This book is a standalone sequel to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer trilogy. Where strangers find themselves stranded in the same spot for days and start sharing and relativising their differences. If on a useless rock in the middle of the Universe rather than in a snowed-in Yorkshire pub! But the science-fiction aspects become quickly irrelevant, except for enlarging the initial specific (as in species) differences between the five (non-human) antagonists. On the one hand, this book is a rather conventional, caricaturesque, care-bear, feel-good, rosy, cocoonesque story… On the other, it is a more profound and humanist fable on the fact that we are more alike than we are unalike. Actually, the book reads better as a fable than as a novel as the story is almost inexistent and the characters too perfect to be anything but shells (and literally so for some of them) for their awakening to the others. Perfect mind-candy for a bleak day!
Archive for universalism
the Galaxy and the ground within [book review]
Posted in Books, Kids, pictures, Travel with tags Becky Chambers, humanism, pub, science fiction, space opera, universalism, Wayfarer trilogy, Yorkshire on February 5, 2022 by xi'an“So President Emmanuel Macron of France called me on Thursday afternoon” [really?!]
Posted in Books with tags Champs-Elysées, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, French politics, media, NYT, religions, secularism, The New York Times, universalism on November 26, 2020 by xi'an
When I read this first sentence in The New York Times article by Ben Smith, I was a wee bit suprised as it sounded more Trumpian than Macronesque. Esp. when the article continued with the French president “having some bones to pick with the Anglo-American media”… As it transpired, it is factually correct, if giving an impression of the exact opposite of the right causality arrow. The Élysée palace indeed called back the NYT journalist after the latter asked for an interview a few days earlier and that Macron agreed to it. Beyond this misleading launch, the article is much more of an opinion piece (about Ben Smith’s opinions on French politics and secular principles) than an interview. Just like most principles, the rather specific core concept of “laïcité” (secularism) can be both debated ad nauseam and turned into political weapons for all positions on the political spectrum, from extreme-left to extreme-right. It is also almost invariably presented from abroad as an attack on the freedom of religion (and lack thereof), mostly against Muslims, and almost automatically mixed with institutional racism. The article actually goes all over the place, from attributing the uncovering of a pedophile writer to The Times journalists, to seeing Macron’s position as a theatrical posturing helping his own agenda for the next presidential elections. And while I readily concede the many woes of the French society, government, institutions, like police and justice, politics, &tc., I cannot but support an idea of a model that remains universalist and therefore secularist.
