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I've only read a couple of his works, but I'd always thought they were overrated. His work seemed to have a "The horror" (while staring with sick fascination)
by jwhitlark 10y ago
I've only read a couple of his works, but I'd always thought they were overrated. His work seemed to have a "The horror" (while staring with sick fascination) vibe that I associate with the 70's. Not that there isn't plenty to be horrified by in this world, but the key is to do something about it, not just stare at it.
- eli_gottlieb 10y agoI more tend to consider his works overrated in that he successfully "prevented" the "terrifying" future of never-ending, ever-accelerating change he foretold by managing to make sure that very little at all was allowed to change. Call it a generational difference and also disrespect for the deceased, but being a child of the late '80s who grew up with Gingrich a major figure and "future shock" a commonplace concept, I've reached the 2010s and managed not to be future-shocked because people keep acting on their "future" shock by keeping things largely the same. Worse, the social problems he was preaching about happened despite the lack of flying cars and techno-singularities, because it turned out they were largely about underlying slow shifts in social conditions anyway rather than about the shock of an ever-accelerating technological change that never happened.