I didn’t get that from the story. All those fantasy books he’s read, and he only now ponders whether something is good just because the author labeled it “Good”?
I think you’re being a little optimistic here in thinking your skepticism is at all general.
Why was Norman Spinrad’s _The Iron Dream_ so critically well-received and still read? (If you haven’t read it, it’s much like Eliezer’s story except without the sane hero.) Because it demonstrated that most readers weren’t critical, that they’d been reading fantasy stories for literally decades without cottoning onto how well the same stories justified genocide and fascism!
I thought the point of The Iron Dream was that Hitler’s novel (the story is set in an alternate world where Hitler became a pulp writer) was the nastiest sort of inappropriate fantasy.
I think you’re being a little optimistic here in thinking your skepticism is at all general.
Why was Norman Spinrad’s _The Iron Dream_ so critically well-received and still read? (If you haven’t read it, it’s much like Eliezer’s story except without the sane hero.) Because it demonstrated that most readers weren’t critical, that they’d been reading fantasy stories for literally decades without cottoning onto how well the same stories justified genocide and fascism!
I thought the point of The Iron Dream was that Hitler’s novel (the story is set in an alternate world where Hitler became a pulp writer) was the nastiest sort of inappropriate fantasy.