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

41–50 of 90 posts

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#41

Post by ModernMech »

xg15 wrote: post #36
hungryhobbit wrote: post #9

Le Guin is a master of fiction, period. While she's very different from modern sci-fi/fantasy, her work is almost as foundational as Tolkien, Lewis, or Asimov. Take her Earthsea series (which was very loosely adapted as a Studio Ghibli movie). It's much slower paced than modern fantasy. Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here), and it almost reads more like an extended fairy tale. But when you start reading it you c…

> Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here) Can I make a side-rant how since Game of Thrones, it seems to have become an expectation that characters must be killed off? Apparently readers are (expected to) be so desensitized that nothing below "the main party that is the main reason you're reading this story can die at any moment" registers anymore. In fact, even that is just the bare minimum. To really make an impac…

I think that all started with The Walking Dead

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#42

Post by NitpickLawyer »

scarmig wrote: post #24
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 torpe…

I think the critical factor that makes sci-fi hard isn't known physics, exactly, but early on establishing a known set of rules and letting them play out as they will. The narrative has to respect and adjust to those rules, not vice versa. This ends up driving most hard sci fi to current understanding of physics, with maybe one tweak. If you diverge more from that, it's difficult or impossible to establish the rules…

Heh, yeah. At least we're currently a bit more prepared for a Seveneves scenario than we were say 15 years ago.

Speaking of prediction powers, there's one that stands out and turned out to be quite prescient on a bunch of topics, both tech and social. Ender's Game was published (fleshed out, novel version) in `85 and it got quite a few things pretty accurate:

- tablets & touchscreen widely used as a common interface to content

- the Internet as a wide web, everyone using it, instant messaging, and so on

- Social networks, forums where debates are held, and more importantly sock puppet accounts and wide scale manipulation (for politics, etc)

- AI for world generation, military use for training, adaptive difficulty, etc.

In the later books there are concepts like digital currency, AI controlled corps/accounts, AI becoming "sentient" and moving itself between mediums, etc (well, that one is not yet here, but who knows...)

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#43

Post by ghusto »

miyoji wrote: post #13
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'…

The straw man was the 2 obvious statements she made (sci-fi has more than science, technology is more than computers and whatever). She argues for both, when nobody was arguing against, then says; therefore I write (hard?) sci-fi.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#44

Post by simmerup »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #28
simmerup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it hard sci-fi? It was basically magic

Half of Star Trek would basically be "magic" by that rubric. I think she reasoned through a problem and conceived of a solution, even if she didn't have the implementation details figured out.

That’s not hard sci-fi though. Something like Stephen Baxter’s work is hard sci-fi, the ansible was just a plot device

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#45

Post by psunavy03 »

xg15 wrote: post #36
hungryhobbit wrote: post #9

Le Guin is a master of fiction, period. While she's very different from modern sci-fi/fantasy, her work is almost as foundational as Tolkien, Lewis, or Asimov. Take her Earthsea series (which was very loosely adapted as a Studio Ghibli movie). It's much slower paced than modern fantasy. Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here), and it almost reads more like an extended fairy tale. But when you start reading it you c…

> Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here) Can I make a side-rant how since Game of Thrones, it seems to have become an expectation that characters must be killed off? Apparently readers are (expected to) be so desensitized that nothing below "the main party that is the main reason you're reading this story can die at any moment" registers anymore. In fact, even that is just the bare minimum. To really make an impac…

It's to the point where grimdark fiction, for me anyway, is gauche and a cliche. At this point it's countercultural and transgressive for characters to go through hell and high water, but then have a happy ending.

Too many modern writers would have ended The Shawshank Redemption by having Andy Dufresne get shot by a prison sniper the minute he got free.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#46

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #28
simmerup wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it hard sci-fi? It was basically magic

Half of Star Trek would basically be "magic" by that rubric. I think she reasoned through a problem and conceived of a solution, even if she didn't have the implementation details figured out.

Star Trek was never described as hard science fiction.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#47

Post by fmbb »

arthurjj wrote: post #31

>And all science fiction is, in one way or another, technological. Even when it’s written by people who don’t know what the word means. I think this goes too far and then everything is science fiction? She talks about low tech. Is Hatchet science fiction?

I haven't read Hatchet, is it about fictional technology or real technology?

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#48

Post by Robotbeat »

gumby wrote: post #29
hungryhobbit wrote: post #9

Le Guin is a master of fiction, period. While she's very different from modern sci-fi/fantasy, her work is almost as foundational as Tolkien, Lewis, or Asimov. Take her Earthsea series (which was very loosely adapted as a Studio Ghibli movie). It's much slower paced than modern fantasy. Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here), and it almost reads more like an extended fairy tale. But when you start reading it you c…

A side point: when you say “Lewis” I assume you mean Charles Staple Lewis, not Sinclair Lewis. I find it hard to consider the former “foundational”. It was and is popular (much to the annoyance of his buddy Tolkien), but hardly influential in the way of JRRT (nobody writes poor pastiches on Narnia the way innumerable derivatives have been done on Middle Earth). As for Asimov, well, one can argue about his long term i…

CS Lewis was pretty influential on the YA fiction, Harry Potter type of literature. And his other works also have broad influence beyond fiction.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#49

Post by derektank »

joebergeron wrote: post #32

> I could learn. We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do. What a wonderfully humble sentiment, and so plainly said. It's disarming to hear an idea stated so precisely which you've treated largely as subintellectum , despite its truthiness having a foundational effect on how you move about the world [0]. This so perfectly distills my (and I suspect others' here as we…

Reminds me of the sentiment expressed by James Burke at the end of the Connections series.

“Maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything, because that ability is there as long as it's explained clearly enough, and then go and ask for explanations”

https://youtu.be/hu9tb6fPCBw

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#50

Post by gavmor »

romanows wrote: post #26

I've only read "The Left Hand of Darkness". It's a very well written book, but it didn't emphasize enough technology/science/engineering for me to consider it even soft science fiction. I guess she's doing the work of expanding the scope of what technology could be used in science fiction. I'm not sure that's super useful, since by her definition, almost every work of fiction will involve technology. Now I want to wr…

It takes place on another planet, and isn't alien biology "science" speculation, enough?

Besides, it's not even her best work.

Looking forward to reading your story! You might consider Ted Chiang.

Post reply on HN