coalescent

I like this New Yorker piece [via] about Battlestar Galactica, because it seems to have a sense of the show as an exemplary piece of sf, rather than as something that transcends sf's perceived limitations:

If you switch to the term "speculative fiction," which many sci-fi writers prefer, the genre seems more interesting. In fact, the genre is so capacious that it’s not even very useful to call it a genre—at least, not as a put-down or a comment on its limitations. Stories that are geared to ask "What if?" and "What then?" and "Who are we?" and also have some life to them beyond the nuts and bolts of imagining an alternative reality are a genuine achievement. On the other hand, don’t feel bad if you don’t like watching shows filled with characters who have disturbingly shaped heads and faces. I myself am of the school that believes that frontal lobes belong inside the skull. I’m delighted when a character on TV has a brain—I just don’t want to see it.

Commentary on the most recent episode of Galactica here, here, and here.

James Lovelock thinks we are doomed. [via, links will probably become paid-only soon]

'The Faery Handbag' may become a film (scroll down a little).

Musings on evolving definitions of feminism. [via]

Obligatory pimpage of Strange Horizons reviews, part one: in a review of Christopher Priest: The Interaction, John Clute takes issue with the protocols of academic writing:

In following these shit-stupid protocols Hubble (and/or Butler) sedulously make near nonsense of a speculative historical argument, and they waste our time. I am very conscious that I too have, in a sense, been wasting our time as well with such a long excursus; but the dumb secret strength of the kind of protocols I've been attacking is that it takes a long time to explain how damaging their application is in each specific case. Hubble was my victim here, almost at random. There are dozens of similar dispiriting examples throughout Interaction, each so embedded in industrial practice that each would take a paragraph to describe. The cumulative effect is disastrous, both for the scholars locked into malpractice and for the readers who are baulked from accessing anything much of use in a book so compromised.

Obligatory pimpage of Strange Horizons reviews, part two: Graham Sleight and Tim Phipps debate the merits of 'The Christmas Invasion'.

And finally: a request for recommendations. I need recent (last 18 months or so) examples of either sf translated into English or sf written in English that is set in or engages with other cultures. Thanks!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

coalescent.livejournal.com

I can think of a number of points I want to mention here, but I don't have time to weave them together neatly, so I'll just list instead.

1. Personally speaking, my problem with 'speculative fiction' as Atwood used to use it was that it was sectioning off the good stuff from science fiction and giving it a new name. That's not what Franklin does here. She uses 'speculative fiction' for the same things as 'sci-fi', arguing that the right label makes it easier to see what's good about it.

2. Yes, she acknowledges that 90% of sf is crap, but she doesn't say it's crap because it's sf. She just says a lot of it is crap, which is fair enough.

3. What she actually says about the shortage of supplies is that it's the focus of 'a couple' of episodes. Which is true (I'd like to see them return to it, too), if a little misleading overall.

4. I don't think the article is a particularly brilliant analysis of Battlestar Galactica, but then I don't think it's trying to be. It does read like Franklin hasn't seen anything past mid-s1, but I suspect she was specifically told to write a primer--for people who have never seen any Galactica, don't know the backstory, and would normally avoid it just on the basis of the name--so you'd expect it to be fairly topline. As such, I think it's a decent attempt, relative to the standards of other similar attempts.

5. The article does talk about fans a bit more than it has to, but at the same time it suggests that the stereotypical image of fans is outdated. And frankly some of the responses to the new Galactica have been completely barking, up to and including the guy who played the original Starbuck, and whose name I am completely blanking on.

6. That said, I find the thought of a Farscape remake appropriately horrifying. Aie.

From:

grahamsleight.livejournal.com

up to and including the guy who played the original Starbuck, and whose name I am completely blanking on.

Dirk "Faceman" Benedict.

Yeah, I know, I'm a child of the 80s.

From:

despotliz.livejournal.com

She uses 'speculative fiction' for the same things as 'sci-fi', arguing that the right label makes it easier to see what's good about it.

Why? It makes no sense that changing the label makes it easier to see the good.

This feels like dozens of other articles I've read, all of which start by talking about those wacky SF fans who speak Klingon and live in mom and dad's basement, and then they go on to talk about Buffy/Farscape/BG/whatever, and how this show is different and timely and well acted, as though it's a one-off in a sea of crap Trek knockoffs.

OK, so the New Yorker article is not that bad, but it's definitely going in that direction.

From:

coalescent.livejournal.com

Hmm. Maybe I'm the one in the minority, then. :)

But I'm pretty confident, at least, on this point:

Why? It makes no sense that changing the label makes it easier to see the good.

Surely it does. In fact, isn't there a West Wing episode where two characters are trying to decide on a policy name and have exactly this debate?

From:

despotliz.livejournal.com

There's a debate where Charlie needs to come up with a name for his policy which will make it harder to vote against because it gives the impression that politicians are voting to tax the poor. It doesn't make it any easier to see why his idea is good, because it's still the same - it just gives it a snappy name and makes the politicians scared of losing votes.

I don't think that calling it speculative fiction makes it easier to see the good, I think it makes people who would dismiss all science fiction as something for geeky Klingon-speaking detail-obsessives give it a chance because it tries to sidestep their prejudices. I guess you could call that making it easier to see the good, but I would probably call it an example of Atwood-style wrongheadedness.

From:

abigail-n.livejournal.com

As it turns out, spending 10 hours alternately driving around the city and visiting hospitals (nothing serious, but visiting still quite needed) is tiring work. It's 9 PM and I'm falling asleep, so forgive me if this is incomprehensible or badly spelled or not in English.

1. I don't know. This seems like a potato-potahto distinction. By renaming the genre, Franklin is suggesting that there is something limiting, childish even, in plain old science fiction. "Stories that are geared to ask “What if?” and “What then?” and “Who are we?” and also have some life to them beyond the nuts and bolts of imagining an alternative reality are a genuine achievement." I agree with this, but why does it follow that we need to rename the genre in order for Franklin, or anyone else, to recognize this fact? Isn't she simply defining good science fiction?

2. I don't see where in the article she says either one (but, again, half asleep) - reference, please?

3 & 4. I'd also like to see the show return to the issue of low supplies (I have an inkling that an upcoming episode may do just that, and I'll be no spoiler-ier than this) but I suspect the writers are avoiding it for the simple reason that it can't be solved - in which case, I wish they hadn't made a big deal out of Baltar dramatically announcing, back in "Water" or "33", that the fleet was going to starve. But my point - which, as I said, was not entirely a fair one - was that Franklin had only sampled the show. I've read too many articles, on any number of subjects, that were written by someone who had only sampled a product/series/book/cultural experience and wrote about it with very little authority and accuracy. As an insider, these reports drive me up the wall, and the New Yorker article certainly falls in that category.

5. You don't know the half of it if you think Dirk Benedict has been the worst of the rabid fans. Try this on for size. If I'm not mistaken, at some point this guy calls the miniseries derivative for its use of uniforms. And yes, it's worth noting this fanatic response, but Franklin doesn't delve that deeply into the issue and she doesn't point out that these people are the lunatic fringe (which exists in any intense fandom, including ones not traditionally referred to as fandoms such as scale modelers and war reenactors, but that's a topic for another rant). Again, there's no reason for Franklin to bring up fannish intensity/insanity in an article about a television show, but once she does, I think it would be only responsible for her to try and paint a complete picture of the situation.

6. Hah. Just you wait, mister. A few decades down the line we'll both be ranting that no one but Claudia Black could ever be Aeryn Sun, while younger fans roll their eyes behind our backs.

Something that occurred to me while discussing this article at the TWoP BSG forums is that, while it obviously is successful as a way of introducing the show to a demographic that probably wouldn't have approached it otherwise, it does so by further cementing the mainstream's snobbery towards genre. As much as I like BSG, I find myself wishing that it weren't so popular among mainstream reviewers, because it gives all of them the excuse to trot out these tired clichés and insult a huge group of people in the guise of offering praise. If the result of BSG's popularity is that notions of SF fans as Klingon-speakers and of SF as a whole as juvenile and simplistic become even further entrenched in the minds of non-genre readers, then the show accomplishes nothing for the genre, and in fact serves to damage it.

From:

coalescent.livejournal.com

Yikes, that doesn't sound like a fun day. I'm glad it was nothing serious. (I haven't been shuttling between hospitals for ten hours, but I did have to do the lesser task of emergency bibliography-proofreading, and it's now past midnight, so I also apologise for stupid sentences in advance.)

1. She is defining good science fiction ... but she doesn't seem aware that the term 'science fiction' exists. She goes from 'sci-fi' to 'speculative fiction'. Which is annoying, certainly, but given that choice of terms, I can see why she argues that 'speculative fiction' is a more useful descriptive term.

2. OK, she doesn't say anything about the quality of sf or the proportion of it that's good in so many words. But she never implies that stories set in alternate worlds are in any way disadvantaged compared to stories set in the here-and-now, she just argues that to be good, they need to be about more than just the process of imagining (more than just info-dumps and tech). I think my point was that I don't see the "all science fiction is bad ... except this example!" that is so common in other articles. The closest she gets is her last sentence--"Battlestar Galactica,” refreshingly, is as real as science fiction gets"--but even that, I would argue, isn't really praise-by-dissing-the-rest-of-the genre. (In fact, she's complimentary about other shows, such as MSK3000.)

3&4. This is why we have places like Strange Horizons and Vector. Or so I would like to think. ;-) It would be nice to see thoughtful, in-depth critiques of sf in mainstream media venues ... but then, beyond individual reviews, I'm not sure thoughtful, in-depth critiques of anything are particularly common in mainstream media venues. Maybe I'm jaded. Or not reading the right newspapers.

5&6 *shudder*

If the result of BSG's popularity is that notions of SF fans as Klingon-speakers and of SF as a whole as juvenile and simplistic become even further entrenched in the minds of non-genre readers, then the show accomplishes nothing for the genre, and in fact serves to damage it.

But ... she says "[Shatner's] admonition was eventually incorporated into the fans’ self-image; you see self-aware, amused references to it in sci-fi blogs when someone goes on about something in a way that he knows may brand him as a geek," which surely is at least mitigating? (Plus, it's true. But as Willow said, I'm not ashamed: geeks are in. They're still in, right?)

I don't know. I'm not used to being the one defending a mainstream article about genre, and I seem to be in the minority on this one, but I still can't help seeing it as, at the very least, less offensive than the average.

From:

iainjclark.livejournal.com

I suspect she was specifically told to write a primer

Ah! Yes, if it's intended as a primer that would explain why the majority of the review is taken up with a bizarrely detailed account of the opening of the miniseries, scenes which hardly highlight the most interesting aspects of the series.

I agree with other opinions expressed here that the article is basically pointing and laughing at most TV SF through the convenient icon of its nerdy fans, before holding up a commanding hand and shouting BUT WAIT! THIS ONE IS DIFFERENT!

I do agree with you that where the article is unusual is in the paragraph you quote, which does briefly make the case that SF can tell stories which have relevance beyond its core audience. However the reviewer notably fails to mention a single example before plunging back into ridiculing Trek-style aliens. Unfortunately she seems to use this paragraph solely as a jumping off point for distancing Battlestar Galactica from the stereotypical image of 'silly' SF.

From:

james-nicoll.livejournal.com

"And frankly some of the responses to the new Galactica have been completely barking, up to and including the guy who played the original Starbuck, and whose name I am completely blanking on."

What was Benedict's reaction?