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In Which I Behave As Might An Academic
Jan. 29th, 2013 08:41 pmHave nearly completed my first cryptic crossword. Have not decided yet whether I think it's fun or whether I think it's snooty mensa bullshit. I do definitely enjoy the way it facilitates my effort to convey terrible puns to Ciro against his will.
Ciro's mom is now in town and will be staying with us for two weeks.
The weather is all over the place.
The ICA has asked me to lead another workshop in April.
More details on the last workshop when I have even a second to myself.
Cabaret performance week, so I am a theater widow.
Spent my only free moments today pitching ideas to Readercon. Probably I am late enough they will say no. But I thought I'd copy over one of the pitches in place of a journal entry:
I would like to lead a discussion on Dystopias versus Utopias. SF is as full of warnings about the dangers of technology as it is suffused with a belief that technology will set us free, and this mix of optimism and pessimism has been with us from the beginning. (I can lead with a short talk with historical examples and trends, but don't know how necessary that would be with this audience.)
It seems to me that in the last decade, the pendulum has swung away from utopias (such as Star Trek) and we're deep into a renaisance of dystopias, often post-apocalyptic. I'd like to discuss (1) whether this is true, (2) what might have caused the trend, and (3) whether it's ultimately good or bad for the genre (or the personal enjoyment of those involved in the discussion).
My own feeling is that the shift is real and that several factors contribute, including the bleak economy (so that people think they personally will do worse in the future), global warming news (so people think the planet will do worse), the 24 hour news cycle (so there's always a war on), the rise of console-based first-person video games (which are easier to write if you adopt a "kill everybody" people-as-targets [or zombies-as-targets] structure, and the increasing complexity of science, which now tends to be team-based, slow-moving, and within an insitutional context (which fits less neatly into hero narratives).
Some of that is cyclical, and fairly similar to Britain after World War II - out of which came great works like 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Some of that - videogames and science not seeming as much like a frontier - may be more enduring and may not resemble the past.
I can't knock the current state of the genre, which is responding to the culture, and is producing works that resonate with readers and viewers. Wish fulfillment and escape are part of SF, and should not and will not go away. At the same time, I question whether our wholehearted embrace of "Mad Max" situations is entirely responsible, in terms of stewardship of the genre. One of the roles of science fiction is to predict where we are going to go, and to explore the possibilities of science. Scientists have complained publicly that we are no longer doing the dreaming for them, and several science organizations have put together grant programs to encourage writers and filmmakers to make science fiction that involves science.
I also have noticed in my own reading that dystopian every-man-for-himself futures tend to be libertarian, chauvinist, and ableist. (The Hunger Games trilogy is a commendable exception.) So there is part of me that sees this shift as a reactionary "kick the girls out" manouever, using the apocalypse to reassert an older social order and say it's "realistic." I think this is notable becuase it means we're not just embracing "gritty" storylines -- we're ridiculing happy futures as naive and childish, and in doing so are telling, for instance, female authors that we don't believe they'll have a lasting role in the world.
In any case, I think there's a lot of room for a rollicking discussion.
Ciro's mom is now in town and will be staying with us for two weeks.
The weather is all over the place.
The ICA has asked me to lead another workshop in April.
More details on the last workshop when I have even a second to myself.
Cabaret performance week, so I am a theater widow.
Spent my only free moments today pitching ideas to Readercon. Probably I am late enough they will say no. But I thought I'd copy over one of the pitches in place of a journal entry:
I would like to lead a discussion on Dystopias versus Utopias. SF is as full of warnings about the dangers of technology as it is suffused with a belief that technology will set us free, and this mix of optimism and pessimism has been with us from the beginning. (I can lead with a short talk with historical examples and trends, but don't know how necessary that would be with this audience.)
It seems to me that in the last decade, the pendulum has swung away from utopias (such as Star Trek) and we're deep into a renaisance of dystopias, often post-apocalyptic. I'd like to discuss (1) whether this is true, (2) what might have caused the trend, and (3) whether it's ultimately good or bad for the genre (or the personal enjoyment of those involved in the discussion).
My own feeling is that the shift is real and that several factors contribute, including the bleak economy (so that people think they personally will do worse in the future), global warming news (so people think the planet will do worse), the 24 hour news cycle (so there's always a war on), the rise of console-based first-person video games (which are easier to write if you adopt a "kill everybody" people-as-targets [or zombies-as-targets] structure, and the increasing complexity of science, which now tends to be team-based, slow-moving, and within an insitutional context (which fits less neatly into hero narratives).
Some of that is cyclical, and fairly similar to Britain after World War II - out of which came great works like 1984 and A Clockwork Orange. Some of that - videogames and science not seeming as much like a frontier - may be more enduring and may not resemble the past.
I can't knock the current state of the genre, which is responding to the culture, and is producing works that resonate with readers and viewers. Wish fulfillment and escape are part of SF, and should not and will not go away. At the same time, I question whether our wholehearted embrace of "Mad Max" situations is entirely responsible, in terms of stewardship of the genre. One of the roles of science fiction is to predict where we are going to go, and to explore the possibilities of science. Scientists have complained publicly that we are no longer doing the dreaming for them, and several science organizations have put together grant programs to encourage writers and filmmakers to make science fiction that involves science.
I also have noticed in my own reading that dystopian every-man-for-himself futures tend to be libertarian, chauvinist, and ableist. (The Hunger Games trilogy is a commendable exception.) So there is part of me that sees this shift as a reactionary "kick the girls out" manouever, using the apocalypse to reassert an older social order and say it's "realistic." I think this is notable becuase it means we're not just embracing "gritty" storylines -- we're ridiculing happy futures as naive and childish, and in doing so are telling, for instance, female authors that we don't believe they'll have a lasting role in the world.
In any case, I think there's a lot of room for a rollicking discussion.
