Science Fiction and Fantasy
Dec. 14th, 2004 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldI watched the first hour of Ursula K. LeGuin's Legend of Earthsea on the SciFi channel last night and was disappointed but not surprised that it was a rehashing of tired cliches. I'm sure there is innovation somewhere in this genre that doesn't just plagiarize the ancient Myth of the Hero and use Good Vs. Evil to avoid having to motivate the antagonist. Can someone point it out to me? We aren't kids sitting around the campfire listening to a static oral tradition, folks! How did that old adage go? "There are only seven stories"? Balderdash, there are only seven kinds of unimaginative authors and readers. This brought to mind ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dawnwolfe's recent question to me, "If you met someone who had never, ever read a single SF/Fantasy book in their lives, had not even heard of the genre but was open to trying it out, what is the first book you would introduce to that person." It depends on what they want. Different books are good are for different folks and they can get different purposes from the same book. Mine is just one flavor of preference and I'll offer it as nothing more. My thesis is this: I like science fiction to the degree that it's not a fantasy.
Before she or he embarks on science fiction, there is a non-fiction book this new person needs to read: Unbounding the Future by Eric K. Drexler. It is available in print and for free on the web. This is the work that first presented to me a realistic possibility that within our lifetimes we could see technological revolutions which could overturn all the assumptions of the present world. I love the world-view-changing, paradigm-shifting, "real-life-type-of-scary" experience called future shock. That's what I read science fiction for.
It could turn out to be wrong, of course. All forecasting amounts to a tentative educated guess, not dogma. Yes, I do use futurics and science fiction as very weakly analogous to "religious guidance" at least in the sense of a substitute for the same purposes: orientation to values, a sense of where we come from and where we are going, what is the self, "our place" in the universe if there is any such thing. But I would be silly if I claimed that it even remotely approaches inerrancy. In fact, the greatest hallmark of rational inquiry is having been wrong-- this admits of continued improvement on what one's religion or political party believes now. So faith in what the future holds is unnecessary, and in fact it would be an active detriment. But reading the SF that I enjoy does require an attitude-stance toward revolutionary change. I do allow myself to hope and to be warned, within limits of what seems plausible so far. If Unbounding the Future turns out to be total crock, it will still have been a mind-expanding process which made it possible for me to contemplate a radically different real-world. The future will not be like anything that has been depicted, but it will not be like the present. I'm convinced the Planet Earth we grow old in will be a radically alien one.
Some people claim to get answers to philosophical questions straight from Perfection Personified, which ossify them in static thought patterns chained to the past. But these issues are more productively served by mortals who write plausible science fiction set in the 21st century based on the cutting edge of current research. I like SF to have a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center. These are the narratives of characters who have to live their lives with what we mortals learn or fail to learn; what we acheive by working for it or fail to acheive by praying for it. The stories are thought experiments of the implications and lessons of modern knowledge as it inexorably makes authorities, such as religious revelation or the totalitarian State, increasingly unnecessary.
I haven't intended this to mean that politics and religion is the only thing SF should be for. Fiction shouldn't be a thinly disguised tract, and good SF stands on literary aesthetics alone. But thought-experiment seems to be SF's main advantage over other fiction. Thought experiments about my nonfantasy real-world would not be served by the suspension of disbelief required by fantasy. When I read a work which satisfies me, it persuasively compels my belief and involves an act of the will to suspend belief, not to suspend disbelief. I have to make an effort to use my critical thinking skills to see the problems with it or detect if the author is, in my opinion, wrong. This is a second stage to the reading process which I also enjoy. Those who are not interested in what I've described are not going to enjoy any science fiction that I would recommend, such as Greg Egan, and should instead read some easy brain-candy with an arbitrarily-imagined distant future that a movie producer pulled out of his butt. I'm no literary critic, so I can offer them no advice on that.
dawnwolfe's recent question to me, "If you met someone who had never, ever read a single SF/Fantasy book in their lives, had not even heard of the genre but was open to trying it out, what is the first book you would introduce to that person." It depends on what they want. Different books are good are for different folks and they can get different purposes from the same book. Mine is just one flavor of preference and I'll offer it as nothing more. My thesis is this: I like science fiction to the degree that it's not a fantasy.Before she or he embarks on science fiction, there is a non-fiction book this new person needs to read: Unbounding the Future by Eric K. Drexler. It is available in print and for free on the web. This is the work that first presented to me a realistic possibility that within our lifetimes we could see technological revolutions which could overturn all the assumptions of the present world. I love the world-view-changing, paradigm-shifting, "real-life-type-of-scary" experience called future shock. That's what I read science fiction for.
It could turn out to be wrong, of course. All forecasting amounts to a tentative educated guess, not dogma. Yes, I do use futurics and science fiction as very weakly analogous to "religious guidance" at least in the sense of a substitute for the same purposes: orientation to values, a sense of where we come from and where we are going, what is the self, "our place" in the universe if there is any such thing. But I would be silly if I claimed that it even remotely approaches inerrancy. In fact, the greatest hallmark of rational inquiry is having been wrong-- this admits of continued improvement on what one's religion or political party believes now. So faith in what the future holds is unnecessary, and in fact it would be an active detriment. But reading the SF that I enjoy does require an attitude-stance toward revolutionary change. I do allow myself to hope and to be warned, within limits of what seems plausible so far. If Unbounding the Future turns out to be total crock, it will still have been a mind-expanding process which made it possible for me to contemplate a radically different real-world. The future will not be like anything that has been depicted, but it will not be like the present. I'm convinced the Planet Earth we grow old in will be a radically alien one.
Some people claim to get answers to philosophical questions straight from Perfection Personified, which ossify them in static thought patterns chained to the past. But these issues are more productively served by mortals who write plausible science fiction set in the 21st century based on the cutting edge of current research. I like SF to have a crunchy technological coating and a chewy philosophical center. These are the narratives of characters who have to live their lives with what we mortals learn or fail to learn; what we acheive by working for it or fail to acheive by praying for it. The stories are thought experiments of the implications and lessons of modern knowledge as it inexorably makes authorities, such as religious revelation or the totalitarian State, increasingly unnecessary.
I haven't intended this to mean that politics and religion is the only thing SF should be for. Fiction shouldn't be a thinly disguised tract, and good SF stands on literary aesthetics alone. But thought-experiment seems to be SF's main advantage over other fiction. Thought experiments about my nonfantasy real-world would not be served by the suspension of disbelief required by fantasy. When I read a work which satisfies me, it persuasively compels my belief and involves an act of the will to suspend belief, not to suspend disbelief. I have to make an effort to use my critical thinking skills to see the problems with it or detect if the author is, in my opinion, wrong. This is a second stage to the reading process which I also enjoy. Those who are not interested in what I've described are not going to enjoy any science fiction that I would recommend, such as Greg Egan, and should instead read some easy brain-candy with an arbitrarily-imagined distant future that a movie producer pulled out of his butt. I'm no literary critic, so I can offer them no advice on that.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 05:45 am (UTC)Thre real wizard of earthsea book deals with facing up to and intetgrating the darker aspects of yourself. What I saw last night was an interesting and pretty variation that merged the first two books in the trilogy, and seemed to throw in a large dose of Harry Potter.
Also, the Earthsea Trilogy was written to be a childrens fantasy. I highly recommend other books of hers, like "The Disposessed" and "The Lathe of Heaven" both of which I think would fulfill your desire for rich ideas with complex consequences.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 08:52 am (UTC)It almost goes without saying that Ursula K. leGuin has publicly denounced the Earthsea filmmaker on her website.
If you get a chance...
Date: 2004-12-15 09:05 am (UTC)Re: If you get a chance...
Date: 2004-12-15 09:12 am (UTC)I have to agree about Earthsea...
Date: 2004-12-15 10:56 am (UTC)I feel like the dialog was Tele-prompted almost. Never felt real to me.
As far as the story however, I don't necessarily hate the good versus evil plot, because that is inherently what happens in real life. We are constantly fighting to balance our chi, Ying vs. Yang, or opposites. There has to be that constant struggle to create conflict.
All in all, I had high hopes when watching the trailers. It could have been good...
no subject
Date: 2004-12-15 11:19 am (UTC)-- My first goal was to write a fantasy novel that was NOT the umpty-seventh rehash of a Not Quite Final Battle of Good vs. Evil.
-- The black-and-white approach of most fantasy is bullshit. It's laziness. By positing a Force of Supernatural Evil, the writer is relieved of the necessity of motivating his antagonists. "The Devil made me do it!" Or his protagonists, for that matter. "Of course they must be destroyed! They're EEEEEvil!"
-- Every other genre (I should say: every sub-genre) is defined by eliminating fantastic elements: by carving away the gods, fate, magic, whatever. "Fantasy" is what we call a novel that partakes of the whole of the human literary heritage.
-- Does it appeal to the average reader? Christ, I hope not! Screw the average reader -- I want exceptional readers.