I see Dan Simmons made NPR’s list of top 100 SciFi/Fantasy. Regrettable, since the man is a rightwing islamophobic loon.
I’ve interacted directly with him on the web – see these two posts from CoB v1.0, The Century War with Islam(-phobia) and Dan Simmons responds.. sorta
also I did make a brief foray into Simmon’s web forum and had a thoroughly unpleasant experience. At one point, Simomons “invited” me to consider a gedanken experiment:
In this case, the Thought Experiment is this – What might the world be like in 2006 if Islam did not exist?
Now, before accusations of advocating genocide come cascading in, please not that I’m not asking us to imagine that the people in all Islamic nations and cultures did not exist, merely the religion-ideology as a ruling and unifying fabric in those nations and cultures. In that sense, this might be compared to someone in 1940 Europe asking – “What would this continent be like if National Socialism and fascism did not exist?” The German and Italian people, no longer unified by the transformative-beliefs, would still be very much alive and working and reading and taking their children to parks, etc.
Ah, I see! Islam, National Socialism, fascism! Understood?
My beef with Orson Scott Card is similar, though I haven’t blogged about it. Read Card’s own essay and see for yourself:



aziz 3:58 am on August 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
though, one thing of value from that experience was a recommendation for novels by George Alec Effinger, A Fire In The Sun, When Gravity Fails and The Exile Kiss – all of which apparently feature a muslim protagonist. Will add that to my List.
Anon 7:47 am on August 20, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
He may be an Islamophobe, but he’s an amazing writer. Illium/Olympos was fantastic, literally and figuratively.