Science Fiction: Platonic Ideal or Rorschach Blot?
A poster in a prior thread inquired: "Sorry to bring this up if you're purposefully ignoring it, but any comment on the Cook BS?"
I am somewhat bemused by how very many people have felt it necessary to bring this to my attention this week. Go figure.
This refers to a guest post earlier this week at the Amazing Stories website, by, apparently, an aging academic much devoted to science fiction as he sees it. The original post was, shall we say, rather carelessly written and marred by status posturing, which unfortunately obscured what I suspect the man was trying to say, and sent the subsequent net conversation reeling off to other concerns. I'll take one pass at getting things back on track in a more interesting direction, after which you are all on your own.
Since I came in as a reader a bit over fifty years ago, the debate over "What is science fiction?" (or "real" science fiction, or "hard" science fiction, or "important" science fiction, or pick the valorizing modifier of your choice) has formed and reformed without, as nearly as I can tell, getting any forwarder. Each decade seems to have had its own version of the barbarians at the gates – the New Wave in the late 60s and early 70s, Cyberpunk in the 80s, the rise of fantasy since Tolkien, and so on. (Some reader older than me will have to tell us what the 50s and 40s and 30s were kvetching about, but I guarantee there was something.) Boiled down, it was as if each camp in the arguments believed that there existed some Platonic Ideal of SF (suspiciously matching the promoter's own tastes), toward which all works and all authors ought convergently to aspire.
There have always seemed to be mixed up in it issues of generational control and perceived status, which naturally heightens emotions. In theory there is a difference between arguing about the status of science fiction, and using science fiction as a platform to jockey for status, although in practice, alas, the two slop over into each other pretty uncontrollably.
I see the field a bit differently.
The metaphor of emergent properties was not available fifty years ago, as chaos and fractal theory had not yet been developed enough to trickle out to the public discourse. What I think is actually happening is that each writer (and reader and critic) is supplying their own bright thread to a growing tapestry that we shorthand "the SF field", and when people squint at it as a whole, they see some picture emerge. No single thread is the picture, though it could not exist without all of its threads, any more than a painting is some measured amount of canvas and pigment and glue; if you reduced a painting to its elements, the image would disappear. That image is an emergent property, no less real for not being material. (Some people think human consciousness itself is something like this.)
People being what they are, I think it is also probable that everyone perceives a different picture from this tapestry (thank you, Dr. Rorschach), just the way every person reading the same book constructs a different reading experience in their head.
Happily, I am not responsible for the entire tapestry (no one person could be), only my own thread, which I spin as well as I am able. This is, I suspect, a much more relaxing view than that held by the urgent cat-herders attempting to impose their own visions of SF perfectibility on the masses.
My view is not, actually, intrinsically opposed to Platonic ideals, plural, which should be free to joust it out in the marketplace of ideas; just to the restrictive notion of A Single Best Platonic Ideal whose manifest destiny it is to consume all the others. That tends not to work out well, as anyone who has observed a pond taken over by duckweed can attest. It plays hell with the ecosystem.
(Publishing fads, although they have duckweed-like properties, tend to be self-limiting and go away on their own, so I try not to waste energy worrying too much about them.)
(I also observe, reading this over, that we are once more in the old "prescriptive versus descriptive" territories with these views. Hm.)
I have more on these notions, and how they play with various genres, in some of the pieces (including my 2008 WorldCon Guest of Honor speech) in Sidelines: Talks and Essays, my 2013 e-collection available from the usual suspects. But I think this is long enough, now.
So. What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?
Ta, L.
I am somewhat bemused by how very many people have felt it necessary to bring this to my attention this week. Go figure.
This refers to a guest post earlier this week at the Amazing Stories website, by, apparently, an aging academic much devoted to science fiction as he sees it. The original post was, shall we say, rather carelessly written and marred by status posturing, which unfortunately obscured what I suspect the man was trying to say, and sent the subsequent net conversation reeling off to other concerns. I'll take one pass at getting things back on track in a more interesting direction, after which you are all on your own.
Since I came in as a reader a bit over fifty years ago, the debate over "What is science fiction?" (or "real" science fiction, or "hard" science fiction, or "important" science fiction, or pick the valorizing modifier of your choice) has formed and reformed without, as nearly as I can tell, getting any forwarder. Each decade seems to have had its own version of the barbarians at the gates – the New Wave in the late 60s and early 70s, Cyberpunk in the 80s, the rise of fantasy since Tolkien, and so on. (Some reader older than me will have to tell us what the 50s and 40s and 30s were kvetching about, but I guarantee there was something.) Boiled down, it was as if each camp in the arguments believed that there existed some Platonic Ideal of SF (suspiciously matching the promoter's own tastes), toward which all works and all authors ought convergently to aspire.
There have always seemed to be mixed up in it issues of generational control and perceived status, which naturally heightens emotions. In theory there is a difference between arguing about the status of science fiction, and using science fiction as a platform to jockey for status, although in practice, alas, the two slop over into each other pretty uncontrollably.
I see the field a bit differently.
The metaphor of emergent properties was not available fifty years ago, as chaos and fractal theory had not yet been developed enough to trickle out to the public discourse. What I think is actually happening is that each writer (and reader and critic) is supplying their own bright thread to a growing tapestry that we shorthand "the SF field", and when people squint at it as a whole, they see some picture emerge. No single thread is the picture, though it could not exist without all of its threads, any more than a painting is some measured amount of canvas and pigment and glue; if you reduced a painting to its elements, the image would disappear. That image is an emergent property, no less real for not being material. (Some people think human consciousness itself is something like this.)
People being what they are, I think it is also probable that everyone perceives a different picture from this tapestry (thank you, Dr. Rorschach), just the way every person reading the same book constructs a different reading experience in their head.
Happily, I am not responsible for the entire tapestry (no one person could be), only my own thread, which I spin as well as I am able. This is, I suspect, a much more relaxing view than that held by the urgent cat-herders attempting to impose their own visions of SF perfectibility on the masses.
My view is not, actually, intrinsically opposed to Platonic ideals, plural, which should be free to joust it out in the marketplace of ideas; just to the restrictive notion of A Single Best Platonic Ideal whose manifest destiny it is to consume all the others. That tends not to work out well, as anyone who has observed a pond taken over by duckweed can attest. It plays hell with the ecosystem.
(Publishing fads, although they have duckweed-like properties, tend to be self-limiting and go away on their own, so I try not to waste energy worrying too much about them.)
(I also observe, reading this over, that we are once more in the old "prescriptive versus descriptive" territories with these views. Hm.)
I have more on these notions, and how they play with various genres, in some of the pieces (including my 2008 WorldCon Guest of Honor speech) in Sidelines: Talks and Essays, my 2013 e-collection available from the usual suspects. But I think this is long enough, now.
So. What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?
Ta, L.
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Clouds
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Sep 07, 2013 12:24AM
I think the ecosystem you mention is the best analogy, with different ideas evolving to fill different niches. Who wants a whole world of sheep when we could have a rainforest?
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Has he got it upside down? Authors write books, some of which have spaceships, some have dragons, some have detectives, and some have none of the above. For the convenience of booksellers and librarians, someone thought it would be a good idea to herd all the ones about spaceships (and similar) into one set of shelves and call them Science Fiction. Books with dragons got collected together under 'Fantasy', and so forth.
This provides an easy way to file books and for people to find more books that may be similar to the ones they like. However, as categories expand, they get subdivided: we now have 'Paranormal' which is a sort of cross between Horror and Fantasy. But I don't think anyone decided that we needed a 'Paranormal' category and employed some authors to write books to fill it up. The books came first, and when there were enough of them, a new category was born, for better filing purposes.
So trying to decide what 'Science Fiction' really is, is likely an exercise in frustration, because it's simply a convenient label. It conveys nothing apart from 'here be spaceships' - no values of writing quality, subject matter, or anything like that. The books come first, and the label came later.
Consequently, trying to decide what Science Fiction should be is equally an exercise in futility, because there is no central plan or even true connection between constituent books. They don't even depend on each other, other than the way trends emerge in pretty much any human endeavour. For exactly the same plot, if the author puts a spaceship in, then it's SciFi. If the author uses a dragon, it's Fantasy. Using both is likely to cause a filing crisis.
The final question, I suppose, should be: "If you are an author, do you just write the story you imagine, and then decide what genre to put it in? Or do you decide on the genre first and assemble the story from genre-appropriate components?"
My opinion. Feel free to scoff or ignore.
This provides an easy way to file books and for people to find more books that may be similar to the ones they like. However, as categories expand, they get subdivided: we now have 'Paranormal' which is a sort of cross between Horror and Fantasy. But I don't think anyone decided that we needed a 'Paranormal' category and employed some authors to write books to fill it up. The books came first, and when there were enough of them, a new category was born, for better filing purposes.
So trying to decide what 'Science Fiction' really is, is likely an exercise in frustration, because it's simply a convenient label. It conveys nothing apart from 'here be spaceships' - no values of writing quality, subject matter, or anything like that. The books come first, and the label came later.
Consequently, trying to decide what Science Fiction should be is equally an exercise in futility, because there is no central plan or even true connection between constituent books. They don't even depend on each other, other than the way trends emerge in pretty much any human endeavour. For exactly the same plot, if the author puts a spaceship in, then it's SciFi. If the author uses a dragon, it's Fantasy. Using both is likely to cause a filing crisis.
The final question, I suppose, should be: "If you are an author, do you just write the story you imagine, and then decide what genre to put it in? Or do you decide on the genre first and assemble the story from genre-appropriate components?"
My opinion. Feel free to scoff or ignore.
To sum it up in one word, or several words, well-- Prophetic, Groundbreaking, and Revolutionary. And more. I guess there is no clear cut ideal, but at least, Sci-Fi should be one of the many things it can and should be.
And isn't saying there's a single ideal of science fiction like saying that all readers are looking for the same thing? In reality, every reader is looking for something different. I imprinted on Orson Scott Card's Ender and Homecoming series(es) very early on, so for me science fiction is philosophical and psychological while playing heavily with ideas. My husband, on the other hand, loves science fiction that is more pulpy and adventure-y. That's not to say there's no overlap (your Miles Vorkosigan series, actually, is a prime example; it's a favorite of both of ours), but we see the genre very differently, and a book that succeeds as science fiction for one of us could very well fail as science fiction for the other of us. I suspect it's the same for all readers. So shouldn't there be a wide variety, to accommodate as many readers' tastes as possible?
Jen wrote: "Has he got it upside down? Authors write books, some of which have spaceships, some have dragons, some have detectives, and some have none of the above. For the convenience of booksellers and libra..."I tackle this in my WorldCon speech, where my primary definition of genre is "any group of works in close conversation with one another." So, indeed no central plan, but much true connection. Marketing categories just as you describe are one three main ways in which I see the term genre being practically applied -- from the creating, consuming, and selling viewpoints, roughly.
We have words like synonym, homonym, antonym... there ought to be a word for words that are spelled, sounded and described alike in the dictionary, but are deployed in arguments by people using entirely different meanings for them, without cross-checking. I offer "antagonym".
Much debate could be clarified by people becoming conscious of when they are using antagonyms.
Ta, L.
Clouds wrote: "I think the ecosystem you mention is the best analogy, with different ideas evolving to fill different niches. Who wants a whole world of sheep when we could have a rainforest?"People who aspire to be shepherds?
(Extending metaphors for fun and profit is a great game, although I would caution people to remember that they are not equations, so one needs to do a reality check at the end.)
Ta, L.
"any group of works in close conversation with one another."Heh. I was thinking of saying something like that, but of course... *grin*
(What I would've said: Once gathered together, a genre does tend to accumulate some specialized concepts, and/or expected... patterns. Don't infodump, goes the modern wisdom; but someone new to the genre may need more infodump than someone who already breathes certain fantasy conventions. (Been there, seen that, gone "...I suppose I'm using fantasy tropes at the foundation of this. Huh!")
E.g., say your spaceship has a warp drive. We know what that is! Hyperdrive? It goes bamf and emerges somewhere else (though what might be in hyperspace can vary greatly). Jumpgates? We know those! Wormholes? Yup. One word, and a whole general concept springs to mind.
Or, well... What you said, only you said it shorter. *wry grin* Close, close conversations.)
I do wonder if, with the current tendencies (not absolutes) for SFF to have a "don't infodump, but unfold bit by bit" worldbuilding attitude, if it's... easier? for SFF fans to get into other genres that also take their genre conventions for granted? More used to picking stuff up as one goes along? (It has felt that way to me, anyway, when reading out-of-genre. But personal experience, could be wrong, etc., etc. *grin* )
Anton wrote: "To sum it up in one word, or several words, well-- Prophetic, Groundbreaking, and Revolutionary. And more. I guess there is no clear cut ideal, but at least, Sci-Fi should be one of the many things..."Valorizing modifiers indeed, but pretty slippery in meaning without a specific context.
And to what extent are all these words describing temporary emotional responses in the reader -- surprise, amazement, sense of wonder, fear -- rather than something intrinsic to the work? After all, one generation's prophet is the next generation's tedious grandpa. And surprise only works the first time.
I suppose "responses shared across many readers" would do to make the concepts more graspable, with "over time" pinning them down more. "Books that change the way other books are written" was one of my definitions of "important", somewhere in one of my essays, which touches the "groundbreaking/revolutionary" bits. Books that change the way people behave in the real world are trickier, as they can be either good or pernicious. Consider _The Hammer of Witches_ for an example of the latter with an impressive final body count.
Prophetic, well... I am reminded of the old saw about even a stopped clock being right twice a day, and then there is the issue of self-fulfillment. (Clarke's communication satellites, ferex.) I also wonder how many revolutions one can stuff into a finite span of time.
That said, I adore sense-of-wonder when I can get it.
Ta, L.
All I can say is that you are one of the writers who got me back into reading SF. I am so grateful to have found you.I think your framing of the Amazing Stories article is absolutely spot-on--everyone has notions (that match their own tastes) and try to sway others to their definition. It's understandable, but sad. As Daniel Abraham said on Twitter: "It's just his opinion. His stupid, stupid, embarrassing, puerile, retrograde, stupid opinion."
Understandable and annoying, perhaps. Sad would be if no one at all cared enough to argue...Ta, L.
Very true!On another note, my library book group is discussing "The Warrior's Apprentice" next week. So excited!
Cheers!
Jen, have you read Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl? Because if you haven't, you gave a pretty good summary of it.If you can find it, I highly recommend it - it had a profound effect on me and my writing. It taught me the importance of viewpoint.
As to the original discussion - I have little to say. SF is a pretty broad genre, and I like it that way. Anyone who tries to corral it or control it is crazy, IMHO.
She did not say anything about SCIENCE and its relationship to science fiction. That is the trouble with a lot of SF fans. They don't care about science.But Bujold does and you can see it in her stories. Her father was a well known engineer in his field. I suspect this shows in Falling Free.
But if you read lots of reviews of Komarr you will rarely find any mention of the science driving the story. It contains obvious similarities to the well known short story The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin. Reality does not care about human beings. Get your physics wrong and it will kill you without hesitation or remorse. That is what started the story of Komarr. Bujold treats her imaginary wormhole physics like REAL physics.
But then she does not separate serious science fiction from adventure story toy science fiction in the above comment.
Karl wrote: "She did not say anything about SCIENCE and its relationship to science fiction. That is the trouble with a lot of SF fans. They don't care about science.But Bujold does and you can see it in he..."
One of my very favorite reviews of A Civil Campaign was from a fellow who'd worked in product development, who seized on the subplot of the butterbugs as a worked example of everything that can go wrong (and right) in the adventures of product development. "She had all the steps right there," he marveled, or words to that effect, and enumerated them all. "The really bad interface idea..."
The entire review was all about that part of the novel. I thought I kept a copy, but it's lost in the compost somewhere.
I am suddenly reminded that I worked in the product development laboratory of a pharmaceutical company, at a low tech level, for a short stretch in my misspent youth. Huh. I can't say as I thought about it consciously at the late date of writing the novel, though.
"A book is like a mirror," as someone said. (Variously attributed; I've never been sure who was the correct source.)
And yes, I do care about the science, and indeed, it is seldom remarked upon.
Ta, L.
Karl wrote: "She did not say anything about SCIENCE and its relationship to science fiction. That is the trouble with a lot of SF fans. They don't care about science.But Bujold does and you can see it in he..."
I suddenly realize I need to ask, to whom does "she" refer in the first and last paragraphs of this note?
Textually confused, L.
Lois wrote: "Karl wrote: "She did not say anything about SCIENCE and its relationship to science fiction. That is the trouble with a lot of SF fans. They don't care about science.But Bujold does and you can..."
Hi Lois. I tend not to think of myself as a fan of authors but I have read so many of your books and looked forward to getting the next one I have no alternative but to admit being a fan of yours. LOL
But by "she" I meant you in both cases but I changed the last sentence to be more precise in its meaning. I was simply saying that in your original response you did not say anything about a relationship between science and science fiction.
Works by Andre Norton and Alan Dean Foster obviously belong to the science fiction genre but they are usually not very "sciency" stories. SF has a spectrum from hard stuff like Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of Moondust to stories with almost no science, like your Mountains of Mourning. The only science is implied by being on an alien planet and the discussion of mutations. But the subject is still very serious and it is not just a FUN adventure story.
I have wondered what you would do with Imperial Auditor Vorkosigan in a First Contact situation. Use his Imperial Voice to order the aliens back where they came from? LOL How big can the Nexus get without encountering the inevitable. Michael McCollum use a supernova to bring humans and aliens in contact in Antares Dawn. A bit dramatic.
Karl wrote: "Lois wrote: "Karl wrote: "She did not say anything about SCIENCE and its relationship to science fiction. That is the trouble with a lot of SF fans. They don't care about science.But Bujold doe..."
I toyed with the idea of bringing in aliens way back in Shards of Honor, but shelved it in favor of a more Cordwainer-Smith-esque projected future, where ten thousand years down the timeline, all the aliens will be [descended from] us. We can see the start of this bioengineered explosive speciation in Miles's time.
So, aliens would require booting up another universe.
Ta, L.
I presume this is the article that started this business:http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/09/...
I think this is just another case of something that I have begun to regard as normal in the last 20 years. Writers in the media need to find things to say to fill up page space and air time etc. And if it is somewhat controversial so much the better because then more people can write about the controversy.
Every decent story is going to mix multiple elements. What they will be will depend on the writer and what the writer thinks the market wants and how much of a whore the writer is. Consider Leviathan Wakes with its Vomit Zombies and how many people like that crap. LOL Consider the entire Harry Potter series. Talk about literary puke.
ROFL I have actually read two to see what the big deal was about. I think the movies are very good interpretations of the books I read. I probably would have loved them when I was in grade school. Why anyone over 14 cares about them I don't know.
But the fantasy people get bent out of shape if you talk as though accurate science is important to good science fiction and there are LOTS of fantasy people. So it is probably a good idea for a writer to not annoy them for economic reasons.
I have also read Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls. They are nice stories but I just can't get into fantasy. It is like there is no "there" there. The story is just so much "sound and fury signifying nothing".
To have a "platonic ideal" of science-fiction, is part of the human fallacy of imposing greater meaning to things we enjoy than is proper, needful, or necessary. Humans always want to justify their pleasures, and make everyone around them acknowledge the "correctness" of their views. Enjoy what you enjoy: there is no need to justify it to anything other than the law(s) of your society.non-sequitur: Miles' adventures have always been great fun to read, and provided me with many laughs: a rarity in my life. Thanks....
Great response Lois. I'm thinking of writing a blog post "why fans don't need to tell favorite authors about critism/bad reviews". Right now I'm spending a fair amount of time talking to newbie, and not so newbie, authors about not responding to bad reviews. Watching this unfold, I've commented elsewhere on my thoughts of Paul Cook, reminds me that its not always the writers fault when they are pulled in and few are as good as you at responding without being dragged down.I was offended by his comments, for women, for romance writers and readers, and on your behalf. Surely an overreaction on my part. I do what Paul Cook does in my own way. I know what "proper regency romance" should be and I'm disappointed that its been destroyed by "fill in the blank". In my own defense I don't do much other than grumble quietly, search for books that meet my criteria, find others like me so we can share book suggestions, and widen my reading to other genre as my main complaint is too much explicit sex.
So what am I saying? The way you handled this is something to aspire to. You've made me more aware of additional issues that the newbie authors I work with face. I need to rethink some of my own actions and reactions. I adore miles adventures and love recommending your books as starter books for entry into science fiction.
Oh and I loved your pre-Worldcon interview.
After a few days of thinking about it, I'm grateful for the brou-ha-ha. It's helped me clarify my thinking about the whole thing.Story is the ice cream, and when it comes right down to it, I don't really care too much about genre sprinkles. I do like little candy hearts (romance), hot fudge (relationships), crunchy silver dragees (shiny real science, projected), and a little bit of woo-woo frozen crunchy balls. (OK, I could eat a whole bowl of woo-woo frozen crunchy balls.)
It seems to me that the people who are "gatekeeping" just don't think that candy hearts go well with silver dragrees. They prefer a good dose of silver dragree, chili adventure (one of my faves, too), with a healthy helping of "outline for a better society" caramel.
Oh, and some fans have an inordinate fondness for shredded tech manuals, it seems. (He caressed his 6500 Betaphysical Ectoplasmic Disperser lovingly, as he noted again the fine craftsmanship [delete long description of tech details from sales manual] and waited for the dawn to come.)
That's all OK. Genre doesn't always help us identify these things, because so many things are cross-genre works. So, these days, we go on-line, read reviews and look for tags that might give us a hint about what kind of ice cream is really in that dystopic-looking box.
I think Platonic ideals are a little stiff and not fun to read. I think it all comes down to people want better marketing details. Maybe US publishers need to revamp the covers. I don't think Aaronvitch's original UK covers look much like "Urban Fantasy" but they suit the books, and tell us it's not Grandpa's Science Fiction anymore. (Although, a really good cover would reference Grandma's Mystery Collections, I think. Very trad police procedural with a lovely helping of woo-woo dipping dots.)
Better representative book covers, better book descriptions, book marketing that actually is about the book would be great.Reading book reviews and paying attention to covers, book descriptions, and reading book reviews is the responsibility of the readers. I learn so much from well written 3 star reviews and ranting 1 star reviews that let me know all the reasons I will love a book written by people who skipped reading descriptions and reviews. LOL
Book covers are a big hot button for me as many book covers aren't really representative of what's inside the book but are instead marketings idea of what book buyers will buy. Too many urban fantasy covers have skimpily dressed girls/women & I pass them by. It takes many friends to convince me the book is actually about cool worlds and happenings not thinly disguised paranormal sex its getting absurd.
Tasha wrote: "Great response Lois. I'm thinking of writing a blog post "why fans don't need to tell favorite authors about critism/bad reviews". Right now I'm spending a fair amount of time talking to newbie, an..."Back in the day, I was taught a writer should never to respond to any review except perhaps a word of thanks if someone said something nice. I've never found this advice to be bad yet.
Ta, L.
Lois is making me think again, which is one of the reasons I own her books in multiple formats. So, what is my Platonic Ideal of science fiction? It starts "A well-written story, with characters who have both virtues and flaws, in a consistent setting, ...." But that's also true of fantasy, historical fiction, biography, mystery, and many other genres that I read. The distinction, for me, is that science fiction explores how scientific advances could impact how people live. Some impacts are positive, others are negative. Some stories focus on the scientific advance, others focus on the people, while the very best weave them together seamlessly. The consistent setting in my general definition of good book is critical to my Platonic Ideal of science fiction. Good science fiction has to get the science right. If the science isn't right, the setting always has consistency problems, just like historical fiction that totally ignores history. I devoured historical romance as a teenager, but preferred Georgette Heyer to the new Regency romances that were trendy. Heyer's settings were consistent; if one of her characters alluded to a Greek play, I could check that play out of the library. I do the same thing with science fiction; my current reading on efforts to stabilize sinking buildings in the Florida Everglades, Venice, etc, started with Mark purchasing the sunken ImpSec to turn it into a tourist attraction. That's my ideal of science fiction; a good story that prompts me to learn more about science and technology because the science is right.
Tasha wrote: "Better representative book covers, better book descriptions, book marketing that actually is about the book would be great.Reading book reviews and paying attention to covers, book descriptions, ..."
This is interesting. I get tired of all of the subjective evaluations that people say about sci-fi works. So I have created a computer program that analyses the frequency of word usage. LOL
Did you know that J. K. Rowling uses the word "wand" at a higher rate through the Harry Potter series even faster than the books increased in size? The first book used it fewer than 100 times and the last more than 400.
So I count the use of "scientific" and "fantasy" words and divide by the number of kilobytes in the work to get sci-fi and fantasy densities.
In Komarr Lois uses the word "wormhole" 48 times and "galactic" 27 times.
So Komarr has a sci-fi density of 0.586 and a fantasy density of 0.007.
But for Falling Free they are 0.826 for sci-fi and 0.004 fantasy.
However Curse of Chalion is 0.061 sci-fi and 0.214 fantasy.
Obviously this doesn't show if the writer used the scientific words correctly or if the story is any good. But The Hunger Games got a pretty low sci-fi density at 0.062 SFD and 0.018 FD. So it got essentially the same score in SFD as an admitted fantasy novel.
I have been testing this on numerous SF works in Project Gutenberg. When the SFD gets below 0.25 the tales usually don't hold my interest very well.
But we are now using computers and the Internet to discuss science fiction. I find people claiming to be SF fans but poopooing the science and technology in SF rather disturbing. We may not be able to reanimate dead bodies as in Frankenstein but we do organ transplants and restart people's hearts with electricity. It is the relationships between science, society and science fiction that should influence the evaluation of SF. In the 50s some people were discussing using science fiction to encourage children's interest in science. What has happened to that?
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10...
Karl wrote: "Tasha wrote: "Better representative book covers, better book descriptions, book marketing that actually is about the book would be great.Reading book reviews and paying attention to covers, book ..."
Hee! This is the geekiest way of sorting books I've ever heard of. Delightful.
I do wonder about subjective bias creeping in at the level of selection of the keywords to test for, though. "Chimera", for example, which has both a strict scientific and a mythological meaning, might also confuse the program.
People were discussing using SF to encourage children's interest in science as far back as the 20s. Why this shifted is a question that could probably take several books and PhD theses to sort out. Why have dystopias gotten trendier while the real world, measured objectively, got better? On the brighter side, today people of all ages can get at the science more directly through the internet, on the thousands of real science sites available -- too soon to say yet what the impact of that will be, but I am mildly hopeful.
(I am also briefly reminded of the net program floating around a while back that purported to measure whether a block of text was written by a man or a woman through some word-count protocol. I ran some of my fiction through it -- all my scenes from a female viewpoint came out as written by a woman, all the scenes written from a male viewpoint came out as written by a man. I suspect it was incidences of pronouns that made the actual difference.)
Ta, L.
>This is, I suspect, a much more relaxing view than that held by the urgent cat-herders attempting to impose their own visions of SF perfectibility on the masses.[snip]
>[My view is opposed] to the restrictive notion of A Single Best Platonic Ideal whose manifest destiny it is to consume all the others. That tends not to work out well, as anyone who has observed a pond taken over by duckweed can attest.
I've taken to ignoring the whole thing. Once I noticed (circa 1995) self-professed Doctor Who fans were simply saying "This show would be great if it was just like this other thing over here which I like better and which come to think of it isn't actually science fiction or family suitable or anything lame like that" ... I learned to avoid such people, no matter what author or TV show or movie they were faux-enthusing about.
I read what I want to read. I watch what I want to watch. If it's popular, it's probably too mediocre for me.
So. What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?
Excite my imagination. Be internally consistent. Whatever mystery is being solved must either be too hard for me to solve or the context so interesting I don't care that I figured out how it was going to go as of chapter five. And the thing that has kept my reading list short and manageable for the last fifteen years: The characters must not be stupid.
Lois wrote: "Hee! This is the geekiest way of sorting books I've ever heard of. Delightful."LOL
I had no idea what the results would be when I started writing the program. The word list has gone from about 50 to over 200. There are 10 times as many science words as fantasy words but there are lots of words that fantasy books don't seem to use. It never occurred to me to include "chimera". But I left out "cell" because I bet even science fiction uses "jail cell" more often than the biological version of cell. There can never be a perfect word list.
You use the word "galactic" quite often in the Vor novels but it isn't applied in the scientific sense.
Not just the densities but maybe the most used words matter also.
Komarr
atmosphere 10
gravitational 10
oxygen 10
program 10
theory 10
genetic 11
brain 15
pressure 16
galactic 27
experiment 32
engineer(ing) 40
wormhole 48
Falling Free
hydroponics 10
planet 10
genetic 14
wormhole 19
computer 20
pressure 20
laser 21
acceleration 22
orbit 23
engineer(ing) 35
gravity 34
Curse of Chalion
atmosphere 3
language 3
logic 3
theory 4
pressure 6
brain 8
nerve 10
thrust 10
magic 33
castle 81
sword 85
Some years ago I used the Internet to select 5 books on the basis of multiple "good" reviews. After buying them I was able to finish one. I later finished another after promising someone I would. It was like sticking pencils in my eyes. It was Revelation Space. It had characters I could not give a damn about. The sooner they were all killed off the better I would like them.
I didn't read any reviews before I bought Komarr. But I have read more than a dozen since. If I wasn't already familiar with your work I probably wouldn't buy it on the basis of the reviews. I only recall one that sort of mentioned the science by discussing Dr. Riva. Otherwise there is no way to tell that your wormhole physics creates the mystery of the story and makes it quite interesting.
I would think a system that lets readers determine with high if they would like a book would appeal to most readers. But for most people it seems to be as much about social networking as reading. I often wonder how many people allow themselves to be told what to like.
I can't help but wonder how Karl's system would work on something like YA SFF. I know there's a lot of excellent YA fantasy out there. YA SF, I don't know so much. I think the only thing I've read recently is the YA classic The Giver, which left me saying, "meh."
Results for The Giveracceleration 1
brain 1
computer 1
electrode 1
experiment 1
genetic 1
nerve 1
magical 1
science 3
scientific 3
technology 3
wand 4
language 14
total number of words was: 13 used 35 times
total document length: 252K SF word density 0.119 Fant word density 0.020
It is significantly below my 0.25 threshold for SF.
This is for H. Beam Piper's Omnilingual a work 40% as long.
electric 4
electron 4
nuclear 4
planet 4
uranium 4
chemistry 5
physics 5
hydrogen 6
scientific 6
atomic 7
oxygen 7
archaeology 8
Mars 12
language 18
total number of words was: 37 used 130 times
total document length: 97K SF word density 1.331 Fant word density 0.010
There are works a lot shorter that used more than 13 words.
We're hijacking the thread. But since this does relate to things Lois has addressed elsewhere....I hated young adult books, and I don't like them any better as an adult now I can articulate why. I liked imaginative fiction. In the juvenile books I grew up on, boys and girls were on equal footing, because moving the books along was all about each child's (or sometimes adult's) skill set and getting along well enough to work with others toward a solution. In the young adult books the girls were either the problem or the prize (or both), and what moved the books along was the character's place in life, not his ingenuity or determination. Incidental characters tended to be like paper cutouts whereas in juvenile books they had presence and reason. Fantasy was the worst offender.
There I was, bored with the simplicity of juvenile books, and unable to read adult books because back then adult meant it *had* to contain sex and/or violence, which I thought were boring and stupid (actually, I still do more often than not) and frankly I wasn't *ready* for adult books. As far as I could tell young adult books were required to be about boy-girl relationships or speculate about boy-girl relationships, and the characters had to be stupid compared to the characters in juvenile books. I was bewildered by the degeneration and bored. The only young adult books I liked had no girls, and just because a book had no girls was no indicator of whether I would like it, because then it tended to be about boys jockeying for supremacy or being manipulated by hostile outside forces they could do nothing about. Boooring.
I'm trying to remember any of the young adult books I liked. "Interstellar Pig" (which I've never reread). "Watership Down"--which was adult at the time, but young adult now. And the Target novelizations of Doctor Who--which were considered children's in the UK. "Cheaper by the Dozen"--is that juvenile or young adult? Um.... Is that really all? Oh dear.
Leela4 wrote: "We're hijacking the thread. But since this does relate to things Lois has addressed elsewhere....I hated young adult books, and I don't like them any better as an adult now I can articulate why...."
May I recommend to your attention Megan Whalen Turner's series starting with The Thief. Read them, then come back and we can continue. (Also, Wrede and Stevermer. Pat Wrede hates stupid characters, too.)
(Cheaper by the Dozen is a nonfiction memoir, iirc.)
"Juvenile" as a label/category has been retired altogether, as far as I know, and quite some time ago at that. "Young adult" gets as much argumentation over its meaning as "science fiction", and that's by the people who work in it. It's also one of those categories that contains all other categories inside it, recursively.
A lot of older books first published as adult have been re-marketed as YA -- this ploy has been going on for a couple of generations, now. Easy enough to see why the publishers would go for it, but presumably the drivers must be teachers and school librarians. (The latter is a big market for hardcovers in the US -- there are way more school libraries than public ones.)
Ta, L.
Lois is right--The Thief by Whalen Turner is great! I read it ages ago but loved it.There are some seriously great teen books out there. Try "The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks" by E. Lockhart. Or "Glow" by Amy Ryan for a teen sf.
Karl, thanks for doing the analysis! I wonder if YA SF is skewed to slightly simpler words . . . although I can't think of a really sciency YASF (note: I haven't read much YASF). That's a real pity . . . it would be good to get kids interested in science, because it is really cool.YA Fantasy is doing some amazing things these days, and as an adult, I've enjoyed several books. There's Wrede, of course -- I especially recommend Cecilia & The Chocolate Pot, which is kind of Regency Urban Fantasy via letters. The Thief was very good. Robin McKinley's fairy tales can be quite harrowing, but so well written. And then there's Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely, which is a nice twist on the Fae.
Cheaper by the Dozen was YA?? Oh my. It was hugely influential upon my childhood (efficiency! but as an adult, I find it "perfectionist efficiency" to be overrated). Scientific. But great human interest. I re-read it as an adult, and was fascinated, and sought out some other books by the authors and their parents. Quite worthwhile. Not science fiction, but a kind of scientific lifestyle.
Michaeline wrote: "Karl, thanks for doing the analysis! I wonder if YA SF is skewed to slightly simpler words . . . although I can't think of a really sciency YASF (note: I haven't read much YASF). That's a real pity..."What I hear from the YA editors is that they would like to do more YA SF, but aren't getting enough up-to-scratch submissions.
Ta, L.
So it all comes down to, "if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself"? LOL. Or maybe the more positive spin would be, "if you build it, they will come." If I'm going to do it, I better do it quick while I still have young adults in the house . . . .
Lois wrote: ""Juvenile" as a label/category has been retired altogether, as far as I know, and quite some time ago at that. "Young adult" gets as much argumentation over its meaning as "science fiction", and that's by the people who work in it. It's also one of those categories that contains all other categories inside it, recursively."So Lois, what would people in the publishing industry think of my Sf evaluation method?
Regardless of how "good" or "bad" it is, it is at least consistent across works. LOL
And how can an author use a lot of "sciency" words without having some science information without looking completely stupid.
Karl wrote: "Lois wrote: ""Juvenile" as a label/category has been retired altogether, as far as I know, and quite some time ago at that. "Young adult" gets as much argumentation over its meaning as "science fic..."I think others would be amused, too.
But if it were actually put in place I think it would quickly become counterproductive, as people would start gaming the algorithm to get a good score, to scramble to the top of whatever queue their work was in, instead of actually concentrating on telling a good story. (My business is insanely competitive.)
Real-world parallels left to... anyone but me.
Ta, L.
Lois wrote: " I think it would quickly become counterproductive, as people would start gaming the algorithm to get a good score, to scramble to the top of whatever queue their work was in, instead of actually concentrating on telling a good story."Admittedly my viewpoint is entirely from outside the market, or maybe the demand side, but I do not see SF promoted much to grade school kids, or the parents of grade school children.
Now the education business is talking up this Common Core stuff. I have not seen at what grade level they expect a student to be able to explain the basic structure of the atom or what causes winter and summer.
I was mind blown when I saw this 20 years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0wk4q...
I learned more science as a result of reading science fiction than from my grade school teachers. The books told me what words to research in the encyclopedia. In the short run the stories were important but in the long run it was the concepts behind the words. I applied to MIT after winning a National Merit Scholarship. I was not accepted but had no trouble getting into another engineering school.
I would have loved this in 7th grade:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
But our current society is somewhat like the culture you created in Cryoburn. We are at a crossroad with these cheap computers and what kind of society we have 50 years from now will be hugely affected by what we do and do not do with this technology now. Who decides?
The neutron was not discovered until 1932. Grade school kids should know things that PhD physicists did not know 100 years ago.
Karl wrote: Grade school kids should know things that PhD physicists did not know 100 years ago. There is the problem that a lot of people think memorizing trivia is a good substitute for understanding. Understanding tends to lead to questions, and questions tend to lead to "I don't know", which many people find unbearable.
It hardly ever leads to "Hm. Let's figure out how to find out, and then you can do that."
Going back to Lois's post, I think I do object to Platonic Ideals of any genre, and I'm not sure it's in their nature to allow plurality.The fundamental problem (from a lit-critty pov) is the way that the term 'genre' is understood. It's actually quite recent in its application to writing, and was borrowed from fine art, where 'genre painting' pretty much meant anything not depicting a sacred subject, and the trouble is that it became Platonised, as if it had a singular and essential meaning -- this is tragedy, and that is comedy, and the other is satire. But by comparison with its close scientific cognate 'genus', genre doesn't have much specific meaning, and the literary equivalent of kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species is medium-genre-genre-genre-genre-genre-form. Cue all the confusions and brouhaha. Antagonyms is a wonderful coinage, and exactly what's going on.
My own teaching metaphor for what is wrong with essentialist definitions is pigeonholes -- you can't put one item into more than one pigeonhole, but any honest reader knows that books (and all artworks) may be of more than one genre simultaneously. And the pigeonhole way of thinking is endemic, but deeply mistaken and sterile. It has to go, and while that ain't gonna happen anytime soon, we have been able to tackle other essentialisms and at least begin to erode them.
I've always liked Lois's definition of books in conversation with one another, but feel that one important element is missing -- expectation, which helps to pull together the commercial and the critical uses of 'genre'. Any given genre isn't only a label for books one has read but an expectation of what some other book one hasn't read is and isn't going to be, to have -- and that is what allows the notion of a 'twist', by definition unexpected. And if appropriate cues are provided, in approaching the book (cover, location in bookstore, blurb ...) or within the text, there is no reason one cannot as a reader recognise the presence of more than one genre, one bundle of expectations.
For me, half the fun (and wonder) of Lois's books is seeing what genres she's added to the mix this time. Hey, space opera and screwball comedy! Yowsa, science crime! Woot, space regency romance! The only critical opinion offered in her far too brief entry in The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th ed. (sandwiched between "Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc" and "Bukowski, Charles"), is that "she playfully combines generic modes from romantic comedy to dark psychological thriller", and though short of a few superlatives, that's spot on, surely?
But Plato wouldn't approve at all, at all, so down with him and up with the ecosystem. Ultimately the essentialists are on a hiding to nothing, just as much as those who would deny or ban miscegenation, but they are surely annoying in the meantime.
I bet Plato would not approve of science fiction.
Oh, I dunno. I thought The Republic was supposed to be the Ur-form of that whole wing of political utopian/dystopian, I-have-an-idea-to-fix-the-world, here-let-me-show-you-it fantasy and science fiction?Which leads me to wonder, sideways to this thread but connected to one above, if Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C 41+ is in Ron Miller's new Baen e-editions. I read that when I was about 9, I think, as a paperback reprint was lying around the house. Now, there's an influential book that nobody wants to mention. (It was very pulpy -- though one could only dub it "Ur-pulp" if one didn't know about dime novels.) I wonder how it would reread to my adult mind, more than a century now after its first publication? I wonder if Gutenberg has it... (Hm. Not in Kindle, although Amazon offers some used paperbacks for not too much. Now I'm curious if it has an e-edition anywhere.)
Ta, L.
Gary wrote: "John wrote: "Going back to Lois's post, I think I do object to Platonic Ideals of any genre, and I'm not sure it's in their nature to allow plurality.You're correct. Plato's notion was that for e... You can't pick your own Platonic ideal any more than you can pick your own absolute monarch."
Sure you can. You just can't get anyone else to agree with you...
:-), L. Contemplating the intrinsic subjectivity of literature. And the slightly depressing way so many arguments all boil down to "arguing for status".
Lois was: "Contemplating the intrinsic subjectivity of literature. And the slightly depressing way so many arguments all boil down to "arguing for status"."That would be yup, and yup -- but I was trying to, um, sidestep the boiling-down with your antagonism gambit. Hom. not so sap. does seem fairly hardwired for hierarchy and status (Octavia Butler certainly suggested so), but intellectually the problem with essentialism as applied to genre is fairly demonstrably (a) a category error and (b) dependent on a clear failure adequately to define the term 'genre' as applied to literature.
I think (mutatis mutandis) the comparison of these wannabe genre purists with that other essentialism of blood and/or race holds up quite well, intellectually speaking -- a purely abstract desire for a supposed purity that does not and cannot ever have existed; an entirely culturally developed claim for an impossible state of genetics (another cognate with genre, as are genus and gender). So the hopeful thought is that over less than a hundred years we've reached a point where those who now speak politically in terms of racial or ethnic purity are, for the most part, pretty marginalised, and mainstream orthodoxy more or less accepts that it's a toxic chimaera. If we're lucky, the same lesser but still important truth about so-called generic purity will also become mainstram and marginalise those with views like those which set this thread off in the first place. One can hope, anyway.
Sidenote to Gary: what do you think a less silly way to solve the problem of universals, btw?
"What's your favorite Platonic Ideal of science fiction?"I don't have one, assuming platonic ideals exist at all in the real world. Seems to me that is sort of like asking what ice cream flavor is your favorite flavor. I think you can choose and then must defend several flavors as one's favorite with equal validity. (But for those who favor mint chocolate chip. Either I am genetically damaged or those of you who like that flavor are so damaged. Some of us are wrong since the makers keep making it.)
For books, my tastes vary from month to month, year to year. For science fiction, some run more towards science driven stories (say, Tau Zero) but I in general prefer the more character driven stories. Sometimes I prefer the comedic, other times the social commentaries, occasionally hard science driven stories but those are usually one reads.
I've spent a lot of time enjoying the Vorkosigan series but have not read the Chalion series. At one point in my life, I'm pretty sure I would read and loved the Chalion series given its talented authoress but now I just have little or no desire for books of that type. Maybe next year.
I mention this because Cook's essay complains about labeling. I'd never be mislead by a label on the Chalion books calling them "science fiction." Even under his definition, I don't see how you could call the Vorkisgan series not science fiction, since the science is beyond what we know have and the term "fiction" is pretty flexible.
Cook's essay ends "Of course, I’ve offended everyone who’s read this far–simply by having an opinion. But this essay has been about truth-in-advertising. I’m too old to put up with indulgences by books claiming to be one thing, but are really something else. I like my science fiction advertised as such, nothing more."
Old or not, if Cook is too lazy to read a synopsis beyond the words "science fiction" on a cover, I'm sure he is entitled to his opinion and I'll give it what I consider appropriate weight.
I'm not sure I'd even agree with Cook's definition of fantasy versus science fiction. At some point the science diverges to fantasy. Zelazny did a great commentary on this in Lord of Light. Are the miraculous pressure suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers much different analytically to the magic of J.K. Rowling's Potter wizards? Not to me. Rowling set limits on what her magic system could and could not do, just like Heinlein set limits on his miraculous pressure suits, which could leap tall buildings in a single bound just like the early version of Superman.
As far as platonic ideals go, my introduction to Plato came from Heinlein's government discussions in Starship Troopers--my first of many science fiction books-- where Heinlein refers to Plato's ant like republic. But then I read Wilson's Journey to the Ants a year or two back and ant societies are actually little like Heinlein's Plato synopsis. Wilson wrote in On Human Nature, "“How aggressive is man compared to other animals? When a count is made of murders per thousand individuals, human beings are well down on the list of violently aggressive creatures, and I am confident [that] this is true even if our episodic wars are averaged in….. [Compared to] ants—which conduct assassinations, skirmishes and pitches battles as routine business—men are tranquilized pacifists. Give hamadryas baboons nuclear weapons and I think they’d destroy the world in under a week.”
So much for ideals in real life, but IMO they are useful for comparative position analysis.
Interesting, Jamie. Thanks. And a couple of points.At one point in my life, I'm pretty sure I would read and loved the Chalion series given its talented authoress but now I just have little or no desire for books of that type. Maybe next year.
Forgive me, but doesn't this beg the question? Books of what type?
Objectively, the Chalionverse novels posit a world with mediaeval technology wherein a pantheon of five gods definitively exists and each is able, within sharply prescribed limits, to affect the course of events. In RL terms, the base informing the worldbuilding is the Iberian peninsula during a late stage of the Reconquista, and the society is relatively densely imagined, on terms including the political, social, cultural, economic, theological, hagiographical, institutional, topographical, international, gendered, genetic, calendrical, animal, and individual.
Not much less objectively, I could make sound arguments relating the various novels to Homer, El Cid, the primary concerns of the Vorkosiverse, Mary Doria Russell, Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy, the primary concerns of The Sharing Knife, and Sho'ah studies.
Also not much less objectively, I point to my upthread remarks about "expectation". My own experience, pretty much whenever I have books I have for some reason kept relegating in the to-read pile, is that when I do finally, on some vilely rainy day when there isn't an undone jigsaw in the already cleaned house, take the plunge, I am swiftly blown away. You are, it seems to me, blocking yourself, or closing yourself, on the basis of a bundle of expectations -- of which (I promise) at least half are inappropriate and the other half are not worth preserving unmodified.
Acquire a pleasantly cheap digital text and next time you're stuck at a loose end, try the first three chapters of the Curse of Chalion. If you are unimpressed, you will acquire a leg to stand on. If you are not, much pleasure will be yours.
Wilson wrote ...
My emotions when Wilson is presented in argument are decidedly mixed. (I'd be fascinated to know what Lois, far more biologically informed and minded than I thinks of him.) I cannot impugn his fieldwork as such, but the large philosophical implications he infers from it are consistently ... hardline Behaviourist, mechanical, reductive of almost everything. Eugene Marais is a deal more interesting about ants, and you might consider Nabokov on insect symbiotics affecting the Blue Butterflies he studied taxonomically. De Waal's kind of ethnography belongs in there too, as much as Wilson's lack of any ethnography at all, so far as I can tell.
Or ... I hear Wilson on hamadryas baboons and raise you Alasdair Gray in the novel 1982 Janine:
"A geneticist fella told me we humans differ from other brutes by drinking when not thirsty, eating when not hungry, fucking all round the calendar regardless of climate and torturing and killing helpless creatures of our own kind. In plain language, we have an inborn capacity for intoxication, greed, lust, cruelty and murder: a fact which your thinking moralist will always find more significant than our ingenuity in constructing such bizarre containers of ourselves as the Polaris submarine, Sistine Chapel, and suspender-belt."
My bad. Make that "ethnography", "ethnology", please. Thanks.
Jamie wrote: "Are the miraculous pressure suits of Heinlein's Starship Troopers much different analytically to the magic of J.K. Rowling's Potter wizards? Not to me."What did Clarke really mean by "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."?
Was it simply that when it exceeds THAT INDIVIDUALS comprehension, then it is magic. Exo-skeleton suits are now under development. Heinlein was an engineer. To him they weren't magic just technology he could speculate about that was not possible at the time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_...
Lois has powered armour for the Dendarii Mercs.
The great thing about sci-fi is the vast variety which makes a Platonic ideal impossible.
John & Karl, Thanks for the comments. Magic to technology is sliding scale. One can play games with it.FYI READERS: The first two essays in Ms. Bujold's wonderful book Sidelines Talks and Essays, has an excellent discussion on her views. The her comments are The Unsung Collaborator and When World Views Collide. In the second, Ms. Bujold identifies the likely psychological themes being enacted by her aging critic. Nice little joke Ms. Bujold.
(PS, The referenced are talks, speeches, but qualify as essays at least to my definition lol).
Kudos to clever
