Bakker LVIII HITB: A Literalist Interpretation (Spoilers for all books)

[El Kabong]

2 hours ago, Garlan the Gallant said:

Goodreads has future books listed. Is this some clerical error? 

Must be, I don’t see them anywhere now. Probably an overzealous fan.

[Larry of the Lake]

Just saw this randomly on Twitter but made me think of cil-aujas

 

[PlanckEnergy]

I'm rather at peace with what we got, if indeed the next 2-3 books never see the light of day.  As TUC ended, I wasn't even aware he had any plans for more and thought it was perfect.

 

A good deal of the discussion, just after the last two books released and everyone thought more was coming,  was centered around how the good guys could possible end up winning.  And that really misses the fact that the good guys have already won and the ending we got is the happiest possible ending. 

 

Too many fans of this series are too wrapped up in the in-universe metaphysics and seem to completely ignore or fail to think about the very real, obviously purposeful meta commentary on our actual reality that is the core of all these books.

 

Namely, these books are one giant flaming repudiation of abrahamic religions and very specifically the concept of hell.  And how extra extra bad the concept of hell is in a reality where free will doesn't exist.  Only one faction in this story has a 100% foolproof way to prevent new souls from going to hell.  In the face of this, nothing else matters.  Anything is permissible (even, as would result here for anyone not immortal, the extinction of all sentient life in the universe [as no new souls can enter babies or whatever]).  The consult are the heroes of this story, and it's a good thing they have won.  They are made so comically vile just to drive home just how much worse /eternal/ torture is and how warped anyone who believes in it is.

 

All that said, I would of course love to have more books where more in-universe stuff is explored and revealed.  But not that the risk of oblivion being lost.

[One-Winged Balrog]

How come no one made "The Grimdarkness That Comes Before" joke yet? 0 hits on google, I can't believe it!

Edited June 20, 2022 by One-Winged Balrog

[One-Winged Balrog]

Following this line of thought, many elements of Bakker can be found in Warhammer 40K.

For example, Outside is Warp/Immaterium, populated by gods and daemons that exist outside of time, feed on emotions and will do unspeakable things to your soul for all eternity. The Progenitors are a combination of Dark Elder and Nekrons, damned to hell and looking for a way seal of the world from the Warp. Inchoroi, Sranc etc. are just Orks, an ancient bioweapon, only a lot less amusing.

Warhammer 40K is in general a lot more fun. Basically, Bakker was bested by a freaking tabletop war game before he even started writing. Pathetic.

Edited June 20, 2022 by One-Winged Balrog

[jurble]

40k lore was no-where near as robust when Bakker started writing.  E.g. The atemporality of the Warp is something that's come up in recent novels with demons knowing that they won't die because they're still alive at the Final Battle or whatnot, but I don't recall it from pre-Horus Heresy novels.

[Calibandar]

7 hours ago, One-Winged Balrog said:

Following this line of thought, many elements of Bakker can be found in Warhammer 40K.

For example, Outside is Warp/Immaterium, populated by gods and daemons that exist outside of time, feed on emotions and will do unspeakable things to your soul for all eternity. The Progenitors are a combination of Dark Elder and Nekrons, damned to hell and looking for a way seal of the world from the Warp. Inchoroi, Sranc etc. are just Orks, an ancient bioweapon, only a lot less amusing.

Warhammer 40K is in general a lot more fun. Basically, Bakker was bested by a freaking tabletop war game before he even started writing. Pathetic.

Pretty sure Bakker is not familiar with 40K, or if he heard of it, it was not in any way the basis for his work.

Dune however was a big influence, and Dune of course also was a big influence on 40K, so thats one of the reasons you see similarities.

[Werthead]

11 hours ago, Calibandar said:

Pretty sure Bakker is not familiar with 40K, or if he heard of it, it was not in any way the basis for his work.

Dune however was a big influence, and Dune of course also was a big influence on 40K, so thats one of the reasons you see similarities.

Bakker started writing the series before WH40K was published, so it would be hard for him to have been impacted by it at all. I'm sure he's heard of it, but I'd be impressed if he was really familiar with it. The decent WH40K fiction only really started appearing around the time Bakker was being published (well, maybe a couple of years earlier).

[One-Winged Balrog]

To be honest, my thesis doesn't require Warhammer 40K to have been originated before Bakker's writings. The point that it beats him, by being as grimdark and also more fun, still stands.

[Rhom]

2 hours ago, One-Winged Balrog said:

To be honest, my thesis doesn't require Warhammer 40K to have been originated before Bakker's writings. The point that it beats him, by being as grimdark and also more fun, still stands.

I think you’re ignoring the fact that Bakker wrote to be more philosophical while 40K is pulp fiction,

[jurble]

The Warp and the Outside being very similar, I assume they're drawing from some older Fantasy source, but nothing comes to my own mind, especially as regarding the atemporality.  When the atemporality started popping up in the newer 40k novels, I actually pinged one of the authors on Twitter and he said he hadn't read Bakker (was it ADB? I honestly don't remember who it was.  Maybe it was Guy Haley since atemporality being a feature of the Warp was mostly strongly expressed in the Plague War book than any previous 40k book I've read).

Atemporality also shows up in the Dr. Strange movie with the Dark Dimension having no 'time', though it's a bit weakly done.  I assume this is an aspect of the earlier Dr. Strange comics, so maybe Bakker and 40k drew from comics, but I assume it's an even older trope.

Edited June 21, 2022 by jurble

[One-Winged Balrog]

Atemporality of God is a very old theological concept. "Gods resides in eternity". etc. Here it is simply applied to a "bad" kind of "god/gods".

I wonder if Lovecraft had something on it...

[One-Winged Balrog]

11 hours ago, Rhom said:

I think you’re ignoring the fact that Bakker wrote to be more philosophical while 40K is pulp fiction,

Bakker is closer to 40K than appears at first glance, being a huge pile of inconsistent philosophy - just like 40K is a huge pile of inconsistent fiction tropes.

Edited June 22, 2022 by One-Winged Balrog

[.H.]

4 hours ago, One-Winged Balrog said:

Bakker is closer to 40K than appears at first glance, being a huge pile of inconsistent philosophy

In what sense?  Granted, I am biased by my general Hegelianism, but given Bakker's Derridian roots, I think the inconsistency of Earwan metaphysics is very deliberate.  And, at this point, I am generally convicted that we ought to be rejecting Dualistic or Monistic thinking about it all, instead trying to think Dialectically, when and where ever possible.  Not that this is going to "solve" things, but, in a Hegelian Absolute Knowing sense, at lease move us closer to what is more likely to be the case.

[Larry of the Lake]

On 6/22/2022 at 10:15 AM, .H. said:

In what sense?  Granted, I am biased by my general Hegelianism, but given Bakker's Derridian roots, I think the inconsistency of Earwan metaphysics is very deliberate.  And, at this point, I am generally convicted that we ought to be rejecting Dualistic or Monistic thinking about it all, instead trying to think Dialectically, when and where ever possible.  Not that this is going to "solve" things, but, in a Hegelian Absolute Knowing sense, at lease move us closer to what is more likely to be the case.

Yeah this also jives with that interview (or blog post?) where he talked about reading DeLillo (trying to find meaning in a meaningless world) and wanting to explore the opposite.

[One-Winged Balrog]

9 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

Yeah this also jives with that interview (or blog post?) where he talked about reading DeLillo (trying to find meaning in a meaningless world) and wanting to explore the opposite.

Trying to find meaninglessness in a meaningful world?

[Werthead]

Interesting article here by Bakker's brother, where he talks about how the series developed out of their D&D campaigns in the 1980s. He shows some maps, character ideas and even a poem that came out of those campaigns, which were set in a proto-Earwa. It's interesting seeing D&D races like gnomes alongside SA names like Scylvendi.

At the end he alludes to Scott having some problems in recent years which he is trying to overcome. He also says of the final series that it's kind of where we thought it was five years ago: Scott seems torn between expanding the story further with a final series/trilogy or leaving The Unholy Consult as the final word on the series.

 

Quote

 

For those interested in the now, some have commented on the fact that Scott has been quiet online in recent years. Suffice it to say he has gone through a lot. His singular focus right now is raising his daughter and building his family's future.

As for the future of the series, I've heard him say two things, over the years, about how the Second Apocalypse should end:

• One was that there would be a third trilogy outlining the blow by blow of 'you know who's' rise. I know outlines exist for such a story, but just outlines.
• The other is that the story is finished. That 'The Unholy Consult', is a fitting way to end a sprawling epic about the death of meaning.

For my part, I can't help but to think that this massive story was where Scott's creative life began and, it would not surprise me if, after his real life trials are complete, he doesn't return to it, before the end.

Like a favourite old coat - warm and comfortable - and smelling of sulfur (:

Sometimes, life does come full circle.

 

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by Werthead

[.H.]

5 hours ago, One-Winged Balrog said:

Trying to find meaninglessness in a meaningful world?

Bakker explicitly said this is the case, yes (way back in 2005 actually).  (My bolding to highlight the quote, but include the context too.)

Quote

That was where the original idea for the ‘Kellhus meme’ came from – I think. The next step in his evolution came with my readings of Theodor Adorno. The dominant tradition in mainstream literature is to depict protagonists stranded in a potentially meaningless world trying to find some kind of compensatory meaning – usually through some conception of ‘love.’ You’ve literally seen this pattern countless times. Kellhus offered me an opportunity to turn this model on its head. What makes fantasy distinct is that the worlds depicted tend to be indisputably meaningful – in a sense that’s what makes them fantastic! I thought to myself, what would a story of a protagonist stranded in a meaningful world struggling to hold onto meaninglessness look like?

Thus the ‘Prince of Nothing’ was born. Now he’s spreading, reproducing…

 

Edited June 24, 2022 by .H.

[jurble]

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

Interesting article here by Bakker's brother, where he talks about how the series developed out of their D&D campaigns in the 1980s. He shows some maps, character ideas and even a poem that came out of those campaigns, which were set in a proto-Earwa. It's interesting seeing D&D races like gnomes alongside SA names like Scylvendi.

At the end he alludes to Scott having some problems in recent years which he is trying to overcome. He also says of the final series that it's kind of where we thought it was five years ago: Scott seems torn between expanding the story further with a final series/trilogy or leaving The Unholy Consult as the final word on the series.

 

 

Interesting, the article seems a few weeks old too?  I suppose it went unnoticed since I don't think Bakker-bro has the largest internet profile?

 

Quote

His singular focus right now is raising his daughter and building his family's future.

 

Not to speculate overmuch, but this sounds like his wife left him?

[One-Winged Balrog]

Does the existence of Cishaurim imply the possibility of Transhaurim?