SF as a Proper Name

 

This video discusses Proper Names by John Searle. My reason for posting this is to ask the question should SF or science fiction be considered a proper name?

Searle's Theory

1. Names can be a single word, or a cluster of words, that define the name

2. When descriptive names no longer describe the original thing they're still valid

3. Names don't have to be statements, or necessarily true; they're contingent facts

4. Names have a unique and plausible use within language

5. Names can describe non-existent objects or persons

6. Objects or persons can have more than one name and be the same object or person

TL;DW:  Or in this case, does the name science fiction make science fiction, science fiction?

Pronoun's Progress

I'm a lifelong science fiction fan and reader. As a writer I now study and practice writing and I was thinking about Isaac Asimov who posited that there were three types of SF stories.

Adventure: Man invents car, gets into a car chase with a villain.
Gadget: Man invents car, holds lecture on how it works.
Social: Man invents car, gets stuck in traffic in the suburbs.

It is to the last type of story that inspired today's post.

One of the few things that's unique to the SF genre is working out the unintended consequences of any new technology or changes in cultural mores etc.. Asimov himself wrote about mobile phones in his robot novels, which I've mentioned before, had a scene where a character apologizes that he can't speak as he's in a public space.

Oh, if only that were true, huh!?

So who would have predicted pronoun choice as a sociocultural prediction? I know some authors wrote about variant genders, or the ability to change sex, but who would've thought that this would lead to people introducing themselves with a declaration of their preferred gender?

Not me. Yet here we are.

I had to go away and think about this, have been mulling it over for several years. At one level I'm bothered by people declaring their gender pronouns, but on the other hand I'm a boring old fart and the times they are a changing. I generally predisposed to accept changes if they are for the better.

I mean, you'd be crazy not to. Amirite? Hah!

So while I may not be in the habit of declaring my preferred pronoun, I'm cool with it.

Of course if pushed my instinctual reaction would be, you're smart, figure it out. Yeah, guess I've gotta work on being more agreeable. However, an exchange I had with a friend who suggested, fucker, you fucker as the new go to pronoun, which I should've seen coming.

So, the unintended consequences of social change may lead to unintended outcomes, and therefore one should be careful what you wish for. The future's bright and stranger than you can imagine.

Just Another Furore in Fandom

Jeanette Ng made a statement at this years Worldcon when receiving her award for best new writer. I stand by her right to say whatever she pleases.

But while Jeanette Ng can say whatever the hell she wants, she is responsible for what she says.

John W. Campbell was a bad father of modem science fiction. The Hugo awards named after Hugo Gernsback, likewise. I don't disagree that both men were horrible. The more I read history the more I find that it's filled with unpleasant people.

Take other historical figures, like Freud for example, who is considered the father of psychology and psychotherapy. To say he's a bad dad is a humerous understatement.

Alfred Noble is another historical figure who is probably known for the award named after him. He was no angel.

They all share the fact that their lives cast a shadow cast over the prizes named after them.

History is full of people who had views that it would make any conversation with them difficult. But, in the bigger scheme of things, they're all low hanging fruit of unpleasantness.
 
Because there's very little in this world that's completely black or white.

All prizes have value that is greater than who or what they are named after. The Campbell Award is important because of who it has been awarded to, not because it's named after John W. Campbell.

As an SF fan I've read countless stories where people's opinions are used to sway public opinion. A recent example is a season one episode of The Orville in the episode called Majority Rule about the effects of a democracy run by upvoting/downvoting.

The current trend in fandom to create mobs is not something to be admired. The conversations that have followed her statement have done nothing but fuel the divisiveness and hate in fandom.

I think this very bad thing.

Fickle Fame

 

I caught this from David Langford of Ansible fame.

Paul Cornell, whose connections with Doctor Who include many tie-in novels since 1991 and scripts for three broadcast episodes, dared to tweet that Jodie Whittaker was "A great new Doctor'." He was swiftly put in his place by Twitter twit Jr Hunter with 'Yea... I could tell you never seen previous doctor who's'. (7 October) Another such pundit dealt with Neil Gaiman, also a long-time Who enthusiast and scriptwriter: "ahh so your a new fan because the doctor is a woman not a real fan of the show since the 60's then." Truly all knowledge is contained in Twitter.

Which I think just about goes to show that no matter how famous you are, or well known in a particular area that someone will not have heard of you.

Bad Fan

I'm a Bad Fan.

Let me expand what I mean when I say I'm a Bad Fan.  I tend to do my own thing when it comes to buying CDs of bands I follow or the books of authors I read.  I find I'm always behind on the latest new thing because I'm still enjoying the last old thing I found.

For example, take the band Garbage.  I discovered them when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was first on TV after buying the soundtrack for the series that had all the songs from the band that appeared in the show when the characters were hanging out in the Bronze.  That was back in 1999 and I probably bought my first Garbage album in 2001/2.  As I said I'm not quick when it comes to getting on the band wagon.  So this old fogey has been following Garbage for about 14 years, and the band has been around 20 years.  That pretty much defines not being on the bleeding edge.

I only recently got their last new album Not your Kind of People, which is great, mostly because I'd forgotten about it and there is another new album coming out soon: Strange little Birds.  And don't get me started on Blackstar by David Bowie, who along with Kate Bush I use to buy every LP (vinyl record for those who are too young to know what an LP is anymore) as it came out during the seventies and early eighties, but there again I reiterate I'm a Bad Fan, because I buy/listen/read/consume things at a pace that suits me.

Beginning of rant.

Anyway, on the internet in the last week we've had the usual foolishness of of people telling me what kind of SF there is and who likes what.  Warning this link takes you to Damien Walter being judgemental and dividing the goats from the sheep in his Eight Tribes piece.  I will state here that I intensely dislike being herded into a tribe.  It's divisive and serves no useful purpose.  Furthermore, my experience is that while some fans self identify as a fan of a particular part of the genre, lots of us (me) like to taste more than one thing.  To then extrapolate that certain parts of fandom – those into Military Science Fiction – are part of a right wing tribe that is just a poor ad hominem attack on those that Damien Walter's doesn't understand or like.

All this sort of piece does is divide people, and I'm not happy with being defined by a genre I read.  My reply to anyone who thinks that this is reasonable is sod off.

End of rant.

On a related note Paul McAuley wrote a rather nice piece on the Clarke Award in response to Nina Allan's Last Hurrah blog.  To quote Paul:

Science fiction, perhaps the most protean of genre fictions, is somewhat harder to define. We know it when we see it, but it includes a vast variety of different kinds of fiction; its borders are vague; it overlaps other genres, including literary fiction. But in all of those different kinds of science-fiction works, there's perhaps one unifying factor: rather than exploring reality, science fiction is interested in exploring the limits of reality. Rather than analysing and universalising individual human experience, it's interested in analysing the reality of the universe and measuring it against human values. It's about change and difference, and the consequences of change and difference.

I particularly like the, exploring the limits of reality, which is apposite given what science has to say about local versus non-local reality or if you prefer our biological versus our mathematical understanding of the universe we live in.

So that's it for another week, and I have to find my centre and get on with finishing off an article I'm in the middle of, rather than fretting over stuff on the internet that upsets me.

And So It Begins

It's the beginning of the Hugo Wars where the forces of lawful good versus chaotic evil.  Oh sorry, that was the plot-line of Babylon 5.  My bad.

Looking at the works there's a lot to like and my feeling remains the same: read the stories and if you like it vote for it.  If not, then vote no award and ignore the political machinations.  I can't help but pull on my cynic goggles and say that the only real winners here are those that benefit from the column inches in what passes for the mainstream press.

Anyway, a pick of some of my favourites on this years Hugo list.

First the Retro Awards

Novel: Slan by A.E. Van Vogt (Astounding Science-Fiction, Dec 1940).

Best Dramatic Presentation: The Thief of Bagdad written by Lajos Bíró and Miles Malleson, directed by Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, and Tim Whelan (London Films, United Artists).

Hugo 2016 Nominees

Novel: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit)

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form): The Martian screenplay by Drew Goddard, directed by Ridley Scott (Scott Free Productions; Kinberg Genre; TSG Entertainment; 20th Century Fox).

Star Wars: The Force Awakens written by Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, and Michael Arndt, directed by J.J. Abrams (Lucasfilm Ltd.; Bad Robot Productions; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures).

And separately I'm pleased to see.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Andy Weir.

As for the whole brouhaha over who nominated what and why all I can say is that after four years of discussions by various people on the internet ranging from the famous to the obscure (I include myself in the obscure) I fail to see anyone changing their minds about their positions, which I take as a cue for saying, "we'll all have to agree to disagree."

Hugo Reflections: Part 5 - 1993 to 2002

Now I'm into my fourth decade of reading SF.  I went to Helicon in 1993, but after this I didn't go to another convention again until 2002 when I return to fandom by attending ConJosé the 2002 Worldcon in San Jose, which was the first convention my partner ever attended.  Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

Again the link for the Hugo Wikipedia page is here.
 
1993 to 2002 

Looking at the awards I have managed to read five of the eleven winners in this period, and only four of the forty nominees.  Given how few of the Hugo award winners and nominees I've read it's easiest for me to list them, rather than trying to encapsulate all the books I haven't read (check out the link for all the books).

The award winners I've read were: A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge, Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold, Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman, A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge, and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling.  However none of these were bought because they were Hugo award winners, assuming that makes sense.  I was blown away by A Fire Upon the Deep and I've just snapped up anything by Vernor Vinge ever since.  Likewise for Bujold's work, and Rowling's books were read mostly so that I could talk to my clients at work who were enjoying the stories.

Therefore it's no surprise to find that of three the books nominated for the Hugo were by two of the authors in the award winning list: Memory by Lois McMaster Bujold, Brightness Reef by David Brin, A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling.

This seems to indicate a complete collapse in the number of books I'm reading, except I bought and read a whole bunch of books, even though I will qualify my statement by saying I wasn't reading as much during this period as I used to.  In this case mostly because I had a shed load of text books to read for the diploma in mental health studies I was studying for.  The job I then went into was quite demanding, which also had a considerable impact on how much I read. Still, saying that my book collection kept growing.

Part six link.