I'd like to see what they have in the way of real science fiction.
(Yes, I know.)
I mean scifi that explores strange ideas. Like Egan, Banks and Hughes.
Rather than the usual dramas with added futuristic technology.
North Korean science fiction
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Re: North Korean science fiction
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SF is pretty much always about the current day. SF is often speculative fiction that extrapolate current trends into the future - frequently taking them to their logic conclusion - to explore and critique. Good SF anyway.
Is it even worth reading? Genuine question. I thought it was campty sort of satirical old-timey stuff, but I never read it.
Sci Fi is often a way to talk about the present without getting bogged down in the minutae of accurate facts and "what's realistic" for critics.
Whether that's worth reading depends on you. It's a big genre too, different authors and works don't all cover the same themes. If you want to see someone experience about what it's like to be a foreigner in a racist society, Arkady Martine's Teixcalaan series explores that. If you want to read an optimistic vision of how computation could look and what ethical implications follow from that (set against a massive backdrop of geopolitics), read Ian Banks's Culture series. If you want to read a discussion of how society shapes our thoughts and beliefs, read pretty much anything by Ursula K. Guin (though The Dispossessed comes especially to mind). If you just want to explore the implications of different physical laws, Greg Egan.
And of course, there's plenty of the campy stuff too. You don't always need to read high-minded narrative philosophy with sci-fi if you don't want to.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#73I look forward to reading some of this. SF is pretty much always about the current day. Soviet SF was quite illuminating to me (back when anybody cared about the USSR). I’ve always wanted to read a couple of the Soviet equivalent of the James Bond novels.
> SF is pretty much always about the current day. I can't comprehend this. Scifi is famously occupied with the future, and not the current day. Space travel, advanced technologies, artificial intelligences, and generally things that don't yet exist are par for the course. Most of SF is literally not about the present. Do you mean to say that SF's subtext reflects the zeitgeist at the time/place of its writing?
SF is set in the future. But its meaning is more directly relevant to the time in which it is written than the time in which it is set. Take for example, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. If people in the actual literal 25th century are able to read about Buck Rogers at all, they will probably be reading it to better understand the 20th century, not their own.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#74> "Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and technologists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders." Here is an interesting symmetry as reflected by ideological mirrors. In NK, the state sanctioned imaginal…
> And no, you can't just become one of the special superheroes. Two of the most iconic superheroes, Batman and Iron Man, are normal human beings who became superheroes from hard work.
They're billionaires. No one worth billions of dollars is "normal". Fewer than three thousand people alive are billionaires.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> SF is pretty much always about the current day. I can't comprehend this. Scifi is famously occupied with the future, and not the current day. Space travel, advanced technologies, artificial intelligences, and generally things that don't yet exist are par for the course. Most of SF is literally not about the present. Do you mean to say that SF's subtext reflects the zeitgeist at the time/place of its writing?
SF is set in the future. But its meaning is more directly relevant to the time in which it is written than the time in which it is set. Take for example, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century . If people in the actual literal 25th century are able to read about Buck Rogers at all, they will probably be reading it to better understand the 20th century, not their own.
One of my favorite examples is Black Mirror’s “Fifteen Million Merits”.
Read as a prediction of the future, it’s kinda shit. Unremarkable at best.
Read as a way to show us the time when it came out (roughly now—it’s not so old) from a perspective skewed enough that it might prompt us to re-evaluate our own normal, it’s pretty damn good.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Doomed City is a bad example since it was specifically released in a post-soviet era. It had very direct criticisms of communism which lead to the authors deciding to not release it during the soviet era they wrote it. "Hard to be a God", mentioned below, is a better example. Soviet era Sci-Fi where Star Trek esque space communists try to uplift a medieval society into modern political belief before establishing…
The Doomed City is way deeper than "criticisms of communism". People literally wake up in The Doomed City when the pandemic has started in 2020, for example.
What's deep about that?
Re: North Korean science fiction
#77I look forward to reading some of this. SF is pretty much always about the current day. Soviet SF was quite illuminating to me (back when anybody cared about the USSR). I’ve always wanted to read a couple of the Soviet equivalent of the James Bond novels.
Can you share some examples of Soviet SF? Should be quite exciting.
Kurt Vonnegut was accused once of ripping off George Orwell's 1984 with Player Piano. He responded by saying that he and Orwell had both just ripped off Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Soviet author who ran afoul of Stalin and wrote We inspired by his perspective of the revolution.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Doomed City is way deeper than "criticisms of communism". People literally wake up in The Doomed City when the pandemic has started in 2020, for example.
What's deep about that?
You will never know until you read the book. That's the deal with good books.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#79I look forward to reading some of this. SF is pretty much always about the current day. Soviet SF was quite illuminating to me (back when anybody cared about the USSR). I’ve always wanted to read a couple of the Soviet equivalent of the James Bond novels.
“The air seller” by Belyayev reminded me a lot about the more wacky side of James Bond. The protagonist is not glamorous, can’t do that in USSR. But it does have a villain that tries to take over the world with revolutionary technology from his evil layer. The villain captures the protagonist to boast about his evil genius. Even a final battle between marines and henchmen is there. Could have been adapted into a gold…
What a surprise to see “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin” being mentioned on HN. I read some Soviet SF as a kid, unfortunately this is the only one I can recall by title.
Re: North Korean science fiction
#80I look forward to reading some of this. SF is pretty much always about the current day. Soviet SF was quite illuminating to me (back when anybody cared about the USSR). I’ve always wanted to read a couple of the Soviet equivalent of the James Bond novels.
Can you share some examples of Soviet SF? Should be quite exciting.
The Inhabited Island is an amazing book with a great ending. SF, government conflict/war, weird and fun machinery, etc.
Others are suggesting Hard to Be a God by the same authors, which is an okay book, but it's not really SF as most people think of SF IMO.