[info]james_nicoll

More Words, Deeper Hole

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One point defines a curve, right?
[info]james_nicoll
April 16th, 2005
Since all of Hugo nominated novels this year are written by non-North Americans, I think it's time for a panicky assessment of NorAm SF, with general finger-pointing to follow.

So when exactly did the US [1] stop being fertile soil for real SF? OK, obviously we can't expect a nation more than a generation into fond nostaligia for the 1950s to produce all that many forward thinking SF writers [2] but when _exactly_ was the battle for the future lost? 2000? 1980? Or did the basic assumptions of Campbellian SF spread the seeds of self-destruction?

I eagerly await the angry denials that the American future was in fact lost but answer me this: when was the last time you read a NorAm (Nah, make that "American". Who the hell cares what the Canadians think [4]) SF book set some time in the next hundred years that did not assume civil liberties would be rolled back or lost? Or one set in the same period whose characters were better off than their grandparents?


1: Yeah, there are Canadian SF writers but the publishers are pretty much all in the US and if Canuckian SF writers don't adapt to market realities, they won't get published. In other words, the Canadians are and will remain irrelevant in the grander scheme of things until such time as they develop a globally oriented SF publishing culture [pause for laughter] or they more vigorously exploit British and other markets.

2: Thus the growth of alternate history fiction, which I see now as a cancerous growth on the brain stem of SF. Although it could be a virulent STD in the community of minds. I have not yet made up my mind. Could someone ask the current lot of NorAm AH writers where the burning sensation is?

MilSF needn't be so terribly awful as it is, I think. Looking at the SF writers whose fiction I like, most of them who wrote about military matters wrote about some aspect of the military that they had actual experience with. I therefore propose a special MilSF Award that will enrole the winners in units serving in active warzones, to be awarded authors whose fiction needs more research. This should be presented at the same time as the Mack Reynolds International Experience Award, which will consist of a one way ticket to the glorious Libertarian Utopia of Somalia.

4: Thus nicely removing DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM from consideration....
( 49 comments — Leave a comment )

[info]cincinnatus

2005-04-16 08:35 pm (UTC)

Is it the idea of AH you dislike or just the application? 'Cause I can agree with the latter, it's largely poorly-done and poorly-written, but I think it can be done well. For a while there I was considering, for my final project ("The Plan" as it's known) here at Marlboro trying to write an AH novel, but I think I'll do something else instead. I'm not a great writer but I bet I can do better than what's currently out. The fellows on SHWI do so regularly.

Berard
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Why Alternate History is the anti-christ of Science Fiction

[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 08:45 pm (UTC)

The applications. Obviously AH is just a narrative tool but these days it seems to be used mostly because contemplating the future is so unbearable and a backward-facing subgenre is more comforting. Same reason so much purile fantasy is written, I suppose.

The worst, the absolute worst, AH shit is the "we go back in time and make history happen the way it _should_ have happened! Yay, Us! In a completely contrived scenario, we can win!" What a total wankfest.
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Re: Why Alternate History is the anti-christ of Science Fiction

[info]mishalak

2005-04-17 08:00 am (UTC)

Which explains why the first AH was Napoleonic and French.
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Re: Why Alternate History is the anti-christ of Science Fiction

(Anonymous)

2005-04-17 12:45 pm (UTC)

You could also phrase that the other way around: science fiction is the Antichrist of alternate history. God I loathe people who say, since AH is SF, any use of SFnal elements in an AH narrative is OK and anyone who thinks otherwise should "get a pink belly" (whatever that means. I suspect it's racist, or at least not applicable to non-whites).

The worst, the absolute worst, AH shit is the "we go back in time and make history happen the way it _should_ have happened! Yay, Us! In a completely contrived scenario, we can win!" What a total wankfest.


The bad influence of military fiction (not necessarily SF), or, going back to root definitions, the-application-of-force-to-politics fiction, which is preadapted to all sorts of wankery.

Carlos of "Halfway Down the Danube", a blog
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[info]timill

2005-04-16 08:46 pm (UTC)

the last time you read a NorAm SF book set some time in the next hundred years that did not assume civil liberties would be rolled back or lost?

Michael Flynn's "Firestar" et seq, the first of which is copyright 1996.
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:09 pm (UTC)

Good point. I can't read Flynn at all but that's not the reason.

I suppose THE WRECK OF THE RIVER OF STARS could be taken as evidence that later, things did not go quite as well as they could have but in that timeline's defense, that ship was crewed entirely with self-destructive morons and the fact that a system spanning civilization existed at all without having gone extinct from airlock mishaps and misguided attempts to have sex with fusion generators suggests that the ship was a statistical anomoly.
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[info]timill

2005-04-16 09:32 pm (UTC)

Clearly I must acquire that book after such a positive review...

Tim
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:40 pm (UTC)

Consider the preconditions for a ship-wreck. The crew could be unlucky or they could be incompetent (or both). There are a lot of books where the crew is unlucky but not very many where the author chooses to make them all idiots, each in their own way.

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[info]redbird

2005-04-16 09:45 pm (UTC)

I haven't read that book, but I am reminded of Le Guin's "Vaster than Empires, and More Slow," in which an exploring ship is crewed entirely by crazy people. This isn't because the shipbuilders want mad astronauts: it's because the only volunteers for a near-lightspeed voyage to a probably-uninhabited world over 100 lightyears away are insane.
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:49 pm (UTC)

One of Joan Vinge's early short stories took a look at what sort of person would volunteer for a one-way mission to nowhere, based on some musings of Robert Forward [1]. I think it was called VIEW FROM A HEIGHT and I think it was in EYES OF AMBER, which came out from Signet in the late 1970s, I believe. In any case, the protagonist isn't mad (although she is a little stressed at one point). She did have a good reason for going, too.


1: Forward himself had a try at that in fictional form. I am not a big fan of his work but the small part of FLIGHT OF THE DRAGONFLY [?] that touches on that issue is still something I remember fondly.
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[info]nancylebov

2005-04-17 03:10 am (UTC)

One of Poul Anderson's last novels had a similar premise--people from an advanced, pleasant civilization who'd volunteer for a long space voyage weren't necessarily insane, but they were flaky and dysfunctional.
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-17 03:38 pm (UTC)

Is that STARFARERS? In that one, US democracy collapsed into a more supervised version. Starflight eventually followed but only because it served no useful economic purpose: the systems were too far apart to trade effectively.
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[info]nancylebov

2005-04-17 10:30 pm (UTC)

Yes. I knew it was one of his last novels, and I just checked on the publication date.
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-18 02:50 pm (UTC)

His final novel, whose title I forget, was actually fairly upbeat for him.
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[info]timill

2005-04-16 09:56 pm (UTC)

C J Cherryh's Merchanter's Luck, maybe? Since I enjoy both Flynn and Cherryh, sound well worth punting some cash at Interthingy 2 (since it doesn't seem to be out in the UK yet).
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[info]redbird

2005-04-16 09:13 pm (UTC)

Given note [4], why should I bother responding to this post?
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:20 pm (UTC)

But you did respond so you must have had a reason. Pure logic will lead us to it....

You must be aware of my somewhat ill-defined citizenship situation (Although at this point, I could only imagine that the USG would insist that I was an American so that they could strip that citizenship from me and expel me forever. Since I am already in Canada, that seems somewhat pointless, like invading a nation to prevent it from using the WMD it doesn't have).
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[info]redbird

2005-04-16 09:29 pm (UTC)

Reason? Silliness and slight brain-fog.

You must be aware of my somewhat ill-defined citizenship situation.

Actually, I wasn't. [*]
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A dirty little secret

[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:38 pm (UTC)

Well, I don't like to mention this but technically, I could be an American if I so chose. Both my parents were US citizens when I was born, even my mother, who spent virtually all of her life in Canada (Given that my father died almost immediately on becoming Canadian, she may have been the prudent one*).


* Wait a moment. She never ignored her own foot going gangrenous and when she had appendicitus, she didn't try to wait it out. Definitely she was the prudent one.
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Re: A dirty little secret

[info]redbird

2005-04-16 09:42 pm (UTC)

Ah. So you come by your accident-proneness from your father, but inherited enough of your mother's good sense to survive the accidents.
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Re: A dirty little secret

[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-16 09:51 pm (UTC)

Actually, the great-uncle who was done in by his own wooden leg was on my mother's side of the family.

Her father volunteered for mine-sweeping duty in both WWI and WWII so risk-assessment does not appear to have been a primary skill on either side of that match.
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Re: A dirty little secret

[info]del_c

2005-04-18 02:38 pm (UTC)

The pirate with the eye patch in the old joke must have been a Nicoll:

"No way! How could a bird dropping blind you?"

"It was my first day with the hook."
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[info]orzelc

2005-04-16 10:55 pm (UTC)

when was the last time you read a NorAm (Nah, make that "American". Who the hell cares what the Canadians think [4]) SF book set some time in the next hundred years that did not assume civil liberties would be rolled back or lost? Or one set in the same period whose characters were better off than their grandparents?

Jack McDevitt's various Archeologists in Spaaaaace books might be a counter-example (I don't recall that much about the political scenario, or the date). John Scalzi's Old Man's War is another possible.

I wouldn't call any of them Great Literature, and they're probably not even Great SF, but they're not really depressing, either.
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[info]scalzi

2005-04-17 12:56 am (UTC)

Nonsense! Mine is the the greatest literature the world has ever known. EVER.

I wouldn't necessarily have nominated OMW, though -- the future earth in which it is set does not in fact have a decrease of civil liberties (or personal circumstances) as they apply to living in the US, but there are other things going on (some of which will be revealed in the sequel, maybe) which would suggest that there's a lot Earthlings are not clued into.

Having said that, Agent to the Stars, which is available online and comes out in book form in July, sees no diminution of rights in the US, but it may not be on point because it's supposed to take place in current time. I do have an upcoming book (The Android's Dream), however, which takes place about 100 years up the timestream and which assumes Americans and others are more or less as free as they are now, and certainly no worse off, even though the earth is now part of a galaxy-spanning federation. I guess I'm just not depressing enough, or something.
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[info]orzelc

2005-04-17 11:48 am (UTC)

I wouldn't necessarily have nominated OMW, though -- the future earth in which it is set does not in fact have a decrease of civil liberties (or personal circumstances) as they apply to living in the US, but there are other things going on (some of which will be revealed in the sequel, maybe) which would suggest that there's a lot Earthlings are not clued into.

I didn't really get that from the book, but then, I'm usually fairly oblivious to background political details in SF. (And when they move into the foreground, it usually annoys me. I'm not the right audience for this question...)

I think Nancy raises a good question farther down, though: Are there really non-US authors writing happy, optimistic near-future SF? Most of the stuff that I see praised and recommended is either just as pessimistic as the American brand, or set much farther in the future.
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[info]robertprior

2005-04-17 02:42 pm (UTC)

Peter Hamilton's Mindstar series?

Britain has pulled out of a 'people's republic' phase, and is now a democracy again. Lots of hard work ahead, but the future is bright...
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[info]rysmiel

2005-04-18 02:19 pm (UTC)

Well, for borderline fascist neo-Thatcherite values of "civil liberties" maybe...
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[info]timill

2005-04-17 07:32 am (UTC)

It's been censored. They can do that in Canada...
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-18 03:35 pm (UTC)

Well, they can _try_ it. Modern technology makes it something of a challenge.
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[info]nancylebov

2005-04-17 03:13 am (UTC)

I vaguely remember _Islands in the Net_ as somewhat utopian.IIRC, _Kings of the High Frontier_ was neutral about civil liberties and downright cheerful about new possibilities for space travel.

Who of the non-US writers would you recommend as optimistic about the future?
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[info]ritaxis

2005-04-17 04:51 am (UTC)

I don't think the next hundred years or so is a fair limitation. There's people who have a general sense of optimism but think that things might get much worse before they get better.

If you had not had that limitation, I could have given you Melissa Scott, who has some situations with less and some with more freedom and prosperity in the far future, and Cherryh and LeGuin also. And me. If they would come to their sense and publish my novel, I could prove that I in fact am optimistic about our potential.
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[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-17 07:51 pm (UTC)

You see _Cherryh_ as optimistic?
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[info]mishalak

2005-04-17 08:04 am (UTC)

Aristoi by Walter Jon Williams was a not perfect future (and the nanotech seemed a bit too incredible at times, hate the grey goo senario), but over all a story about humanity succeeding and hope for the future even after a terrible disaster. Not forbiding the too dangerous technology, but trying to figure out how to live with it. And publishing date of 1992.
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[info]mishalak

2005-04-17 08:08 am (UTC)

Drat. Missed the next 100 years in the first go round. I'll try again in a bit after I get over mocking myself.
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[info]wordweaverlynn

2005-04-17 08:06 am (UTC)

Whar about Neal Stephenson? Are Snowcrash and The Diamond Age not real SF?
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[info]mishalak

2005-04-17 08:10 am (UTC)

I don't know about The Diamond Age, but I would not call Snowcrash a hopeful future. Funny, yes. Hopeful future with civil liberties, no.
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[info]robertprior

2005-04-17 02:45 pm (UTC)

Lots of civil liberties, at least in the sense used by most 'libertarians'. The governments in Snowcrash are almost powerless. People have the freedom they choose (or can afford).
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[info]ritaxis

2005-04-17 05:08 pm (UTC)

I was just thinking about whether the Stephenson books qualify. Things are a mess but I'm not sure they're really much worse than the world is already, and there is at base a tremendous optimism about people. But I don't think that argues against James's point.
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The last time...

[info]seawasp

2005-04-17 01:49 pm (UTC)

... would have been when I re-read the draft of "Boundary" that me and Eric handed in to Jim. Comes out in February 2006.

I can't say much about other recent SF as I have had almost no time to read anything new for a few years now. :( Or at least, no new SF. I'm the only one in the house that would read the real stuff, and I don't get chances to browse any more.
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[info]ritaxis

2005-04-17 05:11 pm (UTC)

I think I understand it all now. It's history. I always say history is a terrible thing. USians were in ascendance in the early 20th century, whether we approved of it or not, and there was an expansiveness and largeness of future in the air. As a nation we're coming to the end of that, and contraction is in the air.

It doesn't have to necessarily lead to pessimism, though.

Is there a way to turn off specific people's user pictures without turning them all off? I am very distressed by animated gifs.
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[info]ritaxis

2005-04-17 07:49 pm (UTC)

I don't use Firefox. And wouldn't that de-animate other animated images also? I just want to get rid of the strobing user pictures.
(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Firefox

(Anonymous)

2005-04-17 11:42 pm (UTC)


I don't use Firefox.


Well, *there's* your problem right there!

Less snarkily: In IE (and in Firefox, and possibly other browsers as well), you can whack the "Esc" key, which will cause animated images to stop animating. Of course, if the page has not yet loaded completely, it will stop the page loading as well.


And wouldn't that de-animate other animated images also?


Well, yes. Same as with the "Esc" key.


I just want to get rid of the strobing user pictures.


I don't know of anything in IE (or any other browser you might happen to be using)(although I suspect that any browser that uses the Gecko engine will allow use of the Firefox user.js configuration) that will allow you such fine-grain control over what particular images do or don't do.

For Firefox, there's also an AniDisable extension, but I think that just does the same thing as the user.js config does - change animations for the entire page, and permanently as a configuration option.

Also for Firefox, there is the stupendously excellent Adblock extension, which allows fine control over nearly any and all web page elements (including blocking from wildcarded domains, eg: *.advertising.com). The thing is, it doesn't provide control over animation, only whether the thing appears in the web page or not. Which might suit your needs; you can block those specific user icons that irritate you.

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Two by Bruce Sterling

(Anonymous)

2005-04-17 06:07 pm (UTC)

_Holy Fire_. (Though it's late 1980s.) That's a very nice late 21st century future. The question of the book is "...maybe _too_ nice?" and the answer is pleasantly ambiguous, but it's clear that pretty much everyone is free-ish and the society is very rich. (One example: transatlantic plane flights cost about as much as a bus ride; they're so cheap that payment is on the honor system.)

Most people have swapped a certain degree of personal freedom in return for access to lifespan-extending medical care, but the book makes it clear that this is not compulsory. Of course, there's the question of whether keeping liberty and giving up 50 or 60 extra years of healthy life is a meaningful choice for most people, but that's something else again.

_Distraction_ (1998) is less utopian, but still pretty upbeat. Most of the book is about politics, and politics is pretty screwed -- the US has become very Latin America-like. But, again, look hard and it's a pretty prosperous future. Even the nomadic dropouts have technology that keeps them out of poverty, and stuff like the "build your own house" tech has obvious applications for wealth creation. Civil liberties don't seem to have been eroded much; Green Huey is a gangster, but it's clear he's an aberration. Oh, and racism as we know it seems to have completely disappeared... except for the protagonist and his "personal history issue".

BTW, do you include Kage Baker in your anathema? Hidden history rather than althist, but still mostly backward looking. What think you?


Doug M.
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(Deleted comment)

Re: The problem with this is that

(Anonymous)

2005-04-18 02:54 pm (UTC)

I have been thinking about assembling a list of quotes from scientists who don't particularly care for written science fiction, who give examples why. Somehow I doubt any of them could be converted by Sea Wasp.

The "science" in science fiction has usually been "engineering applications of science" anyway.

Carlos of "Halfway down the Danube", a blog
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Re: The problem with this is that

[info]james_nicoll

2005-04-18 03:38 pm (UTC)

I know people in the physical sciences, biological sciences and in the computer industry. All of these people are at the cutting edge of the future, developing the ideas and technologies that we will use in 20+ years. Hardly any of them read science fiction, and, if they do, it is mostly the older stuff. American, especially USian science fiction, has no appeal to these people (and non-USian stuff is really hard to get).

I think part of the problem is that by and large, SF authors aren't interested in the sciences except as plot enablers. Some fields of science seem to be particularly vulnerable to misuse in SF.

Is it possible for a biologist to read recent SF like DARWINS RADIO or TERRANESIA without buying a pistol and booking a flight to the next Nebula Awards ceremony?
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Re: The problem with this is that

(Anonymous)

2005-04-19 08:26 am (UTC)

"Is it possible for a biologist to read recent SF like DARWINS RADIO or TERRANESIA without buying a pistol and booking a flight to the next Nebula Awards ceremony?"

I sort of qualify as a biologist. My only complaint about TERANESIA is that there was only one wacky science idea, and it wasn't as wacky as half the ideas in DIASPORA or PERMUTATION CITY. And it was the technothriller-style writing rather than the premise that put me off DARWIN'S RADIO. If someone confuses "cool idea for an SF story" and "accurate description of reality" enough to start toting firearms, they must be a pretty poor excuse for an SF reader. Perhaps a poor excuse for a scientist, too. Greg Egan has explicitly said, for example, that _none_ of the quantum mechanics theory in QUARANTINE reflects his actual beliefs - it just makes a good story.

Gareth Wilson
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