Five questions meme

[iainjcoleman]

I'm blowing the dust off this LJ because katlinel tagged me with her five questions. As is traditional in this little game, let me know in comments if you'd like five individually hand-carved questions of your very own.

1. Which dead politician would you most like to have a chat with and why?Niccolo Machiavelli. He would have some excellent stories. Also

Comments

[iainjcoleman]

What with the astrophysics PhD and the years of postdoctoral research in space physics, I'm quite well aware of the plethora of spacecraft out there doing amazing work

[martin_wisse]

The books that are still so shelved, even (especially) the better ones, seem more and more to be engaged in a closed conversation with their predecessors in the SF field.

Can you give any examples, because the sf writers I read certainly don't read that way.

[ilya187]

The books that are still so shelved, even (especially) the better ones, seem more and more to be engaged in a closed conversation with their predecessors in the SF field. Lovecraft wrote about cosmic horror, Heinlein wrote about societal structures, Dick wrote about God and the nature of humanity. Modern SF writers write about Lovecraft, Heinlein and Dick. The ossified Hugo awards are just a symptom of this turning-in of the SF literary community.

WTH? The authors I read -- Alastair Reynolds, Ian Banks, Peter Watts, Charles Stross, -- are most certainly shelved in SF section, are not AFAICT writing about past SF writers, and I see no evidence on SF dying. Granted there are fewer writers than 30 years ago, but number of subjects being tackled is if anything, greater. Exactly because Space-Age-as-cultural-construct has come to an end, SF is not all " IN SPAAACE!" any more.

[ilya187]

Meant to type: SF is not all "[insert traditional trope] IN SPAAACE!" any more

[iainjcoleman]

You may be thinking of a different Charles Stross from the one I have read, who has published a Heinlein homage, two novels in dialogue with Vinge's singularity, and a series of Lovecraft mashups. Very enjoyable Lovecraft mashups, I grant you, but still.

[ilya187]

I read following by Stross:

Iron Sunrise
Singularity Sky
Saturn's Children
Accelerando
Family Trade

Saturn's Children is an obvious Heinlein homage, but is my least favorite of the above -- I never managed to finish it. Iron Sunrise and Singularity Sky could be considered "in dialogue with Vinge's singularity", but only in the sense that ALL transhuman fiction is "in dialogue with Vinge's singularity". You might as well say that all underwater SF is "in dialogue with Jules Verne". The other two books do not seem to be homages to anything.

Moreover, Charles Stross is not my favorite modern SF writer -- Alastair Reynolds is. And he seems to write quite original fiction.