volterator

This is spot on: a critique of Gene Wolfe's reactionary politics in The Wizard Knight books. I think, quite honestly, that the book is a conservative's failure to understand history because he can't get past ideology. Which I'm quite happy to read and enjoy, but not to accept that the old chap is right, and by extension, neither is Gaiman right in agreeing with him. Still, each to his own beliefs. I can take or leave the Tolkien stuff but as it relates to Wolfe it seems to me the crux of that post is this observation

"As my favorite reader of Tolkien, T. A. Shippey, has noted, the ring and its thematic motif of the corrupting nature of power bring into Tolkien the one modern element in an otherwise pre-modern work. That is, Tolkien brought into his work some of the complexity from the modern world -- and it made his work as rich as it is. Wolfe brought in a modern element, seemingly just to show that nothing from America really needed saving or really had any valuable perspective lacking in the pre-modern world."

And I could not more strongly disagree with the idea that the past did not know less and offer fewer rights and opportunities to the balance of people. And I do believe that fundamentally people are of their own times, and spend a lifetime learning to fit into them.

But while this blog post is about what I think, you're only getting half the picture, unless you're