As I've said, I think Steyn just makes no sense at all when you work the numbers. I suspect he knows it, because his stuff shows a consistent pattern of misdirection and concealment.
IMHO he's just trying to stick a pin into certain buttocks to get 'em to jump and squeal and 'make their flesh creep'.
I'm hostile to radical Islam and I really don't think there -are- many moderate Muslims, but I don't take them all that seriously in the big picture/long run. They can be dangerous and need to be slapped about now and then, but they're not an existential threat to Western Civ. as a whole.
To be a real threat they'd have to modernize, and to modernize (something at which the whole House of Islam is a dismal failure) they'd have to imitate us so closely than they'd -become- us.
Dale,
Between you and Mark Shea I'm adding more fiction books to my library request form than I'm possibly going to read in the next month or two.
I love it.
I've been on non-fiction for so long I need a breather. I've been bogged down in an otherwise good book about the Founding Fathers and the separation of church and state because I just can't bring myself to pick it up.
I'd also like a recommendation on where to start with Mr. Stirling's books. I haven't read any yet, and I'd like to give them a try.
Steve (Skojec),
For the "Emberverse" series, start with Dies the Fire. Or, Island in the Sea of Time. The stories are linked, but it's quite possible to enjoy the Emberverse without having made it through the ISoT series.
peace,
"To be a real threat they'd have to modernize, and to modernize (something at which the whole House of Islam is a dismal failure) they'd have to imitate us so closely than they'd -become- us."
Respectfully disagree. I think it is quite possible to be technologically advanced and to be quite different from a modern democratic state. Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia and Imperial Japan are all examples. I could imagine liberal democratic regimes arising in the Islamic world, modernizing their states, only to be swept away by resurgent Islamists. Democratic regimes emerged victorious in the last century but it was a near run thing. I pray we will be as successful, and lucky, in this century.
"Respectfully disagree. I think it is quite possible to be technologically advanced and to be quite different from a modern democratic state."
-- sure, but it's not possible to be technologically advanced and have a pre-modern mindset. The seed of the West falls on 'barren ground' in such settings. It's not just a matter of technical tricks or formal institutions. Those are just the words. You have to learn the _tune_.
Eg., look at the Saudis. They buy machinery in enormous job-lots, but nothing works unless it's operated by foreigners. Their military budget is larger than Israel's by several multiples, but everyone knows they'd be utterly helpless without American intervention in any serious confrontation.
The Saudis can't even be persuaded to do the grunt work; there was a hilarious episode I heard of from a guy who went there to do a seminar on how Saudi Arabia could become less dependent on foreign workers.
The initial lecture had to be delayed until a Filippino showed up to rearrange the chairs...
The big disadvantage of Islam is that it's too efficient _as a religion_ -- that is to say, as a self-reinforcing collection of 'memes'. And those memes just aren't suited to an individualist/rationalist worldview; they're saturated with a very old Middle Eastern mindset.
To be modern, the Muslim world wouldn't necessarily have to be democratic -- though take a look at what _happened_ to Hitler's regime, and Stalin's, and the pre-1945 Japanese. Authoritarian systems have severe built-in inefficiencies which inevitably get worse over time, due to the lack of corrective feedback mechanisms.
But leaving democracy aside, they would have to be _modern_.
That means they'd have to give up "amoral familialism", which encourages a paranoid hostility towards outsiders and very low levels of social trust and means impersonal institutions just don't _work_ there.
They'd have to stop marrying their first cousins, murdering their sisters, and they'd have to drastically tone down the whole reputation/honor/shame thing, and so forth and so on.
It isn't just a matter of formal institutions; it's a matter of changing things right down in the guts and balls, the concepts of pollution and purity and personal honor, of what it means to be a man, a woman, a parent, a child, a kinsman, a real human being, of what's good and bad, decent and disgusting.
Which is to say the areas of a culture that are most resistant to outside influence.
And in the case of the House of Islam, ones that are mandated in the basic texts.
The Turks are working on a redoing of the Hadith, and more power to them; also the textual critics are getting to work on the Koran, the way they did on the Bible back in the mid-19th century. But such things take time, if they work at all.
In the meantime, they'll continue to be resentful, vicious, but basically impotent.
Interesting and thought provoking comments by Mr. Stirling.
"sure, but it's not possible to be technologically advanced and have a pre-modern mindset."
I'm not entirely sure about that as a general rule, without exceptions. One large exception that comes to mind immediately is Imperial Japan. The Mejii Restoration clothed Japan with a Western veneer: an Imperial Navy modelled on the Royal Navy, an Imperial Army that replicated many features of the Prussian Army and representative parliamentary government. However, as events of the 20s and the 30s of the last century demonstrated, the substance of Japan remained truly alien. The revival of Shinto, and the cult of the emperor. Assassination as the mode of changing government policies. The sinister influence of the Kokuryu-kai (Black Dragon Society), and other secret societies in and out of the military. Glorification of bushido. The slogan near the end of the war in Japan "One Hundred Million Die Proudly" which I think without Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been much more than a slogan. As one Marine veteran of Okinawa told me: "We might as well have been fighting Men from Mars. As far as I could tell the only thing we had in common with them is that they bled red when we shot them." If history had been kinder to Japan in the forties (shudder), I think much of Asia might well be under the rule of a technologically advanced Japan, and one with a mindset that might not be pre-modern, but very alien for what passes as modern in the West.
"The Saudis can't even be persuaded to do the grunt work; there was a hilarious episode I heard of from a guy who went there to do a seminar on how Saudi Arabia could become less dependent on foreign workers.
The initial lecture had to be delayed until a Filippino showed up to rearrange the chairs..."
Oh agreed as to the Saudis! They have produced a Lillies of the Field society that will return to the desert as soon as the oil runs out. I sometimes wonder if this isn't deliberate by at least part of the Saudi leadership in order to have a return to what they perceive to be a better past. At any rate the Saudis are squandering their wealth and will have nothing to show for it. Interestingly much of the Arab world feels the same way about the Saudis, and lazy rich Saudi jokes have been a staple of Arab humor for generations, outside of Saudi Arabia of course.
"To be modern, the Muslim world wouldn't necessarily have to be democratic -- though take a look at what _happened_ to Hitler's regime, and Stalin's, and the pre-1945 Japanese. Authoritarian systems have severe built-in inefficiencies which inevitably get worse over time, due to the lack of corrective feedback mechanisms."
I agree, but I think the "over time" qualifier is important. Pius XII viewed the Nazis as being a bigger threat than the Soviet Union. The Nazis were like a severe fever that comes on quickly and can be life threatening if not checked immediately. But for delaying Barbarossa from May to June in 1941 due to his incursion into the Balkans, I think Hitler had a very good chance of conquering all of Europe and perhaps winning WWII. An autocratic regime, animated with a mass ideology, is a deadly menace to a Democracy in a conflict lasting a few years. In a Cold War stand-off lasting decades, I agree that the autocratic regime is at a severe disadvantage, although I would note that Islam obviously has greater staying power as an ideology, as the past four centuries demonstrates, than did communism.
"That means they'd have to give up "amoral familialism", which encourages a paranoid hostility towards outsiders and very low levels of social trust and means impersonal institutions just don't _work_ there."
As David Pryce-Jones argued in his classic study of the pathologies of Arab culture The Closed Circle. I am not quite so sure. Certainly Islamic cultures, with the notable partial exception of Turkey because of the secularization rammed through by Ataturk, have proven completely unable to innovate technology, and their track record in maintaining modern military equipment given to them or purchased by them is usually quite poor. However, I think this need not be the case in the future. As Turkey demonstrates, an Islamic culture can embrace modernity, take on the trappings of a modern industrial democracy, but still remain on the knife edge of a return to a traditional Islamic culture. A few years ago in a Rotary exhange we had a group of Turks visit us in my hometown of Dwight, Illinois. I talked to a young female Turkish lawyer. Her English was perfect, and she had a wonderful sense of humor. We exchanged views about the practice of law in Turkey and the US and discussed current events. I found her no different from any pleasant career woman I had met in this country. However, when her group left she gave me a gift. It was a charm to ward off the evil eye.
For the jihadists to pose a long term threat to us, I think they would have to piggy-back off of modernizing secular regimes such as that established in Turkey, and I think they will. Their are groups in the Islamic world who wish to become like us, and they can obtain power for a time. However, in times of threat I think the mass of muslims will always embrace groups preaching a return to Islam. This is more of a long term problem. Short term I think our problems are the likely prospect of nuclear terrorism by the jihadists in the next decade and an “Après moi le déluge” attitude among European elites which will encourage the jihadists in their attempts to neutralize Europe. The recent re-election win of the appeaser Zapatero and his socialists in Spain indicate that this strategy of the jihadists can pay dividends for them.
Dale:
Remarkably good analysis. Nah, that's not good enough. You pegged it. 'Nuf said.
Coupla points: Chanting "Odin" to try to rain out, and hence avoid, a parade is something the cadets have been doing for decades. It's not a Norse revival.
By the way, especially good in catching the "This is what a real empire looks like, so stop whining" theme.
As for the numbers, no, they're not just Steyn's. Back when it was an semi-official part of my job to track the EU, and occasionally entertain parliamentarians from the EU, they already knew they were going to become majority Muslim and were just arguing over the when of the matter.
Economic viability: a careful check of all the "achievments" of Islamic civilization will show that there aren't any, really. They grafted themselves onto real civilizations and milked and ruined them. But that usually took some centuries, even many centuries, to come to pass.
I didn't get into it because I thought, and think, that a single century would be enough to damage Europe badly, but probably not to utterly ruin it. Note: I gave a hint where the Janissaries are wondering where the hell they'll get more decent military material once the last Christians convert.
Nukes: They'll have France's limited arsenal some years after the retaliation. By then, it should have sunk in that if they don't want to be completely exterminated they'd best chill.
Dale:
Thanks for the summary and for everyone's comments.
OK here's my take on Steyn's thesis:
1) His demography is destiny is surprisingingly vulgar marxian for an Anglophone conservative to even entertain. Steyn underestimates contingency in his analysis.
2) Too much credence given to the Euro elites as received wisdom; it's not. I can tell you categorically that the indigenious Europeans have had enough of both their elites' selling them out for a plate of lentils as well as the Moslems' unjustied ingratitude.
I really worry that the ordinary Europeans will go postal (no, not WW I or WW II but certainly in the same manner that the Anarchists were dealt with in the early 20th century or the contemporary soccer riots)
3) Speaking about contingency, we just don't know the extent of the Arab and Persian catacombs. I'm convinced that Islam, sociologically speaking is both a mess and more dysfunctional that we realize. However, they're quite good at covering up their shortcomings and we're too blinkered in our biases to pick up the signs.
Hence, Magdi Allam's conversion and his call for fellow ex-Moslem converts to come out of the catacombs (in Europe at least)will be a very interesting illustration of unexpected surprises in history. As well as lifting the veil as to just how messed up Islamic societies are
4) Islam's noticeable anti-intellectualism that stops them from questioning everything because to do so is blasphemy. That's problematic because the Moslems limit their capacities and become dependent on other societies which don't. Hence the perpetual rage: they can't understand why Moslems aren't rulers of the earth and so are painfully behind in so many activities. They then draw the incorrect conclusions which perpetuate their falling behind.
xavier
"and lazy rich Saudi jokes have been a staple of Arab humor for generations, outside of Saudi Arabia of course."
-- but the Saudis are just typical Arabs with lots of money added. Kuwait is less nasty and less baroque, but essentially not much different. The only real -functional- differences are in the degree of westernization in different areas, and westernization there tends to produce violent counter-movements.
Individual Arabs often do well in the West or in other settings outside their own society(*), as long as there aren't enough around to create a mini-mi version of it.
The society/culture itself is dysfunctional.
(*) Japanese doing fundamental scientific research are often much more productive outside Japan, by the way.
Mr. Kratman: "they already knew they were going to become majority Muslim and were just arguing over the when of the matter."
-- nope, totally impossible. Numbers don't add up. "Eurabia" is just a masochistic fantasy.
Look, the POE (People of Muslim Origin) in Europe mostly come from the Maghreb, Turkey and Iran. Here are some Total Fertility Rates:
Algeria: 1.86 children per woman
Tunisia: 1.73 (2005 estimate, almost certainly lower now).
Turkey: 1.89
Iran: 1.71
Morocco is at either 2.6 (CIA World Factbook) or 2.38 (Moroccan government, probably more accurate because more recent); which is to say, barely above replacement level and sinking fast.
Morocco was, as recently as the 1980's, at about _eight_ children per woman -- the decline only got started in the 1990's, really. Roughly the same arc for Iran, except that it started a bit earlier.
So by 2100, there are going to be fewer Iranians, Turks, and Maghrebis than there are now.
(Note that emigrants from those countries are disproportionately from rural/small town and poor backgrounds; that means they're a little further back on the curve, but moving fast.)
TFR's throughout the Muslim world are dropping with similar speed; declines of 50% in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan within the past 15-20 years, and that's pretty typical.
The only parts of the Muslim world that -aren't- dropping very, very fast
are total backwaters like, say, Niger -- a country which Steyn is fond of bringing up, usually in conjunction with Latvia, as if the two had any connection.
But Niger's TFR -- which is 7.37, and -still- lower than Morocco's a generation ago -- is not due to its religion. It's that way because it's a Sahelian pesthole, poor and ultra-backward.
Furthermore, the term "POMO" is justified because most European "Muslims" are Muslim only in the sense that most Danes are Christian. They're most accurately described as post-Muslim.
75% of French POMOs have never been inside a mosque; a third of all births to POMO women are illegitimate, and a third of all POMO women who are married are married to non-POMO men... which is, by the way, strictly forbidden under Islamic law.
In other words, the "unassimilable" Muslim is a myth, like the eternally-fast-breeding one.
There are cysts of underclass Muslims who are a social danger. They'll never be a majority; they'll never be a large minority.
"I found her no different from any pleasant career woman I had met in this country. However, when her group left she gave me a gift. It was a charm to ward off the evil eye."
-- you don't know anyone with a rabbit's foot, or who reads the astrology columns? I know lawyers here who make sacrifices to Lugh and Brigid at the four festivals.
As for the actual numbers, take Spain, which has the lowest birth-rates in the world, barring some Asian city-states.
There are about 700,000 Muslims in Spain, of whom about 500,000 are of Moroccan origin.
Wow! Reconquista in reverse! Effete Euros thrust aside (if you'll pardon the double entendre) by virile swarthy Muslims!
Nope.
There are 700,000 -Rumanians- in Spain. And about 400,000 other Europeans and about 3.5 MILLION Latin Americans, with more arriving by the day.
That's probably an underestimate; there may be a million more illegal Latin Americans. The legal number of Ecuadorians is 420,000(!) but the Ecuadorian embassy estimates the real total as 750,000. In other words, there are more people from the Andes than from the Atlas.
(There were 42,000 new arrivals from Paraguay, of all places, in 2007 alone.)
Meanwhile, the Moroccans are beginning to complain about labor shortages and illegal immigrants from Senegal...
Sweden's another country that's often portrayed as being swamped by immigration, by implication of non-Europeans.
Of about 9 million people, around 1.1 or 1.2 are immigrants or their children.
Except, of course, that of those 1.1 million over 400,000 are from... Finland. And about 250,000 are from Denmark and Norway. And most of the remainder are Poles, Balts, and from the Balkans. Actual non-Europeans are about one-tenth the number.
Steve, if I may (we actually should have met at Libertycon 03 but I arrived quite late):
I address most of that in the afterword. That Moslem birthrates are dropping in poor Moslem countries does not mean they will drop or drop as much in social-democratic Europe. They might, of course, but it's supposition to simply assume they will. I don't know how many Moslems have been inside a mosque. I do know that le Figaro reported that while 60% of Muslims in France kept Ramadan in 1989, in 2007 it was 70%. There's an interesting stat floating around to the effect that half of immigrant men in France marry non-immigrant women while a quarter of immigrant women marry non-immigrant men. The stat appears to have gotten circulation from a book, Sixty Million Frenchmen Can be Wrong. The problem therein is that those who came up with the stat are using the word "non-immigrant" as if it meant "culturally French." I don't know of any particularly good reason for that substitution.
We'll probably simply disagree.
best,
Tom
"I know lawyers here who make sacrifices to Lugh and Brigid at the four festivals."
Well, I guess some lawyers will worship anything! I did find the charm a striking gift. I have seen New Age types give Dreamcatchers, including a local woman who made the mistake of giving one to Hillary Clinton, and was subject to federal prosecution because it contained an eagle feather. The case was eventually dropped. The difference of course being that the New Agers do not have a party dedicated to advancing their agenda, while the ruling party of Turkey, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party, is an Islamist party, moderate as such parties go, but viewed by hard line followers of the secularism of Ataturk as a major threat. They may be right in the long run.
"That Moslem birthrates are dropping in poor Moslem countries does not mean they will drop or drop as much in social-democratic Europe."
-- well, yeah, actually, it does. If anything, they -have- dropped and will drop even more.
Muslims born in France have about the same birth-rates as "ethnic" French; the longer they're resident and the earlier they arrive, the less the difference.
This is because Muslims respond to the same environment the same way other people do. There is no special "Muslim" demographic pattern. None. Zip. Nada. Either in Europe, or anywhere else.
Living in a modern 1st-world city makes birth rates go down. For everyone.
This is not an assertion, it's observable fact.
Dropping fertility is a -world-wide- phenomenon, and it's closely associated with certain basic types of modernization. Not prosperity, just modernization; eg., basic literacy.
If anyone's an exception, it's Americans. Probably because Americans are more religious than any other large group, Saudi Arabia and Iran included. Observance there is socially and for all practical purposes legally mandated; as I mentioned, the first thing most Muslim immigrants in the West do is sever all connections with the religion.
>They might, of course, but it's supposition to simply assume they will.
-- no, because they already have.
If you want the skinny on the French demographics, I've got a pdf file ; e-mail me and I'll send it on to you. Plenty of numbers.
Email you where, Steve? I am at nrvlaw at aol dot com.
I'd be interested in reading it, since the French government does not collect or, perhaps, even allow such stats to be collected, generally speaking. I did run into a French Ob-Gyn's comments that his Muslim patients typically delivered 3.6 or more children, though he may have been practicing in a Tunisian dominated area. (Tunisian women in France had a lower birthrate than Tunisian women in Tunisia in 1981. This, however, reversed itself by 1990 with Tunisian women in France having a higher birthrate than Tunisian women in Tunisia. The figures were, in 1981, 5.2 and 5.1. In 1990 they were 4.2 in France and 3.4 in Tunisia. Both dropped, generally, of course, but not to the same degree. What it may be now I don't know.)
Email you where, Steve? I am at nrvlaw at aol dot com.
I'd be interested in reading it, since the French government does not collect or, perhaps, even allow such stats to be collected, generally speaking. I did run into a French Ob-Gyn's comments that his Muslim patients typically delivered 3.6 or more children, though he may have been practicing in a Tunisian dominated area. (Tunisian women in France had a lower birthrate than Tunisian women in Tunisia in 1981. This, however, reversed itself by 1990 with Tunisian women in France having a higher birthrate than Tunisian women in Tunisia. The figures were, in 1981, 5.2 and 5.1. In 1990 they were 4.2 in France and 3.4 in Tunisia. Both dropped, generally, of course, but not to the same degree. What it may be now I don't know.)
More generally, it's usually a bad idea to react to an enemy the way the enemy wants you to react.
Jihadi lunatics will smile if they run across "Caliphate". They want to be feared and seen as a real mortal threat to the hated Western Civ.
What we should be doing, in popular culture as elsewhere, is _laughing_ at them rather than reacting as they wish, with alarm.
Jeering contempt, that's the ticket -- show them as vicious but incompetent buffoon-clowns, pseudo-macho girlies sweating with sexual psycho-pathologies and given to laughable perversions in private, mainly notable for murdering each other because it's safer. Make it clear they're a nuisance, like a backed-up drain.
You know that Al Qaeda training video with guys in black masks jumping through burning hoops? Run it often -- with a comic sound-track.
"Jump, fido! Jump! Good dog! Here's a biscuit!"
Oh, and footage of bin Laden's niece in her leather miniskirt outfit, in which she's been a notable feature of the London club scene for years.
That sort of thing won't make them smile. It will heap coals of fire on their heads instead.
It will make their eyes bulge and steam come out their ears and their heads explode with frustration and rage.
That shame/humiliation culture of theirs makes them peculiarly vulnerable to this sort of thing.
The chain is hanging in plain sight. Give it a hefty jerk every time you get an opportunity.
Oh, yeah...it's occured to me from time to time that Caliphate might either get me, accolade of accolades, my own personal fatwa-cum-death sentence or a lifetime achievement award from Al Qaeda and/or CAIR.
I think, though, that A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex will shade things toward the fatwa.
"The figures were, in 1981, 5.2 and 5.1. In 1990 they were 4.2 in France and 3.4 in Tunisia."
-- Tom, 1990 is nearly _twenty years ago_.
The 2007 figure for Tunisia is 1.73 -- less than half the 1990 figure _and still dropping fast_ as the villages around Sfax catch up with the suburbs of Tunis.
Given a simple continuation of present trends, by about 2015 Tunisia, which is already in the European range, will have the same TFR as Italy, around 1.2, meaning population will drop 30% or more per generation and average age will shoot through the roof.
Birth rates are equalizing on opposite sides of the Mediterranean, and doing so with astonishing speed; as of 2007, Italy and Tunisia now have something in common.
They both have lower fertility rates than Norway.
By way of comparison, a TFR of 1.7 is about the same as England (where, incidentally, there are now more Poles than Muslims) and substantially lower than, say, Ireland (1.86)and much lower than the US (2.09).
Iran is even lower, 1.71
Why this is happening is not a mystery.
It's the same reason the same thing has happened all over the world. The incentive structure changes; behavior follows.
All you have to do is let people (particularly women) know alternative behaviors are possible (access to soap operas on TV will do it) and they stampede.
It turns out people mostly just don't _want_ to have huge families, because they're a lot of work; and that this is true regardless of religion. And they do not make personal family decisions on the basis of "let's outbreed Group X".
Whether it's Christian or post-Christian Europe, or Muslim-theocracy Iran.
As for differentials and lags, Mexican immigrants who arrive in the US as adults have (slightly) higher fertility rates than Mexicans in Mexico.
The reason is that new fertility patterns show up first among the urban upper-middle class and then diffuse down to rural and lower-class groups. And immigrants are more likely to come from rural and lower-class backgrounds; few lawyers wade across the Rio Grande to pick lettuce.
But diffuse they do; it's like pulling on a rope, it's automatic. Changing countries slows it down only slightly, because it's harder to reference the local upper-middle-class urban reference group until you fit in a little.
Hence since Tom is a smart guy, I suspect that the real aim of "Caliphate" is to vex/drive crazy/vent spleen upon certain Westeners (Euro-weenies in Brussels and so forth), rather than to warn against the Muslim Hordes.
Now, granted, that type of person can be annoying, but I have better things to do with my time and stomach lining than get seriously upset with them. Or to take them seriously at all.
NB: if you want to know where a country's birth-rate will be in 20 or so years, there's a simple proxy that almost always works, except in _really_ backward places.
Look at the TFR of well-to-do professional groups in the cities. Successful entertainers will also do, taken as a group and concentrating on the younger ones.
Using this trick, I can predict that the increase in American fertility levels of the past 20 years will continue at least for the next decade.
I live in a serious yuppie-scum city (Santa Fe, NM, a town of 60K people and 300+ art galleries) and over the past decade it's been blatantly noticeable how many more of their spawn you see.
Young couples with expensive cars and gear and 2, 3 or more infants are now common as dirt, where they used to be quite rare.
Yes, and by what you just sent me, in 1999 the Tunisian TFR in France was about 3.3, which is nothing remotely like the kind of drop in Tunisia. Different factors at work, no doubt.
Another factor is, if Muslims are not assimilating, or are reverse assimilating (note that Figaro figure), we may see the drop (which is still much above the culturally French TFR) change to growth.
In any case, the book is about what it would be like if it happens. It's only in the afterword that I address whether it is likely to happen at some point in time. And for that, well, Hell, if you want to read it, lemme know.
Dear Mr. Kratman:
Thank you for the high praise! And while I can't say as I enjoyed the book, it was definitely worth reading.
I've liked Tom's work too. Very vivid with an action scene.
I want more authors in my comment boxes. Do you have some trick, Dale?
BTW - I believe I have a copy of Mr. Kratman's book waiting for me today. As for Mr. Stirling, I'm probably going with the above suggestion on where to start, but I don't know if reading his books chronologically is at all important.
Steve S(kojec):
I've been meaning to get to this:
Depends on what you're looking for. Bite size is his short story collection: Ice, Iron and Gold (review pending). For pure adventure, The Peshawar Lancers is swashbuckling fun in an alternate history where the British Empire runs half the planet. Ditto The Sky People and In The Halls of the Crimson Kings, set in a universe where the Cold War Earthlings learn that not only are Venus and Mars habitable, they are inhabited.
His first big splash was the not-for-the-remotely-squeamish Draka series. Get the paperbacks--Marching Through Georgia, Under The Yoke and The Stone Dogs. They come with appendices and chapter headers that were excised from the one volume "The Domination." Again, a grim read, but very interesting world building.
Zach's recommendation of the Island and Emberverse series are also very well taken. They are mirror-images of each other. I'm biased, of course, to the latter. But the first is a lot of fun, too. Ayup. These series have been his biggest sellers (as in New York Times Bestseller List for the latter).
Tom: "Yes, and by what you just sent me, in 1999 the Tunisian TFR in France was about 3.3, which is nothing remotely like the kind of drop in Tunisia."
-- Tom, 1999 is _a decade ago_, and in 1999 the Tunisian birthrate in Tunisia was still about 3.
Note that what has happened, both in Tunisia and among emigrants in France, is a drop of 1 child per woman every 6-10 years, since roughly the 1970's.
Once a meme gets set -- the "ever-fertile Muslim horde" one, for example -- getting it out of people's heads is an exercise in pure frustration.
Even when you've got all the data. People get _really attached_ to a perception. They spring to its defense.
Demographics requires very, very careful attention to numbers and very, very clear thinking. Both are in short supply.
Tom: "we may see the drop (which is still much above the culturally French TFR) change to growth."
-- and we may see water start to spontaneously run uphill, which is only slightly less probable.
Big modern city = low fertility.
Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, third time it's a pattern. And this pattern is pretty universal.
The above illustrates why I'm not going to read "Caliphate", even though I'm sure it's quite well written and I've enjoyed a number of Tom's books.
The basic premise means it'll be intensely irritating to me. And I just don't have fiction-reading time or energy to waste reading books that I find irritating.
I'd rather reread "Captain Blood" or "The White Company".
Actually, Steve, you seem not to know what the basic premise of the book, as opposed to the afterword, _is_. I didn't rely on any current demographic projections; I relied on a vengeful holocaust driving massive numbers to Europe. Don't like that premise...okay.
You know, I just reread that and it sounds, in retrospect, somewhat nasty. Didn't intend it that way. Rephrased: Current and future Muslim demographics are not the premise of the book; a flood of refugees from a nuclear holocaust is. Still, you may find it or the afterword irritating. Fair enough.
Tom: Current and future Muslim demographics are not the premise of the book; a flood of refugees from a nuclear holocaust is.
-- well, first you tried to defend Steyn's version of demographic projections.
C'mon now, you did... 8-).
(Me, I don't write near-future SF at all -- too much chance of being embarassingly wrong. You've got more guts than I do that way!)
And yeah, there is that extra oomph from the wave of refugees in the book, but I don't think Europeans would be insane enough to even _consider_ letting those refugees in. Not in significant numbers.
They'd just utter pious noises and let them die, shooting any who got through in the water, while making anti-American speeches and blaming it all on us.
Canada _certainly_ wouldn't, btw -- and I'm Canadian by birth.
Nobody outside quite marginal-fringe types in Europe really _likes_ these people, you know. Don't take rhetoric at face value.
In any country at any given time, there are certain things that have to be said when you're speaking in public.
Often things which everybody but a few kooks knows are bull****.
This official discourse often, in fact usually, bears no relation to what people actually think -- including those most strict about saying what's "salonfahig".
Or to what they actually do, as opposed to what they _say_ they're doing.
Eg., in the 16th century the Spanish always talked about their "entradas" in Indian territory in terms of selfless sacrifice to bring Christ and civilization to the _indios_. From the way they wrote about it, you'd swear Spain was losing money on the whole thing.
It was officially forbidden to refer to this process as "conquest". Instead it was called "pacification".
Nobody but a few clerics with their heads in the clouds (or up their fundaments) took this seriously for a moment, of course.
But you had to _pretend_ it was true.
Nowadays the Euros talk sympathy for suffering Muslims but they're not letting in floods of refugees from Darfur, either, you'll notice. Or exerting the slightest effort to stop the slaughter there.
And they're not letting in people from Gaza, for that matter. Or Afghanistan. Or Iraq. Or anywhere in the Muslim world -- in fact, they're not even letting in Turks any more, and the Germans have been adamant about not letting the ones they have get much in the way of rights.
That's why Turkey has about zero prospect of actually getting into the EU, at least until its popualation starts falling. (Sometime around 2030.)
All the European countries have been getting tougher on restricting immigration from outside Europe, not easier. Many of them are squeezing quite hard.
I don't see much prospect of that changing, except to get more so.
Anti-immigrant parties are getting more and more votes; they're the dominant political force in Denmark's current coalition, they usually get at least a quarter in France (with Sarkozy stealing a
Oh, I'm sure the Euros don't much like them. And this could help persuade me if the EU didn't have the "democracy deficit" it does. Sadly, the average European is increasingly powerless to affect a government that seems increasingly less open, less responsive, less accountable...and ever more powerful. Call the EU an acorn, and you would, so far, be right. But then oaks grow from...
And another factor rolled in there is the drop in Euro TFR (on which I think we agree) which threatens the social democratic welfare state. I don't know any good way around the equations: 1 baby + 18 years = one taxpayer; 1 taxpayer to support 2 early retirees = not enough. They haven't taken in the number of moslems they have, for the most part, out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of the need to fill jobs Euros wouldn't or couldn't. They can squeeze down on immigration, legal or illegal. It's not altogether clear to me that a) they can keep that squeeze up or b) aren't just engaging in the kind of fraud which is the hallmark of our age" Talk much, do nothing. And to expect a politician to look past the next election is a poor bet.
That, by the way, is one of the problems I have with the study you sent me. Our age is one of institutionalized fraud to a degree that may be unique in human history. As soon as something becomes a political issue the lie generators are put into turbodrive. See, eg, the religion of global warming, the science behind which appears to be collapsing and the fraudulent insistance upon which grows ever more shrill.
I don't know any good way around the equations: 1 baby + 18 years = one taxpayer; 1 taxpayer to support 2 early retirees = not enough. They haven't taken in the number of moslems they have, for the most part, out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of the need to fill jobs Euros wouldn't or couldn't.
I think this is the crux of the problem. Europe is beginning to ges suspicious of all these shady characters entering in droves, but they aren't exactly having more children.
I think Mr. Kratman's depiction of Gabi is spot on as characterization of the problem:
"They hate us that much? I can't believe it," she said, over and over.
"Believe it, Gabi," Mahmoud said. "They despise everything about you...and about me, since I love you."
She missed that admission. Hands waving widely, she said, "But surely those...those...lunatics are a tiny minority. Mahmoud, I know Muslim people who are nothing like that."
"You think you know them," he corrected. "But you do not know that you know them. We have no problem lying to or hiding our beliefs from the 'infidels' when necessary...or just useful."
The fact is that Gabi (A.K.A. secular, liberal Europe) refuses to see. These people won't believe that the only trustworthy Muslims are the unorthodox, cafeteria kind (ie., Mahmoud) - and these are not the dominant sort one finds immigrating into Europe en masse.
FWIW, I'm 120 pages into the book and enjoying it thoroughly, even if it makes me squirm. I've envisioned something like this scenario myself, and it's surreal to see it depicted so well.
I'm reading the book right now. The one thing that bothered me was the constant references to "the American Empire" and "Imperial America".
Okay, I see America's enemies referring to the US as such (heck, they do now) but I just don't envision actual *AMERICANS* ever saying "American Empire".
The book is a compulsive page-turner, other than that.
One of the premises of the book is that America has turned into an Empire in reaction to the nuclear attacks.
OK, this is a little off-topic, but it seemed like the only logical place to put this. 26 posts on Sci-Fi topics, and you have no comments on Dr Who? Where's the justice? I'd add a smiley here if I was intelligent enough to know how. Show airs tonight on Sci-Fi channel at 8:30 PM EST.
Great blog, Dale. I'm linking to it - always good to meet another metro-Detroiter on the narrow path!
RT:
We've used the word "empire," and approvingly, in at least three contexts in the US. One of there, for example, "Forward the course of Empire," generally referred to the settlement of the west. We didn't, by and large, mean by that what people normally think of as "empire," but really just increase in the size of our country, quite without conscious reference to ruling unruly foreigners. In the South, both before and after First Manassas, one could read in the papers such things as, "We must elevate our race, every man of it, and bring them up to arms, to command, to empire." (That's from memory of an editorial quoted in Allan Nevins' civil war series.) They meant Empire, "empire." Lastly, following the Spanish-American War, and some of our Pacific and Latin acquisitions, for Americans to refer to an "American Empire" was pretty commonplace, and fairly accurate.
Today, while we don't use the word (piffle: mere aesthetics), you might note that no one much objects to, say, Niall Ferguson's approving use of it to describe us.
Sorry to come back so late. Finished the book a weeks back and it was good.
Tom, thanks for explaining to me your rational for using the term "empire" and "imperial". It makes sense, especially in the world that you create in the book. However, it still doesn't sit with well with me when i hear "American" and "empire" used in the same breath.
But then I figured that was the point that you were driving home: the idea America is pushed to the point where US feels that it needs to become an "empire" is supposed to be unsettling. So I just rolled with it.
Thanks for taking the time to post.
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