Science fiction

I learned today that there is Schindler's List fan fiction

And Samuel R Delany.

xpost to self

I skipped on Ursula, even though I like the Earthsea books, because of her somewhat dodgy politics - kind of plays into Dom's 'reject the alien' fantasies.

I don't know I thought the politics of "The Left Hand of Darkness" and "The Dispossessed" were actually quite interestingly nuanced. Then again it's years since I read them and that was against a background of wacko Heinleinian politics.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s236/mezxspectrum/kpouterspacers.jpg

I don't remember any stuff like that in LeGuin either, they seemed very considered to me, but it's been years since I've read them also.

i always liked how ged had nice chestnut skin and the baddies were all ghostly white

strickly speakin that's fantasy though, not science fiction

"speculative fiction"

strickly speakin that's fantasy though, not science fiction

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 15:47 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Do you see major differences beyond the cosmetic?

She has written a lot of actual no-denying-it Science Fiction as well though.

xpost - yes.

Although the lines between the two do blur on occasion.

Was just thinking of Left Hand of Darkness as a kind of reject-yr-gut-impulse-to-reject-the-alien book, a theme I'd say is considerably more prevalent more in written SF than the basic reject-the-alien one. I guess I'm vaguely snobbish towards TV sci-fi in that I might tell someone I liked science fiction and not count really that stuff, even though that's probably the default meaning for most people with it in their livejournal interests etc, and I would suspect it of having a considerably worse ratio of blast-the-aliens cowboys-in-space stuff.

(I do see differences between fantasy and SF, though obviously I can't say that in a post starting w. Ursula Le Guin without noting that the lines would be very blurred even in what I consider the good stuff, especially 60s-70s before fantasy and maybe sci-fi too completely hived off into its/their own genre(s) that nobody else wanted to touch. Maybe it's just snobbery again but SF = about possibilities, about "if our universe changed in these crazy but not completely impossible ways, or turned out to have worked in them all along, what does that mean about us? and since human psychology stays basically the same -- PS if not, why not -- where would it take us?", vs fantasy's retreat into cosy if gory imagined world of impossibilities, romantic heroism, etc. And to join that up with my first-paragraph elitism, in some ways TV SF seems kind of more fantasy than SF, future/space just an excuse to declare technology functionally indistinguishable from magic, have epic multi-century feudal wars and cloud palaces and beautiful princesses...)

God knows why I've bothered typing or even thinking this. I await a one-line shred-ripping of my misplaced and overlong earnestness and then some c+p slash, or maybe just a prompt thread death.

"I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style. "I guess we all feel alone sometimes." Jesse ran a slender hand through his long, dark hair, cut in the fashionable mullet style.

fantasy = magic wardrobe
sci fi = spaceship

or

fantasy = goblins
sci fi = martians

dom you're right that martians/spaceship or goblins/wardrobe can perform the same kind of functions in a story (portal to another world; what you find once you get there) and that the differences are largely differences of ambience and tone but ambience and tone are a big part of what any fiction is all about

i have just finished doing a radio series on golden age sci-fi pulp stories, despite knowing virtually nothing about them, so forgive me for going on and on here in possible the wrong direction completely but it seems to me that "classic" sci fi was all about a hero or group of heroes applying their rationality to some disturbance or alien thing (something star trek took up with gusto at the exact moment that this model of sci fi started losing its currency in the sharp blast of "new wave" story which tended towards INNER space and psychology); these classic stories were also hobbled, depending on your point of view, by having the short story as their dominant mode and thus relied heavily on short story tactics like the twist ending, which can feel cheap

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/7c/Wolfe_shadow_&_claw.jpg/202px-Wolfe_shadow_&_claw.jpg
does this count? it just arrived from amazon.

the first four of those Gene Wolfe Severian books are fucking excellent.

Actually that's a classic case of the lines between SF and fantasy being blurred, quite deliberately too.

i have just finished doing a radio series on golden age sci-fi pulp stories, despite knowing virtually nothing about them, so forgive me for going on and on here in possible the wrong direction completely but it seems to me that "classic" sci fi was all about a hero or group of heroes applying their rationality to some disturbance or alien thing (something star trek took up with gusto at the exact moment that this model of sci fi started losing its currency in the sharp blast of "new wave" story which tended towards INNER space and psychology); these classic stories were also hobbled, depending on your point of view, by having the short story as their dominant mode and thus relied heavily on short story tactics like the twist ending, which can feel cheap

-- Tracer Hand, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 16:33 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

In these stories, as a rule, is the foreign element eventually educated or destroyed?

If that's your angle, Dom, you're probably better looking at sub-Tolkein sword-and-sorcery trilogies, and even then you might be reaching a bit.

no

xpost

Dom I don't understand quite what you're saying, any chance you could spell it out in broader brush strokes?

So far the most batshit fantasy world on this thread is the one where The Sopranos isn't getting enough critical attention.

Haha.

So far the most batshit fantasy world on this thread is the one where The Sopranos isn't getting enough critical attention.

-- Matt DC, Tuesday, 3 June 2008 16:44 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

I'm not talking about critical attention! I'm talking about academic study.

You people are so dismissive of what you don't understand, which is why I'm arguing _against_ a culturally hegmonic approach to what is taken from popular culture into the academic field. I'm trying to help you.

Helpful people are a nuisance.

Sci-fi is pabulum for 12 year old girls.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22the+sopranos%22&hl=en&lr=

I really can't believe there's a disproportionate amount of SF being studied in academia, unless you're talking about backwater US schools that offer majors in Klingon.

in "the tactful saboteur" by frank herbert, the foreign element is a species with five genders. this species' family unit is made up of a representative of each of these genders, and "head of the household" status passes around the circle every couple of years, effectively changing the gender of the person who has it, or gives it up. the intricacy and subtlety of this arrangement prompts the human protagonist of the story to finagle one of these family units into the head of a powerful government department on the basis that their knowledge and tact makes them a better candidate than any of the available humans. embarrassingly for this species, the only way he can do this is by revealing the secrets of their "ego transfer" in an open courtroom, which is apparently akin to describing each moment of a rimjob

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,920 for "the sopranos". (0.12 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 18,300 for "star trek". (0.08 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 26,800 for "star wars". (0.22 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 851 for goodfellas. (0.15 seconds)
xxp

you'd think this story would be, uh, "eaten up" by gender studies courses but no

xpost

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=%22elephant+shitting+on+the+floor+in+blue+peter%22&btnG=Search

Real critical underappreciation.

star trek: 1966
star wars: 1977

sopranos: 1999
goodfellas: 1990

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,210 for "buffy the vampire slayer". (0.20 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 744 for "the breakfast club". (0.18 seconds)

"Buffy" is pretty bad I must admit. Most/nearly all TV/film SF I don't like, personally.

If you're arguing that taking geekish/"cult" TV/film into "serious" academia is ridiculous, then you might have a point worth expanding on there. So it might be worth expanding on it, Dom.

nerds be goin into academia. so what?

the university of google!

"so what" is a perfectly valid response, I agree.

The ridiculous number of people emotionally-invested in making Buffy seem cleverer than it actually is always astounds me.

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,650 for "film noir". (0.09 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,870 for "professional wrestling". (0.13 seconds)

You people are so dismissive of what you don't understand, which is why I'm arguing _against_ a culturally hegmonic approach to what is taken from popular culture into the academic field. I'm trying to help you.

-- Dom Passantino,

But Captain Passantino! What is this human thing you call critcal discourse?

Jesus Dom.

I can't write an extended post at the moment, but I think this "Why professional wrestling makes for a more informed viewer than science fiction" thing needs expanding on. I will come back later.

Results 1 - 10 of about 79 for "stone cold steve austin".
Results 1 - 10 of about 64 for "ashlee simpson"

Stone Cold Steve Austin had America's biggest selling t-shirt of the 1990s. The fact that he is only mentioned in 79 academic texts is another example of the failings of modern universities.

uh, I would think that the fact that he's mentioned in as many as 79 academic texts is a stronger example of the failings of modern universities

Results 1 - 10 of about 417 for "hulk hogan"
Results 1 - 10 of about 316 for "daleks".

Check that out.

Why so?

Results 1 - 10 of about 948 for "barry bonds". (0.17 seconds)

And that's from a sportsman who plays a (in world terms) minority sport. Stone Cold Steve Austin was the second biggest grossing US performer in the history of one of the few sports (alongside football, boxing, and track athletics) that has a legitimate worldwide fanbase.

xp

Results 1 - 1 of 1 for "jimmy bullard".

BINGO!