Weblog
06/02: delany again
i'm reading these interviews of delany and they're funny cause he so clearly has no patience for most of the questions that he gets asked. so he just answers the question that he wants to be asked instead. i know, it's now common media-savvy practice, but this was in the 80s when soundbite theory hadn't made it to the masses, and he was doing it to fan boys...this is one cool excerpt so far...
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29/01: sarah jane smith adventures
just got done with the first of the sarah jane smith adventures.and i realize that tv is a slow moving target, and i'm about to engage in feminist rhetoric 101 (or perhaps 102), but argh.
argh.
the premise is - what do doctor who's women do after he's dumped them.
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17/12: science fiction and torchwood
i watch torchwood, which is an embarrassing admission to make. i don't know why i do it, and i spend the time that the episode is running doing as many other things at the same time as possible (playing a game, washing dishes, talking on the phone, whatever).torchwood is a show about a team of people who are supposed to investigate alien technology, with subplot about the mysterious team captain who can't be killed and isn't afraid to make the hard decisions, and the interaction between the latest recruit (who is the emotional one and apparently supposed to be the most well socialized) and the rest of the (more experienced) team.
the only interesting thing about this show
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05/11: science fiction as personality cult
delany delany delany delany"the mutual inadequations of language and desire constitute what happens; the mutual inadequations of desire and what happens constitute language; the mutual inadequations of what happens and language constitute desire. ...
The point is that, because the inadequacy of any one to any other produces the field in which the third constitutes itself and registers, none of the three is a ground that can stabilize either of the other two.
...
all genres, to repeat myself, survive, propagate, and reproduce themselves by taking some value and inflating it,
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22/10: SF as self-fulfilling prophecy II
Delany’s premise aside, if one of the characteristics of SF is extrapolation from current events, than the more extreme the extrapolation — not necessarily extreme in time, but in effect — the more SF the work is (yes, let’s treat SF also as an adjective, as a continuum). Back in the mid-70s, Tanith Lee, among others, was talking about gender change, and full body change, as something taken for granted. (“So and so is a hulking man again this week. He’s always so blank as a man.”) This flexibility is getting closer and closer, and also being obviated, by all kinds of changes to how people feel connected to their physical selves, not to mention the physical selves they were born to.But the point isn’t whether SF can present us with accurate predictions,
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04/09: science fiction and possibilities
Torment, the role-playing game, and Star Trek:TNG both touch briefly on species that speak through metaphor, a cultural characteristic that could as easily (and perhaps more usefully) be explored through cultures that already exist. But this raises the question of when (and if) it’s useful to use aliens as a plot device, rather than human cultures. Whatever usefulness exists lies in the ahistorical nature of aliens. Authors and readers can explore the significance of various characteristics – greed, honor, pacifism, story-tellingRead More!
21/08: science fiction and post-modernism
Most science fiction has a fiercely humanist tendency. Some of the core beliefs of liberal humanism are that a) there is an absolute truth; b) the world can be controlled and ordered; c) progress is linear; d) human nature doesn't change; e) humanity's purpose should be the enhancement of human life; f) reality can be known directly through the senses and the employment of rational thought. This is most striking to me in books like Vonda McIntyre's Starfarers series, which portrays venal politicians trying to control white-hat, knowledge-loving, no-blood-on-their-hands scientists, as if knowledge is some kind of value-free Ultimate Good. Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history, Years of Rice and Salt, was less interesting than it might have been because of its portrayal of a world dominated by islam that develops the same kind of science as that of a world dominated by christianity. While Robinson might have been making the valid point that islam and christianity have fundamental similarities, what comes across is the idea that science is a constant - that the development of knowledge is always the same - which is a humanist view (see points a) and f) above).Cyberpunk is the postmodernist voice of science fiction, describes worlds in which technology is rampant and its effects are mixed, truth is relative, and people usually aren't trying to save the world as much as get by. The least interesting of these stories culminate in re-enacting the conventional morality, good-wins-out-even-in-the-slums style.
Cyberpunk has been known to challenge many humanist premises (immutable human nature, linear progress, the ability to know reality through ration and sense – think Matrix), which is arguably what makes it popular today, but it hasn’t been used to question the primacy of human life (only its definition), or the need/ability to control the world.
Frequently cyberpunk is more interesting
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16/08: science fiction as peg
“The very fact that it’s debated about should end the discussion.” I love that line by guy gavriel kay. He’s discussing fights about how to distinguish between fantasy and science fiction (but it works for so many things…) “The very fact that it can be seen in ambivalent or complex ways suggests that whatever slot you tag onto it, there’s going to be an element of square peg/round hole.”
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10/08: science fiction as self fulfilling prophecy
SF can have a disturbing relationship to mainstream culture, an element of self-fulfilling prophecy. William Gibson (considered by most to be the originator of cyberpunk) remarks:
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07/08: science fiction as perspective
Science fiction can be a more fun way of getting the sense of perspective that reading history or anthropology can also give. The world has been not-this-way and will again be not-this-way. Other possibilities exist. We don’t know what exactly will change, or how. Things don’t develop in straight lines (or in lines at all). And the multiplicity of visions, the mere fact of many ideas and styles of describing how things will change, the plethora of books and stories and ways of envisioning the future, is a reminder that there is not one correct answer.One of the many stories that gave me this sense that things could be deeply different is
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