What is modern SF about?
David Cowie
the present, not the future (apologies for the vagueness). This is a
proposition that I have seen before a few times, and the idea is that SF
contains today's problems and opportunities more or less disguised in the
clothes of the future or the fantastic.
A couple of examples: 1950's flying saucer movies are supposed to
reflect fear of Communism, and the 1960's and 1970's saw a lot of SF
about overpopulation and environmental issues. In _Danse Macabre_
Stephen King claims that commercially successful horror movies tap into
the audience's mundane fears.
If all this is true, then what is current SF "really about"?
Obvious example: in the film of Spider-Man, the spider is changed from
radioactive to genetically modified.
And is one more likely to find SF that is really about today in the good
stuff (because it gets some of its impact from its contemporary
relevance), or the not-so-good stuff (because hacks can't come up with
timeless themes, and resort to putting today's headlines Innnn
Spaaaaace) ?
Extra marks will be awarded for mentioning "subtext" :)
--
David Cowie
Dan Goodman
news:pan.2003.02.07....@lineone.net:
> Recently, in another thread, someone said that SF is always really
about
> the present, not the future (apologies for the vagueness). This is a
> proposition that I have seen before a few times, and the idea is that
SF
> contains today's problems and opportunities more or less disguised in
the
> clothes of the future or the fantastic.
To me, it seems more likely that SF is really about the _past_. Consider:
the writer is likely to be at least slightly behind the present as it is
at the time of writing. Things can change awfully fast; businesses and
politicians have lost spectacularly by doing what worked a year ago.
Even if the writer is up-to-date, by the time the short story or book is
published, there's been some change. Sometimes it's big; there were still
"The USSR invades the US" novels coming out for at least a couple of
months after the USSR was officially dead.
> A couple of examples: 1950's flying saucer movies are supposed to
> reflect fear of Communism, and the 1960's and 1970's saw a lot of SF
> about overpopulation and environmental issues. In _Danse Macabre_
> Stephen King claims that commercially successful horror movies tap into
> the audience's mundane fears.
In written-words-visuals-optional fiction, science fiction and horror are
mostly distinct. (Currently; Frank M. Robinson's _The Power_ would
probably be marketed as horror today.)
> If all this is true, then what is current SF "really about"?
We probably won't know till some time later.
A good deal of English fantasy from the late 19th and early 20th century
is "obviously" about sex -- now. It wasn't obvious then.
> Obvious example: in the film of Spider-Man, the spider is changed from
> radioactive to genetically modified.
_Movie_ sf and _written_ sf are different enough that I don't think it
makes much sense to discuss them together in this way.
> And is one more likely to find SF that is really about today in the
good
> stuff (because it gets some of its impact from its contemporary
> relevance), or the not-so-good stuff (because hacks can't come up with
> timeless themes, and resort to putting today's headlines Innnn
> Spaaaaace) ?
Depends on the writer. The hack might be reusing stuff grabbed from old
sf. Which means it can be as outdated as the softcore porn stories in
which beautiful teenage girls have trouble losing their virginity. The
good writer may be discussing something which -- like most people -- he
doesn't realize nobody's going to consider important six months from now.
Christopher M. Jones
It's difficult to notice trends when you're smack
in the middle of them (how long did it take for
humanity to get a firm grasp on the notion of the
atmosphere?), you don't have the benefit of
indifferent hindsight to tell you what was a trend,
what was almost a trend, and what was just spiky
random noise which drowns out the trends momentarily
but are easy to discount when you can see that they
where just transients.
One trend I have noticed is the retirement of the
old scifi (and non-scifi as well) pattern of
futurama-ism or perfectionism or "future modernism"
or whatever you want to call it. This is the
defining characteristic of most ancient scifi.
The future is (and/or aliens are) dramatically
different from the (then) present, the people are
more sophisticated, smarter, etc. This is the
"everyone in the future wears a silver jumpsuit
and eats food pills" effect. Star Trek represents
the last great gasp of it before it was killed
dead and good by Alien and Star Wars.
And that leads to the replacement, evident in films
like Star Wars, Alien, Blade Runner, Akira, The
Matrix, Terminator, Gattaca, (and Indiana Jones,
Chinatown, Fight Club), etc. In many ways many of
these films have much in common with early / mid 20th
century films and literature (adventure serials, film
noir, true crime, etc.) I would say the definitional
characteristics of this era/style of films are
imperfection, diversity, and moral dilemma. Unlike
the classic, unwavering, square chinned heros of
silver-jumpsuit-scifi the "heroes" of "modern" scifi
have to struggle with their consciences and
occasionally have to break with absolute morality in
order to uphold a greater or more important morality,
or sometimes the hero will actually be an anti-hero.
The characters in modern scifi are real people, with
flaws and quirks which make them human. Often times
the moral "trade" in the story will involve a life.
Unlike the silver-suit-era hero who might face his
fate as a perfect being, unafraid and ready to die,
the modern flesh and blood "hero" faces his fate with
a degree of trepidation and anxiety which manifests
itself in "disfunctional" style behaviors. Consider,
for example, the scarred personality of Sgt. Reese in
The Terminator, or the brooding and alcoholism of
Deckard in Blade Runner, or the acoholism, self-hate,
and suicide of the original Jerome in Gattaca.
Another key element of modern scifi is diversity.
Rather than the "purity" of a bunch of people
acting out their perfect and perfectly identical
daily lives we got more diverse locales, settings,
and people. Star Wars is an excellent example of
this, especially in the bar scene in the first
movie and the "rag tag" nature of the rebel alliance
and the main characters as well.
Star Wars is all around a good example of the
pivot from silver-jumpsuit-ism to modern scifi
(demonstrated, in part, by its massive popularity
at the time and since then). All the key elements
are there. Strained familial relations, rag tag
groups, grungy technology, bustling and diverse
locales, living in the backwoods of the galaxy,
inner struggle between good and evil, victory
bought with great sacrifice (Luke's hand, Anakin's
death), imperfect/questionable motives (is Han Solo
noble or just a smuggler?), distrust of government,
social strife, crime, etc.
I'm not quite sure what all this grew out of, or why
it replaced silver-jumpsuit-ism but many of the same
themes had been around, and been relatively "popular",
for quite some time before. My guess is that it grew
out of the turmoil of the '60s. In the early '50s
people were still confident in the unwavering progress
toward "the future". They trusted their neighbors,
they trusted their government, they trusted industry
and big business. Then people started to learn about
pollution and the dangers of radioactivity, the cold
war dragged on and heated up (5 or 10 years of duck
and cover might be easy to bear but after that it
gets increasingly wearisome and the realities start
creeping through), the civil rights struggle and
debate came to the fore, as did women's liberation,
major (popular) political figures were assassinated,
the president was caught grossly abusing the powers of
government, people realized that their government could
and would lie to them, divorce rates sky rocketed,
crime increased, etc. People became disillusioned, and
that was reflected in the art of the time. Eventually
people came to put a little more trust back into the
promise of the future and the advance of progress but
they never unlearned the lesson that perfection is
impossible and most everything in life is imperfect, a
mixed blessing, and frought with complication besides.
The future was shattered, and became no longer a place
or an era but just a time. Note how Star Wars, which I
keep coming back to because it's a very good example, is
set not in the future but in the past, and in a far away
galaxy.
Spiderman is a good example of some of these themes. One
of the major characteristics of the spiderman / Peter
Parker character is how thoroughly complex and flawed his
life is. Unlike Clark Kent he did not have a perfect
family and a near perfect job, etc. Peter Parker was
just an average joe trying to muddle his way through the
world, struggling with all the little "mundane" yet
utterly important problems everyone has to deal with.
Another major characteristic of spiderman is the
responsibility and burden that comes with power. Similar
themes run throughout much of modern scifi.
I dunno, maybe there's more going on than I see, and
maybe there's a good, succinct way to sum it all up into
a nice little phrase. The only things which come to mind
are perhaps "mesotopia", or maybe "realist humanism".
--
Zip-a-dee-doo-dah
Sea Wasp
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
>
(snip long stuff)
> The future was shattered, and became no longer a place
> or an era but just a time. Note how Star Wars, which I
> keep coming back to because it's a very good example, is
> set not in the future but in the past, and in a far away
> galaxy.
>
This isn't a particularly modern trend -- the 60s, remember, are 40 years
ago now -- and by just saying "modern SF" you're excluding a LOT of stuff if
you're insisting on it being the way you describe.
The SIMPLISTIC "silver jumpsuit" stuff is gone, but ONLY because no one
will read overly simple material, and because the easy stories with easy
super-science are all written. Our darned Real Science has taken AWAY the easy
ones. We know too much about electricity, radioactivity, and so on. They
didn't change Spider-man's origin because they felt it was "better", they
changed it because we no longer can accept "radioactivity" as a one-stop
miracle shop. At the moment, we still have genetic engineering and
nanotechnology which are used as one-size-fits-all MacGuffins (usually badly
used, but that was of course true in many of the older works, too.)
But I submit that a lot of modern material is NOT so ambiguously angsty as
you imply. Honor Harrington and the Dahak books by Weber, f'rinstance, some of
the most popular SF currently available, may be more COMPLEX in some ways, but
Honor and her compatriots still have pretty square jaws and clean-cut ways.
(and in fact get lambasted in this forum for being too much that way, often
being compared to the older material).
This is in fact the kind of material I seek out. I have much LESS interest
in the morally gray and conflicted material. Note that while the original
poster's example Spider-man has always been a more COMPLEX character, he
actually ISN'T -- or at least in his longest running original incarnation --
much less clearly GOOD than Superman. The two are different only in that
Spidey has less power and has a life that troubles him more. But the CHARACTER
isn't less clear on a pretty black-and-white division. Both he and Superman
were raised by two kindly parents/parent figures who instilled a basic set of
good-old-fashioned virtues. Spidey's only real stumble came because he didn't
START with his powers, and his parent-figures didn't know about them, so he
thought of them as morally neutral until he made a mistake that cost him
dearly. After that, he's been as iron-willed certain of what's right and wrong
as Supes or Captain America. Just never able to manage being as clean-cut.
I think the most you can say about "modern" versus "older" SF is that it
has been forced to be more complex in some areas, because the readership's
already SEEN the simple approaches and eventually the simple ones bore most
people. But becoming more complex doesn't mean that the silver jumpsuit
shining future goes away; it just needs more paint and props.
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Brandon Ray
Sea Wasp wrote:
>
> This is in fact the kind of material I seek out. I have much LESS interest
> in the morally gray and conflicted material.
I've snipped almost everything you wrote, but I agree with most of it. I feel
the same way wrt my reading preferences, and judging by what's popular, a lot of
other people do, too.
I don't mind stories where it's hard to figure out what the right thing to do is
-- that's the often the meat of a very good story. As long as the heroes are
decent people who are *trying* to do what's right, I'm there. I don't even mind
if they screw up and make the wrong choice sometimes, as long as their reasons
for doing so are honorable, and not hopelessly stupid.
But I don't have much interest in antiheroes. That sort of thing seemed like it
was popular in the 70s, but maybe is less so now. Either way, it's not my bag.
--
In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics! -- Homer Simpson
Mark
individual cases which then "date" horribly.
SF is always about the present in that the driving concerns are what
we're thinking about now. In a sense, SF is very much philosophical
fiction. That's a big field. And, like philosophers, we're always
turning things over to see how they work or making adjustments here
and there to see where they go. So it ends up, most broadly, that SF
is about what we'll be like in the future (or even in the past, given
a fiddle or two with the conditions). The gizmos are unimportant
except as entertainment and to suggest a different mindset.
For instance, since Gibson published Neuromancer, one of the primary
threads of SF has been Privacy--its nature, its limits, what it
actually looks like, and how is it achieved. (Other subsets in that
vain have to do with mind-body dualism, Cartesian mechanics, and the
failure of class distinctions.)
I think a growing thread is a concern with historical inevitability,
ala Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
A curiosity in the recent past is Banks' Look To Windward, which seems
presciently concerned with outsized terrorism. It is a novel about
the nature of retributive morality, something that has been of concern
since the Cold War began and is of even more importance to resolve
these days.
I think it more fruitful to look at the concerns dominating the
thinking that happens before a book gets written (whatever it may
be--the traces are visible in the texts) than to look for any
one-to-one examples. You'll find them, of course, but they may be
false leads. After all, Jack Finney swore the Invasion of the Body
Snatchers was not about communism.
Mark
author of:
COMPASS REACH
METAL OF NIGHT
PEACE & MEMORY (forthcoming)
www.marktiedemann.com
Robrt Pearlman
damn well wants to be.
Christopher M. Jones wrote:
> "David Cowie" <david_co...@lineone.net> wrote:
>
>>Recently, in another thread, someone said that SF is always really about
>>the present, not the future . . .
[unprovable, possibly meaningless conjectures snipped, and then there's
not much left]
Christopher M. Jones
[lotta stuff snipped]
>
> I think the most you can say about "modern" versus "older"
> SF is that it has been forced to be more complex in some areas,
> because the readership's already SEEN the simple approaches and
> eventually the simple ones bore most people. But becoming more
> complex doesn't mean that the silver jumpsuit shining future
> goes away; it just needs more paint and props.
I think you misread what I was saying. "Believability"
and "angstyness" are not really relevant. And, in fact,
there are plenty of examples of post silver-jumpsuit-ism
scifi which contain huge, unbelievable macguffins or
present fairly straightforward moral problems (and
solutions). The core of what I am saying is a trend in
film (and literature) and especially scifi is the
eliminition of the notion of "perfection" or utopia as
remotely achievable, and the consequences of that. Also,
this isn't to say that silver-jumpsuit-ism does not
exist, only that it is now the minor player compared to
"imperfection-ism" or whatever you want to call it.
You can't ever really approximate non-utopianism /
mesotopianism via utopianism with props, it just
doesn't match up no matter how you align it. And what
invariably happens when you try to "punch up" utopianism
is that you end up incorporating elements which destroy
the utopianism (as in the Star Trek franchise, for
example).
"Wild Wild West" and "Back to the Future", for example,
are modern "silver-jumpsuit-ism" style movies. The
characters are simplistic, there is a trust in
technology and authority, etc.
What I'm describing isn't really about complexity or
"sophistication" per se but about imperfection, and
it's primarily about the difference between
caricatures of people and fair approximations of
real people (warts and all).
And, as I said, this is a *trend*, not a magical on/off
switch. There are components of it which go back well
over a century certainly but the prevalence and the
extent is what's important, and that has, I believe,
increased at a fairly steady pace in modern times.
--
Not enough memory to displ~
Steve Taylor
> But I submit that a lot of modern material is NOT so ambiguously angsty as
> you imply. Honor Harrington and the Dahak books by Weber, f'rinstance, some of
> the most popular SF currently available
I read _Mutineer's Moon_ a while ago and enjoyed it, but one of my
strongest impressions was how very old-fashioned it was. It took me
right back to the Perry Rhodan books I used to read when I was ten. That
doesn't argue that it's not popular, of course, but it does feel like a
bit of an anomaly compared to most of the books I see.
(Though yeah, I admit that we all read within our preferences, so the
sort of book we most commonly see is not necessarily the most common
sort of book)
> Sea Wasp
Steve
Doug
> "Sea Wasp" <sea...@wizvax.net> wrote:
> [lotta stuff snipped]
> >
> > I think the most you can say about "modern" versus "older"
> > SF is that it has been forced to be more complex in some areas,
> > because the readership's already SEEN the simple approaches and
> > eventually the simple ones bore most people. But becoming more
> > complex doesn't mean that the silver jumpsuit shining future
> > goes away; it just needs more paint and props.
>
> "sophistication" per se but about imperfection, and
> it's primarily about the difference between
> caricatures of people and fair approximations of
> real people (warts and all).
>
> And, as I said, this is a *trend*, not a magical on/off
> switch. There are components of it which go back well
> over a century certainly but the prevalence and the
> extent is what's important, and that has, I believe,
> increased at a fairly steady pace in modern times.
I believe that's a direct result of the times we live in. We aren't
so naive to believe that the "authorities" are doing things for our
own good - we've seen them at their worst and we know better.
[Warning - sweeping generalizations ahead.]
It's striking the disconnect between my generation (born in the 1960s)
and my parent's generation (born in the 1930s) when it comes to
viewing authoritative figures. That generation, by and large, trusts
the government, their church leaders and so on, while my generation
inherently mistrusts those same organizations. They grew up with
their fathers, uncles and older brothers "doing nothing less," as Tom
Hanks put it, "than saving the world." Yet all the while they were
hushing up indiscretions and covering up acts that we would view as
nothing short of monstrously evil. (Intentionally exposing American
GIs to nuclear fallout when they knew it was wrong, manipulating the
political and economic fortunes of whole countries for the gain of
American business, subjecting whole parts of the population to
clandestine medical experiments that are different fro mthe Nazis only
in degree, and so on.)
While our parents were sold a shiny facade that was no more true than
the propaganda of any corrupt dictator, we who grew up with the
revelations of scandal and corruption -- Watergate and Wall Street,
preachers and prostitutes, Iran-Contra and international banking --
have no belief in the phony fakeness of the image sold to previous
generations.
In short, we are disillusioned, and our heroes and the worlds they
inhabit reflect that. That perfect society has been shown to be a
sham, and we've outgrown the silver jumpsuit. That's not to say that
people don't still long for the ideal or indulge in the fantasy; it's
just that it does seem to be more a fantasy than ever before and, as
such, loses its power. Perfectionism is wish-fulfillment; we get that
now.
So, yeah, SF is, thematically anyway, the literature of the present.
Doug
Doug
>
>
> I think it more fruitful to look at the concerns dominating the
> thinking that happens before a book gets written (whatever it may
> be--the traces are visible in the texts) than to look for any
> one-to-one examples. You'll find them, of course, but they may be
> false leads. After all, Jack Finney swore the Invasion of the Body
> Snatchers was not about communism.
Well, no, of course not. It was about corporate bookstores v. independents, right?
Doug
Mark
My word, you're right! This stuff is more subversively prophetic than I thought!
Walter Bushell
It was about Christianity. Jesus is born in your heart and takes you
over ("each thought and each motive beneath His control") until you
become like those plant critters, having the shell of the old self, but
interally an alien life form.
--
Sartre was an optimist. He thought Hell was _other_ people.
Walter
Dan Goodman
So is modern pornography.
Mark
> Modern sf is about power.
>
> So is modern pornography.
That's a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think? I mean, for
that matter, so is the modern political thriller, the horror novel,
any war novel, and quite a few romance novels. Power is at play and
central to a vast amount of fiction.
The brush is too big. For one thing, anyone with the chutzpah to
actually express an idea in print, in public, and assert a world view
(which at varying degrees every fiction writer--a good many nonfiction
writers--does) is dealing with and expressing power relationships.
Basic to plot itself is the idea that someone or something is going to
win--that's power.
So it's necessary to narrow that down a bit and ask, first, what kind
of power and, second, if that's either the only or main thing.
In which case, no. SF is not about power. It's about process. It's
about the way things change and the possible results of change. It's
about the interaction of ideas and the mutability of perception. It's
about getting from here to tomorrow--intelligently, if possible--which
may lead to power but in itself is not about power.
Now, I might, in an ungenerous mood, agree that Fantasy is about
power--who has it, how is it used, and who needs it to end the threat
of its misuse. But even that, as I say, is ungenerous.
I'm not even willing to admit that all pornography is "about power"--a
lot of it is about sensuality, which is certainly powerful, but
doesn't always or necessarily require a power relationship to explore.
But I'm sure there's another forum to discuss pornography. The
linkage, though, with SF is reminiscent of some of Samuel R. Delany's
early examinations of SF, art, and criminality.
Walter Bushell
> Modern sf is about power.
>
> So is modern pornography.
Is modern religion about power also?
Karl M Syring
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
>> Modern sf is about power.
>>
>> So is modern pornography.
>
> Is modern religion about power also?
You bet! Even the Vatican has electric lightning.
Karl M. Syring
erilar
(Walter Bushell) wrote:
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
> > Modern sf is about power.
> >
> > So is modern pornography.
>
> Is modern religion about power also?
Of course, and has been for several centuries or so 8-\
--
Mary Loomer Oliver(aka erilar)
Erilar's Cave Annex:
http://www.airstreamcomm.net/~erilarlo
Dan Goodman
news:78b1aacb.03021...@posting.google.com:
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
> news:<Xns9321D50A3CF...@209.98.13.60>...
>> Modern sf is about power.
>>
>> So is modern pornography.
>
> That's a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think? I mean, for
> that matter, so is the modern political thriller, the horror novel,
> any war novel, and quite a few romance novels. Power is at play and
> central to a vast amount of fiction.
A vast amount of _current_ fiction. I'm saying it's more the case now
than in the past.
A lot of late-19th-century and early (pre-Great War) 20th-century fantasy
and horror is "obviously" about sex to modern readers.
> The brush is too big. For one thing, anyone with the chutzpah to
> actually express an idea in print, in public, and assert a world view
> (which at varying degrees every fiction writer--a good many nonfiction
> writers--does) is dealing with and expressing power relationships.
> Basic to plot itself is the idea that someone or something is going to
> win--that's power.
>
> So it's necessary to narrow that down a bit and ask, first, what kind
> of power and, second, if that's either the only or main thing.
>
> In which case, no. SF is not about power. It's about process.
Hold on -- this is about contemporary sf, not sf At All Times.
So -- I'll agree that sf is about change and its results. But very little
fiction is about only one thing. And I think that current sf is more
about power than sf at times in the past -- and presumably in the future.
Dan Goodman
pr...@panix.com:
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
>> Modern sf is about power.
>>
>> So is modern pornography.
>
> Is modern religion about power also?
>
Modern religion isn't a written-medium genre.
Dan Goodman
> Sartre was an optimist. He thought Hell was _other_ people.
>
His characters (at least in that one play) thought so. But it's quite
possible that Sartre himself saw the characters as each making their own
Hell.
BrainsAkimbo
<snip>
> If all this is true, then what is current SF "really about"?
I think that Bruce Sterling is a typical example of
the tendency you mention. His stories sometimes read
to me like a 3-year old Time article, complete with
Easter European mafiosi, Silicon Valley IPO's and
slightly out-of-date attempts at coolness.
Love his non-fiction, though. More imaginative than his
fiction, strangely enough. "Imagine a bacteria the
size of a railway car". Aaaagh!!! I still have nigthmares
about that one.
http://www.eff.org/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/FSF_columns/fsf.15
(This is just my personal opinion, of course.)
-- BA
Walter Bushell
Old then, which is the modern form of power.
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen
>mtied...@earthlink.net (Mark) wrote in
>news:78b1aacb.03021...@posting.google.com:
>
>> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
>> news:<Xns9321D50A3CF...@209.98.13.60>...
>>> Modern sf is about power.
>>>
>>> So is modern pornography.
>>
>> That's a bit of an oversimplification, don't you think? I mean, for
>> that matter, so is the modern political thriller, the horror novel,
>> any war novel, and quite a few romance novels. Power is at play and
>> central to a vast amount of fiction.
>
>A vast amount of _current_ fiction. I'm saying it's more the case now
>than in the past.
Uh, what was the "first English language prose" piece about? I think
the title was: _The King Horn_
JayVee
--
[...]For you the legend I relate, / You who seek the upward way
To lift your mind into the day; / For who gives in and turns his eye
Back to darkness from the sky, / Loses while he looks below
All that up with him might go.
Mark
> than in the past.
Hmm. By what critera? What past era do you have in mind? Just
looking around my personal library I can identify books which are
concerned with power from almost any period of the last three
centuries, some more baldly than today. Just consider the biggies:
War And Peace, Moll Flanders, Of Human Bondage, The Titan, Oliver
Twist--each one an intimate portrait of power and its exercise in
various milieus.
>
> A lot of late-19th-century and early (pre-Great War) 20th-century fantasy
> and horror is "obviously" about sex to modern readers.
> Hold on -- this is about contemporary sf, not sf At All Times.
But you made it a comparative statement--now as opposed to the past.
>
> So -- I'll agree that sf is about change and its results. But very little
> fiction is about only one thing. And I think that current sf is more
> about power than sf at times in the past -- and presumably in the future.
Again, what past SF are you talking about? Jules Verne? The subtext
in almost all his work is power and its abuse--Master of the World,
Robur the Conqueror, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea most especially.
Wells? The War of the Worlds, Things To Come. The Invisible Man? Or
just Golden Age SF? Doc Smith, with his constantly escalating
exchanges of beams and rays in the titanic eons-long struggle for
dominance in the multiverse? Van Vogt's "Weapon Shops" is centrally
about power, as well as most of Heinlein's early period material--like
"The Roads Must Roll" and "Logic of Empire."
Contemporary SF has many more examples of everything than SF of the
past simply by virtue of sheer numbers. But probably in
proportionally the same degrees. In fact, I suspect that there's more
attention paid to EMpowerment now than the simpler exigeses on pure
power of the past. I'd suggest they are qualitatively different
concerns.
Doug
One could make a case for that, starting with the Bible and working
through those "Carried Away" or "Passed Over" (or whatever they're
called) books.
Doug
Jim Cambias
<dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
> Modern sf is about power.
>
> So is modern pornography.
Two curious and unsupported assertions.
Modern SF is mostly about people reacting to change.
And pornography has always been a fantasy of access.
Cambias