I think most of what I would have said was addressed as well or better than I would have said it by others on your last blog entry.
The one thing I want to note is that it was specifically this passage: "It was communism on a vast and—incomprehensible as it may seem to the modern mind—workable scale. Their minds were as different from ours as their bodies were similar; the concept "freedom" would have been totally incomprehensible to them," that made me sure that the story was a science-fiction allegory, rather than a literal recounting of historical events, even given the certainly unreliable narrator. I, like you, was disappointed that the ending didn't 'say' anything. Another story you discussed in an earlier column was similar, as I recall - a story which implicitly condoned the character's actions by not condemning them.
(I found the tone of Gordon's response letter particularly offensive; not because he 'fooled' me, but again, because the allegory was so transparent as to be a let-down rather than an 'ah-hah' at the end.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-02-17 06:39 am (UTC)The one thing I want to note is that it was specifically this passage: "It was communism on a vast and—incomprehensible as it may seem to the modern mind—workable scale. Their minds were as different from ours as their bodies were similar; the concept "freedom" would have been totally incomprehensible to them," that made me sure that the story was a science-fiction allegory, rather than a literal recounting of historical events, even given the certainly unreliable narrator. I, like you, was disappointed that the ending didn't 'say' anything. Another story you discussed in an earlier column was similar, as I recall - a story which implicitly condoned the character's actions by not condemning them.
(I found the tone of Gordon's response letter particularly offensive; not because he 'fooled' me, but again, because the allegory was so transparent as to be a let-down rather than an 'ah-hah' at the end.)