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Jan. 22nd, 2012
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Jan. 22nd, 2012 09:46 pmMy college units this semester are Dissertation Preparation, National Cinema and The Short Story. ( Read more... )
ANYway, The Short Story does not look promising, but, I have a lot of books of short stories lying around. And that's without getting into the thirty year solid collection of Analog. So I got a recent SF anthology down that I hadn't started and I've been reading.
I have previously got into arguments about the definition of science fiction. (I spend three hours down the pub every two weeks talking about science fiction, naturally this comes up). I have said that science fiction is all about exploring the way new technology shapes lives. I've said it in a variety of phrasings, but I figured, the tech changes, and people change in response to that, and then we have story. I have been unenthusiastic about definitions that reckon science fiction is all about the props. There are many stories set on spaceships that are not, to my mind, science fiction. I've been known to get sniffy about it.
I might have to revise that quite a lot.
( Read more... )
I guess the basic problem has been said long since: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
So any sufficiently advanced science fiction is about magic.
Push my definition of science fiction only a step or two out, and we've run into my definition of fantasy.
I just read a short about how stories about Mars shape how people react to Mars.
That's not the only sort of world we've been dreaming on a long, long time.
As soon as it's technologically possible to make faerie, people are going to do it. Remake themselves or their avs and just... go.
So I'm left with a conundrum. Anything with the trappings of science fiction, the star trek kind with recogniseable humans on big metal starships, I no longer find a plausible extrapolation. And anything plausible isn't exactly what I'd been thinking of as science fiction.
Having twisted my brain in a knot I should probably go to sleep.
Then wave a little surrender flag on my definitions and go back to writing stuff like I've been watching: humans charging around the universe in tin cans.
ANYway, The Short Story does not look promising, but, I have a lot of books of short stories lying around. And that's without getting into the thirty year solid collection of Analog. So I got a recent SF anthology down that I hadn't started and I've been reading.
I have previously got into arguments about the definition of science fiction. (I spend three hours down the pub every two weeks talking about science fiction, naturally this comes up). I have said that science fiction is all about exploring the way new technology shapes lives. I've said it in a variety of phrasings, but I figured, the tech changes, and people change in response to that, and then we have story. I have been unenthusiastic about definitions that reckon science fiction is all about the props. There are many stories set on spaceships that are not, to my mind, science fiction. I've been known to get sniffy about it.
I might have to revise that quite a lot.
( Read more... )
I guess the basic problem has been said long since: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
So any sufficiently advanced science fiction is about magic.
Push my definition of science fiction only a step or two out, and we've run into my definition of fantasy.
I just read a short about how stories about Mars shape how people react to Mars.
That's not the only sort of world we've been dreaming on a long, long time.
As soon as it's technologically possible to make faerie, people are going to do it. Remake themselves or their avs and just... go.
So I'm left with a conundrum. Anything with the trappings of science fiction, the star trek kind with recogniseable humans on big metal starships, I no longer find a plausible extrapolation. And anything plausible isn't exactly what I'd been thinking of as science fiction.
Having twisted my brain in a knot I should probably go to sleep.
Then wave a little surrender flag on my definitions and go back to writing stuff like I've been watching: humans charging around the universe in tin cans.