Science fiction

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?"

the female characters complaint relates to girls generally being discouraged from sci-fi i guess. but there aren't enough female characters for good and bad to be defined v well. what about all the terrible male characters etc.

Also this ^ is true for every genre besides sci fi as well.

that doesnt mean it's not true of scifi

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 don't agree about the genre thing Alex, it lumps together really disparate works in ways that I don't find helpful, and sometimes it acts as a barrier to keep people inside it as well as outside it?"

The barriers that kept people in it allowed for a degree of creativity that wouldn't have occured if they were writing short fiction for the Atlantic or the Saturday Evening Post of whatever.

Ray Bradbury used to write for Collier's!

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

"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.

I'd argue that SF writing has become wayyyyyy more nichified these days

xpost

But I won't, I'll just say it and you'll have to accept it

"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.

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'.

There are plenty of woman sci-fi writers (and fans) from the earliest days.

plenty as in enough?

and are you suggesting sci-fi is no more male character-orientated than other genres? was it ever?

(gotta go now tho, back in the morning)

has anyone done a scifi abuse memoir yet?

Plenty enough to undermine the argument that it's exclusively the province of a bunch of dudes.

"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?

"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.

B-b-ut Alex, what is the sci-fi equivalent of the cozy?

has anyone done a scifi abuse memoir yet?

hmm, Joe Haldeman to thread.

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.

B-b-ut Alex, what is the sci-fi equivalent of the cozy?

maybe Time Traveler's Wife or And She Crawled Across the Table?

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.

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

both are pretty obvious attempts at genre-splicing though

xp

not sure who would really fit under this, maybe Ballard

not really

leguin comes to mind

btw there is a whole convention here dedicated to feminist sci-fi

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.

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.

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.

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

god I have to read more of these authors and get out of my LCD pulp whore rut

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.

(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.

And I think the general perception of scifi is that it is all hard stuff. Or cheesy space operas. (xp to self)

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.

^^^ Shakey's got it.

Speaking of space operas, Tom Disch called this "space opera gone to heaven."

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.

appleseed is awesome dude xpost

I'm liking it so far. It's kind of rough sledding because it's so dense, but in a good way.

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?"

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?

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.

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!

Flash Gordon
Doctor Who
Buck Rogers

to name a couple.

Hari Seldon, Lazarus Long, Ender Wiggin, HAL9000,