The camp of the saints

Imagine if "A Modest Proposal" wasn't written by Jonathan Swift but by some ham handed pulp fiction hack. Imagine too that they didn't write it as satire but as dystopian cautionary tail projection which may or may not be meant literally. In that version of "A Modest Proposal" it wouldn't be the Irish peasants selling their babies to the rich for food out of desperation but the English forcing them to raise their children for such purposes. Then imagine that not only people at the time it was written but modern people took this as inspiration for their political behaviors today as if that sort of thing was actually unfolding. That's what you have with this dreadful piece of fiction that many people then and today see as wonderful fiction. It's premise is revolting. It's writing is hackish, disjointed, bloated, and inconsistent. It makes Logan's Run, previously my least favorite novel for it's own ludicrousness and bad writing, seem like "To Kill a Mockingbird" in comparison. There is nothing redeeming about it at all.

I am not the most well read person in the world but I have had the occasion to read scifi and pop novels from many eras. On a writing quality and style level this is one of the worst I've ever read. Characters don't behave in realistic ways. It seems to jump from pseudo-first person to third person writing depending on whether it's supposedly a writer from the future documenting this period of time as narrator or as sort of a third person all knowing perspective typical of a 3rd person writing. The text is repetitive in many places, and I don't mean that on themes I mean that on actual descriptions of foods or circumstances. It was almost like it was copy/pasted in a time when there was no literal copy/paste on the computer. Interleaved into the prose throughout are political diatribes that break up the flow. I guess that is supposed to be the interjection of our writer/narrator with poor effect but all it does is make things flow worse. Lastly the entirety of the premise is beyond nonsensical. Out of the blue millions of Indians spontaneously jump on dozens of ships that spontaneously become available to cross two oceans to invade France for no other reason than to just occupy new lands because they are evil. There is a sort of anti-Christ character but that's muddled. There is the shear lack of reality on how many people are packed into the ships, how they eat and drink, etc. and then their behaviors throughout. It is of course full of prurient behaviors. Literally in one paragraph the starving filth covered masses on a ship go from having so little energy that they can barely move to being awash in a massive perpetual orgy that is so persistent that semen flows everywhere, they are raping women, men, and children. Again there isn't even self consistency in within the novel of people's behaviors much less any real motives or sense to behaviors except some weird fetish around naive mean lefties want to help black/brown people destroy everything out of sheer nihilism'' anda handful of these truly wise people who see how white people are superior want to preserve justice and order that the Third World eschewed from us.''