The Revolving Boy by Gertrude Friedberg
Mar. 29th, 2016 07:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethThink I'm keeping this one.
The future as seen from 1966, complete with flying cars, adaptable houses, very specific fashions, and programmable food that may become illegal if you try and modify it.
There's lots of women, wife and mother and school teacher and researcher and astronaut, which is about all the things men are too. It's pretty domestic so it don't feel like discrimination when the women are domestic too.
The way I was reading it the plot wasn't what it was about. Boy born in orbit senses a signal from way out between the stars, but signals travel at light speed so even after he points it out to the scientific establishment it takes 16 years to signal back and hear anything in return. Simples.
But the way it's told it's a lifetime of growing up in The Future, with changing social institutions, things like 'television schools', and all that domestic technology.
It was fun to read.
Super wrong, because what seemed simple turns out difficult and what they hadn't thought of turns out pervasive, but still fun.
Also homes with walls you pull down like curtains and floating balloon lights and chairs that sort of spring up when you want them are a bit five minutes into the future from here too. Plus I liked it when the characters weren't actually very good at them. They ordered the wrong chair or made the food blue and dithered about if they programmed it right. Because you do, don't you, if it's something ordinary and you just can't be bothered to go get the other chair instead.
Also I liked when the fashion was parasols so women all wore parasol scabbards. That sounds useful. Especially if they're super strong like in the story.
I liked also that it was about the Very Special Boy With a Difference, and his family went out of their way to hide him mostly because of tabloids, and when people found out they mostly laughed and ignored it. And his life was pretty much the same all day, except for some quirky adaptations to this sense nobody else had, and he grew up and got a normal job. Like life is normal and plot is what happens a few times in his life. Nobody's going to bother hunting him down for any nefarious purpose, he's just the weird kid.
It's a bit of a relief after all the Marvel stuff I've read.
Though it would be different if a whole generation had an extra sense at once. Or a big group. Then it's not just the weird kid and people would have a reaction.
It's funny how I react different to the different yesterday-futures. Some of them are only wrong enough to bork my suspension of disbelief, but others are so wrong it's funny, and then it's just another SF book about a new civilisation.
Also funny was I kept forgetting this wasn't set in England. I think it's because it was in schools and at home, so I kept mapping it to my home.
Yesterday-futures always have the wrong things change the wrong amount. Like we expect the stuff we understand to keep on zooming ahead, always miss the truly new, and then the story skips the thing where a lot of the ordinary yesterday will still be around.
Science fiction is proper tricky.
The future as seen from 1966, complete with flying cars, adaptable houses, very specific fashions, and programmable food that may become illegal if you try and modify it.
There's lots of women, wife and mother and school teacher and researcher and astronaut, which is about all the things men are too. It's pretty domestic so it don't feel like discrimination when the women are domestic too.
The way I was reading it the plot wasn't what it was about. Boy born in orbit senses a signal from way out between the stars, but signals travel at light speed so even after he points it out to the scientific establishment it takes 16 years to signal back and hear anything in return. Simples.
But the way it's told it's a lifetime of growing up in The Future, with changing social institutions, things like 'television schools', and all that domestic technology.
It was fun to read.
Super wrong, because what seemed simple turns out difficult and what they hadn't thought of turns out pervasive, but still fun.
Also homes with walls you pull down like curtains and floating balloon lights and chairs that sort of spring up when you want them are a bit five minutes into the future from here too. Plus I liked it when the characters weren't actually very good at them. They ordered the wrong chair or made the food blue and dithered about if they programmed it right. Because you do, don't you, if it's something ordinary and you just can't be bothered to go get the other chair instead.
Also I liked when the fashion was parasols so women all wore parasol scabbards. That sounds useful. Especially if they're super strong like in the story.
I liked also that it was about the Very Special Boy With a Difference, and his family went out of their way to hide him mostly because of tabloids, and when people found out they mostly laughed and ignored it. And his life was pretty much the same all day, except for some quirky adaptations to this sense nobody else had, and he grew up and got a normal job. Like life is normal and plot is what happens a few times in his life. Nobody's going to bother hunting him down for any nefarious purpose, he's just the weird kid.
It's a bit of a relief after all the Marvel stuff I've read.
Though it would be different if a whole generation had an extra sense at once. Or a big group. Then it's not just the weird kid and people would have a reaction.
It's funny how I react different to the different yesterday-futures. Some of them are only wrong enough to bork my suspension of disbelief, but others are so wrong it's funny, and then it's just another SF book about a new civilisation.
Also funny was I kept forgetting this wasn't set in England. I think it's because it was in schools and at home, so I kept mapping it to my home.
Yesterday-futures always have the wrong things change the wrong amount. Like we expect the stuff we understand to keep on zooming ahead, always miss the truly new, and then the story skips the thing where a lot of the ordinary yesterday will still be around.
Science fiction is proper tricky.