#sf writing

[tlaquetzqui]

Love all the science fiction where humans are indomitable. So, like, hey, why’s your story in English? Why’s that language spoken in Britain, and not in the Anglia Peninsula in northwest Germany that gives it its name—what became of the Britons and their language? And what’s with all the French words? I mean since humans never submit and all.

[tlaquetzqui]

How about a cyborg mercenary who’s lacking in empathy not because having a robot arm makes you psychologically inhuman (because…it’s cursed?), but because they have to eat three times as much to power their superhuman strength, and also have to pay off extensive, probably illegal surgical modification (you also need to reinforce the torso, with arms like that). People who can’t be sure they’ll have enough to eat, and people in debt to criminals, are both notoriously unscrupulous.

[tlaquetzqui]

Should someone tell Makaku, the first villain in Battle Angel Alita, that if you’re going to eat someone’s brain for their endorphins, breaking the top off their skull is going about it all wrong? Endorphins are mainly stored in the anterior pituitary gland, which is in the bottom of the braincase, right above where the lower jaw attaches.

(Also God but the anterior and posterior pituitary lobes together totally look like a sideways nutsack.)

[tlaquetzqui]

You might be thinking “I have to kill off characters or the reader won’t have any investment, it’ll be like a mystery where you see who the killer is in the opening scene”.

Columbo, you mean? Columbo is not about “who done it”, it’s about “how catch ’em”. A lot of stories, probably most, are not about “Will the protagonists die?”, because if they die fuck there’s no story. They are about “How Will The Hero Get Out of This One?” It is not in question that The Hero can Get Out of This One; the interest is in how.

From another angle, consider Dragon Ball. After the power-creep sets in, taking away the ability to wish people back would be a Band-Aid on a suppurating chest wound. The problem is not that people don’t die (permanently): the problem, no matter who is dead or alive, is still that the only solution is always “wait for Goku to finish powering up past another threshold and handle everything with a yet-more souped-up Kamefuckinghamefuckingha.” It’s boring.

Something like Naruto or BnHA is better, even though except in very special circumstances nobody is really any more likely to be permanently killed. Because the characters have different powers—everyone is far more of a wildcard than Piccolo’s weird slug-man stuff—and not only the protagonist is allowed to save the day. If you really thought anyone was gonna die in those except in very telegraphed circumstances, you’re not old enough to read shonen manga. The interest is in how they avoid dying.

(It occurs to me that this is kinda the fictional equivalent of “it matters not how long you live, but how well”. The protagonist’s death is generally a real nuisance. Just make the foregone conclusion of their survival fun to read.)

[tlaquetzqui]

Y’all know science fiction is actually set in this universe, right? Or one that is at least ostensibly supposed to work like it, or with predictable modifications to its rules.

You can no more announce that your aliens can do things like shapeshift without being limited by conservation of mass, and still call it science fiction, than you can have a Muslim woman POTUS in the 1870s and all the Mexicans speaking Finnish instead of Spanish, and still call it a Western. That second thing is a different genre, and the first one is too.

[tlaquetzqui]

This is actually important in worldbuilding: manufactured beings are not actually going to have sexual urges, unless some weirdo makes them that way.

[bluerosesonata]

Stop me if I’ve made this post before, I’m just feeling a little melancholy.

Science fiction has always been a reflection of the times it was written in. The stories and themes of science fiction stories, intentionally or not, will always speak to the social issues and fears of the author’s present day, and (in hard SF, at least) the ways we engage with emerging technologies.

For about a decade now, it’s been getting harder and harder for me to think about the future of tech with any feeling of awe or hope. And I know I’m not alone.

I can only speak as a USamerican, but when I read older SF, sure, you get the US paranoia of Japan as a manufacturing superpower. You get the concerns about manufacturing jobs being lost to automation and jobs moving overseas. You get the fear of government surveillance, of corporate omnipresence and consumerism.

But there was the idea of tech as an equalizer. That kids raised online, frequenting hacker forums and building their own rigs from scrap could do something.

And before that, there was the idea that global unity was possible. That it was our destiny to go to the stars, and that there would be a population of people both on earth and in space.

Yes, there would still be wars. There would still be inequality. There would still be poverty and exploitation. But we would cure disease. We would live longer. We would have lives that were improved by tech, even if it caused problems of its own. And when those problems outweighed the benefits, we could always trust in the human spirit and human kindness and determination to overcome those problems.

There was hope.

But now, I feel like it’s harder to ask a reader to suspend their disbelief and invest in the idea that the advance of technology could unilaterally make our lives better. To believe in the human spirit and misfits overcoming corrupt omnicompanies or crooked government. To believe in a future where the Earth is inhabitable.

It feels like a bridge too far to ask them to look to the future in wonder and awe. Because it’s hard enough for me to feel that way and not feel like a fraud.

It just feels like it’s easier to ask readers to imagine an alternate history or to believe in space magic, because that goes down easier than trying to address where we go from here, and to make them believe things can be Cooler and Marginally Better, instead of just getting bleaker and more hopeless.

[tlaquetzqui]

Just saw some self-hating white girl being very self-righteous, so: science fiction and fantasy are Euro-American genres, just as wuxia and xianxia are East Asian genres.

I am sorry if that incontrovertible historic fact bothers you but every non-Westerner who produces SF/F knows they’re practicing a foreign art form, just as Indonesian electric guitarists know it. Do you think Yoyo Ma is gratified if you claim classical cello is just as Chinese as it is European? Or do you think he pities you for lying about your civilization’s history to please him, when he doesn’t even mind the truth?