The SFFaudio Podcast #412 – Jesse, Paul Weimer, Marissa, Maissa and Bryan Alexander discuss Rite Of Passage by Alexei Panshin

Talked about on today’s show:
1968, 1963, Paul’s suggestion, an antidote to Heinlein, an answer to Heinlein, Heinlein liberal?, Heinlein incestuous, Masqueworld books, clever and charming, anthropological SF, political SF, being good company, Doctor Who without the intelligence or capacity or Tardis, puckish satire, a pleasant smile of a book, Starship Troopers is to The Forever War as Tunnel In The Sky is to Rite Of Passage, Heinlein In Dimension, before the internet was a thing, a YA novel thirty years early, modern tech, attitudes, modern sexuality, Cory Panshin, a new wave SF piece, Ursula Le Guin, Russ, Frank Herbert, early Triptree, SF in the age of the sexual revolution, communal living, teen sex, squarely on the liberal side, Brave New World lite, history not SF, a girl instead of a guy, this is the spartan youth being trained to kill the helots, the genocide, the unexpected, “reprimanded”, Morlock, divided by caste, a eugenics officer, The Word For World Is Forest, a doomed society, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, like duh, Panshin’s response to Orphans Of The Sky aka Universe and Common Sense, a hollowed out starship, a generation ship, mutants, JoeJim, thoughtless religion, the ship society, don’t get too weird, the ancient Greeks, a trial or a test, boy-scouting trips, why isn’t the mom in here?, the men and women don’t live together, dormitories, the common room, the USA as Athens and the Soviet Union as Sparta, Athens is elsewhere, there’s no art, the mom is a sculptor, a kind of communist, how things work, technological know-how vs. physical means, all they need to do is have one defector with a thumb drive, one Edward Snowden, when is this book going to deal with that?, knowledge isn’t just a bunch of books, a set of skills, the expertise, George, blaming the colonist mud eaters, what do we think about the father, one of the two kings, earlier visits, kids are mean, unequal trade, how slowly the narrator learns, in the shadow of her father, always daddy, if Professor Eric S. Rabkin were here, internal exile, she has a romance with Peeta, the enforcer of rules, he freezing her, the tutor, we want them to be more opposite, the Romans, two consuls, rivals vs. enemies, moral discipline, Dune’s painbox, are you human?, winnowing your caste, time will tell, Havero – Have-arrow, Star Trek: The Next Generation, wearing pajamas, a useless therapist in the lounge, that’s what Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is for, turtle, ritual declarations of war, a war of one against the others, The Hunger Games, spacesuits were designed for war, the turtles and the tigers, stagnation, the last chapter, seeing it from the wrong perspective, bristling with nukes and planet killers, less Tunnel In The Sky than it is Universe, Forbidden Planet, a negative version of the utopia in Iain M. Banks’ Culture books, popular notes on Kindle, choosing to be smaller than you could be, a completely secular society, collective guilt, completely bullshit, Attila, it turns out Rod is black, not a racist thing, yes there is a time when we will destroy them completely but now they are useful to us, plowing ahead, an American thing, civil unrest, the War on Poverty, the 1960s, the Great Society program, “inner cities”, rural poverty, ships are like universities, cultured cities, riding roughshod over Appalachia, Deliverance, loving them their way, good bookstores and great libraries, the number of the universities, financial aid, an interesting echo, Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, part 3, the dissident dude who treats her like a daughter, “he gave me lessons”, “my first stop was the library”, books inside of novels: The White Way, “it has beed an interesting 42 years”, why is it winning a Nebula, fine tough minded people, on the water world, my dad is eighty, The Chromium Fence by Philip K. Dick, factional pogroms, what’s the point of that?, a pseudo-father figure, wha happn?, this is why sequels happen, is there never going to be a revolution?, enslaving the local humanoids, slaving, the great sin: breeding, discipline and trials kill a lot of the population, genre and popular concerns, The Population Bomb, the Club of Rome, Make Room! Make Room!, log cabins and sheriff’s offices, Earth went to pot, our heroine, being a spear-carrier, reading a book from the perspective of a spear carriers, an Austin Powers spear-carrier scene, it’s fun to hold a gun, a token of hope, she’s not the revolutionary we want her to be, a more searing indictment, Bryan doesn’t like YA fiction, Harry Potter, Bryan as Hagrid, a transition book, anti-colonialism, the US role in Vietnam, uprisings against the French, the Chinese, Avatar, inequality as a means for control, the anti-colonialists fail, the structure, a playful light tone, the epilogue, waking up out of a bubble, oh we’re doing that?, that’s my society doing that sort of thing?, you’re dad was alive during WWII, your dad was in the hitler Youth, oh yeah, Jordan Peterson, a depressing failure, reforms of her tutor, Revolt In 2100, Have Space Suit, Will Travel,

Posted by Jesse Willis