Brief Weekend Resume

[coalescent]

Despite the best efforts of the train network, yesterday I went to Cheltenham to do literary-type things. Met up with veggiesu and immortalradical when I got there, and first up was a panel on political writing, in Cheltenham town hall, framed around a discussion of this year's Orwell Prize nominees. This was notable for three reasons. The first was Margaret Drabble's observation, based on the evidence of Orwell and HG Wells, that writers coming from a naturalist tradition often aren't as well-equipped to fictionalise politics as writers from a fantastic tradition. That's what she said; I'm just reporting it. The second reason the panel was notable was Bernard Crick who, bright red socks and switched-on-mobile phone and all, was just generally entertaining. The third was that, having read out the shortlist and declared political writing in the UK to be in good health, the panellists spent the rest of their time explaining what's wrong with political writing in the UK. In fact, there was an interesting comparison of the media cultures of the US and UK; we think of the British press establishment as generally superior to its American counterpart in just about every respect, yet they're not the ones who've made a bloodsport out of political scandals.

Lunch was at That Mexican Place (via at least one interesting statue) and, contrary to popular rumour, I did not refer to Andrew as 'Hoggy'. I would never do that.

After that, Su went shopping whilst Dan and I wandered off to see Adam Roberts interviewing Brian Aldiss. Nothing groundbreaking but a nice, thoughtful interview - and afterwards, Dan bought me a copy of Super-State. Then we got rained on rather thoroughly as we made our way back into town; then we had a drink with Su in a Wetherspoon's that used to be a car showroom and looked like it; then we made our ways home. On the way back I finished Pattern Recognition, which was good but not spectacular, and this morning I wrote reviews of that and more (which can be found here). 'Twas all much fun; cheers, guys.

In other news, the puns get worse.

Comments

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

We think of the British press establishment as generally superior to its American counterpart in just about every respect, yet they're not the ones who've made a bloodsport out of political scandals.

Which forms, of course, the main reason the elite American media (mostly the Post, the Times etc.) consider themselves above the British press - including the broadsheets. It also constituted the paradox at the heart of the panel's discussion, as I said at the time - they disparaged what they perceived as the less aggressive stance of the American media, whilst at the same time deploring the excesses of the British media. It seems to me you perhaps can't have both.

[colours.livejournal.com]

Is this not related to the American media being under more of a stranglehold by their politicians, though, and hence not being able to report political scandals to such an extent, rather than any actual superiority?

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

I think it's certainly to do with the American press being more a part of the system, rather than outside it as perhaps ours are (although the lobby system for political journalists for decades made the process by which our newspapers secured stories much less transparent that the American method). Right now, I suspect the timidity of the anti-Bush press (for it exists!) is more down to cultural rather than political reasons. But we all know the right political levers can reinforce the prevailing cultural mood.

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

An interesting review of Pattern Recognition - I'm not sure if it does or doesn't feel like SF... but it's an intriguing idea. I got the feeling that I was reading something a split-second into the future - just out of reach of the 'now', but close enough to it to be wholly recognisable.

But it has got me thinking.

Personally, I don't think it had any reason whatsoever being on an SF Award shortlist...

(Are parts of it written in the present tense? I'm pretty sure they are, but can't get to my copy very easily.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I got the feeling that I was reading something a split-second into the future - just out of reach of the 'now', but close enough to it to be wholly recognisable.

It's either that, or it's a couple of millimetres sideways into an alternate world. Mirror-world, as Cayce keeps saying. I think maybe the fact that it is so observational is part of what makes it feel like sf; yes, everything Cayce notices is recognisable...but often not instantly. It's something in the way she looks at the world, maybe. Because of her allergy, she's on the outside looking in? I'm not sure. Just throwing out ideas here!

Personally, I don't think it had any reason whatsoever being on an SF Award shortlist...

I think the logic is the same as it was for Cryptonomicon: it's by an sf writer, it deals with sf-like themes, it's written in an sf style, therefore it's sf. Obviously!

(I also have this very silly image of genre fans using award nominations as a lasso to drag Gibson/Stephenson back in: "Oh, no, you don't get out of the ghetto that easily!")

(Are parts of it written in the present tense? I'm pretty sure they are, but can't get to my copy very easily.)

Yes. Almost all of it, in fact (again, like Cryptonomicon).

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

I think you're right about the way she observes...

Why do you say the themes are sf-like? I'm not sure it struck me in that way... Examples? :o) I'm off in a few minutes, so won't be able to reply after about 8.35...

But there certainly is something in the style in which it is told (and present-tense narrative may help to create an unusual tone).

And if there is a ghetto, I think PR escaped it :o)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Why do you say the themes are sf-like?

Maybe I should have said 'concerns' rather than 'themes'...

"It's about expression and individuality in a world rushing headlong towards media-saturated globalisation, and it's about how relationships formed online can have repercussions in the real world."

Pattern Recognition? Or any one of a hundred near-future corporate dystopias? OK, there are probably other 'mainstream' novels that could be blurbed in the same way, but if I read that description, I'd expect some sf.

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'd query the "near-future" bit - isn't it very much the "here and now"? When I read "media-saturated globalisation" and "relationships formed online" I don't think "wild and wonderful near-future"...

It's all around us - didn't you write about reading a LJ community on a commuter train travelling between Manchester and Blackpool? A LJ community containing members living all around the "real" world? Livejournal, a US company; your mobile phone, on a UK contract...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

(Slowest conversation ever!)

I suppose I'd query the "near-future" bit - isn't it very much the "here and now"?

It is, but I (and I suspect a lot of people) don't often think of it that way. To do so provokes future shock - which is exactly what Gibson does in PR, and might be part of what makes it feel like sf. Shame it didn't take the BSFA award, really.

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

I was away from the 'puter for a week :o)

I am getting confused :o)

How does thinking about the events in 'PR' as though they are the "here and now" provoke "future shock"? And, perhaps more importantly, what precisely is "future shock" - I don't have my Clute-Encycl-of-SF to hand :o)

And are you implying that (many) people reading 'PR' read it as though it were set in the future? The whole Pilates obsession felt very "here and now", as did the "viral marketing" thing... Both of those, pilates and viral marketing, could even be said to have passed us by, and be in our "near-history", not our "near-future".

So, I'm interested - did you find anything concrete about 'PR' that "put it" into the future, and made it, thus, SF; or, is the SF-ity of 'PR' a product of the fact that it is written by a former SF writer and could be said to have an SF outlook?

(And, I'm not sure it does have an *exclusively* SF outlook; the outlook *could* be SF, but it could also be a trait of other works, whether literary or otherwise)

And also, I'm not sure I fully grasp what you mean when you say that Gibson "provokes future shock" in PR... What is it, and how does he provoke it :o)

I look forward to hearing from you - hopefully soon :o)

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

Some further thoughts :o)

I Googled a bit with "future shock", "Pattern Recognition" and "Gibson", and turned up some good stuff.

This article:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/arizonaliving/articles/0206qagibson0206.html

And in that article, this quote:

"I had been saying for years that I thought I could write a novel set in the present that would wind up having the same affect as a novel set in the near future. I never felt that I was writing about the future. I always felt that I was squinting at the present in a peculiar way and describing what I saw. Reality has become such a deeply problematic situation that we can't comfortably look at it as it really is, and the tool kit of science fiction includes something like a set of oven mitts with which we can pick up our red-hot, protean, ever-changing and worrisome present and look at it objectively."

I'm not sure how that helps... But it is, I think, interesting.

And:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,466391,00.html

He makes a comment, after discussing how Japanese culture seems one beat ahead of the rest of the world, about how "future shock" is now "simply the one constant in all our lives."

Intriguing.

The article is mainly about Japan, but it displays a fascination with the futurity of Japanese society, and there are clearly connections to made between "present-day" futurity and "near-future" science fiction.

Is Gibson simply writing about how he finds contemporary society to be, in many ways, futuristic.

Are we, perhaps, living in the future without realising it?

I'm not sure what to make of "future shock". I think it could be like the sonic boom an aircraft makes as it passes the sound-barrier - is it true that the pilot in the aircraft doesn't hear the boom himself?

Anyway, I think we've passed the "sound-barrier" of futurity, and are living in what we've previously imagined - in fictions, or in films - as being the future. We are living at the "speed-of-the-future" and have left the "future-shock"\"future boom" way behind us - without realising it.

And like the scene in The Right Stuff where they imagine the "demon" in the sky that prevents people going beyond a certain speed, we, a decade ago, thought that there was something terrifying and unimaginable and uninhabitable that would prevent us from moving beyond a certain point in the future - but we were just suffering from future shock.

The future isn't really that shocking: Starbucks, the internet, meaningless video-clips...

(Isn't it intriguing how so much of the meaning in 'PR' comes from the past - the claymore mine; the Stuka (I think it is a Stuka); the mechanical calculators.

And Stephenson is looking to the past, not into the future - both Gibson and Stephenson, major "SF" voices, aren't *really* writing SF...

Perhaps science fiction hasn't got a genuine future to offer us - it has "science fiction futures", versions of the future that serve to fulfil certain functions within a given SF narrative - but it doesn't have a real, plausible, frightening future...

We're already there.

... or I may simply be in a provocative mood. :o)

I just found an interesting review of 'PR' at the SMH:

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/14/1047583693494.html

Wow. I seem to have written quite a bit - must go to bed!

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

More commentary

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More commentary <a href="http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2004_04_01_mumpsimus_archive.html#1082310004110477122>here</a> (and the links contained within; and in fact that blog in general is a good read).

<em>I'm not sure what to make of "future shock".</em>

It's meant to be the realisation that the world is changing too fast to keep up with, and that the world is too big to be understood. I think it affects fiftysomethings most keenly. :)

<em>I think it could be like the sonic boom an aircraft makes as it passes the sound-barrier - is it true that the pilot in the aircraft doesn't hear the boom himself?</em>

I have no idea - intriguing, though.

<em>We are living at the "speed-of-the-future" and have left the "future-shock"\"future boom" way behind us - without realising it.</em>

Hmm. I'm not sure about that. I think some of us have, certainly; Cory Doctorow springs to mind. But I think there are a lot of people still trying to adjust. I was wandering around chinatown a couple of months ago with some friends, and we were trying to work out where to eat. One of my friends whipped out his mobile phone and googled up a page of restaurant reviews.

That's future shock.

<em>The future isn't really that shocking: Starbucks, the internet, meaningless video-clips...</em>

The internet isn't that shocking? ;-)

It may have been you who said it earlier in this thread even, but someone recently told me that <em>Pattern Recognition</em> is the novel that would have been considered as amazing science fiction if it had been written in 1980.

<em>And Stephenson is looking to the past, not into the future - both Gibson and Stephenson, major "SF" voices, aren't *really* writing SF...</em>

Interestingly, they're both major voices from the same specific tradition of SF: cyberpunk. And even more interestingly, arch-cyberpunk Bruce Sterling's new novel <em>The Zenith Angle</em> is contemporary in the manner of <em>Pattern Recognition</em>...

<em>Perhaps science fiction hasn't got a genuine future to offer us - it has "science fiction futures", versions of the future that serve to fulfil certain functions within a given SF narrative - but it doesn't have a real, plausible, frightening future...</em>

So many of the standard futures of science fiction have passed beyond meaning, I agree. Galactic empires, FTL, even senseofwonder engineering like space elevators - none of it fits with our contemporary perception of the future.

Anyway.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Damn the lack of edit-comment. Damn it, I say!

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

One of my friends whipped out his mobile phone and googled up a page of restaurant reviews.

That's future shock.

Mmmm... I suppose we just disagree about what we call "shock". :o)

To me, WAP seems quite mundane (and not particularly user friendly).

Perhaps I'm cynical, but very little about the present is shocking me in that way.

(Although this is pretty odd.)

More on this once I've watched some Trollope.

[scribeoflight.livejournal.com]

It may have been you who said it earlier in this thread even, but someone recently told me that Pattern Recognition is the novel that would have been considered as amazing science fiction if it had been written in 1980.

Ha! That wasn't me. That's a silly thing to say. :o) You could say it about any number of things...

You can't make PR feel more SF by saying it would, in a different cultural context, have been SF any more than you can say that Arthur C. Clarke's prediction of geosynchronous satellites wasn't, at the time, SF, because they eventually came true. At the time, the prediction was Science Fiction.

;o)

... Bruce Sterling's new novel The Zenith Angle is contemporary in the manner of Pattern Recognition...

I love: "contemporary in the manner of [my italics] Pattern Recognition..." :o)

So many of the standard futures of science fiction have passed beyond meaning, I agree. Galactic empires, FTL, even senseofwonder engineering like space elevators - none of it fits with our contemporary perception of the future.

Do you get Warren Ellis' email newsletter? It isn't archived, so I don't know if I can find it...

... Nope. It has gone. He talks about how SF should never have been seen to be something that predicts the future, quite rightly... It is, as has so often been said, a reflection on our current climate.

Does the speed of progress in our current climate mean that sharply written "literary fiction" set in the here-and-now can sometimes feel more cutting edge than some less sharply written near-future science fiction?

We both read the same novel, but you're convinced it had an "SF" feel and an "SF" approach, whereas I thought it was incredibly contemporary (almost hyper-contemporary; and possibly suffering for this, because some of those hooks - Pilates and viral marketing - seem to have come and gone), very much an "It" novel capturing something of the day-before-tomorrow time in which we live (the BoingBoing world, if you like)...

But we did read the same book. :o) I dunno. It is, for sure, saying something interesting about our responses to SF, about the way SF has conditioned our responses to what may or may not be SF... (And - dare I say - about the way SF fandom won't let go of certain authors...) ;o)

Anyway.

Yes! :o)

I think we've probably said all that can be said! (And moved from the original point, whatever that was!)

re: puns

[applez.livejournal.com]

(woo-hoo! I get mentioned on your LJ!)

But, I must say, all blame lies with itchyfidget ... anything Tom or I may have extrapolated on is simply the natural evolution of such a provokation.

I suppose, I could retaliate/recompense with a 'what if' future projection that involves bio-chemistry and nano-tech - I know you can't resist. ;-)

Re: puns

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

But, I must say, all blame lies with itchyfidget ... anything Tom or I may have extrapolated on is simply the natural evolution of such a provokation.

Uh-huh. Yep. You're entirely innocent. Of course!

I suppose, I could retaliate/recompense with a 'what if' future projection that involves bio-chemistry and nano-tech - I know you can't resist.

You wouldn't dare. :-p

Wot?

[applez.livejournal.com]

No nibbles? Even sparkymark couldn't resist the temptation of nanotech...

6 hours and no bites. Ha, you will succumb...

Re: puns

[itchyfidget.livejournal.com]

Sir, sir! A big boy did it and ran away!

<g>

[snowking.livejournal.com]

It's 2 against 1, Harrison. First animated icons, now nicknames. Who is left to uphold moral standards now?

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

(via at least one interesting statue)

Wow, you found a picture of it! Hee :-)

contrary to popular rumour, I did not refer to Andrew as 'Hoggy'. I would never do that.

I always thought you were an honest man, Mr Harrison. I see I shall have to rethink that opinion.