Vance cleverly subverts our expectations by making the titular Gray Prince not a hero out to save the world but an agitating grievance monger masquerading as a populist upon whom political agitators and people concerned with feels can project their various hopes and desires. He also realizes that he’s been kind of a condescending dick of the ‘white mans burden’ variety after spending some time with one of the aliens. Much of the ‘adventure’ portion of the story is the moderately liberal/progressive character, who is as part of an alphabet soup progressive organization, learning that isolated political classes, demagogues and ideologues tend to have no idea of the practical realities of the situations over which they try to dictate, and such dictations have potentially dire consequences. The story comes at us from the perspective of the center, first from a moderately conservative character, secondly from the moderately liberal/progressive character.
Of course the political ideas and themes explored here are a lot harder to unpack than just saying it’s about SJWs.
While I’m certain there are people who disagree with me (especially those who’ve given this book 1 star ratings in various places complaining about the ‘problematic’ themes), The Gray Prince is an amazing piece of science fiction that deserves a place in the High School curriculum somewhere between the Great Gatsby and The Things They Carried.Īnyone who has read my blog for an extended period of time knows that I don’t really talk much about Social Justice Warriors, but there’s really no way to talk about the Gray Prince without bringing them up because this book is literally about Social Justice Warriors.
0 kommentar(er)
