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North Korean science fiction

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Re: North Korean science fiction

#91

Post by the_af »

narrator wrote: post #34
AdamH12113 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Roadside Picnic" is a well-known novel that was the basis for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic

Roadside picnic is so ridiculously melancholy. Everyone in that book is so depressed! I also don't think I've ever seen so much smoking and drinking in a sci-fi book. You could tell the brothers were really not enjoying communism.

The novel itself and the setting are not about communism though, not even in disguise. It would have to be in disguise because the setting is an unnamed North American (possibly Canadian?) city, but even if it was, the themes are not about communism.

Agreed about the melancholy.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#92

Post by philwelch »

anon25783 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And zero people alive can fly or shoot heat rays out of their eyeballs, so it should have been obvious what I meant in context.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#93

Post by the_af »

rexpop wrote: post #60
gumby wrote: post #2

I 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?

It means the future elements in scifi (when it is about the future at all; some scifi doesn't even pretend to be futuristic) are an extrapolation of the current time and used to explore an idea about today.

An author's scifi "gimmick" (it can be a technology, a societal norm, an alien encounter, etc) is often the way in which the author develops and extrapolates a preoccupation about the real world, be it war, or invasion, or social alienation, or consumerism, etc.

The most obvious (but least interesting) example of this is how all those "Mars attacks" / alien invasion / body snatcher stories really were about the Red Scare, basically "what if Communism was infiltrating our society!"

Re: North Korean science fiction

#94

Post by jvb1000 »

thriftwy wrote: post #85
jvb1000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I saw a We play a year back, and it was highly contemporary with its office-style glass walls, mixed-use spaces and complex rituals around dating.

That's probably a testament to the criticism. Interesting that what Yevgeny Zamyatin presents as a clear, almost too on the nose dystopian satire has been repackaged as a desirable work environment.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#95

Post by jvb1000 »

thriftwy wrote: post #85
jvb1000 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I saw a We play a year back, and it was highly contemporary with its office-style glass walls, mixed-use spaces and complex rituals around dating.

For those not aware, despite it seeming highly contemporary, the first English translation of the book was published in 1924.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#96

Post by raincole »

anon25783 wrote: post #74
philwelch wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But the whole US ideology is about anyone can be a rich. Of course in real world it's not true, but it's a direct contradiction against the GP's weird "western ideaology = you can't just become one of the special superheroes" conspiracy.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#97

Post by xhevahir »

3np wrote: post #83
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to underlie their problem: if they're only supporting SciFi (and probably other creative outlets) as a means to an end, as a means to encourage innovation, they're doing it wrong . Asimov didn't write because he foresaw all of the tech entrepreneurs who would read his work, he wrote because he wanted to, and because the society where he wrote supported him—and promoted artistic works (though of course ther…

Why the CCP supports SciFi is can be detached from motivations of individual authors.

Something tells me the Party's support or funding of an author's work could have a lot to do with the author's ideology (or the perception thereof).

Re: North Korean science fiction

#98

Post by jvb1000 »

rexpop wrote: post #60
gumby wrote: post #2

I 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?

Even if it's not true of all science fiction (especially the pulp traditions of American sci-fi), it is arguable that the origins of science fiction are thought experiments that exist to help think through and critique the present. A lot of influential writers have said exactly this, including Le Guin, Gibson, Vandermeer, Doctorow, and Palmer to name a few of the top of my head.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#99

Post by totetsu »

anon25783 wrote: post #73
rexpop wrote: post #60

Earlier 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.

A good demonstration of this is the differences present in any sci-fi that got a remake 10-20 years after it was first written. The setting may well still be the far future .. or long long ago.. but that future has changed to match the present. The foundation TV series comes to mind. it's veeery different from the original novels.

Re: North Korean science fiction

#100

Post by jvb1000 »

jvb1000 wrote: post #98
rexpop wrote: post #60

Earlier 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?

Even if it's not true of all science fiction (especially the pulp traditions of American sci-fi), it is arguable that the origins of science fiction are thought experiments that exist to help think through and critique the present. A lot of influential writers have said exactly this, including Le Guin, Gibson, Vandermeer, Doctorow, and Palmer to name a few of the top of my head.

Alongside this, there are also several international traditions of sci-fi (Russian, French, Indian, Chinese) that imagined modernization in supposedly under developed countries to contrast a possible future against the very real modernization of developed neighbours.
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