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A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

ursulakleguin.com

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Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#51

Post by GolfPopper »

ModernMech wrote: post #41
xg15 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Glen Cook was killing off major characters back in the 1980s.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#52

Post by watwut »

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 is backslash against years and years of shows where you are 100% certain characters will be unharmed. Cumulatively, shows lost tension for many of us - there were no stakes whatsoever. You have massive fight, but there is no excitement about the fight, because it is basically just an elaborate dance part. There are good and bad and good must always win and if bad thing happening is always punishment for moral failure forced formula got overfed.

Game of Thrones broke the spell, bad things suddenly could happen, substories could be ended badly. Writers learned there are two possible formulas not just one. Suddenly there was a tension and drama.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#53

Post by arthurjj »

fmbb wrote: post #47
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?

Real, although the speed of the development in the novel is fictionalized

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatchet_(novel)

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#54

Post by vova_hn2 »

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…

If I haven't read any of her books, which book or series would you recommend as a starting point?

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#55

Post by majormajor »

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…

> hardly influential in the way of JRRT (nobody writes poor pastiches on Narnia the way innumerable derivatives have been done on Middle Earth)

Harry Potter and its own spawn bears fairly distinct influences, less "direct plot copies" (Narnia itself borrowing heavily there from the Christian Bible, of course) but more mechanically and "YA fantasy vibes."

His Dark Materials is basically a deliberate Narnia rebuttal/counter-argument. I think I've heard of a couple other "intentionally darker/twisted Narnia" inspirations in series, but am blanking on them.

Terry Pratchett made a few direct references pointing that assumed a high level of ubiquity.

IMO certainly as enduringly foundational as Asimov.

Dick would belong there too at the same level of a Lewis or Asimov.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#56

Post by pixl97 »

gumby wrote: post #34

Science fiction, even more than historical fiction, is always about the present, which is why SF novels rarely age well. But good literature is good literature and she sure had the knack, which is why I believe her work will continue to be read for quite some time to come. In her brief essay (more of a note), she uses the word “technology” to invoke its own root: τέχνη, just means practical art (hence artifact). The…

When you look at the DNA of a creature it is filled with all kind of stuff that we consider junk and we have no idea what it does. But then some new disease or predator shows up and it turns out that DNA had a use, but you could not have predicted it before hand.

The issue with knowledge is it's really hard to know what bits of it are going to be important in your future. Learning powerpoint probably put food on the table of a great number of people, it turns out our economy had a lot of places for that, and seemingly less, or less new jobs that wanted a deep knowledge of mathematics.

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#57

Post by rpearl »

ghusto wrote: post #39
scarmig wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 No that's just competent writing. Hard sci-fi is very much about real science.

Clockwork Rocket by Greg Egan is specifically about physics which does not exist here.

"Hell is the Absence of God" by Ted Chiang deals with a world in which god, heaven and hell are unambiguously real.

Both are definitely "hard sci fi"

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#58

Post by teraflop »

ghusto wrote: post #43
miyoji wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> therefore I write (hard?) sci-fi.

This is not at all what Le Guin is saying! It's right there at the end of the essay: "I agree with my reviewer that I don’t write hard science fiction."

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#59

Post by romanows »

gavmor wrote: post #50
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.

Having something like another planet or alien biology is necessary but not sufficient to make something science fiction. There is some fuzzy amount of focus on science/technology, style, and tropes that are needed to make something more science fiction than fantasy or speculative fiction. The Left Hand of Darkness read more like fantasy to me, and I don't think it would have been any different at all if the setting was Middle Earth and the ambisexual species were Hobbits. I think I wouldn't have blinked if it had been described as "science fantasy" to me rather than "science fiction".

I'll bump up Chiang on my reading list, I have heard a lot of good things!

Re: A Rant About “Technology” (2005)

#60

Post by xg15 »

watwut wrote: post #52
xg15 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is backslash against years and years of shows where you are 100% certain characters will be unharmed. Cumulatively, shows lost tension for many of us - there were no stakes whatsoever. You have massive fight, but there is no excitement about the fight, because it is basically just an elaborate dance part. There are good and bad and good must always win and if bad thing happening is always punishment for moral fail…

Yeah, that was basically the Disney/Spielberg formula, which got overdone.

> There are good and bad and good must always win and if bad thing happening is always punishment for moral failure forced formula got overfed.

I mean, maybe there are different moral horizons behind this. I would expect some basic "doing good is in the end more successful than doing evil" morality in shows.

The alternate message seems to be an uncaring universe where it plays absolutely no role if you're an asshole or try to help people, because deaths happen randomly anyway.

Which would be an omen of how our world developed in the following years for real...

(GoT never went completely nihilist though, which I appreciate. Even the most random deaths had at least long-term consequences for the rest of the story, and a lot of characters kept their morality through all the carnage)

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