Using the Program Guide of the World Science
Fiction Convention in Dublin, Ireland in August 2019 (to which I will be unable
to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against,
and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program
Guide. The link is provided below where this appeared at 2:30 on August 16…
Victoria Lee: EMT, science doctoral student.
Shweta Adhyam: writer, degrees in Physics and Astronomy, ADHD
Aliza Ben Moha: Chief translator (French/Hebrew), Ministry
of Justice
Tom Easton: SFWA; ANALOG book review column, retired
college professor; PhD in biology; writes textbooks for McGraw-Hill; writer
OK – recently I’ve
started to judge my enjoyment of a science fiction story based on the newness
of the central idea. Most of you know that SF was once defined as the “literature
of ideas”. For more depth to this definition, I went here: http://www.sfcenter.ku.edu/SF-Defined.htm
to find that it’s also defined as the “literature of the Other”, “provides an
approach to understanding the universe we live in”, “multi- and
interdisciplinary, concerned with…exploring core values of diverse fields”, “literature
of…philosophy, answering such questions as, ‘What if?’ or ‘If this goes on...’
and is thus sometimes more interested with exploring ideas than developing plot
or character”.
It definitely
gives me a better idea of what I look for in my reading, however the overriding
thing for me is the expression of a new idea.
For example, I
primarily read ANALOG Science Fiction & Fact. In a recent issue, I was
unimpressed with several stories (though not the main one, Derek Künsken is a
fount of crazy SF ideas!) Some ideas were even tired…
On the other hand,
I just realized I also re-read SF series like Bujold’s VORKOSIGAN saga and CJ Cherryh’s
FOREIGNER books. Why do I accept those stories when the “ideas” aren’t new; in
fact, the FOREIGNER series has spent twenty novels in a single society and
while the technological advances in the Atevi’s society are monumental (from
steam powered locomotives to 20th Century space shuttle technology
in the space of twenty-some years; Humans had done it in the same amount of
time: from Yuri Gagarin as the first Human in space in 1961 to the first
Shuttle launch in 1981)?
For the last two,
it’s because the stories are all about the people – Bren Cameron in Cherryh’s
series; Miles Vorkosigan in the other. For both of them, their constant
collision with technological advances – from trains to First Contact and the
birth of centralized government in Cherryh’s books, to Bujold’s exploration of
a society in which the society jumps from “body birth” to “uterine replicators”
and from horses to hovercars virtually overnight.
So, my ideal book
would be crazy scientific advances meshed with novel scientific advances.
In ANALOG, one of
the stories explored the gradual increase in intelligence of a Martian mechanical
rover. This intrigued me because I’d never considered accidental intelligence;
for practical reasons, it could be considered evolutionary punctuated
equilibrium.
One of my favorite
recent new novels, Kameron Hurley’s THE STARS ARE LEGION in which Zan wakes with
no memory of who she is or why she's there but discovers that the Legion of organic
world-ships is slowly dying and there are massive wars to control them and that
she’s been resurrected without her memory many times and is supposed to save
the world.
The organic technology
is a more-or-less new, but hardly startling (OLEDs have been around since 1987 –
they are “an emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound
that emits light in response to an electric current.”), and taking away people’s
memory is old hat as are wars for scarce resources and societies of all women
(the true origins of the Amazons is unclear at best)…but when combined together
and overlaid with advanced star drive technology, the IDEA is new and Zan is
clearly and evocatively drawn.
David Brin created
something new and created truly magnificent characters to live in that world, taking
sentient animals, then genetically tweaking them to create sapient beings –
then charging them with millennia of servanthood as payback; while at the same
time enacting draconian laws to prevent ecological disaster. In all of the
books, realistic and sympathetic characters allowed the message to slip in on
the shoulders of story.
Hmmm…so…maybe it’s
not new ideas I like so much as high technology combined with exceptionally well-drawn
characters.
This requires some
thought, though it shouldn’t. My novella, “Road Veterinarian” does this –
CHEAPALIN is a genetically engineered living, sentient road surface that brings
two characters not only into alliance to solve a problem, but sparks conflict
and unexpected romance.
I’ll get back to
you as I ruminate on this.
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