strawman wrote:My main offendedness take-away is Pohl's presumptuousness making me, the reader, one of his characters, and then writing a part for me.
As you say, Varda, no group is homogenous. Especially Readers.
But the story certainly has merit as a challenge to writers who may wonder whether they might be able to get away with telling people how they are reacting to what they just read.
This aspect is so much a form of mental masturbation that it almost becomes appropriate that Pohl should include some features of porn-type fantasy. One day, he seems to say, we Neanderthals will evolve to the point where we find his pseudo-fantasy as arousing as Don and Dora do. And that's what the story is about.
That's particularly well-put, Strawman! I think you've hit the nail on the head. The decision to make this story 2nd person makes the alienating elements particularly grating. Not only are we all forced to assume an identity chosen for us by the author, but we're also told what our anticipated reactions should be, and then patted on the head and lectured at for those predetermined reactions.
I wonder if people liked this story better when it was first written, or if there were similar reactions?
Funny thing, thanks to your astute observations, I feel more able to "eat around the crap" metaphorically, and offer some further thoughts on the story beyond its creepy pseudo-pornographic treatment of women. The central question of the story seems to be what the nature of love might be in a distant future where biology does much less of the driving in our lives. What is love, when decoupled from the physical nature of our bodies?
I'm of the opinion that love is most meaningful as action. I think it's more loving to treat people in ways that are loving than it is to feel the feels, and that love as action always trumps love as feeling. So while I agree with Pohl's conclusion that love would continue to exist without biological incentives, I disagree that that's necessarily a futuristic view of love, and one that would surprise us Neanderthals in Day Seven Thousand.
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