Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

ursulakleguin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 90 posts

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#11

Post by NitpickLawyer »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

To wit, LeGuin is the one who originally coined the term "ansible," which is about as hard sci-fi as you can get.

> which is about as hard sci-fi as you can get.

Interesting, I always thought that the modern interpretation is that hard sci-fi is "rooted in science" or close to it. The ansible (i.e. FTL communication) is, to our current knowledge, not possible. But it is such a useful plot device that it could be viewed as "close enough".

I understand the opposite of hard sci-fi to be the hand wavy "magic" stuff like photon torpedoes, teleportation, phasers, hyperspace, and so on.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#12

Post by api »

Fine. Sci-fi is a broad genre that intersects at the edges with fantasy, alternate history, magic realism, and all kinds of other very imaginative styles.

The hard/soft axis is fuzzy. The extreme of hard is "known physics only" and generally modest technical leaps or changes (e.g. solarpunk imagines known physics but a very different technical vocabulary for how it's used).

The extreme of soft becomes fantasy with sci-fi veneer, like Star Wars.

Fiction is art. It's all valid. It just depends on the style you're going for and what kind of story you're trying to tell.

I like hard SF because I'm an engineer, but I also think there's not a lot of well written hard SF in terms of prose style and character development. I wish there was more.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#13

Post by miyoji »

bananaflag wrote: post #6

This is a bit of a strawman argument. Hard SF is not just "about tech", it is about making sure the tech agrees with scientific principles and is not just an ad hoc method to make some story possible. Soft SF can be about tech and its (social) implications (like her work) but is not written in this sort of spirit. This is why she has written "soft SF".

A strawman is when you make up an argument to defeat it. She has made nothing up, the reviewer said, "As Le Guin isn’t a hard science fiction writer, these traits aren’t technological — technology is carefully avoided — but philosophical, psychological, social, or linguistic." You can complain that the reviewer is wrong in their characterization of hard science fiction, but Le Guin is not beating up a straw man, she's responding to an argument that she disagrees with, explaining her disagreement.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#14

Post by daishi55 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #3
daishi55 wrote: post #2

Not really a rant? She’s just clarifying a reasonable difference between different types of technology to explain how her work qualifies as science fiction without being all about what she calls “hi-tech” technology. Sounded pretty reasonable to me anyway.

> Submission title is a bit misleading. It's the original title, she labeled it a rant herself. EDIT: The person I replied to has significantly edited their comment since my original reply so my comment now appears as a non sequitur. This is why I quote people, or wait a couple hours to reply once I know they're the sort to do this kind of thing.

Yes, I noticed that was her title and not the submitters title so I edited my comment accordingly.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#15

Post by [deleted] »

trescenzi wrote: post #5
daishi55 wrote: post #2

Not really a rant? She’s just clarifying a reasonable difference between different types of technology to explain how her work qualifies as science fiction without being all about what she calls “hi-tech” technology. Sounded pretty reasonable to me anyway.

By the standards of someone as articulate as Le Guin it's definitively a rant.

[deleted]

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#16

Post by theptip »

Cpoll wrote: post #7
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

To wit, LeGuin is the one who originally coined the term "ansible," which is about as hard sci-fi as you can get.

I don't think an ansible is "hard sci-fi". Hard sci-fi deals with known physics, and FTL communication violates that.

I agree that the ansible isn’t hard sci-fi, it’s not defined rigorously IIRC.

However I don’t think hard sci-fi has ever been strictly limited to known physics. It just requires consistency with it.

Greg Egan is one of the OGs of hard sci-fi, and a lot of his work is borderline psychedelic in how far he takes speculative-yet-consistent physics.

There are plenty of physically consistent “FTL” mechanisms in the family of “bend spacetime” that don’t violate c and have not been disproven.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#17

Post by miyoji »

graemep wrote: post #10
bananaflag wrote: post #6

This is a bit of a strawman argument. Hard SF is not just "about tech", it is about making sure the tech agrees with scientific principles and is not just an ad hoc method to make some story possible. Soft SF can be about tech and its (social) implications (like her work) but is not written in this sort of spirit. This is why she has written "soft SF".

She sticks to some principles. The hainish universe has no FTL travel, which lots of hard sci-fi does. There are people with psychic powers,but that also happens in hard SF. Compare her to Niven, for example

> the hainish universe has no FTL travel

That's not quite right. There are FTL ships in the Hainish books, but they carry no passengers because living things cannot survive FTL travel.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#19

Post by pitchlatte »

Cpoll wrote: post #7
AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #4

To wit, LeGuin is the one who originally coined the term "ansible," which is about as hard sci-fi as you can get.

I don't think an ansible is "hard sci-fi". Hard sci-fi deals with known physics, and FTL communication violates that.

there is almost no sci-fi with at least some invention and speculation that bends known physics and/or engineering, either implicitly or explicitly. novels that seem very “hard” often ignore effects that would ruin the plot, and make up physics. it might be plausible and compatible with known physical laws, but it’s speculation plain and simple.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#20

Post by Groxx »

Along somewhat similar lines, my main division between the two is that sci-fi generally touches on the interaction between "people" (often the main characters, but not usually limited to them) and the world's systems (politics, war, how future tech changes society, etc), while fantasy generally focuses on individual's internal struggles (how they deal with the violence in their swords and magic world, how they get along with their squad, how they deal with the politics they're stuck in).

Which isn't to say one is more personal than the other, just that the focus is different. How the world as a whole handles something can easily be covered with a single character's thoughts, and they can be worried about how they interact with the world that surrounds them.

No division is perfect of course, but I think it fits pretty well with a lot of the genre-bending works, and better predicts who will like what book. Some are totally in X genre because of the setting itself, but more often I find people sticking to one or the other because they like that kind of story.

(Also Le Guin is fantastic, very obviously an exceptional author, and you should absolutely read some of her works)

Post reply on HN