A Tale Of Two Parties
Oct. 20th, 2002 02:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentI went to two housewarming parties this evening, on opposite sides of Oxford.
First up,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gagravarr's house in Jericho. Seeing as how his housing arrangements were somewhat last-minute (as a result of being messed around by College), I've got to say I'm a bit jealous of how well he's done - it was one of the nicest student houses I've seen (Big holes in the walls where the wiring is being redone notwithstanding, of course). Far nicer than my house last year, certainly, although correspondingly more expensive. And on a potentially interesting note, one of his housemates moves out in March. If I got my act together, I'm sure I could find a job by then; although on the downside, the stairs were the kind with no backs, and I can guarantee that if I did live there I would get my foot caught on one and injure myself within a month or so...
Next stop (by which time it was approaching 11pm) waselleblue's house in Marston. As you might expect, there was something of an OUSFG gathering - truecatachresis, squigglyruth, sparkymark, tinyjo and oxfordslacker all present and correct. Also there was Geneva. She doesn't have a livejournal, although rather encouragingly she agreed that what with everyone else having them, it is probably now a matter of historical inevitability.
We got talking about our summers, and she said something quite interesting about Stephen Baxter's short story collection Traces: That actually, quite a few of the stories were as much or more fantasy as they were hard science fiction. That got me thinking, since I've always thought of Baxter as being hard SF. I actually think she might be on to something. Quite apart from steampunk outings such as 'Journey to the King Planet', a fair number of Baxter's shorts deal with modified humans or bizarre intelligences in extreme, highly unusual environments that are indeed reminiscent of fantasy settings - the interior of a neutron star, or the afterglow of the Big Bang, or a stream (possibly of water, possibly of something more exotic). These are not hard SF in the Greg Egan sense, based on ruthless extrapolation of a scientific or technological idea, at least.
That said, I still think the stories are written in an SFnal 'voice', although I'm finding it hard to describe why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the focus is still on the environment as much as it is on the characters. At their heart, all of Baxter's fantastical settings are concieved on a scientific basis, even if that is only alluded to in the story. In fact, I can think of other stories that on the face of it are even more fantastical that I would still consider to be science fiction (Ted Chiang's 'Seventy Two Letters' comes to mind).
Anyway. Time for bed.
Or, I could watch this episode of Firefly that I appear to have acquired. Dilemma!
First up,
gagravarr's house in Jericho. Seeing as how his housing arrangements were somewhat last-minute (as a result of being messed around by College), I've got to say I'm a bit jealous of how well he's done - it was one of the nicest student houses I've seen (Big holes in the walls where the wiring is being redone notwithstanding, of course). Far nicer than my house last year, certainly, although correspondingly more expensive. And on a potentially interesting note, one of his housemates moves out in March. If I got my act together, I'm sure I could find a job by then; although on the downside, the stairs were the kind with no backs, and I can guarantee that if I did live there I would get my foot caught on one and injure myself within a month or so...Next stop (by which time it was approaching 11pm) was
elleblue's house in Marston. As you might expect, there was something of an OUSFG gathering - truecatachresis, squigglyruth, sparkymark, tinyjo and oxfordslacker all present and correct. Also there was Geneva. She doesn't have a livejournal, although rather encouragingly she agreed that what with everyone else having them, it is probably now a matter of historical inevitability.We got talking about our summers, and she said something quite interesting about Stephen Baxter's short story collection Traces: That actually, quite a few of the stories were as much or more fantasy as they were hard science fiction. That got me thinking, since I've always thought of Baxter as being hard SF. I actually think she might be on to something. Quite apart from steampunk outings such as 'Journey to the King Planet', a fair number of Baxter's shorts deal with modified humans or bizarre intelligences in extreme, highly unusual environments that are indeed reminiscent of fantasy settings - the interior of a neutron star, or the afterglow of the Big Bang, or a stream (possibly of water, possibly of something more exotic). These are not hard SF in the Greg Egan sense, based on ruthless extrapolation of a scientific or technological idea, at least.
That said, I still think the stories are written in an SFnal 'voice', although I'm finding it hard to describe why. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the focus is still on the environment as much as it is on the characters. At their heart, all of Baxter's fantastical settings are concieved on a scientific basis, even if that is only alluded to in the story. In fact, I can think of other stories that on the face of it are even more fantastical that I would still consider to be science fiction (Ted Chiang's 'Seventy Two Letters' comes to mind).
Anyway. Time for bed.
Or, I could watch this episode of Firefly that I appear to have acquired. Dilemma!
