I’ve mentioned The Blue World, published in 1966 by Jack Vance, a couple of times over the last few days. I’d been feeling a little stale, a little distressed, and decided to retreat into some old pulp-era fiction by one of my favorite authors.
Get the taste of Trump out of my mouth, ya know?
Midway through, I realized that taste was going nowhere because there were a lot of parallels in The Blue World to the entire Trump phenomenon. Briefly, the preservation of unearned, outrageous privilege; the clever mixing of truths with lies during political discussions; the rise of the under-educated; the buffaloing of the unprepared by the militaristic; the debate over the great threat between those with society’s best interests at heart and those for whom the threat is the source of their privilege; stretching a parallel, the discrediting of the opposition by the antagonists.
It was really quite a jolt.
Sure, it’s pulp, or just post-pulp, depending on when you think the era ended. It’s fun. The good guys win in the end. It’s one of the best of the pulp stories, but I shan’t recommend it, unless you’re a fan of SF pulp-era fiction, and if you are, you’ve probably already read it. Vance is a true legend of the genre.
But I couldn’t stop from drawing parallels. And, given the age of the book, I take the lesson that the general principles of Trump are nothing new on the American political scene, only their prominence. Congress has always had a dodgy reputation, particularly in the 20th century, and I begin to understand really why. The exigencies of the lust for power, crossed with provincialism and, let’s face it, a lack of education and religious fundamentalism, along with a little fearfulness. The only new thing is the Internet.
And, as I read The Blue World, the book fell apart. Literally fell apart. It’s old enough that it might be a first edition (just checked, and it appears to be so), but no collector would pay for this mess. My Arts Editor will attempt to reassemble it, but right now it’s just fragments.
Hopefully, that’s a sign. A good sign.
