For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. I have read other science fiction novels that were as engaging as stories (Cherryh's "Hellburner" for example) that had more memorable characters (Zakalwe from Banks' "Use of Weapons" easily trumps everyone I can think of in this regard) and were as brilliantly imagined (Walter Jon Williams' "Metropolitan" comes to mind).
But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD" different.
AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
The "slavery in space" thread on this newsgroup is what made me finally come to this realization. There was something faintly ludicrous about it to me. I realized that it seemed ludicrous because it was presenting an image of the future in which we are advanced to have space colonies functioning as either actual or virtual independent societies, but no account was being taken of any changes that might occur in the way people think due to the influence of computers on the human mind. Certainly, there is no mention of the possible influence of AIs or DNI linked people in the thread, but it seems to me that controlling people on a space station might be made easier through the use of partially sentient computers -- they could take the "foreman" role -- but could be rendered next to impossible in the presence of slaves with knowledge of computer systems, or more likely, hostile anti-slavery elements outside the slavers' domain with knowledge of computer systems.
There are a lot of other examples around. I enjoyed reading one of Keith Roberts' Warstrider novels -- he had some interesting ideas on how combat with nanoweapons might work, and he had some nice passages on how it might feel to be linked to a computer/machine interface via DNI -- but his grafting a society with widespread access to DNI links and computer resources onto a feudal Japanese social system felt absolutely, completely WRONG.
It seems to me that computers, and the ability to communicate via computers, is already changing the way we think. Even if DNI never becomes a practical reality -- and I'd hate to be in the position of having to bet against that, especially since it's already been demonstrated that you can get electric signals running between chips and neurons -- it's ludicrous to imagine that our current interface, the keyboard, won't be far surpassed in the years to come. Just a good voice-recognition system hooked up to a computer terminal with access to an advanced AI (i.e., one much smarter than humans) would have profound implications for the nature of the human mind, of human culture and human conduct.
In a sense, AFUTD has ruined me for a lot of science fiction, just as the movie "Blazing Saddles" ruined me for a lot of Westerns, and "Monty Python And The Holy Grail" ruined me for medieval epics. I can't watch westerns or medievals without constantly being reminded of some wicked bit of drollery from "Saddles" or "Grail" and I can't read science fiction without being reminded of how Vinge handled the future in AFUTD.
: For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. : I have read other science fiction novels that were as engaging as stories : (Cherryh's "Hellburner" for example) that had more memorable characters : (Zakalwe from Banks' "Use of Weapons" easily trumps everyone I can think : of in this regard) and were as brilliantly imagined (Walter Jon Williams' : "Metropolitan" comes to mind).
: But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that : makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the : rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD" different.
: AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and : Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of : the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have : been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every : other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
: The "slavery in space" thread on this newsgroup is what made me finally : come to this realization. There was something faintly ludicrous about it : to me. I realized that it seemed ludicrous because it was presenting an : image of the future in which we are advanced to have space colonies : functioning as either actual or virtual independent societies, but no : account was being taken of any changes that might occur in the way people : think due to the influence of computers on the human mind. Certainly, : there is no mention of the possible influence of AIs or DNI linked people : in the thread, but it seems to me that controlling people on a space : station might be made easier through the use of partially sentient : computers -- they could take the "foreman" role -- but could be rendered : next to impossible in the presence of slaves with knowledge of computer : systems, or more likely, hostile anti-slavery elements outside the : slavers' domain with knowledge of computer systems.
: There are a lot of other examples around. I enjoyed reading one of Keith : Roberts' Warstrider novels -- he had some interesting ideas on how combat : with nanoweapons might work, and he had some nice passages on how it : might feel to be linked to a computer/machine interface via DNI -- but : his grafting a society with widespread access to DNI links and computer : resources onto a feudal Japanese social system felt absolutely, : completely WRONG.
: It seems to me that computers, and the ability to communicate via : computers, is already changing the way we think. Even if DNI never : becomes a practical reality -- and I'd hate to be in the position of : having to bet against that, especially since it's already been : demonstrated that you can get electric signals running between chips and : neurons -- it's ludicrous to imagine that our current interface, the : keyboard, won't be far surpassed in the years to come. Just a good : voice-recognition system hooked up to a computer terminal with access to : an advanced AI (i.e., one much smarter than humans) would have profound : implications for the nature of the human mind, of human culture and human : conduct.
: In a sense, AFUTD has ruined me for a lot of science fiction, just as the : movie "Blazing Saddles" ruined me for a lot of Westerns, and "Monty : Python And The Holy Grail" ruined me for medieval epics. I can't watch : westerns or medievals without constantly being reminded of some wicked : bit of drollery from "Saddles" or "Grail" and I can't read science : fiction without being reminded of how Vinge handled the future in AFUTD.
In article <5e0kgg$...@camel0.mindspring.com>, Mister Skin < mrs...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind.
[Comparisons to novels with better characterization etc. snipped]
>But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that >makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the >rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD" different.
>AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and >Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of >the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have >been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every >other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
Right. I know what you mean. What did it to me was not a book or books, but an author . . . Bruce Sterling, speaking on a panel at I-Con. He tore into the concept of space colonization and explotation with an awesome grace; whenever I think of it I imagine a hot-blooded velociraptor matched against an old-concept cold-blooded dinosaur. The latter is big and blustering and impressive . . . but doomed. I couldn't take the "Destinies" school of space SF seriously after that.
Vinge's notion of the Singularity was similarly mind-blowing and paradigm busting. I always had a _feeling_ that there was something really dippy about the notion of space empires and interstellar mercenaries and "great houses" ruling the affairs of humanity. The mere possibility that something like the Singularity _might_ happen leaves all this stuff in the dustbin. If they don't at least address the issue, they are at best pleasant romances set in future times. (Aside: I'm not a snob; I still READ space opera, I just don't take it seriously.)
[Thoughts on the archaic nature of "slavery in space" snipped]
[Thoughts on how computer - human interfacing will change things snipped]
>In a sense, AFUTD has ruined me for a lot of science fiction, just as the >movie "Blazing Saddles" ruined me for a lot of Westerns, and "Monty >Python And The Holy Grail" ruined me for medieval epics. I can't watch >westerns or medievals without constantly being reminded of some wicked >bit of drollery from "Saddles" or "Grail" and I can't read science >fiction without being reminded of how Vinge handled the future in AFUTD.
LOL!
FORTUNATELY Vinge is not the only one out there writing science fiction that is aware of what lies ahead MOD our increasing understanding of the human mind.
A few examples:
Swanwick's _Vaccuum Flowers_ Sterling's _Schizmatrix_ Bear's _Blood Music_ Kress's _Beggars and Spain_ et al.
: Mister Skin (mrs...@mindspring.com) wrote: : : For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. : : I have read other science fiction novels that were as engaging as stories : : (Cherryh's "Hellburner" for example) that had more memorable characters : : (Zakalwe from Banks' "Use of Weapons" easily trumps everyone I can think : : of in this regard) and were as brilliantly imagined (Walter Jon Williams' : : "Metropolitan" comes to mind).
: : But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that : : makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the : : rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD" different.
: : AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and : : Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of : : the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have : : been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every : : other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
: : The "slavery in space" thread on this newsgroup is what made me finally : : come to this realization. There was something faintly ludicrous about it : : to me. I realized that it seemed ludicrous because it was presenting an : : image of the future in which we are advanced to have space colonies : : functioning as either actual or virtual independent societies, but no : : account was being taken of any changes that might occur in the way people : : think due to the influence of computers on the human mind.
Subject: Re: Why Vernor Vinge Has Ruined SF For Me Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written References: <5e0kgg$2qm@camel0.mindspring.com> Distribution: world
: For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. : I have read other science fiction novels that were as engaging as stories : (Cherryh's "Hellburner" for example) that had more memorable characters : (Zakalwe from Banks' "Use of Weapons" easily trumps everyone I can think : of in this regard) and were as brilliantly imagined (Walter Jon Williams' : "Metropolitan" comes to mind).
: But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that : makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the : rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD" different.
: AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and : Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of : the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have : been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every : other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
: The "slavery in space" thread on this newsgroup is what made me finally : come to this realization. There was something faintly ludicrous about it : to me. I realized that it seemed ludicrous because it was presenting an : image of the future in which we are advanced to have space colonies : functioning as either actual or virtual independent societies, but no : account was being taken of any changes that might occur in the way people : think due to the influence of computers on the human mind.
I deleted the rest of your article, but the point is already well made.
Unfortunately, I must agree with you. But with me it started with MIRT back in 1986. I've read some pretty good stuff since then: "Neverness", "Vacuum Flowers", "Harvest of Stars", among a few others. But SF in general has become increasingly hard - even frustrating at times - for me to read. A particularly good/bad example of this is Bujold. She clearly has talent, but does she really believe that centuries in the future we're going to have royalty and people who think and talk like Victorians?
The problem is compounded - and Vinge's vision of the future looks more plausible - with the explosive growth of the Internet and networks in general, and the overall progress in telecommunications technology just to name a couple obvious areas.
Besides, as I have often asked myself in recent times, why would I want to read such poorly imagined fiction when I can read books like "Mind Children", and "After Thought"? The ideas in these books have hardly even been noticed in SF! I get better "SF" in Fortune magazine than in Asimov's. I'm not even talking about the articles on technology, but the ones on new organizational structures, trends in society and management methods that describe new ways of thinking and doing.
I think that since SF was begun in the industrial/resource economy stage, most writers just extrapolate from the America of about 1950 with the same centralized harierarical corporate structures and control of information.
Also, what Vinge does is probably too difficult for the run-of-the-mill writer. Partly because of the problems I mentioned above - reality outrunning fiction - but also, most of them aren't really interested in thinking seriously about the possible futures, but of ax-grinding, or alegory, making points concerned with the present human condition - whatever that's supposed to mean. In other words, they are just putting SF clothes on a mainstream skeleton; so it doesn't matter if the imagined future doesn't seem plausible to someone looking at present trends. The real point is the sermon. People like Lucius Shepard Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson are big in this school.
I didn't mean to go on so long, but I feel strongly about this issue - how could you tell - and I could say a lot more on the same topic. But I'll quit for now.
>For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. >I have read other science fiction novels that were as engaging as stories >(Cherryh's "Hellburner" for example) that had more memorable characters >(Zakalwe from Banks' "Use of Weapons" easily trumps everyone I can think >of in this regard) and were as brilliantly imagined (Walter Jon Williams' >"Metropolitan" comes to mind). >But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that >makes it stand out in my mind as being qualitatively different from the >rest, and I finally have figured out exactly what makes "AFUTD"
different.
>AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and >Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of >the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have >been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every >other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
I agree that Vinge's novels present a fascinating vision - and I think that "vision" is the correct term - of the future that is far more compellng than most science fiction, and particularly more compelling than most space opera. One major flaw of much science fiction is that it is just the same old Western or Detective or Romance novel set in a futuristic setting with words like "laser" instead of "gun". Many space operas set up a universe that is exactly the same as the one we live in circa 1997 but with fancier gadgets. Novels like" A Fire Upon the Deep" or "Marooned in Realtime" are different - they show us dazzling possibilities that are not reworked versions of our familiar social schemes.
There are a lot of other great SF works that do the same - for example Iain M. Banks' "Culture" universe, Daniel Keys Moran's "The Continuing Time", David Brin's "Uplift" universe - I could name a dozen others. so I think that you shouldn't give up on SF so easily. There are still plenty of authors who are not just reworking the same very tired old themes and settings.
I also like Vinge and Banks because they are great writers - both in terms of style and in terms of content. Many SF novels are just so poorly constructed (or edited) that the beautiful ideas are spoiled by the rotten writing.
In article <5e293h$...@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, Evan S Reese <esrs...@pitt.edu> wrote:
>: Mister Skin (mrs...@mindspring.com) wrote: >: : For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind.
[DELETIA]
> I deleted the rest of your article, but the point is already well >made.
[DELETIA]
> Unfortunately, I must agree with you. But with me it started with >MIRT back in 1986. I've read some pretty good stuff since then: >"Neverness", "Vacuum Flowers", "Harvest of Stars", among a few others. >But SF in general has become increasingly hard - even frustrating at times >- for me to read.
Testify, brother, testify!
>A particularly good/bad example of this is Bujold. She >clearly has talent, but does she really believe that centuries in the >future we're going to have royalty and people who think and talk like >Victorians?
Careful. You're setting yourself up to be ROYALLY flamed!
People grow INCREDIBLY ATTACHED to comfortable, romantic views of the future. They are easy to write about and ohhhh boy do the fans love it!
> The problem is compounded - and Vinge's vision of the future looks >more plausible - with the explosive growth of the Internet and networks in >general, and the overall progress in telecommunications technology just to >name a couple obvious areas.
Not just telecommunications! We are learning really wicked stuff about the brain & mind, evolution, astronomy and more that really pull the chain on many of the cliches of SF.
> Besides, as I have often asked myself in recent times, why would I >want to read such poorly imagined fiction when I can read books like "Mind >Children", and "After Thought"? The ideas in these books have hardly even >been noticed in SF!
You need to read the CHEAP TRUTH newslettes that the nacent cyberpunks distributed in the mid 80s. Shirley, Sterling, and their ilk were saying JUST THIS in an incredibly rude and direct manner.
rbklei...@aol.com (RBKLEIMAN) writes: >Novels like" A Fire Upon the Deep" >or "Marooned in Realtime" are different - they show us dazzling >possibilities that are not reworked versions of our familiar social >schemes.
What exactly do you have in mind here? That is, what are the social schemes in _AFUTD_ or _MIR_ that aren't reworked etc.?
This isn't a flame, just curiosity - I've read both novels (_MIR_ quite recently), and while grand things in terms of other types of society are hinted at offstage, most of the stuff presented seemed rather pedestrian.
Banks' Culture and the universe of Delany's _Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand_, now, those get me excited.
In article <5e293h$...@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, Evan S Reese <esrs...@pitt.edu> wrote:
>But SF in general has become increasingly hard - even frustrating at times >- for me to read. A particularly good/bad example of this is Bujold. She >clearly has talent, but does she really believe that centuries in the >future we're going to have royalty and people who think and talk like >Victorians?
I think it's just as foolish to believe that cultural progress marches unfailingly onward and upward as it is to claim that biological evolution does so. Both are random walks, influenced by events major and minute. Just because the last few centuries have shown some trend or other is no reason to assume that the trend will continue. (Of course, it's even worse to assume that culture *won't* change, starting now...) But my point is: attitudes recur. Some of them are influenced by technological factors. Some aren't, at least not obviously. If I were transported a thousand years into the future *or* the past, and assuming no pesky singularities or language barriers got in the way, I'd expect to find a mishmash of attitudes, some of which I considered advanced, some retrograde, some incomprehensible, and some Just Like Home. Royalty and hereditary governmental positions are not such odd concepts that I wouldn't expect to see them again and again.
As for Bujold, if you argue that technology drives changes in culture, Bujold is being perfectly consistent: until a generation or two before the stories she's written, Barrayar *was* of an approximately Victorian tech level. The other societies she writes about (Beta, Cetaganda, Athos) all have decidedly different cultures.
On the other hand, if what you really want to read is a story about how technology will change society in the next hundred years, it's frustrating to read Bujold's work, which is not really extrapolative in nature. Many of the Vorkosigan stories could just as easily have been set in the 1800s; there's no reason for them to be set in the future on other planets. (But there's no reason not to, either, and they're great yarns.)
As for people who are upset at SF which doesn't include the Singularity: we *are* in the Slow Zone, after all; look at the map in AFUtD. More generally, there are a lot of processes in nature that follow a sort of sigmoid curve; they look exponential until about a third of the way through, and eventually they level out at a new stable point. Human-level artificial intelligence has been 40-400 years away since the invention of the stored-program computer. Perhaps it's impractical for some reason we don't even have the means to express yet. Perhaps the same applies to significant human enhancements via DNI. Perhaps, perhaps not. Wait and see.
All this said, though, I do think that one of the hallmarks of great SF is that it makes almost everything else look threadbare, unimaginitive and obsolete by comparison, and Vinge's work frequently has this effect.
-- Wim Lewis * w...@hhhh.org * Seattle, WA, USA PGP 0x27F772C1: 0C 0D 10 D5 FC 73 D1 35 26 46 42 9E DC 6E 0A 88
rbklei...@aol.com (RBKLEIMAN) wrote: >On 2/14 Mr. Skin wrote;
>>For a long time, Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon The Deep" has haunted my mind. <snip>
>>But there has always been something about "A Fire Upon The Deep" that <snip> >>the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have >>been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every >>other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light. <snip> >Novels like" A Fire Upon the Deep" >or "Marooned in Realtime" are different - they show us dazzling >possibilities that are not reworked versions of our familiar social >schemes.
>There are a lot of other great SF works that do the same - for example >Iain M. Banks' "Culture" universe, Daniel Keys Moran's "The Continuing >Time", David Brin's "Uplift" universe - I could name a dozen others. so I >think that you shouldn't give up on SF so easily. There are still plenty >of authors who are not just reworking the same very tired old themes and >settings.
>I also like Vinge and Banks because they are great writers - both in terms >of style and in terms of content. Many SF novels are just so poorly >constructed (or edited) that the beautiful ideas are spoiled by the rotten >writing.
I agree a lot with what you say here and generally like the same books. I've been a Brin fan for sometime and rasfw has keyed me into Vinge and Banks to name a few. At the risk of embarrassing him again, I see Robert Sawyer's work in the same light. I just finished _Starplex_ a couple of weeks ago and found it comparable in scale with the aforementioned writers' best. It has great ideas and he won the Nebula last year so the quality of the writing is not in question. _Starplex_ is a tour de force by a writer who is hitting full stride. I'm off to discover some of his earlier work now.
In general, I wouldn't give up on SF. There a lot of good writers and rasfw is a wealth of good info.
>(SNIP) >I think it's just as foolish to believe that cultural progress marches >unfailingly onward and upward as it is to claim that biological evolution >does so. Both are random walks, influenced by events major and minute. >Just because the last few centuries have shown some trend or other >is no reason to assume that the trend will continue. (Of course, it's >even worse to assume that culture *won't* change, starting now...) >But my point is: attitudes recur. Some of them are influenced by >technological factors. Some aren't, at least not obviously. If I >were transported a thousand years into the future *or* the past, >and assuming no pesky singularities or language barriers got in the way, >I'd expect to find a mishmash of attitudes, some of which I considered >advanced, some retrograde, some incomprehensible, and some Just Like Home. >Royalty and hereditary governmental positions are not such odd >concepts that I wouldn't expect to see them again and again.
>(SNIP excellent material, alas, for brevity)
88
And apropos your comments, these recurring attitudes are in evidence even in AFUtD. Witness those colonies on the edge of the slow zone that have lapsed into medievalism, forgetting their technology and knowledge of the outside universe.
Versimillitude is turned on its head: Characters and societies -- especially societies -- which are easily recognizable as mild mutations of their present-day prototypes set off my bs detector every time. But the more bizarre and unimaginable the characters and societies are, the more I feel comfortable thinking "Yeah, this could happen.".
So I guess I'm a post post-modern reader.
Somebody gave Ursula K. LeGuin a nasty knock in this thread for allegedly pasting modern morality tales into foreign settings, but I have to strongly disagree-- LeGuin crafts characters and societies that are internally consistent, realistically complex, and believably bizarre.
So she isn't hot on human evolution yet, but not every writer can be a Vernor Vinge. :-)
Bryce
signatures follow
+ island Life in a chaos sea Not speaking for DigiCash or /. the University of Colorado / br...@colorado.edu or ---* br...@digicash.com
In article <5e0kgg$...@camel0.mindspring.com>, Mister Skin <mrs...@mindspring.com> writes
>AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and >Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of >the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have >been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every >other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
If you wanted to classify SF by the technology used in the background, you'd use a list of questions like the following?
My initial list of such questions would be:
- Is space travel practicable?
- Are there other types of about-as-smart-as-human beings (i.e aliens, robots)?
- will there be some kind of major catastrophe (nuclear war, etc.)?
- are vastly-smarter-than-current-human beings (e.g. AIs) practicable?
- are non-sentient information-processors (e.g. computers) practicable?
- is nanotech practicable?
- will society be organised im some radically different way than democratic capitalism?
In all cases, it only counts if it's a major theme, with the implications thought through to some degree. I'm also excluding any 'unique ideas' that form the main point of the story (e.g. time travel, Bobbles, etc.) - I want to look at what's happening in the background, as that defines reader's and author's expectations.
For example,
- current society has computers only (space travel just doesn't count, as it has had no major impact on society).
- Asimov's Foundation has space travel only.
- Lot's of other 50's SF writers had space travel and aliens.
- Bujold's Vorkosigan series has space travel and feudalism.
- Gibson has computers, AIs and (some) space travel.
- Vinge has computers, nanotech, libertarianism and trans-human intelligences.
- Aristoi has computers, nanotech and space travel.
- Banks has all of the above.
My current 'best-guess' at the future would be something like Sterling's Islands in the Net, trending towards Vinge by the end of the next century. But there are lot's of other possibilities. For example, what if those rumours of somebody in a Scandanavian university discovering antigravity actually turned out to be true?
I do agree that I find it difficult to take stories like Bujold's or Cherryh's seriously as realistic versions of the future - the computers in them are barely ahead of today's levels, with no obvious reason why progress stalled. (In particular, any version of space combat that has human involvement in real-time decisions is about as plausible as WW I biplanes shooting down a stealth fighter).
Of course, this doesn't mean I can't still enjoy them as stories - predicting the future is not, of course, the point of SF.
>- current society has computers only (space travel just doesn't count, >as it has had no major impact on society).
Yep, it's had no major impact. It's a shame we don't use those satellites for anything directly useful like telecommunications or observation of the planet...
I otherwise like the list, but you should think before you say these things - now if you said interplanetary/interstellar travel, that'd be correct.
-- <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a> "In headlines today, the dreaded killfile virus spread across the country adding aol.com to people's usenet kill files everywhere. The programmer of the virus still remains anonymous, but has been nominated several times for a Nobel peace prize." -Mark Atkinson
: In article <5e293h$...@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, : Evan S Reese <esrs...@pitt.edu> wrote: : >But SF in general has become increasingly hard - even frustrating at times : >- for me to read. A particularly good/bad example of this is Bujold. She : >clearly has talent, but does she really believe that centuries in the : >future we're going to have royalty and people who think and talk like : >Victorians?
: I think it's just as foolish to believe that cultural progress marches : unfailingly onward and upward as it is to claim that biological evolution : does so. Both are random walks, influenced by events major and minute. : Just because the last few centuries have shown some trend or other : is no reason to assume that the trend will continue. (Of course, it's : even worse to assume that culture *won't* change, starting now...) : But my point is: attitudes recur. Some of them are influenced by : technological factors. Some aren't, at least not obviously. If I : were transported a thousand years into the future *or* the past, : and assuming no pesky singularities or language barriers got in the way, : I'd expect to find a mishmash of attitudes, some of which I considered : advanced, some retrograde, some incomprehensible, and some Just Like Home : Royalty and hereditary governmental positions are not such odd : concepts that I wouldn't expect to see them again and again.
That's precisely the point; I think your assumption is ludicrous. You can expect anything you want if you make the right assumptions. I cannot prove mine is any more valid than yours, but I believe there is a lot of evidence to support it. There are many influences on evolution, but it is hardly random. Royalty and hereditary government is hardly an odd concept because it has occured throughout most of our history. Believing that it could return is similar to believing that hunter-gatherer tribes will reemerge. It's interesting that authors can justify a return to royalty, but not a return to a hunter-gatherer society - something that lasted a lot longer than recorded history.
: As for people who are upset at SF which doesn't include the Singularity: : we *are* in the Slow Zone, after all; look at the map in AFUtD. More : generally, there are a lot of processes in nature that follow a sort : of sigmoid curve; they look exponential until about a third of the way : through, and eventually they level out at a new stable point. Human-level : artificial intelligence has been 40-400 years away since the invention : of the stored-program computer. Perhaps it's impractical for some reason : we don't even have the means to express yet. Perhaps the same applies : to significant human enhancements via DNI. Perhaps, perhaps not. Wait : and see.
I agree with the signmoid curve model. It certainly seems to have occurred in transportation speeds. But would anyone from a couple centuries ago have ever guessed where that curve would level out? I wouldn't claim that intelligence would go on climbing indefinitely, but that when it levels out it will be out of our ken. qualitative changes in evolution do take place: from rocks to cells to brains. To assume that evolution will stop somewhere close to where we are now is untenable, imho, of course - especially now that we are learning how to take charge of the process.
On 14 Feb 1997 03:00:32 GMT, in <5e0kgg$...@camel0.mindspring.com> Mister Skin < mrs...@mindspring.com> wrote..... [snip]
> AFUTD --and the other works of Vinge, particularly The Peace War and > Marooned in Realtime -- are different because they present a vision of > the future that is so compelling and so brilliantly realized that I have > been evaluating every other science fiction novel I read -- indeed, every > other idea about the future I encounter -- in its light.
> The "slavery in space" thread on this newsgroup is what made me finally > come to this realization. There was something faintly ludicrous about it > to me.
[snip]
This is a conclusion I came to, roughly from the opposite direction, a long while ago myself. While externalising the one bad novel that everyone supposedly has inside themselves, back in the late 70s, the setting I put together had to be about 1200 years from now (timescales for STL travel, terraforming, and eventual slow FTL conspiring together) - and I thought to myself "Do I believe that this society would be remotely comprehensible?" and answered "Probably not, but I'll just fudge it, and put in some wild extrapolations."
Some of those wild extrapolations like widespread access to computer power and communications networks have already happened.
And for many years after, I read very little SF, since much of it was to my eyes "Spaceship Fiction" - some pulp adventure (often of a style of "The US Marines conquer the Galaxy") or didactic work with 1950s SF trappings. It was the discovery in the late 80s of cyberpunk (which I'd not touched until well after the event, due to having read some truly awful mind-machine interface stories in the late 70s), including the re-issue of _True Names_ that actually brought me back seriously to looking at the genre at all.
There are the occasional gems, like Vinge, Stephenson, Bear and a number of sporadic others that just have to be sought out amongst the best-selling Hugo-nominated "Hornblower in Space" drek. So I would say that for me a more appropriate thread title would be "Why vernor Vinge Has Saved SF For Me".
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To my surprise and delight, esrs...@pitt.edu (Evan S Reese) wrote:
> I think that since SF was begun in the industrial/resource economy >stage, most writers just extrapolate from the America of about 1950 with >the same centralized harierarical corporate structures and control of >information.
Well, I think Neal "Diamond Age" Stephenson deserves a little credit here. It has been noticeable, though, that much ScF combines 21st-century technology with 20th-century societies and 19th-century economies, and the Really Daring stuff combines 25th-century technology with late-20th-century society and 16th-century economies. In the end, this shouldn't be surprising. We live in a civilisation that has pretty fair control and understanding of its technology, and rather little of its culture (there's a lot of speculation and Deep Thinking but damn-all predictive ability, except in hindsight). As for economics, there are reasons why it is sometimes called "the dismal science".
- Richard ------ A sufficiently incompetent ScF author is indistinguishable from magic. see also: What is (and isn't) ScF? ==> http://www.wco.com/~treitel/sf.html
In article <slrn5gcsle.764.kamik...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu>, Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes <kamik...@kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu> writes
>Richard Melvin <rmel...@radm.demon.co.uk> spake: >>- current society has computers only (space travel just doesn't count, >>as it has had no major impact on society).
> Yep, it's had no major impact. It's a shame we don't use those satellites >for anything directly useful like telecommunications or observation of the >planet...
I'll stand by the 'no major impact' - it is perfectly possible to set a novel in the present day without mentioning space travel - try writing one without mentioning computers.
w...@netcom.com (Wim Lewis) writes: > I think it's just as foolish to believe that cultural progress marches > unfailingly onward and upward as it is to claim that biological evolution > does so. Both are random walks, influenced by events major and minute. > Just because the last few centuries have shown some trend or other > is no reason to assume that the trend will continue.
It's foolish to believe in cultural "progress", but it's not at all foolish to believe in cultural change. I don't necessarily expect that 25th century society will be better than 20th century society, but I do expect it to be different. It's wildly unlikely for it to look all that much like late 19th century England, just as it's wildly unlikely for it to look much like the 1960s US, or Meiji-era Japan.
>hunter-gatherer tribes will reemerge. It's interesting that authors can >justify a return to royalty, but not a return to a hunter-gatherer >society - something that lasted a lot >longer than recorded history.
You obviously haven't heard the people who are trying to form a new hunter-gatherer society. I'd say they are doomed to fail as long as land can be owned by individuals (pretty much what destroyed hunter-gatherers before).
Sam
-- 408-749-8798 / p...@webnexus.com I speak for xyne KS since I AM xyne KS. Resisitance is not futile! http://www.be.com/
>: But my point is: attitudes recur. Some of them are influenced by >: technological factors. Some aren't, at least not obviously. If I >: were transported a thousand years into the future *or* the past, >: and assuming no pesky singularities or language barriers got in the way, >: I'd expect to find a mishmash of attitudes, some of which I considered >: advanced, some retrograde, some incomprehensible, and some Just Like Home >: Royalty and hereditary governmental positions are not such odd >: concepts that I wouldn't expect to see them again and again. > That's precisely the point; I think your assumption is ludicrous. >You can expect anything you want if you make the right assumptions. I >cannot prove mine is any more valid than yours, but I believe there is a >lot of evidence to support it. There are many influences on evolution, >but it is hardly random. Royalty and hereditary government is hardly an >odd concept because it has occured throughout most of our history. >Believing that it could return is similar to believing that >hunter-gatherer tribes will reemerge. It's interesting that authors can >justify a return to royalty, but not a return to a hunter-gatherer >society - something that lasted a lot >longer than recorded history.
Sure they can. "Great Sky river" is a good example of a new version of hunter-gatherers, but there are lots of stories with people who have returned to primitive hunter-gatherer cultures.
I do not know, whether social evolution is random (biological certainly is). It it would be, old structures could reappear, but something completely new is of course more likely. Anyway, I also like those stories better and that is really the only important thing about novels.
> I agree with the signmoid curve model. It certainly seems to have >occurred in transportation speeds. But would anyone from a couple >centuries ago have ever guessed where that curve would level out? I >wouldn't claim that intelligence would go on climbing indefinitely, but >that when it levels out it will be out of our ken. qualitative changes in >evolution do take place: from rocks to cells to brains. To assume that >evolution will stop somewhere close to where we are now is untenable, >imho, of course - especially now that we are learning how to take charge >of the process.
That could be a reason, that it does remain the same. We might want our kids to be normal. (Of course most parents want a completely normal superior child :-)). -- Joachim Verhagen E-mail:J.C.D.Verha...@fys.ruu.nl Department of molecular biofysics, University of Utrecht Utrecht, The Netherlands. Home-page: http://www.fys.ruu.nl/~verhagen (Science Jokes & SF)
Erich Schneider writes: >What exactly do you have in mind here? That is, what are the social >schemes in _AFUTD_ or _MIR_ that aren't reworked etc.? >This isn't a flame, just curiosity - I've read both novels (_MIR_ >quite recently), and while grand things in terms of other types of >society are hinted at offstage, most of the stuff presented seemed >rather pedestrian. >Banks' Culture and the universe of Delany's _Stars in My Pocket Like >Grains of Sand_, now, those get me excited.
I haven't reread either AFUTD or MIR recently, but remember that when I read them I felt exhilarated, much as if I'd had a truly sublime bottle of wine or a truly wonderful meal at Troisgros. In contrast, I happen to enjoy some space opera too, even though most of it is not very novel, but the feeling I get after reading most SF is what I'd get after a bag of doritos - enjoyable but not really satisfying.
To get back to your query, I recall that most of AFTUD was set on a primitive nonhuman world with group consciousnesses. I thought that this was interesting, although I confess that I didn't care much for these sequences as I dislike what you could call "primitive SF". I generally like Brin and Bear a great deal, but still did not enjoy most of "Brightness Reef", "Infinity's Shore", and "Legacy". The social structures here were interesting to unique but just not what I personally enjoy reading.
Most of the rest of AFTUD, as I recall it, dealt with the galactic civilizations beyond the slow zone and I recall that they were either "hinted at grand" or "described and grand" themselves. My recollection of MIR is also that much of it dealt with simple matters - a whodunnit - but that the setting of the post sublimation world, and the NAFAL universe populated by Berserker like defense systems were quite unusual.
I did not mean that MIR and AFUTD were treatises on future societal possibilities - just that the books were not set in universes where the our own past was not grafted onto newer technologies. I don't think it likely that a galactic civilization will ever spring up modelled on feudal Japanese or Victorian societies, as many space operas suggest. I'm not a sociologist and I don't enjoy books that are entirely concerned with creating new alien worlds.
Finally, nearly all fiction must contain some pedestrian qualities - I don't know if that's because the authors have the same limitations as us, if it's to allow the reader to have some frame of reference for stability, or if that's what you need to write in order to get it published. But the best SF combines the pedestrian with the novel - the characters in the Culture books behave much like you or I might if we had grown up in a post scarcity society. They think about sex, and finding something exciting and fun to do, and about trying to do something meaningful but usually bumble about doing a half assed job of it.
I'm hard pressed to explain myself - perhaps in short I find that some books still excite my "sense of wonder". Banks and Delany and Simmons also do that for me.
In article <qQQ4gBAxxcBzE...@radm.demon.co.uk>, Richard Melvin
<rmel...@radm.demon.co.uk> wrote: > - current society has computers only (space travel just doesn't count, > as it has had no major impact on society).
Except for comsats. But those hardly constitute space travel in the grand old SFnal sense.
It's interesting that people regard _AFUTD_ as such a departure from old traditions. I regarded it as, in some ways, a space opera in the Doc Smith line-- just with technological guesses based on more modern ideas (and described with more modern prose style). I got the impression that Vinge introduced the Zones so that he could *keep* technology from exponentiating everywhere so rapidly that it ate the good story. (I haven't yet read the Realtime series, in which he apparently let the Singularity happen here.)
In article <5e293h$...@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>, esrs...@pitt.edu (Evan S Reese) wrote:
> I think that since SF was begun in the industrial/resource economy > stage, most writers just extrapolate from the America of about 1950 with > the same centralized harierarical corporate structures and control of > information.
There have always been revolutionary writers and seminal works. SF is a work in progress, not a finished product. The history of the genre is dotted with works no one will forget, floating in a sea of absolute crap. I still remember the day a fellow engineering student handed me a copy of the Ace bootleg of _The Hobbit_ and LOTR. I remember his name, and even what he said when he handed me those books 32 years ago. I can't remember much else about what I was reading back then, except that Analog serialized _Dune_ the next year. The year after that, Zelazny's _Lord of Light_ was published, followed quickly by Brunner's _Stand On Zanzibar_ and LeGuin's _Left Hand of Darkness_. In the performing arts, "Space, the final frontier" was the first decent television SF since Twilight Zone, and 2001 hit the theatres. 2001 was a big hit, but almost everybody ignored Star Trek the first time around. The only people who watched it were science fiction fans.
After that, SF entered a dry period and not much happened for a while. In the mid 70's Moorecock started his Eternal Champion series, Zelazny started writing about Amber and Terry Brooks started Shannara. The best reading on the market was reprints of Dunsany, artistic excrement from Harlan Ellison, and low budget fantasies by Peter Beagle. Star Wars and ET moved SF into the mainstream movie culture, but they didn't raise the general quality much.
In the late 70's and early 80's the first CP/M personal computers led to some really big stories that had been waiting to be told. Silverberg's _Lord Valentine's Castle_ was a monumental book. Silverberg, BTW, was one of the original "new wave" SF writers when he was just a lad, and reinvented himself nicely with LVC. "The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy" was the media event of the 80's. Not much else happened. Stories tended to be readable but not memorable.
The 90's have been characterized by the dominance of word processor science fiction. It looks like writers are getting paid by the ton. Almost everything on the market is twice as long as it needs to be, with great attention to prose and no attention to concept. The entire genre is desperately in search of an editor. Vernor Vinge is a notable exception, who seems to know how to edit himself. The media event of the decade has been Babylon 5, which sets an obesity record for word processor products, being a single story that runs for over 70 hours of viewing time. It's been a revolutionary experience, and I'm sure by the time the imitators are done we are all going to be very, very sorry.
> Also, what Vinge does is probably too difficult for the > run-of-the-mill writer. Partly because of the problems I mentioned above > - reality outrunning fiction - but also, most of them aren't really > interested in thinking seriously about the possible futures, but of > ax-grinding, or alegory, making points concerned with the present human > condition - whatever that's supposed to mean. In other words, they > are just putting SF clothes on a mainstream skeleton; so it doesn't > matter if the imagined future doesn't seem plausible to someone looking at > present trends. The real point is the sermon. People like Lucius Shepard > Ursula LeGuin and Kim Stanley Robinson are big in this school.
Raising the bar and writing a really outstanding book is too difficult for almost anyone. _Stand On Zanzibar_ was an excellent book precisely because it was about the present. In 1968, the concept of sabotage as a social problem was so alien as to be startling. Thirty years later it is pretty obvious. Social commentary can be very good science fiction indeed, if it is well done. Heinein's _If This Goes On_ was social commentary on the Billy Sunday evangelists angling for political power in the South. These are not mainstream novels.
You hit it squarely when you speculated that great SF is too difficult for average writers. They not only have to be able to write, they have to have something to say. Vinge went from _Peace War_ to AFUTD because he had something to say, and he abandoned a well established story line to say it. He not only put an immense amount of work into the concept, he did it well enough that his readers happily followed along.
> I didn't mean to go on so long, but I feel strongly about this issue > - how could you tell - and I could say a lot more on the same topic. But > I'll quit for now.
Beth and Richard Treitel (trei...@wco.com) wrote: : To my surprise and delight, esrs...@pitt.edu (Evan S Reese) wrote:
: > I think that since SF was begun in the industrial/resource economy : >stage, most writers just extrapolate from the America of about 1950 with : >the same centralized harierarical corporate structures and control of : >information.
: Well, I think Neal "Diamond Age" Stephenson deserves a little credit : here.
Absolutely! The best book I've read since AFUD came out and one of the ten best of the last 20 years easily.
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