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James P Hogan

rwguinn

Penultimate Amazing
rwguinn
Joined
Apr 24, 2003
Messages
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Location
16 miles from 7 lakes
I read some of his earlier stuff, and kind of enjoyed it --in fact, the Giants series was one of my favorites--but I didn't look much further...
I was in "Half-Price Books" yesterday, and they had a couple of his books there, so I picked up Echoes of an Alien Sky.
Well, I could live with the "Electric universe" stuff, as an alternative, but his views on evolution started getting in the way, and when I hit the "invented" ideas about greenhouse gasses bit, I threw the damn thing across the room...
Now, reading his biography, I see he was also pretty much a Holocaust Denier. I am very disappointed, and feel like I wasted my money...
Crud.
 
Damn, I almost wish I hadn't read this. Giants was one of my favorites also along with Code of the Lifemaker. I guess Bug Park was the most recent book of his that I read.
According to Wikipedia he seems to have gone completely off the deep end. Holocaust denial is a really big problem for me as I'm Jewish. I guess his books can go in the box with my Mad Max movies. :(
 
He was one of my favorite authors; his hard science was great. Apparently, according to his autobiographical work, he spent his whole life in rebellion against authority. At first it was the anti-science establishment he grew up with in England, and then after his best work (IMO) he went into rebellion against science. There apparently wasn't a CT he didn't get into; he was anti-HIV/AIDS connection, holocaust denial, global warming denial, you name it. His fiction became heavy with Veliskovskiian themes and overtones, and the science softened a great bit. By all accounts (including his own) his personal life was as bumpy as that of his heros, replacing wives was a 5-10 year cyclic process.

His earliest novels, I think, were his best. I thought Thrice upon a Time (about time travel paradoxes), Two Faces of Tomorrow (how to handle the rise of artificial intelligence), Voyage from Yesteryear (the ideal anarchical society on A Centauri) and Inherit the Stars (1st of the Giants series, a real interplanetary detective story) were well done complete stories, though the characters were stiffer than later ones were. He got better at the characters as he started moving away from the hard science.

Echoes in an Alien Sky was a collection of his non-fiction short articles, and it pretty much ended his usefulness as a writer for me. Everything after that, fiction and non-fiction, seemed to be a polemic against the establishment, like stuff that michaelsuede might write.
 
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rwguinn said:
I read some of his earlier stuff, and kind of enjoyed it --in fact, the Giants series was one of my favorites--but I didn't look much further...
I was in "Half-Price Books" yesterday, and they had a couple of his books there, so I picked up Echoes of an Alien Sky.
Well, I could live with the "Electric universe" stuff, as an alternative, but his views on evolution started getting in the way, and when I hit the "invented" ideas about greenhouse gasses bit, I threw the damn thing across the room...
Now, reading his biography, I see he was also pretty much a Holocaust Denier. I am very disappointed, and feel like I wasted my money...
Crud.
Click to expand...

I agree, his ideas seem to have shifted over the years. I enjoyed his Libertarian utopia in "Voyage From Yesteryear", although I don't believe such a society is very likely. His being a Holocaust Denier is unwelcome news to me. :(
 
I had dinner with him one night in Nashville. He was charming, entertaining, full of fun and wit, a quite pleasant dinner companion.

But then, he never once mentioned any of the . . . er . . . beliefs that have been brought up in this thread.

I tried reading one of his later books, the title of which I have mercifully forgotten. I was willing to "give" him the Velikovsky material as a speculation. What made me give up was the leaden, plethoric, convoluted infodumps.

And when I found out he was following Nick Herbert (the physicist, not the parliamentarian), that only saddened me.

:blackcat:
 
Never read anything by him, but once (when I worked at a video store in Pensacola, FL in the early 90's) I was casually invited by his wife to tag along with them the next time they went to a local sci-fi convention. Never took her up on that, and am now somewhat glad I did.
 
James P. Hogan died in july of 2010. I wasn't aware of his involvement in Holocaust denial. But I was aware of his boosting of Velikovskian nonsense. What amazed me was his continual harping on the theme that Velikovsky's arguement etc., was more "scientific" than his detractors or the conventional view. of course any remotely rational analysis would indicate that Velikovsky's analysis was crap. It would take a most determined effort to think otherwise. So Hogan's boosting of Velkovsky was based almost entirely on irrational forces and a studied deliberate ignoring of mountaibns of evidence. However to distract attention from his irrational reasons for boosting Velikovsky Hogan would point and say the other side is irrational and unscientific to distract attention from the dubious basis of Velikovsky's ideas.

I checked the Wikipedia article and it is as a link to a piece by Hogan in which he says that he finds Weber and Butz's books and articles more scientific, scholarly and rational and convincing than those of their detractors and the conventional view.

Only a mind set in granite could find Weber and Butz's error filled, anti-semitic tomes, (there is a vast amount of overt anti-semtism in both), to be scholarly or Scientific. With that degree of deliberately refusing to be rational or scientific Hogan's opinions on any issue can't be taken seriously.

It also seems to be the case that Hogan takes these opinions as part of a childish rebellion against authority and to shock people.
 
Zax63 said:
Damn, I almost wish I hadn't read this. Giants was one of my favorites also along with Code of the Lifemaker. I guess Bug Park was the most recent book of his that I read.
According to Wikipedia he seems to have gone completely off the deep end. Holocaust denial is a really big problem for me as I'm Jewish. I guess his books can go in the box with my Mad Max movies. :(
Click to expand...

Nah. If you like the story, read the story.
Just because someone's a nut about something need not mean he has nothing to say about anything.
I know people who won't listen to Wagner, because he had wierd notions and Hitler thought he was cool. They are missing some good music. (And quite a lot of boring stuff involving pointy-breasted women with spears. You have to filter the crud and enjoy the good stuff.)

I read the first 2 Giants books. They were pretty good.
 
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