Robert Bull wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RB> Hello, Roy;

 RB> 20 Dec 04 12:07, Roy J. Tellason wrote to Robert Bull:

 RT> Wow,  an actual discussion of some SF,  and not one of the side-trips
 RT> that seemed to take over this echo for a while!  :-)

 RB> I take the point  ;-)  OTOH, no off-topic traffic would have meant 
 RB> virtually no traffic, especially with Bob fallen silent.

Not necessarily...

 KS>> CBIP: _Paladins_ by Joel Rosenberg.  Almost didn't read this one

 RT> I haven't bought any of his stuff in ages,  and then recently acquired
 RT> one -- "Not Quite Scaramouche",  if I'm remembering
right.  I've had

 RB> I don't think I've even heard of him before Kay's message.

He was in this echo for a while some years back.

 RT> it for a while now and still haven't been able to bring myself to
 RT> start it.  And was less so after looking it over and realizing that it
 RT> was one of a whole series of "Not Quite..." titles.  Maybe I'll get
 RT> into it at some point.

 RB> Previous experience left you unenthusiastic?

No,  just something about that book (and the whole string of them) put me
off.  Some of his earlier stuff was actually pretty good.

 RB>> Elliott still didn't answer another puzzle.  Why are so many
 RB>> American fantasy authors, all of them presumably firm believers
 RB>> in democracy,  apparently so obsessed by hereditary kingship?

 RT> Because they're _not_ firm believers in democracy.  If you look around
 RT> that sort of stuff really does pervade our culture,  though I for one

 RB> I'd heard that America has its own form of class structure,
 RB> including New England old money, but didn't realise Americans
 RB> weren't necessarily instinctive democrats?

There's a fair number of people who just accept things as they are and try
to get where they want to go by "working the system".  And of
course those in control of the system do tend to favor maintaining the
status quo,  as long as it's to their advantage...

 RT> don't care for it much.  Anglophilia as well.  Think
"cultured" here
 RT> and you're likely thinking about someone who talks with an
 RT> "upper-crust" british accent,  or at least what's envisoned as such
 RT> here.  We as a culture should have gotten over that a LONG time ago,
 RT> and it might make for some interesting speculation to try and figure
 RT> out why whe haven't.

 RB> Maybe hierarchies, which ultimately have a head, are the normal way
 RB> for human society to run?

I certainly hope not!

 RB> Most African or whatever tribes seem to have a head man, and 
 RB> they're as close as we have now to a picture of hunter-gatherer  
 RB> times.

There are other ways of arranging things,  though.  Some years back I
happened to find an anthropology textbook,  and it was an interesting read,
 for the contrasts.  I should probably dig it out and add it to my
to-reread pile (which never seems to get very much smaller :-).

 RB> I think Britain has either largely lost its traditional upper
 RB> crust, or at least, they only seem visible in the horsey 
 RB> county-set types that seem to  surround the Queen, and dress up in
 RB> red coats to hunt foxes.

I don't think it's the reality of it as much as the images that people get
attached to.

 RB>> Why should that always be the best way to rule fantasyland?

 RT> Because the author can't come up with a plausible-sounding story that
 RT> would make it happen here?

 RB> The odd thing is I've recently read a string of British fantasies
 RB> set in cities, where the government is either not the main focus
 RB> of the story, or is bad, and in any case is nothing like a 
 RB> monarchy.  These would include China Mieville's three recent
 RB> novels, 

I haven't read those but have read reviews of them some time recently.

 RB> Ian MacLeod's THE LIGHT YEARS,  Jonathan Stroud's two juveniles 
 RB> THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND and THE GOLEM'S EYE, and Marcus Sedgwick's 
 RB> juvenile THE BOOK OF DEAD DAYS.

I'm not familiar with any of those.  But that seems to be happening too
often these days anyway,  I get the feeling that the field has moved on and
left me behind,  somewhat.  Or maybe it's just the fantasy side of things.

 RT> Sounds closer to the reality of it to me -- they're *ALL* run by
 RT> groups of what amount to organized criminals.

 RB> But what's the alternative?  Anarchy, which would devolve into
 RB> "might is right?"

I don't know that it necessarily would.  Currently I'm in the middle of a
binge of Gordon R. Dickson -- somebody sent me a package with three that I
hadn't had before,  and after reading those I dove into my collection and
re-read a bunch of the Dorsai and Childe Cycle related stuff again. 
Currently in the middle of The Chantry Guild,  where the central character
is trying to figure out how things would work without people harming each
other to achieve their own ends.

I also spend a fair amount of time talking to some other folks in online
forums who are actively exploring alternative ways of living (see
"thementalmilitia.org if you're interested in one such forum).

And this sort of exploration is one of the things that SF tends to explore,
 right?  How else things might work...

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