fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3524 ]

[ SECRET POST #3524 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3524 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 48 secrets from Secret Submission Post #504.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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01. http://i.imgur.com/aPMibA8.jpg

I think you're conflating a few different modes of science fiction writing, in a way that's kind of confusing. Wacky space opera and pulpiness is pretty distinct from soft SF and New Wave SF weirdness (which is really what Brunner is writing most of the time, compared to someone like Van Vogt or Gordon Dickson). And it's also important to point out that there was a lot of realistic, hard-ass engineer SF and Campbellian SF in the 50s and 60s, to the extent that it was probably the default self-image of science fiction writing.

That said, I do mostly agree that there seems to be a lack of that. Maybe people have just moved into writing fantasy or horror or non-SFF fiction when they're trying to write those sorts of stories? IDK.

Please keep talking sci fi genres to me anon *_*

I've heard S.M. Sterling tried something like that in The Sky People.

In a very SF-referential meta way, but yeah, true.

I'm never sure how to feel about dude's books, though.

Dirty all over is how you feel, he is a radical libertarian who wants to be living up Galt's Gulch.

Oh, god. You're joking, right??? :O

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-08-27 22:05 (UTC) - Expand

How libertarian is libertarian in this case? You've got Corey Doctorow with his copyright push and Joel Rosenberg who just really hates slavery, and then you've got John Ridley who thinks he can get away with calling people the N-word.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2016-08-27 22:17 (UTC) - Expand

(no subject)

feotakahari - 2016-08-27 22:47 (UTC) - Expand

As someone who still nurses a fondness for planetary romance and pulpy space opera despite/because of all their hand-wavey science, borderline-to-actual magic, and shady colonial underpinnings, I agree with this secret. I blame growing up on 80s cartoons as much as reading classic pulp SF, though :)

Or, like, colonial overpinnings

Lookin' at you, Jack Vance

Ah, Jack Vance. I read the Jack Vance Treasury that was in a Humble Bundle a while ago. Some of the stories had really interesting world-building, but it seems like the one thing he couldn't imagine was women who were more than an extension of their man. There were maybe a handful of women in 500+ pages, even fewer who actually had dialogue, and 0 who weren't the wife or servant of the main (male by default) character. And I'm running into a similar issue with the Harlan Ellison stuff from the same Bundle.

Which is why I generally prefer more modern sci-fi: at least the authors acknowledge that I exist.

That sounds so insufferable.

Yeah, Vance basically just... doesn't write women characters. IIRC in the Demon Princes series he just sort of... cycles new women characters in and out in each book of the series, instead of bothering to develop any of them.

But I was more referring to the novel he wrote The Gray Prince, which is literally, unambiguously an apologia for Rhodesia. And, like, it really doesn't have to depart very far from his other planetary romances to get to that point.

I still read some of his stuff, because his imaginative scope is pretty spectacular and his prose is great. But woo boy his politics were not at all agreeable.

Jean Parlier was pretty badass though.

I am 100% with you there, some more bold adventuring and less wangsty grimdark and idolizing of the military in SF please. This desperation to prove that SF is serious and respectable by being either as dull as possible or as grimdark as possible is getting stale. Stop trying to prove yourself worthy and just contact a medium, summon up Doug McClure's ghost, and go searching for Martian-Atlanteans and giant beasties or something. At least the main sequence new Star Wars seems to be embracing it, and the Doctor Who episode with the moon egg was pure 1970s Age of Aquarius brilliance.

When you put it that way, The Golden Oecumene fits. Just avoid the author's later series--he went bonkers after his stroke.

I don't have a huge preference between grit and pulp; I think both are silly in certain ways and enjoyable in certain ways. My complaint with older sci-fi is that it tended not to take much time with characters, and that's the most important part of any story for me. Old sci fi was, as a rule, all about the "idea," no matter how "hard" or "soft" that idea, whereas I think newer sci fi more often attempts to be about people.

I suggest the movie MOON.

The moon is too close. Planet Gibberish Name 7 where the locals are sentient pampas grasses and attacking our earth colony with flying razor tipped squirrel snakes, that is where it is at.

If I'm thinking of the right movie (the one with Sam Rockwell?), MOON has a lot of the Twilight Zone and the like in it, but I'd maybe have put it more on the gritty end? Given the vaguely dystopian twist and all?

What I love most about old SF (pulpy or not) is how typically the technology was incredibly advanced and yet (by today's standards) also very primitive at the same time. "Look at this device that does anything! Also, all of our computers run on vacuum tubes jsyk."

I love it when a scientist gets his slide rule out to run calculation that the computer cannot handle.

The specialized computer technician using coded paper tape as input. :P So advanced.

Those pics are hella cool.

Also, I agree so hard.

I don't agree because I am seeing plenty of adventures in space written in various shades of pulpiness from serious to silly in all the time from then to now. Also I may need to reread Avengers of Carrig because I don't remember it at all.

Look at The Best Of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord, or Waypoint Kangaroo, or Barst, to name a few. Look at Elizabeth Moon's science fiction serieses. China Mieville and Iain Banks and Ken MacLeod wrote science fiction with socialist sensibilities and pulp inspired technology, wild adventures that yeah have a grim side but also wild and out there.

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