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Beginnings of Science Fiction

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Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#11

Post by netcan »

I always derided art-talk. Art history, movements, art-appreciation. I saw BS and I assumed it was BS. I now think that art is just hard and part of why it's hard is that nonsense and sense are hard to tell apart. It's not that objectivity doesn't play a role, it just requires some work in applying it. In any case, I missed out on stuff I shouldn't have missed out on. Young me's loss. Old me's gain.

One idea, that I think could be expressed as one of those movements which encompass science, art and philosophy starts with the definition of history, which basically defines history as stuff people wrote about things that happened. Prehistory is the stuff that happened before with a hundred years of commentary, nuance, various waves of correctness and such. But, arbitrary demarkations are uncomfortable. We much prefer a nice definable river or mountain range to act as our border than a straight line on a map. As definition go, history's in an interesting one. Someone writes about a guy who was the king, that's history. Someone finds bones and a fancy hat in a lavish grave, that's prehistory.

Now, by that definition we're running into some interesting hockey stick phenomenon. Our accumulation of history, via the digital record is growing f-ing vast. Vast! Google decided (independently, which is creepy but moving on) to make me a little album with dates and places of a recent trip I took. It's choice of photographs was good and so was the labeling.

So, written history with some guy or girl compiling a list of kings and laws and even daily accounts of wars and politics and money are now superseded. Written history is giving way to recorded history. Is recorded the right word? Is history? Post-history?

Back to sci-fi. Sci-fi of the 20th century was about technology. Video phones and space blimps. Alien invasions and human colonization of new worlds. Fantasies of mixed specie societies reflecting our struggles to transcend ethnicity and culture. Today's science fiction is, I believe most enlightening in describing the human response to technology. What will the world be like when tinder puts you in a virtual room with a would be friend? How do we react to real wars (as apposed to a science fiction version of romantic fantasy) in the communication age. How will it feel to be a 90 year old who can run a half marathon. What will it be like for people who can access thousands of hours of conversations their grandparents had with their parents?

These are interesting questions.

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#12

Post by antimagic »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #4
baddox wrote: post #2

(Science fiction, not San Francisco.) Having never really experienced the genre much, I have recently been trying to assemble (and eventually read) a list of influential and quintessential science fiction books, and while my informal research into the beginnings of sci-fi as an identifiable genre led me to earlier authors like Verne and Wells, I had never heard of this fellow or this magazine. By the way, if one want…

I tend to rate Mary Shelley as the earliest sci-fi author. Not just for 'Frankenstein', but also for 'The Last Man'. I would strongly recommend tackling Issac Asimov's 'Foundation' series as one of the all time classics. Another pretty early one to take a look at is 'We' by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was the first book banned by the USSR and was the inspiration for Orwell's 1984.

I did an "English for Engineers" course at uni (a misguided attempt at giving engineers a more rounded education - personally I was frustrated that they didn't let me take straight up Literature 101 - my roommate was an English major, and I must have written about half her essays for Lit 101, just because I found it interesting - averaged a distinction :D )

Anyway, Frankenstein was one of the cornerstone texts of that course, and you can clearly see many of the themes of later SF being developed by Shelley. We also read Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in that course, plus some early Australian SF (like Picnic at Hanging Rock). It was all pretty interesting, but a long way from the space opera that is one of the cornerstones of modern SF. I just don't feel like you can experience SF unless you've read some of the bigger more sweeping stuff, like Hyperion or Pandora's Star.

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#13

Post by simonh »

baddox wrote: post #2

(Science fiction, not San Francisco.) Having never really experienced the genre much, I have recently been trying to assemble (and eventually read) a list of influential and quintessential science fiction books, and while my informal research into the beginnings of sci-fi as an identifiable genre led me to earlier authors like Verne and Wells, I had never heard of this fellow or this magazine. By the way, if one want…

Larry Niven's short story collections are well worth picking up. His first is 'Inconstant Moon' and it's where I first discovered him. Some of the stories later developed into key parts of his Known Space cycle of short stries and novellas. They're all great stuff, but IM is the starting point.

If you like it you can check out the rest, if not then they're only short stories so not too much of an investment in time.

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#14

Post by RobertKerans »

Nice article; I got deeply into science fiction through collections of stories culled from the magazine. I love earlier stuff - Wells etc, but the pulpy golden age stuff is just fantastically easy to read.

If anyone is interested, there's a 2 volume set from 1959, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher, copies of which are always dirt cheap on Amazon; it got a few duds, but it's one of the best collections I've ever read, and an amazing introduction (has The Stars My Destination [as Tiger! Tiger!], the Chrysalids, Waldo, the Weapon Shops of Isher, among loads of other stuff). This site is amazing as well, if you can hack the weird design: http://greatsfandf.com/

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#16

Post by jeffpetes »

baddox wrote: post #2

(Science fiction, not San Francisco.) Having never really experienced the genre much, I have recently been trying to assemble (and eventually read) a list of influential and quintessential science fiction books, and while my informal research into the beginnings of sci-fi as an identifiable genre led me to earlier authors like Verne and Wells, I had never heard of this fellow or this magazine. By the way, if one want…

I'm a big Heinlein Fan. I strongly recommend you read his other big famous works, "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land." After that you can dig deeper into his bibliography, but I'd consider those three to be essential reading.

I recently finished "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and I loved it. Makes me curious to read other sci fi from the Soviet world.

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#18

Post by bane »

If you're interested in Sci-Fi, especially some of the older stuff, there's an unbelievable treasure trove of books, short stories, scanned magazines, old radio dramas and books on tape all for free at archive.org.

Finding stuff there is a mess though, but even just a search for "science fiction" is like falling into a dragon's hoard of genre pieces.

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#19

Post by colomon »

RobertKerans wrote: post #14

Nice article; I got deeply into science fiction through collections of stories culled from the magazine. I love earlier stuff - Wells etc, but the pulpy golden age stuff is just fantastically easy to read. If anyone is interested, there's a 2 volume set from 1959, A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher, copies of which are always dirt cheap on Amazon; it got a few duds, but it's one of the bes…

Recommendation seconded, the Boucher anthology is full of great old stuff. There's a fuller description of it at http://www.philsp.com/articles/anthopology_101_07.html

Re: Beginnings of Science Fiction

#20

Post by bpodgursky »

jeffpetes wrote: post #16
baddox wrote: post #2

(Science fiction, not San Francisco.) Having never really experienced the genre much, I have recently been trying to assemble (and eventually read) a list of influential and quintessential science fiction books, and while my informal research into the beginnings of sci-fi as an identifiable genre led me to earlier authors like Verne and Wells, I had never heard of this fellow or this magazine. By the way, if one want…

I'm a big Heinlein Fan. I strongly recommend you read his other big famous works, "Starship Troopers" and "Stranger in a Strange Land." After that you can dig deeper into his bibliography, but I'd consider those three to be essential reading. I recently finished "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky and I loved it. Makes me curious to read other sci fi from the Soviet world.

Imo forever war is amazing, but stranger in a strange land devolves into bizarre fantasy. I'd strongly recommend the former if you're more interested in hard sci fi and the implications of real accurate (ish) relativistic travel.
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