But I won't, I'll just say it and you'll have to accept it
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:04 (fifteen years ago) link
"yeah it's MORE the case with sci-fi, just as there are more women in rock n' roll or R&B than in electronic/dance"
There are plenty of woman sci-fi writers (and fans) from the earliest days. This idea that sci-fi is a straight boys club is flat wrong.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:05 (fifteen years ago) link
but the argument that there's not enough female characters in scifi for us to determine whether they really are written poorly is, uh, revealing
i'm just saying, this is not sci-fi's fault! surely no-one is thinking 'this character sucks and thus has ruined the entire genre for me'.
― Bondzilla vs Mechaholmes (blueski), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:05 (fifteen years ago) link
There are plenty of woman sci-fi writers (and fans) from the earliest days.
plenty as in enough?
― Bondzilla vs Mechaholmes (blueski), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:08 (fifteen years ago) link
and are you suggesting sci-fi is no more male character-orientated than other genres? was it ever?
― Bondzilla vs Mechaholmes (blueski), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:09 (fifteen years ago) link
(gotta go now tho, back in the morning)
has anyone done a scifi abuse memoir yet?
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:11 (fifteen years ago) link
Plenty enough to undermine the argument that it's exclusively the province of a bunch of dudes.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:12 (fifteen years ago) link
"and are you suggesting sci-fi is no more male character-orientated than other genres? was it ever?"
That's a difficult characterization to make. What genres? Since when? Some of the earliest sci-fi adventure stories are definitely very very macho. But compared to mysteries? Or crime fiction? Or even conventional literature?
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:15 (fifteen years ago) link
"but the argument that there's not enough female characters in scifi for us to determine whether they really are written poorly is, uh, revealing."
Except it's basically nonsense.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, January 27, 2009 6:03 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
that's what im saying.
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
B-b-ut Alex, what is the sci-fi equivalent of the cozy?
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:19 (fifteen years ago) link
hmm, Joe Haldeman to thread.
― WmC, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:21 (fifteen years ago) link
love science-fiction because it deals with and explores the need for humans to both come to terms with and improve the conditions of their existence at the highest level
I've always seen scifi as more about the technology that about the characters. As already noted, there are countless examples of shittily drawn or cliched charactets in scifi, but that's never bothered me as long as the book is full of wicked radical tech ideas, dude. OTOH a well-drawn, character based story in which the future world is merely a backdrop, doesn't interest me nearly as much (not sure who would really fit under this, maybe Ballard?)
IOW it's about the ideas, not the characters or the writing, hence the lack of universal appeal, not everyone is interested in giant spaceships and super smart AIs n shit.
Maybe this is true to an extent for all genre fiction? Perhaps characters are more important in e.g. detective fiction, since obviously the stories have to revolve around people; but still, it won't sell if you don't have a decent central mystery.
― talk me down off the (ledge), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:23 (fifteen years ago) link
maybe Time Traveler's Wife or And She Crawled Across the Table?
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:25 (fifteen years ago) link
yeah Alex OTM - female characters abound in sci-fi, and writers/fans don't seem to be lacking either.
of course I say this as someone who is married to a woman who has collected everything Ann McCaffrey has ever written since she was a little girl lolz
x-posts
― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:27 (fifteen years ago) link
both are pretty obvious attempts at genre-splicing though
xp
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:27 (fifteen years ago) link
not sure who would really fit under this, maybe Ballard
not really
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:28 (fifteen years ago) link
leguin comes to mind
― Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:29 (fifteen years ago) link
btw there is a whole convention here dedicated to feminist sci-fi
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:29 (fifteen years ago) link
sheckley
"OTOH a well-drawn, character based story in which the future world is merely a backdrop, doesn't interest me nearly as much (not sure who would really fit under this, maybe Ballard?)"
I'd actually say that a lot of Dick is like this.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Leguin's more like a sociologist but to say that the worlds/backdrops in the Dispossessed or Left Hand of Darkness are not the REAL characters/focus of the novels is sorta uhhhh. Ballard clearly big on how environment shapes people as well, that's kind of his whole schtick.
― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Oh some of Ballard's short stories are definitely about the ideas, but The Vermillion Sands stuff is all about the characters imo. Delany as well, e.g. "Driftglass", puffed on the back of my collection as "one of the three finest science fiction stories ever written", could pretty much have been written about a coal mining community 200 years ago.
― talk me down off the (ledge), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:31 (fifteen years ago) link
PKD never cared about technology, really - agree that the tropes of sci-fi were used primarily so he could explore metaphysics and his own psychological issues/fascinations
― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:31 (fifteen years ago) link
god I have to read more of these authors and get out of my LCD pulp whore rut
― Barack You Like A Husseincane (HI DERE), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:31 (fifteen years ago) link
Admittedly this character based scifi is a huge and well respected part of the genre, I just prefer the hard stuff. Egan, Reynolds, I guess even Clarke and Asimov.
― talk me down off the (ledge), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:33 (fifteen years ago) link
(multi x-post)Detective fiction has some incidental benefits to fall back on that can make it tolerable to good even when it's not great. One being local color, whether it be dirty New York City subways or fancy meals in Sicily or dreary Scandinavian winters. Sci-fi, when it's not good, can be really, really bad. For every "Scanners Live In Vain" or "Roadside Picnic" there's ... a bunch of other stuff.
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:35 (fifteen years ago) link
And I think the general perception of scifi is that it is all hard stuff. Or cheesy space operas. (xp to self)
― talk me down off the (ledge), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:35 (fifteen years ago) link
I've always seen scifi as more about the technology that about the characters. As already noted, there are countless examples of shittily drawn or cliched charactets in scifi, but that's never bothered me as long as the book is full of wicked radical tech ideas, dude
This is sorta true for me with the caveat that its not just the tech ideas that appeal to me - its a more general conceptual freedom that I appreciate it. Like, not just the technical ideas, but the range of social/political/metaphysical/literary ideas that are foregrounded in sci-fi. It goes back to that "sci-fi is the 'what if...?'"-oriented genre quote - sci-fi for a long time just seemed to present a wilder range of possibilities than other forms of fiction. As long as the ideas are provocative, I am willing to slog through a fair amound of poor prose or stock characters or what-have-you.
― Courtney Love's Jew Loan Officer (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:39 (fifteen years ago) link
^^^ Shakey's got it.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:40 (fifteen years ago) link
Speaking of space operas, Tom Disch called this "space opera gone to heaven."
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:41 (fifteen years ago) link
As long as the ideas are provocative, I am willing to slog through a fair amound of poor prose or stock characters or what-have-you.
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:46 (fifteen years ago) link
appleseed is awesome dude xpost
― Lamp, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:47 (fifteen years ago) link
I'm liking it so far. It's kind of rough sledding because it's so dense, but in a good way.
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 18:49 (fifteen years ago) link
Walters fidgeted with his lapel and poured himself another bourbon. His visitor sat across the desk, waiting for an answer with almost inhuman patience. Finally Walters looked up and scowled - "What, you think you're the only one on Terra with problems?"
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:22 (fifteen years ago) link
i can think of iconic characters in other genres--sam spade, philip marlowe, allan quartemain etc—but are there any really iconic SF characters OUTSIDE of stuff like star wars?
― s1ocki, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:25 (fifteen years ago) link
there are too many to count
in any case:
Remembering Thomas Disch
http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/crowley.php
The theme of the conference that year was “The Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State.” Many of the attending writers denied that the state or any collective could have an imagination; Mailer, however, stated that the imagination of the American state could be shown in the project of reaching the moon, which was both imaginative and collective. I don’t know if Tom Disch heard him say that, but his opening remarks at our panel were similar and yet more far-reaching. If the state—the American state particularly—could be said to have an imagination, he said, it lay in the plans and projects of all the middle-level technocrats and engineers and scientists not only of NASA but of the RAND Corporation and DARPA and the science institutes, whose speculations would become plans that the state might enact. And what writers, he asked, shaped their imaginations? What had they read as boys (almost all of them were men)? Why, science fiction: a kind of writing that, to a degree greater than any other, posits worlds different from our own that we believe are possible and think we might bring about.
― Milton Parker, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:27 (fifteen years ago) link
I've always seen scifi as more about the technology that about the characters.
My favourite aspect is the mechanics of imagined societies rather than the technology per se (of course, technological advances are usually a huge part of what makes these societies different to ours). But yeah, SF is not 'about' characters the way many other forms of fiction are - although it does help if they're not completely one dimensional!
― chap, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Flash GordonDoctor WhoBuck Rogers
to name a couple.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:28 (fifteen years ago) link
Hari Seldon, Lazarus Long, Ender Wiggin, HAL9000,
― WmC, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Jerry Cornelius.
― chap, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:30 (fifteen years ago) link
Gully Foyle is my name And Terra is my nation Deep space is my dwelling place The stars my destination
― Jarlrmai, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:31 (fifteen years ago) link
John Carter, Gully Foyle,
ha, xpost
― WmC, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:32 (fifteen years ago) link
Captain Nemo to go pretty far back.
― chap, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:33 (fifteen years ago) link
Deckard, Paul Atreides. But I think there is a good point here, if you look at any of those "best sci-fi books of all-time" lists, I bet the characters aren't the first thing that comes to mind (I just googled for a couple of said lists and couldn't remember the names of any characters in, say, The Man in the High Castle).
― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
Even Frankenstien's Monster.
― chap, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:34 (fifteen years ago) link
"I bet the characters aren't the first thing that comes to mind"
Except for Stars, Demolished Man, Fury!, etc.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:35 (fifteen years ago) link
Or Neuromancer, Book of the New Sun.
― Alex in SF, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:38 (fifteen years ago) link
I don't know...even in Ringworld, as hard-science as it is, I think of Louis Wu as quickly as I think of "a terraformed ring around a star".
― WmC, Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:40 (fifteen years ago) link
Even Frankenstien's Monster
― lemmy tristano (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 27 January 2009 19:41 (fifteen years ago) link