Doc Savage information.  I'd be interested
in hearing more about that and its appropriation....  However, Dr.
Baedilus is sort of a ruthless instrumental sort of fellow, who
nonetheless is working against imperialism.  It is a sort of emphasis on
replicating European instrumental reason in order to defeat. He also seems
to be able to seduce many white women to use for his plans. We are also
told repeatedly about the 'sinister gleam' in his eye...