Science fiction as a uniquely American industry
Martin Wisse
Thomas Disch's study of the cultural impact of science fiction. It is an
interesting read, even if I disagree with a lot of it.
One of the earliest statements I disagree with and one I would like
y'all to opine about is the following:
"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
Detroit, but most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
future represented by SF writers continues to be an American future. It
isn't only Oz that is Kansas in disguise; the whole Galactic Imperium is
simply the American Dream (or Nightmare) writ large. British SF writers
decorated their stories with American slang just as their rock stars
imitated American accents. When French film directors like Truffaut and
Besson make SF movies, they set them in American cities."
This does not make sense to me. Sure, science fiction as a gerne really
started with Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (an immigrant from
Luxembourg, btw), but certainly it has taken root elsewhere as well. It
is silly to say there isn't a separate sf culture in the UK or in Japan,
even if both are influenced by US science fiction. Certainly writers
like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Ian Banks or Ken MacLeod are more than
just pale imitations of American writers. If science fiction disappeared
from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
Japan.
What do you think?
Martin Wisse
--
Anime fandom has a "sub vs. Dub" thing.
-
Right, throbbing reggae music versus erotic submissives. A fairly common controversy.
Demain Phillips & Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rasseff
David Kennedy
> [Science fiction is American - discuss]
I'm putting that down as rubbish too. Even within American SF it's
hard to identify 'American' elements - much of the most interesting
SF is always pushing something outside of the current societal
norms. As for its success abroad, I think we can certainly agree
that British SF is very much alive, and very well, and with a long
history and a huge influence. As for foreign SF, I regretfully
Am Rubbish With Languages, and cannot comment, but there's an
obvious influence from other cultures - the Japanese future/present
is practically a default setting for many sub-genres.
--
David Kennedy
www.dkennedy.org
Damien R. Sullivan
>"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
>been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
Except to Britain (Jo Walton, Ken MacLeod, Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds,
Charlie Stross, others) and Australia (Greg Egan, Damien Broderick, probably
others) and Poland (Stanislaw Lem, not that I know of any others)
>Detroit, but most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
>future represented by SF writers continues to be an American future. It
It's not clear what that means. Certainly there's lots of SF without direct
American dominance, or where America is no longer relevant.
There's also a Standard SF Morality involving individual freedom and respect
for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain, might
dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full democracy in
the modern era.
There's been a strong libertarian streak in SF, which does owe its strength
(though not all of its intellectual origins) to US political feeling. But
it's hardly exclusive.
>from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
>Japan.
I admit I don't know anything about non-English SF. Well, I know Japan puts
out a lot of SF anime and manga. But France? I am ignorant.
-xx- Damien X-)
Jay Jeong
> future represented by SF writers continues to be an American future. It
> isn't only Oz that is Kansas in disguise; the whole Galactic Imperium is
> simply the American Dream (or Nightmare) writ large.
For this, I tend to agree with him.(though I didn't agree on many of what he
said in the book either) It's true that a lot of SF authers, especially
prolific ones are American-Yeh, there're others from UK, Canada, Austrailia,
China etc, but still, so many of what I read have been American stories
based on American culture and American viewpoint. Of course many SF are
about world eons away, where there's no American, sometimes no earth
anymore, but the important thing is that the very auther who _write_ it
usually can't escape his/her background. Whatever and wherever they write
about, they usually, and should, write about _what they know_ , which is
America. And most readers don't notice it because a)they are American
themself b)they are used to it. I think what Disch meant was not that all SF
were American ones but that most were simply never written about anything
else.
--
Other people may be richer than science fiction people, or more important,
or more famous, or more beautiful, or more glamorous, or more successful.
But we have the best dreams.
-Gardner Dozois, A Misspent Life?
MSN Messanger: jaysj83 at hotmail.com
Mike Williams
> I admit I don't know anything about non-English SF. Well, I know
> Japan puts out a lot of SF anime and manga. But France? I am
> ignorant.
Jules Verne, Pierre Boulle (Planet of the Apes)
BPRAL22169
>This does not make sense to me. Sure, science fiction as a gerne really
>started with Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (an immigrant from
>Luxembourg, btw), but certainly it has taken root elsewhere as well.
What Disch has to say is not so much "untrue" as it is exaggerated.
Bill
Doug Palmer
> [Thomas Disch] "Science fiction is one of the few American industries
> that has neer been transplanted abroad with any success. ..."
On first blush, this is obvious rubbish. Quite apart from the distinct
voice of British SF, there's the little matter of the nationality of
people like Jules Verne or H G Wells.
On second thoughts, though, SF as a specialist genre (or "industry") does
seem to be a more strongly American concept. British writers, in
particular, seem to be much more comfortable moving between the mainstream
and genres. (Eg. Kingsley Amis or Iain Banks or Michael Moorcock.) Since
Disch would be one of the (IMO few) US candidates for this sort of
fluidity, I'm not sure what to make of this.
--
Doug Palmer http://www.charvolant.org/~doug do...@charvolant.org
Mark
I think it's based on a confusion of origins. So much of "American"
culture is steeped in Europhile borrowings over the last century. I
mean, take the idea of the Galactic Empire as served up in most Golden
Age SF--that's not American in any political sense. It's British,
with a smattering of Spanish imperialism thrown in, and regurgitated
as a mongrel kind of Libertarian Autocracy(!).
Thge late 20th century flowering of SF around the world certainly
seems to have American seeds, though--but I think Disch goes too far
in suggesting that European SF is strictly immitating: they took the
forms and used them to make distinctly regional (if that's the right
word) statements. I think Lem, at least, is a voice quite distinct
from American SF, and Ballard can be seen as an outsiders critique of
American SF (and culture).
So I think he has a point about the "form" of SF being American (I
think British SF of the 50s and 60s reads quite different from
American), but it's an error to make that claim that it is
fundamentally American.
(Of course, after WWII, American culture was hugely popular, and
immitation was rampant. On the other hand, a lot of European
"culture", in the form of art and fashion, came back to the States
during the 50s because it was relatively cheap.)
Disch overstates a great deal in that book--I think in order to spur
debate. Still.
Mark
author Of:
COMPASS REACH
METAL OF NIGHT
PEACE & MEMORY
REMAINS (forthcoming)
www.marktiedemann.com
Mike Williams
> most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
>> future represented by SF writers continues to be an American future.
>> It isn't only Oz that is Kansas in disguise; the whole Galactic
>> Imperium is simply the American Dream (or Nightmare) writ large.
>
> For this, I tend to agree with him.(though I didn't agree on many of
> what he said in the book either) It's true that a lot of SF authers,
> especially prolific ones are American-Yeh, there're others from UK,
> Canada, Austrailia, China etc, but still, so many of what I read have
> been American stories based on American culture and American
> viewpoint.
If you're choosing to read American books over those from authors from other
parts of the gobe, then that is going to colour (sorry: color) your
perceptions.
Peter D. Tillman
mtied...@earthlink.net (Mark) wrote:
> mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote
> > At the moment I am busy (re)reading _The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of_,
> > Thomas Disch's study of the cultural impact of science fiction. It is an
> > interesting read, even if I disagree with a lot of it.
> Disch overstates a great deal in that book--I think in order to spur
> debate. Still.
I remember picking up this book and being so annoyed and irritated by
his exagerrations-for-effect that I put it down, never to return. IMS,
it got some stinging reviews from ordinarily level-headed folks, so my
reaction wasn't uncommon.
[isfdb's] Huh. He's still crankin' out the shorts. I haven't read much
of his fiction, but what I've read didn't appeal to me, and is
completely gone from memory now. I vaguely recall he was aggressively
new-wave literary in those days.
Cheers -- Pete Tillman
Phillip Thorne
>>[...] from the USA today, it would still be going strong in
On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, dasu...@cs.indiana.edu (Damien R. Sullivan)
wrote:
>I admit I don't know anything about non-English SF. Well, I know
>Japan puts out a lot of SF anime and manga. [...]
Much of the anime is based on manga (for commercial reasons --
ready-made viewer base and visual designs), but some of it is based on
novels: "Crest of the Stars," the mammoth "Legend of Galactic Heroes"
(both serious galactic-empire space-opera), "Irresponsible Captain
Tylor" (comedy, but anime frequently combines comedy and drama very
effectively)...
...and even "The Dirty Pair." You thought those skimpy uniforms were
fan-service? Nope -- they're in the novel. The first one is
available in English translation at:
http://igarashi.burst.net/dp/novels/novels.htm
There's also the two "Vampire Hunter D" movies, reportedly based on a
series of SF-horror that's reached, I've heard, #17. "VHD: Bloodlust"
*very* effectively conveys the world c.11,000 AD, with "look, it's
another piece of lost ancient technology that just screams OLD!"
abounding. The movie does, anyway -- I can't speak for the written
source.
Manga on their own can be very effective SF, and carry fairly heavy
themes. For instance, Hayao Miyazaki's "Nausicaa of the Valley of the
Wind" (available as a four-volume trade paperback compilation from
Viz), which is something like _Dune_ but with less religion. Or sand.
If you've seen the movie adaptation, the manga (which, structurally,
truly rates the epithet "graphic novel") has *a lot* more.
Japan also *imports* American written SF, of course. For example,
here's the cover of the Japanese edition of Catherine Asaro's _Primary
Inversion_. Somebody needs to tell the artist that Jagernaut uniforms
don't *look* like that... they don't have red accents. :)
http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/soz.htp
/- Phillip Thorne ----------- The Non-Sequitur Express --------------------\
| org underbase ta thorne www.underbase.org It's the boundary |
| net comcast ta pethorne site, newsletter, blog conditions that |
\------------------------------------------------------- get you ----------/
Matt Hughes
>I think we can certainly agree
> that British SF is very much alive, and very well,
So is Canadian sf. Check out the SF Canada website at http://www.sfcanada.ca/
Matt Hughes
http://mars.ark.com/~mhughes/
Next novel, Black Brillion (Tor, November)
Current story, Mastermindless (F&SF, March)
Richard Shewmaker
> Jay Jeong wrote:
>>most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
<snip>
> If you're choosing to read American books over those from authors from other
> parts of the gobe, then that is going to colour (sorry: color) your
> perceptions.
:-)
If the addy is correct, Jay Jeong is in South Korea, and from what
I've seen in France and Italy, US SF is far more frequently translated
(or even simply shipped as is) than that of the UK. That may be the
case in SK also. Even in the US until recently it was pretty tough for
me to find UK SF (and usually long, long after it had been released in
the UK, perhaps due in part to the "cleansing process" in which those
troublesome linguistic and grammatical differences such as those Us
(see above) and mind-bending concepts like biros, bonnets and -- yes
-- plonk were exorcised); even now I'd guess half the UK books I read
don't appear here at all, except maybe in really cool bookstores (and
the best local one I know of is long gone -- wah!). Thank God for
Amazon UK, formerly Bookpages.
--
The Human Ton: "Your Tick won't come. He's sulking in his tent like a
guy from Chile."
Arthur: "Don't you mean Achilles?"
Handy: "You're making us look like jerks! I told you: read a book!"
-- "The Tick vs. Arthur's Bank Account," The Tick
Mike Williams
> Even in the US until recently it was pretty tough for
> me to find UK SF (and usually long, long after it had been released in
> the UK, perhaps due in part to the "cleansing process" in which those
> troublesome linguistic and grammatical differences such as those Us
> (see above) and mind-bending concepts like biros, bonnets and -- yes
> -- plonk were exorcised);
Yes all those mind-bending conceptual differences would be troubling to SF
readers in the US.
I can see a novel outline coalescing before my eyes: a mighty nation
protected from outside knowledge of the world by crack teams of editors. All
alternate forms of expression are eliminated by a group, let's call them
"The Ministry of Truth". Mmm let me go back to my desk and type this one up.
I think I'm onto a winner.
I prefer living in Australia where we have fairly equal access to both UK
and US titles, and of course Australian titles. I lived in the US for five
years and was astounded by the number of non-US writers in English who has
no presence there. Thank goodness for the regular drops from Amazon UK.
mike stone
>
>There's also a Standard SF Morality involving individual freedom and respect
>for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain,
>might
>dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full democracy
>in
>the modern era.
>
>There's been a strong libertarian streak in SF, which does owe its strength
>(though not all of its intellectual origins) to US political feeling. But
>it's hardly exclusive.
Indeed (as I have mentioned elsewhere) there is quite an old _British_
tradition in this area - notably in British _Juvenile_ sf
I grew up on stories by the likes of Patrick Moore, Angus MacVicar, and Captain
WE Johns, all of which had a distinctly negative attitude toward the
authorities. These were almost invariably shown as baddies, trying to close the
Lunar/Mars base down on economic grounds, or else to kick out the peaceful
scientists and turn it into a nuclear test site.
Perhaps the Johns books carried it furthest. His heroes had gone into space,
made contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation, and spent the next
half-dozen or so books gallivanting around the Galaxy in spacecraft borrowed
from the aliens, and at least once saved the Earth from destruction by a
runaway asteroid - all done from a private estate in the Scottish Highlands,
and kept carefully secret from the rest of the human race - because if the
governments of the world (or big business) got to hear they would surely use
the discoveries for evil ends
By the time I started discovering Eric Frank Russell (another Brit, BTW, though
he often used American settings for his yarns) I was already thoroughly
"primed" in his attitudes. When as a child (age just reaching double figures) I
sometimes made up "space stories" of my own, I almost invariably included a
line about "keeping the politicians out of it", a precaution whose necessity I
took for granted
For an example of the same thing in "grown up" sf, look at the Quatermass
films, which are contemporary with the stuff I've just discussed. Despite his
research being government funded, Q's relations with the authorities range from
cool to downright adversarial. See how Colonel Breen and the Minister are
portrayed in _Quatermass and the Pit_. The latter isn't even given a name, but
is just an anonymous personification of Big Bad Authority. The principal Good
Guys (though not always agreeing) are two scientists and a clergyman
All in all, I don't think the US (and certainly not the _1950s_ US) had
anything much to teach Britain where mistrust of authority was concerned.
Indeed, I get the impression that Americans, for all their lip service to
individualism, in practice are often more deferential to government than
Britons. Certainly, Tony Blair is getting a far rougher ride over Iraq than his
American organ grinder. But maybe I shouldn't pursue that any further - I'm not
looking for a flame war
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough England
Call nothing true until it has been officially denied
Richard Shewmaker
Oh, wow, you're in Australia. I've actually found at least two very
hard-to-find (online) UK prints in Australia, so I figured the flow of
UK SF to Australia was pretty darn good.
My most recent Australian read was Kim Wilkins' "Grimoire," which I
really liked. That reminds me, I meant to (and just did) order more of
her books. I'd also not be surprised if I've read Australian SF
without knowing it due to my book buying habits in used bookstores and
while traveling abroad.
--
"What is going on? Carmelita! The savages are shooting dogs at us!"
-- "Sidekicks Don't Kiss," The Tick
Eryk Remiezowicz
Użytkownik "Damien R. Sullivan" <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> napisał w
wiadomości news:bv1m0f$ud2$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu...
> mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote:
>
> >"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
> >been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
>
> Except to Britain (Jo Walton, Ken MacLeod, Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds,
> Charlie Stross, others) and Australia (Greg Egan, Damien Broderick,
probably
> others) and Poland (Stanislaw Lem, not that I know of any others)
>
respect
> for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain,
might
> dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full
democracy in
> the modern era.
There was a period in Polish sf, where most writers were concerned with the
current political situation, and wrote books about the bad totalitarian
political states imposed on humanity by Aliens, or a small group of people.
It was, of course, sf directed towards the fight for individual freedom,
but, I think, the reasons to write it were different, than in US.
Eryk
Vince D.
"Martin Wisse" <mwi...@cloggie.org> a écrit dans le message de
news:4034315e....@news.cis.dfn.de...
Gernsback, and started in the United States. Science fiction may be going
stronger in USA than in Europe, Europe has a heavy classical litteracy past.
Due to USA's youth, it may be more sold and represented in USA.
In my country (i.e. france), science fiction is widely considered as a
sub-culture and sub-litteracy for retarded ones (i'm proud to be retarded
so!). But there are many European science fiction writers, the only problem
is that European science fiction is not that much exported (lack of funds?
Censorship? Dunno!). For my part, I read a lot of American writers (who
wouldn't? They are the most easily found!), some British ones like Ballard,
Italian (Lino Aldani) and so on... I mostly read English and American
science fiction though (I am bilingual). I read also french science fiction
sometimes but the main problem is a printing problem, editors prefer
printing a "mainstream" science fiction book (like space operae) than a
speculative one, which will be harder to understand but is also one of the
goals of science fiction... Being speculative!
Last of it, I discovered that many British and American science fiction
writers can make a living out of their writing, french writers don't for
reasons explained above.
Vince D.
James Nicoll
Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote:
>
>>"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
>>been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
>
>Except to Britain (Jo Walton, Ken MacLeod, Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds,
>Charlie Stross, others) and Australia (Greg Egan, Damien Broderick, probably
>others) and Poland (Stanislaw Lem, not that I know of any others)
China, too, apparently. One of the posters on afh was talking about
Chinese tastes in SF.
snip
>There's also a Standard SF Morality involving individual freedom and respect
>for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain, might
>dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full democracy in
>the modern era.
I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
before the US did. The US is handicapped in this matter by the tragedy
of including the south in the original Union (and it's joined by Canada
in its legal treatment of women and natives, although we're slightly
better on the native front).
>There's been a strong libertarian streak in SF, which does owe its strength
>(though not all of its intellectual origins) to US political feeling. But
>it's hardly exclusive.
>
>>from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
>>Japan.
>
>I admit I don't know anything about non-English SF. Well, I know Japan puts
>out a lot of SF anime and manga. But France? I am ignorant.
There was a French editor at the Montreal World Fantasy Convention,
so there's at least enough SF there to keep one editor employed. I did get
the feeling it was somewhat insular, but the editor himself was a nice guy.
Anna from rasfc has talked about the Italian SF community, but not
in glowing terms.
Come to think of it, I ran across something in an upcoming anthology
that I hadn't seen before: a non-fantastic Spanish SF story, something where
the story was wed to technology and science rather than 'and then a miracle
happened'. Time cops, with a particularly irksome model for time travel (One
unique, alterable, history up to the point where the first time machine was
turned on, many-worlds after that) and a period of concern you don't see in
a lot of fiction: lead up to the Spanish Civil War.
--
"Precepts of religion. Every victory is a defeat. Every cut made is a wound
received. Every strength is a weakness. Every time you kill, you die."
In which case, he thought, clawing briars from in front of his face, the
enemy must be taking a right pounding, the poor buggers. [Memory, K.J. Parker]
James Nicoll
Peter D. Tillman <til...@aztec.asu.edu> wrote:
>In article <78b1aacb.04012...@posting.google.com>,
> mtied...@earthlink.net (Mark) wrote:
>> mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote
>
>> > At the moment I am busy (re)reading _The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of_,
>> > Thomas Disch's study of the cultural impact of science fiction. It is an
>> > interesting read, even if I disagree with a lot of it.
>
>> Disch overstates a great deal in that book--I think in order to spur
>> debate. Still.
>
>I remember picking up this book and being so annoyed and irritated by
>his exagerrations-for-effect that I put it down, never to return. IMS,
>it got some stinging reviews from ordinarily level-headed folks, so my
>reaction wasn't uncommon.
I think I pitched the book at about the point he was claiming
that nobody read _Frankenstein_ willingly.
Pete McCutchen
(Damien R. Sullivan) wrote:
>mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote:
>
>>"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
>>been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
>
>Except to Britain (Jo Walton, Ken MacLeod, Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds,
>Charlie Stross, others) and Australia (Greg Egan, Damien Broderick, probably
>others) and Poland (Stanislaw Lem, not that I know of any others)
Not to mention HG Wells and Arthur C. Clarke. Or even Mary Shelley.
--
Pete McCutchen
Evelyn C. Leeper
Given that Disch manages to misspell Olaf Stapledon's name (three times)
in THE DREAMS OUR STUFF IS MADE OF, I'm a bit skeptical of his knowledge
of British SF from the get-go.
--
Evelyn C. Leeper
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
Loyalty to petrified opinion never broke a chain
or freed a human soul. --Mark Twain
Jay Jeong
"Richard Shewmaker" <nos...@void.nul> wrote in message
news:4014C4BF...@void.nul...
> Mike Williams wrote:
>
> > Jay Jeong wrote:
> >>most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
>
> <snip>
>
> > If you're choosing to read American books over those from authors from
other
> > parts of the gobe, then that is going to colour (sorry: color) your
> > perceptions.
>
> :-)
>
> If the addy is correct, Jay Jeong is in South Korea, and from what
> I've seen in France and Italy, US SF is far more frequently translated
> (or even simply shipped as is) than that of the UK. That may be the
> case in SK also.
==> True, but the thing is that I don't _read_ translated books - I
_translate_ them. (I'm a Korean/English translater specialized in SF/Fantasy
field.)
And for UK SF and US SF, they aren't really different to Korean readers
anywa!
Peter Bruells
> At the moment I am busy (re)reading _The Dreams our Stuff is Made
> Of_, Thomas Disch's study of the cultural impact of science
> fiction. It is an interesting read, even if I disagree with a lot of
> it.
>
> One of the earliest statements I disagree with and one I would like
> y'all to opine about is the following:
>
> "Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
> been transplanted abroad with any success.
....
> This does not make sense to me. Sure, science fiction as a gerne really
> started with Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (an immigrant from
> Luxembourg, btw), but certainly it has taken root elsewhere as well. It
> is silly to say there isn't a separate sf culture in the UK or in Japan,
> even if both are influenced by US science fiction. Certainly writers
> like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Ian Banks or Ken MacLeod are more than
> just pale imitations of American writers. If science fiction disappeared
> from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
> Japan.
> What do you think?
He's both right and wrong at the same time. He's insofar right, that
SF *as an industry* is quite American, so cheap imports (as in comics,
a medium that for years was dominated by American conventions)
out-compete local developments. However, nearly all developed
natiions had some form of Science Fiction. British and French
examples have been quoted, but there were others as well,
i.e. Dominik, Laßwitz, and other writers producing both literary and
pul sf in Germany.
W/out US SF, these would've flourished.
James Nicoll
Matt Hughes <mhu...@mars.ark.com> wrote:
>David Kennedy <da...@dkennedy.org> wrote in message news:<401448a6$0$23464$cc9e...@news.dial.pipex.com>...
>
>>I think we can certainly agree
>> that British SF is very much alive, and very well,
>
>So is Canadian sf. Check out the SF Canada website at http://www.sfcanada.ca/
We have Canadian SF writers but outside of Quebec's publishing
industry doesn't CDN SF exist as an add-on for US SF?
This could be easily fixed by persuading the NYC publishing industry
to relocate to Elliot Lake, with its inexpensive housing, memorable airport
and only mildly heightened background radiation.
triumvir
There's also a sizeable amount of French, German, Italian, Belgian,
... SF comics. Much of what is produced in Europe never gets to the
US.
Mike Williams
> There's also a sizeable amount of French, German, Italian, Belgian,
> ... SF comics. Much of what is produced in Europe never gets to the
> US.
Oh yes - I positively drooled over the <<bandes-dessine>> titles I saw in
Paris. I have the tiny handful of "Valerian" volumes published in English
over the 35 year history of the series - noting that none have been
translated since the 1978 title "Les Heros de l'Equinoxe". For the
uninitiated: http://www.rationalmagic.com/Comics/Valerian.html , and heck,
if the Swedes and Danes can justify translating them for their markets
(http://www.stacken.kth.se/~maxz/valerian/albums.html), surely English rates
a chance...
--
Mike
Mike Williams
> And for UK SF and US SF, they aren't really different to Korean
> readers anywa!
Do you mean they don't perceive any cultural differences or writing
preoccupations? Or is - as you've hinted - simply that so few non-US titles
are being translated that they are not noticed?
------------------------------------------------------------
Minsky's Second Law: Don't just do something. Stand there.
Kai's Example Dilemma: A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
Kent Peterson
> started with Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (an immigrant from
> Luxembourg, btw), but certainly it has taken root elsewhere as well. It
> is silly to say there isn't a separate sf culture in the UK or in Japan,
> even if both are influenced by US science fiction. Certainly writers
> like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Ian Banks or Ken MacLeod are more than
> just pale imitations of American writers. If science fiction disappeared
> from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
> Japan.
Science fiction as it is generally discussed here is a thing of the
Anglosphere. Canada, the UK, Australia - they have a lot more in
common with the US than with the rest of the world. Outside of these
countries - with the notable exception of Japan - any SF authors are
few and far between.
Japanese anime is science fiction too, but it comes at some ideas from
radically different directions that are simply alien to most
english-language writers of SF. The two styles have been engaging in
a good deal of cross-fertilization and idea-sharing, and converging in
some respects, but there are still fundamental qualitative
differences. Why the Japanese have developed their own unique take on
SF concepts, when no other culture has done so, is a question that
would make for some great thesis papers.
As for France, there is very little indigenous science fiction there.
If you go to a bookshop in France and look for the SF section, it will
be far smaller than its counterpart in an American bookstore, and
practically every book on the shelf will be translated from the
English. Jules Verne being the major exception, and of course he
stopped writing a while ago. You've got Planet of the Apes, The Fifth
Element, and I remember reading a few old 1950s-era novels which had
French-speaking explorers being dominant in the galaxy - but these are
exceptions in a country that prefers to look backward (in literature
and otherwise) than forward. (This is no surprise and in tune with
their current politics; Verne wrote at the height of French global
power, it was natural then to look even farther outward. Modern
France is in retreat on practically every front, and frustrated
jealousy is not the right frame of mind in which to appreciate SF.)
Do the Indians write much SF? How about the Russians? There was
_Rite of Passage_ (although I don't know if Panshin was an emigrant
like Asimov or not), and _Aelita_, about good loyal Communists and a
Martian princess; I don't know of much else ... Latino SF? (I count
Philip Jose Farmer as American of Latino extraction, FWIW) Chinese?
Anything out of Germany since WW2? I'm not even going to ask about
the Arabs or sub-Saharan Africans.
The label "American" might be a bit too specific, but overall the
comment is correct: science fiction is a thing entirely bound to a
culture and worldview that we typically think of as being "American".
Craig Richardson
wrote:
>Jay Jeong wrote:
>> And for UK SF and US SF, they aren't really different to Korean
>> readers anywa!
>
>Do you mean they don't perceive any cultural differences or writing
>preoccupations? Or is - as you've hinted - simply that so few non-US titles
>are being translated that they are not noticed?
I think what he's getting at is that UK and US culture, despite the
level of contention on this group, are fundamentally similar. In the
"Anglosphere", we, being immersed in our own cultural variant, tend to
emphasize the differences to stress our own culture's uniqueness. But
Jay is 'way over there in a completely different culture, and the gulf
between there and here is wide. When you have fundamental
differences, the trivial ones kind of fade into the background.
--Craig
--
Craig Richardson (Homepage <http://crichard-tacoma.home.att.net>)
"Congressman Kucinich is holding up a pie chart, which is not truly
effective on radio." --NPR Pres. debate moderator Neal Conan
Tim McDaniel
Mark <mtied...@earthlink.net> wrote:
[the origins of the SF Galatic Empire]
>regurgitated as a mongrel kind of Libertarian Autocracy(!).
Thank you. I've never seen so succinct a description of the internal
politics of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
wrote:
>He's both right and wrong at the same time. He's insofar right, that
>SF *as an industry* is quite American, so cheap imports (as in comics,
>a medium that for years was dominated by American conventions)
?? That's an odd statement - I agree with the first half of your point
about SF as industry (I would have phrased it "as a marketing genre"),
but European comics, specifically French bandes désinées, come from
quite different cultural wellsprings than US comics.
David Cowie
>
> All in all, I don't think the US (and certainly not the _1950s_ US) had
> anything much to teach Britain where mistrust of authority was concerned.
But on the other hand, there is _The Kraken Wakes_ by John Wyndham. (pub.
1953). I read it a few months ago, and one of the things that struck me
was the characters' co-operative attitude to the official cover-up.
Broadcasters and journalists agreed to keep things quiet with barely any
discussion of whether or not this was a good thing. It may be relevant
here that Wyndham was a civil servant during the War.
The scientific characters in _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle (1957) were
also friendly with Authority. Any threat they may have made about going
public about the Cloud were, IIRC, only bargaining chips to get better
facilities for themselves.
Is this attitude common in Wyndham and Hoyle's oeuvre?
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Containment Failure + 1755:38
Tuvix
Is it possible that it's simply a device to lend a sense of reality to
the story? "This story really happened, but you never heard about it
because it was covered up."
Dreamer
"Tuvix" <rwh...@amanda.dorsai.org> wrote in message
news:Pine.GSO.4.53.04...@amanda.dorsai.org...
"I told you, they changed things so the government would let them make the
movie!"
"You mean the movie LIED???"
D
mike stone
>>
>> All in all, I don't think the US (and certainly not the _1950s_ US) had
>> anything much to teach Britain where mistrust of authority was concerned.
>
>But on the other hand, there is _The Kraken Wakes_ by John Wyndham. (pub.
>1953). I read it a few months ago, and one of the things that struck me
>was the characters' co-operative attitude to the official cover-up.
>Broadcasters and journalists agreed to keep things quiet with barely any
>discussion of whether or not this was a good thing. It may be relevant
>here that Wyndham was a civil servant during the War.
>The scientific characters in _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle (1957) were
>also friendly with Authority. Any threat they may have made about going
>public about the Cloud were, IIRC, only bargaining chips to get better
>facilities for themselves.
>Is this attitude common in Wyndham and Hoyle's oeuvre?
Can;t say about Hoyle, as I never really got into his later works
Re Wyndham, I can't recall many other stories of his where the situation arises
that way. In _Triffids_, the government has pretty much collapsed, and the hero
doesn't seem too keen on the self-appointed ones that replace it. The
authorities in _Chrysalids_ are thoroughly loathsome, but that's in a world
far removed from ours. In _Outward Urge_ various governments are there in the
background, but seem to be neither approved nor disapproved of but just
accepted, rather like the weather - In _Trouble With Lichen_ the British gov't
isn't shown as particularly wicked, but just ineffectual and not really in
control of anything. In _Web_ it doesn't really feature at all.
About the closest parallel to _Kraken_ is probably _The Midwich Cuckoos_. The
government is pretty successful in covering up the Dayout and its consequences,
and keeping the Children away from prying eyes. But there of course the parents
and local people generally have their own reasons for going along with the
cover up.
There are a couple of shorts in _Seeds Of Time_ which could be construed as
anti-government. In _Pillar To Post_ the hero is told that his society "died of
government - paternalism. The desire for order -- is natural, but the
achievement is fatal" and in _Wild Flower_ the old lady holds up a posy at the
jet planes and yells "You big bullies with your great clubs of smoke - this is
greater than all of you!" But I agree this attitude isn't as noticeable in
Wyndham as in some other authors - Arthur Clarke doesn't exhibit it much
either, though John Christopher sometimes does. But with them (and James White)
the government usually just doesn't feature in a big way, either for good or
ill.
Damien R. Sullivan
>But on the other hand, there is _The Kraken Wakes_ by John Wyndham. (pub.
>1953). I read it a few months ago, and one of the things that struck me
>was the characters' co-operative attitude to the official cover-up.
Like Stargate: SG-1, where the US government tells more to the Russians and
Chinese than it does to the US people?
-xx- Damien X-)
Damien R. Sullivan
> Not to mention HG Wells and Arthur C. Clarke. Or even Mary Shelley.
I was guessing oldies like Wells and Verne might not count, for some reason.
But Clarke's one of the classic Big Three (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein); he kind
of blows a hole in the whole original idea.
jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>In article <bv1m0f$ud2$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>>There's also a Standard SF Morality involving individual freedom and respect
>>for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain, might
>>dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full democracy in
>>the modern era.
>
> I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
>terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
I was afraid someone would pick on that. Yes, I think NZ had female suffrage
before the federal US (though I don't know about individual states -- Wyoming
jumped in early). OTOH, I thought the Constitution and Bill of Rights and "no
king! no king!" and explicit religious freedom even before 1787 (in parts) was
worth something, even if "full democracy" isn't the right label for that
something.
>of including the south in the original Union (and it's joined by Canada
>in its legal treatment of women and natives, although we're slightly
>better on the native front).
I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
> Come to think of it, I ran across something in an upcoming anthology
>that I hadn't seen before: a non-fantastic Spanish SF story, something where
My SF group recently read "Kalpa Imperial", by Angelica Gorodischer
(Argentinian) translated to english by Ursula K. LeGuin. An e-mail mentions
_Cosmos Latino_, an anthology of Spanish SF. (I haven't read either one.)
Plus Borges, if he's not foisted off into some other category.
-xx- Damien X-)
Tim McDaniel
>> I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
>>terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
>>of including the south in the original Union (and it's joined by Canada
>>in its legal treatment of women and natives, although we're slightly
>>better on the native front).
>
>I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
Pardon me, but I'm not following you: disqualify for what?
The Treaty of Waitangi 1840 gave the Maori British citizenship and
recognized Maori land rights. But given the Waitangi Tribunal and
<http://www.twm.co.nz/Tr_violn.html>, it looks like they were
oppressed, too, just in a lesser amount (four Maori seats in
Parliament in 1867, but that apparently worked as a *cap*).
But <http://history-nz.org/maori7.html> has a somewhat more positive
view.
<http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107834.html> says "New Zealand was
the world's first country to give women the right to vote (1893)".
Damien R. Sullivan
>>I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
>
>Pardon me, but I'm not following you: disqualify for what?
"Full democracy"; I didn't know when they had the vote.
>The Treaty of Waitangi 1840 gave the Maori British citizenship and
>recognized Maori land rights. But given the Waitangi Tribunal and
><http://www.twm.co.nz/Tr_violn.html>, it looks like they were
>oppressed, too, just in a lesser amount (four Maori seats in
>Parliament in 1867, but that apparently worked as a *cap*).
So, the Maori wouldn't disqualify NZ, not if they're in Parliament itself --
certainly wouldn't disqualify it relative to the US.
><http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107834.html> says "New Zealand was
>the world's first country to give women the right to vote (1893)".
http://www.lariat.org/LWV/ says
In 1869, Wyoming became the first territory of the United States to grant
female suffrage, and entered the union in 1890 as the first state where
women had the vote.
Not to take anything from NZ.
-xx- Damien X-)
Tim McDaniel
>So, the Maori wouldn't disqualify NZ, not if they're in Parliament
>itself -- certainly wouldn't disqualify it relative to the US.
Though for quite a bit of time, there was a property qualification on
voting, and since the Maori tended to be poorer ...
@hotmail.com.invalid Eric D. Berge
wrote:
>
>Try Jules Verne and Bernard Werber.
>
>Anybody else got recommendations? :)
I liked Philippe Ebly's series "Les Conqérants de L'Impossible", in
the Bibliothèque Verte edition, when I was a kid. Don't know how they
would hold up now.
James Nicoll
mike stone <mws...@aol.comnojunk> wrote:
>>From: David Cowie m...@privacy.net
>>But on the other hand, there is _The Kraken Wakes_ by John Wyndham. (pub.
>>1953). I read it a few months ago, and one of the things that struck me
>>was the characters' co-operative attitude to the official cover-up.
>>Broadcasters and journalists agreed to keep things quiet with barely any
>>discussion of whether or not this was a good thing. It may be relevant
>>here that Wyndham was a civil servant during the War.
>>The scientific characters in _The Black Cloud_ by Fred Hoyle (1957) were
>>also friendly with Authority. Any threat they may have made about going
>>public about the Cloud were, IIRC, only bargaining chips to get better
>>facilities for themselves.
>>Is this attitude common in Wyndham and Hoyle's oeuvre?
>
>Can;t say about Hoyle, as I never really got into his later works
In a number of them, the cover-up was strictly short term.
When a gigantic cloud blots out the sun, or the top of the atmosphere
catches fire or the galaxy explodes, people notice even if the press
says nothing.
mike stone
>I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
More than the Indians disqualify the US?
Vince D.
"Kent Peterson" too swiftly typed:
>
> Science fiction as it is generally discussed here is a thing of the
> Anglosphere. Canada, the UK, Australia - they have a lot more in
> common with the US than with the rest of the world. Outside of these
> countries - with the notable exception of Japan - any SF authors are
> few and far between.
>
than in every European country taken individually.
>
> Japanese anime is science fiction too, but it comes at some ideas from
> radically different directions that are simply alien to most
> english-language writers of SF. The two styles have been engaging in
> a good deal of cross-fertilization and idea-sharing, and converging in
> some respects, but there are still fundamental qualitative
> differences. Why the Japanese have developed their own unique take on
> SF concepts, when no other culture has done so, is a question that
> would make for some great thesis papers.
>
directly from a William Gibson book?
>
> As for France, there is very little indigenous science fiction there.
>
Ayerdhal, Maurice G. Dantec, Laurent Genefort, Serge Lehman, André Ruellan
(a.k.a Kurt Steiner), Jean Pierre Andrevon, Claude Avice (a.k.a Olivier
Sprigel, Pierre Barbet and David Maine), Valerio Evangelisti etc etc etc...
>
> If you go to a bookshop in France and look for the SF section, it will
> be far smaller than its counterpart in an American bookstore, and
> practically every book on the shelf will be translated from the
> English.
>
think that SF is a sub-literacy.
More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes both SF and Urban
Fantasy has never been edited as a SF writer because some literature critics
enjoyed what he wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
Most are translated from english because both US and UK have an exportation
market, france has not (turned both backward and inward).
>
>Jules Verne being the major exception, and of course he
> stopped writing a while ago. You've got Planet of the Apes, The Fifth
> Element, and I remember reading a few old 1950s-era novels which had
> French-speaking explorers being dominant in the galaxy - but these are
> exceptions in a country that prefers to look backward (in literature
> and otherwise) than forward. (This is no surprise and in tune with
> their current politics; Verne wrote at the height of French global
> power, it was natural then to look even farther outward. Modern
> France is in retreat on practically every front, and frustrated
> jealousy is not the right frame of mind in which to appreciate SF.)
>
getting old. There are more and more retired people and less and less
youngsters. When you know Jacques Chirac's age (french president) is 70, you
understand:
1°) Why france looks backward.
2°) The age of people who vote.
French global power was a colonial power at this time (late XIXth
century-Early XXth). So was UNITED KINGDOM! And European power began to fade
GLOBALLY at the end of WWII. Former colonies asked for independance and so
on... Check your history!
As I said, there are many European SF writers. The only problem is a
printing problem. Furthermore, they can't make a living out of their
writing.
>
> Do the Indians write much SF? How about the Russians? There was
> _Rite of Passage_ (although I don't know if Panshin was an emigrant
> like Asimov or not), and _Aelita_, about good loyal Communists and a
> Martian princess; I don't know of much else ... Latino SF? (I count
> Philip Jose Farmer as American of Latino extraction, FWIW) Chinese?
> Anything out of Germany since WW2? I'm not even going to ask about
> the Arabs or sub-Saharan Africans.
>
> The label "American" might be a bit too specific, but overall the
> comment is correct: science fiction is a thing entirely bound to a
> culture and worldview that we typically think of as being "American".
IMO, as Brian Aldiss said : "Science Fiction is the twentieth century
literature".
I don't think about it of being American more than European, it's just that
I can find more authors here in Europe.
P.S. : There's no capital f in the word france, I did this on purpose, i'll
rewrite it correctly when this country will deserve it.
Vince D.
triumvir
I used to read a lot of _Beatifica Blues_ a few years back
(Dutch/Flemish translation), pretty gritty stuff. Don't know how your
French is but here's a link if you're interested:
http://www.bdnet.com/S/genres.htm
and something else:
Eryk Remiezowicz
> It can't be denied that modern science fiction began thanks to Hugo
> Gernsback, and started in the United States. Science fiction may be going
> stronger in USA than in Europe, Europe has a heavy classical litteracy
past.
> Due to USA's youth, it may be more sold and represented in USA.
> In my country (i.e. france), science fiction is widely considered as a
> sub-culture and sub-litteracy for retarded ones (i'm proud to be retarded
> so!).
We've got the same problem in Poland. Sf lives in a ghetto, mainstream
critics just don't accept its existence. But it's our books that get sold
:-)
> But there are many European science fiction writers, the only problem
> is that European science fiction is not that much exported (lack of funds?
> Censorship? Dunno!).
Cultural differences, language problems, trouble with promotion of a new
author...
> Last of it, I discovered that many British and American science fiction
> writers can make a living out of their writing, french writers don't for
> reasons explained above.
>
> Vince D.
We've got in Poland two sf authors, who make a living out of their writing.
One is Stanislaw Lem, and the other one is an example, of the problems
mentioned above. He'll never make success in US&UK, although in Russia and
Czech he's immensely popular. Slavic languages just don't translate well
into English.
Eryk
Eryk Remiezowicz
> Do the Indians write much SF? How about the Russians? There was
> _Rite of Passage_ (although I don't know if Panshin was an emigrant
> like Asimov or not), and _Aelita_, about good loyal Communists and a
> Martian princess; I don't know of much else
Russian sf is blossoming. Lots of books, lots of great authors. Two years
ago Russian sf reached Polish market, and from what I've read (and heard),
Strugaccy brothers have worthy heirs.
Eryk
Peter Bruells
Yes, but Franco-Begian comics survived as a distinct industry in part
because of protection. Other markets, Germany being one of them,
didn't have these measures and simply imported: Apart from Kauka and
Mosaik, the German comic market with in the hands of US pamphlets and
Pilote reprints.
Rejnold Byzio
> We've got in Poland two sf authors, who make a living out of
> their writing. One is Stanislaw Lem, and the other one is an
> example, of the problems mentioned above. He'll never make
> success in US&UK, although in Russia and Czech he's
> immensely popular. Slavic languages just don't translate
> well into English.
Even if he will never be successful in the US, at least you could
have told us his name.
Eryk Remiezowicz
Uzytkownik "Rejnold Byzio" <rby...@netscape.net> napisal w wiadomosci
news:31ee9132130d5d8a...@ID-26282.news.dfncis.de...
Andrzej Sapkowski.
Eryk
Hallvard B Furuseth
>Pete wrote:
>> Not to mention HG Wells and Arthur C. Clarke. Or even Mary Shelley.
>
>>> respect for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world,
>>> especially Britain, might dispute those being "American", even if
>>> the US was the first full democracy in the modern era.
>>
>> I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
>> terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
>
> I was afraid someone would pick on that. Yes, I think NZ had female
> suffrage before the federal US (though I don't know about individual
> states -- Wyoming jumped in early). OTOH, I thought the Constitution
> and Bill of Rights and "no king! no king!" and explicit religious
> freedom even before 1787 (in parts) was worth something, even if "full
> democracy" isn't the right label for that something.
Of course it was worth something, but "full democracy" precicely what is
was _not_. Like most other places, it was rights and power to the
minority who mattered. Not for slaves, not for Indians, only partly for
women. Calling that "full democracy" is to confirm that all those
people really didn't matter.
--
Hallvard
Vince D.
"Eryk Remiezowicz" <eryk.rem...@pulapka.zachem.com.pl> a écrit dans le
message de news:bv5djn$kp5$2...@atlantis.news.tpi.pl...
of course (I should re-read Solaris). I'm aware that Europe is clutching at
her strong (and bothering) classical literature past.
For the Russian writers you mentionned above it is spelled Strougatsky or
Strugatsky (Boris and Arcady).
The misspelling of their names is an editor's misspelling.
Vince D.
Eryk Remiezowicz
years
> > ago Russian sf reached Polish market, and from what I've read (and
heard),
> > Strugaccy brothers have worthy heirs.
> >
> > Eryk
> >
> Just read your first post about SF authors in Poland, I know Stanislaw Lem
> of course (I should re-read Solaris). I'm aware that Europe is clutching
at
> her strong (and bothering) classical literature past.
> For the Russian writers you mentionned above it is spelled Strougatsky or
> Strugatsky (Boris and Arcady).
> The misspelling of their names is an editor's misspelling.
>
> Vince D.
>
No, it's just the way we write it in Polish :-) Sorry :-)
Eryk
Nancy Lebovitz
Evelyn C. Leeper <ele...@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>Given that Disch manages to misspell Olaf Stapledon's name (three times)
>in THE DREAMS OUR STUFF IS MADE OF, I'm a bit skeptical of his knowledge
>of British SF from the get-go.
That could have been a copy-editting/proofreading error.
Was Disch accurate about Stapledon's writing?
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Now, with bumper stickers
Using your turn signal is not "giving information to the enemy"
Rejnold Byzio
>>> One is Stanislaw Lem, and the other one is an example,
>>> of the problems mentioned above. He'll never make
>>> success in US&UK, although in Russia and Czech he's
>>> immensely popular. Slavic languages just don't
>>> translate well into English.
>>
>> Even if he will never be successful in the US, at least
>> you could have told us his name.
>
> Andrzej Sapkowski.
Yes, i've read two books of his Geralt cycle and really
liked them.
raycun
> think that SF is a sub-literacy.
Which is why Oryx and Crake didn't get nominated for the Booker. Oh
wait...
> More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes both SF and Urban
> Fantasy has never been edited as a SF writer because some literature critics
> enjoyed what he wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
Who published Grimus and Midnight's Children? A mainstream publisher
or a genre publisher? Who was Rushdie's first editor?
Ray
Vince D.
"raycun" wrote too fast:
> > More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes both SF and
Urban
> > Fantasy has never been edited as a SF writer because some literature
critics
> > enjoyed what he wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
>
> Who published Grimus and Midnight's Children? A mainstream publisher
> or a genre publisher? Who was Rushdie's first editor?
Grimus was edited in a science fiction collection (Lattès).
In france (remember? I live there), the paperback editions were Plon,
mainstream publisher.
The pocket editions were Presses Pocket which is both mainstream and SF but
this publisher has the mainstream books, and the SF books (silver covers),
and Fantastic and Horror (black covers) recognized with colors.
Rushdie never had the 'infamous' silver cover with htis editor, it is
considered as 'respectable' literature.
Midnight's children had many editors, I don't know who's the first one?
Right now it is a mainstream editor.
Vince D.
Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes
wrote on 26 Jan 2004 10:01:56 -0800:
> Japanese anime is science fiction too, but it comes at some ideas from
> radically different directions that are simply alien to most
> english-language writers of SF. The two styles have been engaging in
> a good deal of cross-fertilization and idea-sharing, and converging in
> some respects, but there are still fundamental qualitative
> differences. Why the Japanese have developed their own unique take on
> SF concepts, when no other culture has done so, is a question that
> would make for some great thesis papers.
Probably because their new and improved culture post-WWII was
progressive and technophilic, and their economy was booming. If their
economy continues to stagnate or decline, I'd expect the SF to decline,
too. They produce a lot of fantasy, as well, and I don't expect that to
go away no matter what happens.
> As for France, there is very little indigenous science fiction there.
In comics, there's Alejandro Jodorowsky. Much of his work gets
translated to English.
> Do the Indians write much SF? How about the Russians? There was
> _Rite of Passage_ (although I don't know if Panshin was an emigrant
> like Asimov or not), and _Aelita_, about good loyal Communists and a
> Martian princess;
There's Yevgeny Zamyatin's _We_, which makes _1984_ look like _Mr
Bunnsy's Big Adventure_. Ayn Rand emigrated before writing, but being a
Russian who converted to capitalism made her books turn out the way they
did. _Anthem_ and _Atlas Shrugged_ are both SF.
--
<a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
"God, I think. God. He doesn't answer, and I'd be justifiably scared--but not
in a panic!--if he did, since I would know it really was Resuna, or a tiny
brain tumor, or some boo-boo in my mix of neurotransmitters." -John Barnes
James Nicoll
Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>Pete wrote:
>> Not to mention HG Wells and Arthur C. Clarke. Or even Mary Shelley.
>
>I was guessing oldies like Wells and Verne might not count, for some reason.
>But Clarke's one of the classic Big Three (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein); he kind
>of blows a hole in the whole original idea.
>
>jdni...@panix.com (James Nicoll) wrote:
>>In article <bv1m0f$ud2$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
>>Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
>
>>>There's also a Standard SF Morality involving individual freedom and respect
>>>for sentient rights, but the rest of the free world, especially Britain, might
>>>dispute those being "American", even if the US was the first full democracy in
>>>the modern era.
>>
>> I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
>>terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
>
>I was afraid someone would pick on that. Yes, I think NZ had female suffrage
>before the federal US (though I don't know about individual states -- Wyoming
>jumped in early). OTOH, I thought the Constitution and Bill of Rights and "no
>king! no king!" and explicit religious freedom even before 1787 (in parts) was
>worth something, even if "full democracy" isn't the right label for that
>something.
"Republic" might be what you want. Of course democracy and monarchy
can be completely orthagonal: consider the Netherlands vs 2002 Iraq.
The American traitors were in many cases pointing to rights people
in the UK had that the Americans felt they were being shorted on. The US
isn't a Startling New Thing Created Out of Nothing [1] but one example of
a process that arguably had been going on in fits and starts since John
Lackland's time (The grabbing of power by those who had not before had
the power to grab it).
1: Not collapsing into dictatorship and mass murder -was- unusual for
revolutionary republican governments. Be happy Geo. Washington was the
first POTUS and not, say, Thomas "I'm a glib-speaking complete dummy whose
reaction to an international crisis is to plunge the good parts of the USA
into a deep depression and by the way would you like to buy one of my
more comely children?' Jefferson, a fellow who would have done better
as a third world pimp. But I digress.
>>of including the south in the original Union (and it's joined by Canada
>>in its legal treatment of women and natives, although we're slightly
>>better on the native front).
>
>I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
>
How so? In the four colonial British nations (Australia, Canada,
New Zealand and the USA) ranking them by how badly they treated the natives
puts NZ well at the bottom of the list (Canada only looks good if you
stick the US or Australia next to it: I'm not holding up the Indian Act
as any great thing, although it beat being murdered by the cavalry and
even there the Americans tend to be more upfront about the process, unlike
white Tasmanians, say). The Maori were strong enough to resist the sort
overwhelming tide natives in other nations succombed to and so gained more
political power earlier. In Australia, Canada and the USA we could treat
the natives badly, so we did. In NZ they couldn't, so they didn't.
This, of course, reflects well on the _Maori_, not the white settlers
in NZ whose relative good behavior is no doubt due to the lack of opportunity
to behave otherwise.
James Nicoll
ObSF: _The Grey Prince_ (of course).
Andrew Woode
> "Martin Wisse" <mwi...@cloggie.org> a écrit dans le message de
> news:4034315e....@news.cis.dfn.de...
> > At the moment I am busy (re)reading _The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of_,
> > Thomas Disch's study of the cultural impact of science fiction. It is an
> > interesting read, even if I disagree with a lot of it.
> >
> > One of the earliest statements I disagree with and one I would like
> > y'all to opine about is the following:
> >
> > "Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
> > been transplanted abroad with any success.
> >
> > This does not make sense to me. Sure, science fiction as a gerne really
> > started with Amazing Stories and Hugo Gernsback (an immigrant from
> > Luxembourg, btw), but certainly it has taken root elsewhere as well. It
> > is silly to say there isn't a separate sf culture in the UK or in Japan,
> > even if both are influenced by US science fiction. Certainly writers
> > like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard, Ian Banks or Ken MacLeod are more than
> > just pale imitations of American writers. If science fiction disappeared
> > from the USA today, it would still be going strong in the UK, France or
> > Japan.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Martin Wisse
> > --
> > Anime fandom has a "sub vs. Dub" thing.
> > -
> > Right, throbbing reggae music versus erotic submissives. A fairly common
> controversy.
> > Demain Phillips & Patrick Nielsen Hayden, rasseff
> >
> It can't be denied that modern science fiction began thanks to Hugo
> Gernsback, and started in the United States. Science fiction may be going
> stronger in USA than in Europe, Europe has a heavy classical litteracy past.
-above snipped; I am responding to the thread as a whole.
I was toying with the idea of mentioning Islwyn Ffowc Elis' Welsh
novel _Wythnos yng Nhymru Fydd_, ('A Week in Future Wales') when what
should happen but that he died and earned the following obituary:
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/story.jsp?story=485063
from which I learn that he also wrote a work of 'satirical science
fiction, _Y Blaned Dirion_, which the article translates as 'The Fair
Planet' - 'fair' is not perhaps how the adjective is usually
translated, but it may for all I know reflect the book's content.
_Wythnos yng Nhymru Fydd_ is basically a political work, and not a
particularly subtle one, offering two visions of a future some decades
ahead, but without any particular implausible tech - except for the
handwaved time machine, the work of a German scientist (positive
German characters and evil English ones are par for the course in
Ffowc Elis). The viewpoint character first spends an idyllic week (the
limit apparently possible) in an independent utopian Wales; on his
return, he is anxious to revisit this future, only to find that a
many-worlds situation applies; this time he is plunged into a dystopia
in which Wales and its culture have been wiped off the map altogether;
one old lady has the last remaining memories of the language.
AFAIK it has never been translated (it's hard to imagine much of a
plausible market in English), but it certainly qualifies as SF
(however marginal) a long way from America or even the British
mainstream (though Welsh-language materials have of course the best
possible credentials to be called 'British SF').
The above is from memory, but I can dig the book out for details if
anyone is interested.
Any pointers to other Welsh SF (other than the medieval fantasy, which
I know at least in part) would be appreciated if anyone has relevant
information.
[And while I'm trawling in European litaratures, anyone have any Czech
recommendations other than Capek and Nesvadba, whom I have read at
least to some extent]
Andrew Woode
Sean O'Hara
>
> "Tuvix" <rwh...@amanda.dorsai.org> wrote in message
> news:Pine.GSO.4.53.04...@amanda.dorsai.org...
> >
> > Is it possible that it's simply a device to lend a sense of reality to
> > the story? "This story really happened, but you never heard about it
> > because it was covered up."
>
> "I told you, they changed things so the government would let them make the
> movie!"
>
> "You mean the movie LIED???"
>
Damn you George Romero!
(Though given how invincible the Living Dead were in that movie, I have
to wonder how the army defeated in the "real" NotLD.)
--
Sean O'Hara
Gibberish in Neutral: http://diogenes-sinope.blogspot.com/
Sean O'Hara
> >From: dasu...@cs.indiana.edu (Damien R. Sullivan)
>
> >I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
>
> More than the Indians disqualify the US?
>
the treaties we broke with them). Did New Zealand do the same with the
Maori, or were they considered subjects?
David Cowie
[cover-up in _The Kraken Wakes_
>
> Is it possible that it's simply a device to lend a sense of reality to
> the story? "This story really happened, but you never heard about it
> because it was covered up."
No. The story is set in the near future (near at the time of writing -
forty years ago by now) and events include <spoiler> sybbqf erfhygvat sebz
gur nyvraf zrygvat gur vpr-pncf </spoiler> which would be hard to cover up.
--
David Cowie david_cowie at lineone dot net
Containment Failure + 1779:37
Damien R. Sullivan
>True enough in literature and otherwise, france is a country which is
>getting old. There are more and more retired people and less and less
>youngsters. When you know Jacques Chirac's age (french president) is 70, you
>understand:
>1°) Why france looks backward.
>2°) The age of people who vote.
I'm not sure what Chirac's age has to do with anything. Ronald Reagan was
even older.
-xx- Damien X-)
Hallvard B Furuseth
>Jay Jeong wrote:
>> most sci fi still bears the label "Made in America" and the
>>> future represented by SF writers continues to be an American future.
>>> It isn't only Oz that is Kansas in disguise; the whole Galactic
>>> Imperium is simply the American Dream (or Nightmare) writ large.
>>
>> For this, I tend to agree with him.(though I didn't agree on many of
>> what he said in the book either) It's true that a lot of SF authers,
>> especially prolific ones are American-Yeh, there're others from UK,
>> Canada, Austrailia, China etc, but still, so many of what I read have
>> been American stories based on American culture and American
>> viewpoint.
>
> If you're choosing to read American books over those from authors from
> other parts of the gobe, then that is going to colour (sorry: color)
> your perceptions.
Right, one can hardly fault Americans for writing about what Americans
care about. My problem with a number of American SF books is an 'all
the world thinks like USA' feel which strains my suspension of disbelief
at times, though mostly I've learned not to notice it. The non-
American authors I've read seldom make that mistake in the same degree.
I suppose it's because Americans are used to being _the_ important
nation, and often just don't think about it.
--
Hallvard
Simon Slavin
<bv1m0f$ud2$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>:
> I admit I don't know anything about non-English SF. Well, I know Japan
> puts out a lot of SF anime and manga. But France? I am ignorant.
Not as ignorant as you thought: Jules Verne.
Simon.
--
Posted using test version of software.
Please tell me if anything isn't right.
Steve Coltrin
> Kent Peterson <urq...@rocketmail.com>
> wrote on 26 Jan 2004 10:01:56 -0800:
>
>> Do the Indians write much SF? How about the Russians? There was
>> _Rite of Passage_ (although I don't know if Panshin was an emigrant
>> like Asimov or not), and _Aelita_, about good loyal Communists and a
>> Martian princess;
>
> There's Yevgeny Zamyatin's _We_, which makes _1984_ look like _Mr
> Bunnsy's Big Adventure_. Ayn Rand emigrated before writing, but being a
> Russian who converted to capitalism made her books turn out the way they
> did. _Anthem_ and _Atlas Shrugged_ are both SF.
Ivan Antonovich Yefremov. I forget where I read his "Cor Serpentis".
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org WWVBF?
"God forbid that a child know what a member of the opposite sex looks
like naked before they're 13 and gangbanging each other in a back alley
after huffing paint." - drdoody
entropy123
> is practically a default setting for many sub-genres.
:) 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' blows away most SF. It makes the best SF
stuff I've read look like so much trash.
Mike Williams
> Right, one can hardly fault Americans for writing about what Americans
> care about. My problem with a number of American SF books is an 'all
> the world thinks like USA' feel which strains my suspension of
> disbelief at times, though mostly I've learned not to notice it. The
> non- American authors I've read seldom make that mistake in the same
> degree. I suppose it's because Americans are used to being _the_
> important nation, and often just don't think about it.
It goes for manyother "products" too. I worked for an American company for
10 years and it often strained my credulity as to the ignorance of the rest
of the world (even though most of its business was non-US) and the
assumptions made. I could see folks completely tune out at meetings where
non-US issues were discussed, and then they'd suddenly wake up and decide to
press ahead with their dumb ideas.
I particularly love US web-sites for ordering products/services, or updating
customer records where the web form allows you to specify another country
but requires a US state and a US-formatted telephone number. That in turn
reminds me of an old error of my company where the international support
number for several years was 1-800-XXX-XXXX. They were not aware that folks
from outside of North America could not call such a number (although this
now will work as a paid call).
--
Mike
------------------------------------------------------------
Minsky's Second Law: Don't just do something. Stand there.
Kai's Example Dilemma: A good analogy is like a diagonal frog.
raycun
> "raycun" wrote too fast:
> > > More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes both SF and
> Urban
> > > Fantasy has never been edited as a SF writer because some literature
> critics
> > > enjoyed what he wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
> >
> > Who published Grimus and Midnight's Children? A mainstream publisher
> > or a genre publisher? Who was Rushdie's first editor?
>
>
> Grimus was edited in a science fiction collection (Lattès).
> In france (remember? I live there), the paperback editions were Plon,
> mainstream publisher.
It was first published in the UK, right? By Gollancz, a mainstream
publisher (that also has an SF imprint).
> The pocket editions were Presses Pocket which is both mainstream and SF but
> this publisher has the mainstream books, and the SF books (silver covers),
> and Fantastic and Horror (black covers) recognized with colors.
> Rushdie never had the 'infamous' silver cover with htis editor, it is
> considered as 'respectable' literature.
Well, then its not the critics that decided he was mainstream, but the
publisher. (Or perhaps Rushdie himself, if he had any control over the
cover on his books)
> Midnight's children had many editors, I don't know who's the first one?
> Right now it is a mainstream editor.
Midnight's Children was (I think) first published by Knopf, which
publishes mainstream fiction.
Ray
Sea Wasp
Actually, it's a confused, annoying piece of crap. I have many
reasons for disliking Eva -- I suppose one big one being that I
expected SO much better from Gainax, based on things like Nadia,
Gunbuster, and Honneamise.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Terry Pratchett
Williams <mike@nospam4me.?.invalid> writes
>They were not aware that folks
>from outside of North America could not call such a number (although this
>now will work as a paid call).
>
I recall a friend who tried to post a package to me in the UK from a
small US town and was asked by the clerk:"Where the hell is UcK?"
--
Terry Pratchett
Yoon Ha Lee
> I particularly love US web-sites for ordering products/services, or updating
> customer records where the web form allows you to specify another country
> but requires a US state and a US-formatted telephone number. That in turn
> reminds me of an old error of my company where the international support
> number for several years was 1-800-XXX-XXXX. They were not aware that folks
> from outside of North America could not call such a number (although this
> now will work as a paid call).
Add U.S. college applications forms. I've almost never seen one that
allows enough space for one to fit in a transliterated Korean address
(and Korean addresses sometimes expand mightily in the process). (U.S.
citizen living and applying from abroad.)
Then there was UT Austin, which sent me an international student
application form that specified "but don't use this if you're a U.S.
citizen, but living abroad." I wrote them saying that I was a U.S.
citizen living abroad and could I please have the proper form? They
sent a U.S. citizen application form that specified "but don't use this
if you live outside the U.S." By that point I was fed up. I don't know
if their forms still have this little problem, though.
--
Yoon Ha Lee
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com
Pi = 3, for small values of pi and large values of 3.
Terry Pratchett
<dk...@nospam.com> writes
>Yes, because there is an literature 'intelligentsia' in this country which
>think that SF is a sub-literacy.
>Fantasy has never been edited as a SF writer because some literature critics
>enjoyed what he wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
How is this in any way different from the situation in the UK?
SF (and it is usually bad SF, consider purely as SF) written by an
acknowledged'literary' author is automatically filleted from the dreaded
genre, usually with a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it
doesn't have robots in it'.
--
Terry Pratchett
Danny Sichel
>> They were not aware that folks
>> from outside of North America could not call such a number (although this
>> now will work as a paid call).
> I recall a friend who tried to post a package to me in the UK from a
> small US town and was asked by the clerk:"Where the hell is UcK?"
My brother had problems with (I believe) bartenders in New Mexico who
would not believe that there was such a thing as a New Brunswick
driver's license, and as such that it must be a fake ID.
Peter Bruells
> Terry Pratchett wrote:
>> I recall a friend who tried to post a package to me in the UK from a
>> small US town and was asked by the clerk:"Where the hell is UcK?"
> My brother had problems with (I believe) bartenders in New Mexico who
> would not believe that there was such a thing as a New Brunswick
> driver's license, and as such that it must be a fake ID.
Wait a minute, there's a NEW Mexico?
ObSimpsons, SCNR
If you want to have real fun, try showing Denver Avis clerks an
international driver's license or explaining to a Denver airport
customs clerk, that the fact that your I-94 form, green as it may be,
is NOT a green card and that one isn't inclined to enter the US as an
illegal alien.
Michael S. Schiffer
news:m21xpkv...@rogue.ecce-terram.de:
>...
> If you want to have real fun, try showing Denver Avis clerks an
> international driver's license or explaining to a Denver airport
> customs clerk, that the fact that your I-94 form, green as it
> may be, is NOT a green card
This is especially odd given that green cards haven't actually been
green for many years. (A google image search indicates that they're
currently a peach color, though judging color from web photographs is
always chancy.) Not that I'd expect random people who don't handle
the documents to know this (I don't remember how I ran across the
fact myself, and certainly before that I assumed that a "green card"
would be, well, green). But you'd think that people involved in
border control would.
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Peter Bruells
>> ...
One should think so, but said clerk wanted to usher me and a few
americans to customs control (they had a peak, apparently).
Arwel Parry
Woode <andrew...@hotmail.com> writes
>I was toying with the idea of mentioning Islwyn Ffowc Elis' Welsh
>novel _Wythnos yng Nhymru Fydd_, ('A Week in Future Wales') when what
>should happen but that he died and earned the following obituary:
>
>http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/story.jsp?story=485063
>
>from which I learn that he also wrote a work of 'satirical science
>fiction, _Y Blaned Dirion_, which the article translates as 'The Fair
>Planet' - 'fair' is not perhaps how the adjective is usually
>translated, but it may for all I know reflect the book's content.
Sounds interesting. You wouldn't like to write an article about him for
cy.wikipedia.org, the Welsh version of Wikipedia, would you? I think
we've got a "list of authors / Rhestr awduron" article that you could
hang an entry about Ffowc Elis from.
--
Arwel Parry
http://www.cartref.demon.co.uk/
Damien R. Sullivan
>> puts out a lot of SF anime and manga. But France? I am ignorant.
>
>Not as ignorant as you thought: Jules Verne.
Well, yeah. I'd been implicitly thinking of somewhat current authors.
-xx- Damien X-)
Brian Pickrell
Something that stands out about Stanford University is that there are
no bozos there at all. I was really surprised when I called to
inquire about how to apply for financial aid--the first person I
reached on the phone told me what forms I needed and sent them to me.
I don't think I've ever dealt with any other organization where that
could have happened.
Bruce Hollebone
> In message <40162fb6$0$17126$626a...@news.free.fr>, Vince
> D.
><dk...@nospam.com> writes
>>
>>More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes
>>both SF and Urban Fantasy has never been edited as a SF
>>writer because some literature critics enjoyed what he
>>wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
>
> SF (and it is usually bad SF, consider purely as SF)
> written by an acknowledged'literary' author is
> automatically filleted from the dreaded genre, usually with
> a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it doesn't have
> robots in it'.
Margret Atwood gets quite huffy if you call her a science
fiction author.
--
Kind Regards,
Bruce.
Richard R. Hershberger
> In article <78b1aacb.04012...@posting.google.com>,
> Mark <mtied...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> [the origins of the SF Galatic Empire]
> >regurgitated as a mongrel kind of Libertarian Autocracy(!).
>
> Thank you. I've never seen so succinct a description of the internal
> politics of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Are you including the regurgitation part in that?
Craig Richardson
wrote:
I just had a beautiful vision of Atwood making a guest appearance on
"Blackadder"[1]. It practically wrote itself, it was so perfect.
--Craig
[1] Along the lines of the time he drove a couple of actors around the
bend by continually saying "Macbeth" rather than "The Scottish Play".
--
Craig Richardson (Homepage <http://crichard-tacoma.home.att.net>)
"Rapid prototyping has enormous, obvious advantages beyond destroying
humanity as we know it" -Michal Ash in rec.arts.sf.written [04/1/26]
Mike Williams
> Well, then its not the critics that decided he was mainstream, but the
> publisher. (Or perhaps Rushdie himself, if he had any control over the
> cover on his books)
Doesn't Rushdie (and respected comrades) get swept under the rug of "magic
realism"?
As an aid to further discussion:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm, in particular:
Gene Wolfe's definition: "Magical Realism is Fantasy written in Spanish."
John Clute and John Grant have a broader category--fabulation--which
includes Absurdist SF, Fictionality, Magical Realism, Slipstream, and
Surfiction. In Clute's words: "a Fabulation is any story which challenges
the two main assumptions of genre SF: that the world can be seen; and that
it can be told."
Vince D.
One of my favourite writers wrote :
> How is this in any way different from the situation in the UK?
>
> SF (and it is usually bad SF, consider purely as SF) written by an
> acknowledged'literary' author is automatically filleted from the dreaded
> genre, usually with a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it
> doesn't have robots in it'.
>
> --
> Terry Pratchett
Common fact in old Europe then!
Burn the censors!!!!
Vince D. (quite warrior-like today)
--
"I'm not short, I'm concentrated"
Miles Naismith Vorkosigan
Tim McDaniel
Of course, though perhaps "internal" is inapt.
--
Tim McDaniel, tm...@panix.com; tm...@us.ibm.com is my work address
Steve Coltrin
> My brother had problems with (I believe) bartenders in New Mexico who
> would not believe that there was such a thing as a New Brunswick
> driver's license, and as such that it must be a fake ID.
It's our revenge for all the idiots in the other 49 who think we're a
country.
ObSF: the Republic of New Mexico.
Errol Cavit
> In article <bv4bm3$qhp$1...@hood.uits.indiana.edu>,
> Damien R. Sullivan <dasu...@cs.indiana.edu> wrote:
> >Pete wrote:
> >> I need a definition of 'full democracy' here but it would not
> >>terribly surprise me if some small nation like New Zealand qualified
> ...
> >>of including the south in the original Union (and it's joined by Canada
> >>in its legal treatment of women and natives, although we're slightly
> >>better on the native front).
> >
> >I also wonder if the Maori would disqualify NZ.
>
> Pardon me, but I'm not following you: disqualify for what?
> The Treaty of Waitangi 1840 gave the Maori British citizenship and
> recognized Maori land rights. But given the Waitangi Tribunal and
> <http://www.twm.co.nz/Tr_violn.html>, it looks like they were
> oppressed, too,
All sorts of stuff, usually with a facade of legal form - the Maori
and English versions of the treaty were (are) different in significant
ways, Maori were provoked by various dubious actions into doing things
that meant they could be declared in rebellion (no need to limit the
land confiscations after the war to the rebels, BTW), prohibiting
multiple ownership of land (so you can buy off those in each tribe
willing to sell).
Maori were de facto self-governing in some areas until the late 19thC
- e.g. those that entered without permission were killed, and no
attempt was made to find the killers by the Government.
> just in a lesser amount (four Maori seats in
> Parliament in 1867, but that apparently worked as a *cap*).
Things were also arranged so that the 'right' natives (those that
fought on the govt side) got the seats, at least initially.
Once Maori had the choice of being on the Maori roll (to vote for the
Maori seats), it was approximately proportional in effect. Since we
changed voting systems in the early 1990's, the number of Maori seats
has been proportional to the numbers on the roll in law.
> But <http://history-nz.org/maori7.html> has a somewhat more positive
> view.
>
> <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107834.html> says "New Zealand was
> the world's first country to give women the right to vote (1893)".
Comparative Timeline at
http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/Suffragists/world.html
Have fun working out the 'ranking' of Territories, States,
self-governing colonies, Dominions etc.
--
Errol Cavit | "If you have had enough, then I have had enough. But if
you haven't had enough, then I haven't had enough either." Maori chief
Kawiti to Governor George Grey, after the Battle of Ruapekapeka 1846.
raycun
> raycun wrote:
> > Well, then its not the critics that decided he was mainstream, but the
> > publisher. (Or perhaps Rushdie himself, if he had any control over the
> > cover on his books)
>
> Doesn't Rushdie (and respected comrades) get swept under the rug of "magic
> realism"?
Yeah, generally. I'm just questioning the idea that its The Critics
that do the sweeping. If Rushdie asked to be published under a
mainstream imprint, or without the SF label, then he's the one doing
the sweeping. If his publishers decided to call his books magical
realism instead of SF, then the credit and the blame goes to them. I
don't think that Rushdie was originally serialised in Analog, and then
published by Baen (with exploding spaceship and nubile babe cover),
until The Critics stole him away to the land of mainstream.
> As an aid to further discussion:
> http://www.geocities.com/Athens/4824/magreal.htm, in particular:
> Gene Wolfe's definition: "Magical Realism is Fantasy written in Spanish."
> John Clute and John Grant have a broader category--fabulation--which
> includes Absurdist SF, Fictionality, Magical Realism, Slipstream, and
> Surfiction. In Clute's words: "a Fabulation is any story which challenges
> the two main assumptions of genre SF: that the world can be seen; and that
> it can be told."
Genre divisions are a neverending source of discussion. The more I
think about it, the more I tend towards the view that genre is not a
quality of the words themselves, but of the expectations of the writer
and the readers.
Ray
Justin Bacon
>> :) 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' blows away most SF. It makes the best SF
>> stuff I've read look like so much trash.
>
> Actually, it's a confused, annoying piece of crap. I have many
>reasons for disliking Eva -- I suppose one big one being that I
>expected SO much better from Gainax, based on things like Nadia,
>Gunbuster, and Honneamise.
Ditto. (Except I haven't seen Gunbuster.) This is a series where they actually
tried three completely different endings and *still* couldn't get it right.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
"I like the Orcs... They're my kind of people." -Mark Hughes
Serg
> mwi...@cloggie.org (Martin Wisse) wrote:
>
> >"Science fiction is one of the few American industries that has neer
> >been transplanted abroad with any success. Japan may have zapped
>
> Except to Britain (Jo Walton, Ken MacLeod, Iain Banks, Alastair Reynolds,
> Charlie Stross, others) and Australia (Greg Egan, Damien Broderick, probably
> others) and Poland (Stanislaw Lem, not that I know of any others)
>
Russia has thriving SF/F, going back to the end of XIX, beginning XX
century. Eary authers (XIX-beginning XX) quite obscure ( _the Star_ ,
who was the auther ?), but 1920ths, such names as Zamyatin (_We_) and
Bulgakov well known(_Diaboliada_(F?), _Eggs of Doom_(pure SF), _Dog's
heart_(pure SF) and his most famous _Master and Margaret_(F)). From
1940s to 1960s there is a long string badly written ideological SF,
until in the 60-ies the star of Strugatskie brothers rase. Strugatskie
reined unchallenged until A. Strugatskij death, and after his death a
new gneration of russian SF/F authers came, some of them very good.
Martin Wisse
Yet at the same time there has been quite a bit of crossover between
science fiction and "mainstream" literature for about as long as science
fiction has existed as a genre.
You got people like Aldous Huxley, Kingsly Amis, Auberon Waugh , Anthony
Burgess and others either writing science fiction or praising science
fiction and people like Brian Aldiss, J. G. Ballard and Michael Moorcock
being respected both as literary and science fiction writers.
Martin Wisse
--
Oh my Lord, *that's* what cricket commentary is; it's the English radio
version of rasseff.
-Alison Hopkins, rasseff
Sea Wasp
> Sea Wasp wrote:
>
>>>:) 'Neon Genesis Evangelion' blows away most SF. It makes the best SF
>>>stuff I've read look like so much trash.
>>
>> Actually, it's a confused, annoying piece of crap. I have many
>>reasons for disliking Eva -- I suppose one big one being that I
>>expected SO much better from Gainax, based on things like Nadia,
>>Gunbuster, and Honneamise.
>
>
> Ditto. (Except I haven't seen Gunbuster.) This is a series where they actually
> tried three completely different endings and *still* couldn't get it right.
>
For *good* SF/F in anime, I go with Vision of Escaflowne, the
original Gundam series, Crusher Joe, BGC, Nadia, etc.
Martin Lewis
> >>More suprising though is that Salman Rushdie who writes
> >>both SF and Urban Fantasy has never been edited as a SF
> >>writer because some literature critics enjoyed what he
> >>wrote, so they decided it was not SF.
> >
> > SF (and it is usually bad SF, consider purely as SF)
> > written by an acknowledged'literary' author is
> > automatically filleted from the dreaded genre, usually with
> > a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it doesn't have
> > robots in it'.
>
> Margret Atwood gets quite huffy if you call her a science
> fiction author.
Or does she:
http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/blog/archive/2004_01_25_archive.html#107532555868011061
Martin
Peter Bruells
I see no discrepany. IMO, a "science fiction author" is someone whose
main bulk of writing is science fiction.
Martin Lewis
> > > > SF (and it is usually bad SF, consider purely as SF)
> > > > written by an acknowledged'literary' author is
> > > > automatically filleted from the dreaded genre, usually with
> > > > a comment as stupid as 'it's not sf because it doesn't have
> > > > robots in it'.
> > >
> > > Margret Atwood gets quite huffy if you call her a science
> > > fiction author.
> >
> > Or does she:
> >
> > http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/blog/archive/2004_01_25_archive.html#107532555868011061
>
> I see no discrepany. IMO, a "science fiction author" is someone whose
> main bulk of writing is science fiction.
You could read it that way but it is obvious from the context that
this is not what is meant.
Martin
Peter Bruells
> Peter Bruells <p...@ecce-terram.de> wrote in message news:<m2wu793...@rogue.ecce-terram.de>...
>> I see no discrepany. IMO, a "science fiction author" is someone whose
>> main bulk of writing is science fiction.
> You could read it that way but it is obvious from the context that
> this is not what is meant.
It's not obvious to me, sorry. I can easily imagine that an author
gets huffy when he or she get's called a science-fiction author, based
on having written two sf novels. AFAIK there have been authors who
write mostly sf and still claim that they are simply "author", not
sf/fantasay thankyouverymuch.
Joe Bernstein
Craig Richardson <crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
[South Korea being more different from the UK and the USA than those
two from each other]
> When you have fundamental
> differences, the trivial ones kind of fade into the background.
Um, true, but... "fundamental" ?
In an SF newsgroup?
Let's see. Same species. Essentially the same tech level. Similar
religious atmosphere, I think. I don't know too much more about South
Korea, but to me they don't look *that* "fundamental"ly different!
-- JLB