tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post111145227363701928..comments2024-03-17T11:05:22.464+00:00Comments on The Life And Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: SixUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-1111611697680078762005-03-23T21:01:00.001+00:002005-03-23T21:01:00.001+00:00"1984 was Science Fiction only because it needed t..."1984 was Science Fiction only because it needed to be to tell the story."<BR/><BR/>Precisely, but isn't that the opposite of your original point - that the best SF stories are the ones that would or could work in nearly any setting.<BR/><BR/>Not trying to catch you out here, like I say I do actually agree with your original statement more or less, I just think that the additional point needed making.<BR/><BR/>I suppose the position I'm coming from (and from what I can tell, the position you too are coming from) can be summed up as something like "the best SF stories are the ones which are good stories in their own right, but which work best with a particular set of SF elements, which are the elements present in the story". Although that's a bit long winded.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-1111611696720515452005-03-23T21:01:00.000+00:002005-03-23T21:01:00.000+00:00"1984 was Science Fiction only because it needed t..."1984 was Science Fiction only because it needed to be to tell the story."<BR/><BR/>Precisely, but isn't that the opposite of your original point - that the best SF stories are the ones that would or could work in nearly any setting.<BR/><BR/>Not trying to catch you out here, like I say I do actually agree with your original statement more or less, I just think that the additional point needed making.<BR/><BR/>I suppose the position I'm coming from (and from what I can tell, the position you too are coming from) can be summed up as something like "the best SF stories are the ones which are good stories in their own right, but which work best with a particular set of SF elements, which are the elements present in the story". Although that's a bit long winded.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-1111574037428423752005-03-23T10:33:00.000+00:002005-03-23T10:33:00.000+00:00I've always held the opinion that SF stories weren...<I>I've always held the opinion that SF stories weren't really about the science.</I> <BR/> <BR/>Only the good ones are about the science, perhaps.<BR/><BR/>I mean - if they're stories that could be about anyone in any setting, what's the point in making them SF? That just alienates the people who think that SF is childish, or who get distracted by the odd furniture. SF without science is just, well, fiction. Which is fine, but doesn't need its own genre. At most, you get a bunch of cheap metaphors and distancing devices to get you past a few twits who don't want to think about particular ideas.<BR/><BR/>SF is, to swipe an old and boring catchphrase, a literature of ideas. The trouble is, ideas are quite hard to handle. You can simplify and abstract them down to a sort of formal puzzle with no real relationship to reality (e.g. an Asimov robot story), or you can pull the classic Olaf Stapledon/Greg Egan trick and smack the bastard readers square between the ideas with solid intellect, and to hell with the enfeebled wimps who were fwited by a maffs teacher at the age of twelve...<BR/><BR/>Or you can play to the genre's other strength, specifically raw sensawunda. Which is enormous fun, but, well, ultimately a bit limited.<BR/><BR/>Which, dragging it back to Andrew's topic, is I guess one of the reasons that <I>Dr Who?</I> is often superior to the big American SF series. At minimum, it regularly manages to get the sensawunda right, and sometimes, it even sidles up towards an idea or two. Whereas <I>Star Trek</I> is terrified of tackling ideas in any depth and often strangely short on wonder, and <I>Babylon 5</I> gets by on second-hand wondrous images and very feeble "characters" and "morality".<BR/><BR/>(Now, if you want a non-UK SF series that almost manages to invade <I>Who</I> territory at times, I'll tell you about my affection for <I>Farscape</I>. And no, I haven't seen <I>Firefly</I>.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-1111521126830734332005-03-22T19:52:00.000+00:002005-03-22T19:52:00.000+00:00Charles Filson: "The best science fiction stories ...Charles Filson: "The best science fiction stories are ones that would or could work in nearly any setting. They just happen to be set in space."<BR/><BR/>I think you're right up to a point. Certainly there are fundamental elements of a story (characterisation, pacing, and all that jazz) that are important whether you're writing a soap or an opera. An SF story that doesn't work as a story is going to fall flat on its face.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, I do think that there are some things you just *can't* do outside of an SF setting. 1984, for example, absolutely required the Thought Police, the Anti-Sex-League, the Telescreens and all the rest (all of them, ultimately, SF elements, although here the "S" stands more for "Speculative" than for "Science") because it had to portray an absolutely perfect image of a totalitarian society. You could have told a *similar* story about, say, a man living in Soviet Russia, but it wouldn't have had the same effect or impact. Even today we talk about "Big Brother" and "newspeak", and these are tremendously powerful concepts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9987513.post-1111487549960901482005-03-22T10:32:00.000+00:002005-03-22T10:32:00.000+00:00I wince too whenever I hear the increasingly popul...I wince too whenever I hear the increasingly popular statement that SF/fantasy "isn't about people". <BR/><BR/>Obviously some of it isn't. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, to pick a rather extreme example, is about precisely one person. (Until the second series, when first person fades to background and series is about second person.) And some of the bad stuff isn't about people, just as some of the bad thrillers, detective novels and chick-lit don't have a recognisable human being in the cast. B5 was pure people, especially Londo and G'Kar, Buffy was teenagers who sort of count as people, Enterprise is trying hard and partly suceeding. Asimov's Robots are Kantian people.<BR/><BR/>I was thinking about this the other day because I was contemplating starting my third Robert Reed novel. He writes very well but his people are all thousands of years old and somehow their failure to change in nature doesn't ring true. And if the people aren't right the plot tends to become irrelevant. You have to wonder why RTD doesn't know that already, or whether as Andrew suggests he's playing up to the anti-SF crowd <BR/><BR/>Not everything is or should be about people though. As a teenager we studied Larkin's "At Grass". I remember being deeply disappointed when our English teacher explained that it wasn't about horses at all but people. I much preferred horses at the time. And no matter how often I go back to it, it's always about horses to me. Fantasy's like that sometimes; you just want it to be about aliens and Dorset quarries not continuous allegory and interpersonal relationships.<BR/><BR/>Back to Doctor Who. I feel you're a little harsh on Christopher Ecclestone, who was supposedly not commenting on the whole history of DW but on what he felt about it as a child. Presumably he encountered one or at the most two Doctors at a formative age. I suspect he wasn't the boffin type anyway. Although given the lack of Northern accents on at the time one feels he must have been turned off an awful lot of TV, which is a little odd for a prospective actor.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com