6 ms·

Good to know. I tried "the left hand of darkness" and didn't like it. Somehow it read more like mediocre fantasy than scifi.

by k__ 6y ago

Aeolun 6y ago
Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration. I guess that could be either fantasy or science fiction, but since it has spaceships it must be the latter.
- kijin 6y ago
  > since it has spaceships it must be the latter. I look forward to the day when spaceships become as mundane as trains and helicopters, so that their presence alone will not make a novel "science fiction". Le Guin never identified her books as science fiction. Sadly the world can't seem to look at a book without shoving it into the bounds of a familiar genre. This doesn't help readers, either, as GP was apparently given the wrong expectations by these labels.
  - minnca 6y ago
    I'm a big Le Guin fan and I consider her books to be sort of like "anthropological science fiction," as in they're focused on the societies and people of science fictional societies and less so on the science behind those societies.
    - 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
      Yeah that's a big part of her thing right. She was raised by anthropologists I think? It's very present in a lot of her books and Always Coming Home is like 1/3 straight fictional ethnography.
      - vidarh 6y ago
        Both her parents were anthropologists. This is her father [1], and this was her mother [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Kroeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Kroeber [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Kroeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Kroeber
- k__ 6y ago
  I don't know. Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" spoke more to me, and it's also more cultural exploration than science.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  That's true of most SF. SF is primarily political, and has been since at least the late 50s. Although there is hard SF where the science leads, it's rarer - and less interesting - than SF which uses imaginary technologies to set a scene for political and social questions. IMO Le Guin and someone like Heinlein were two sides of the same strand of SF. They're both moralists rather than technical speculators, and in their own way they have a didactic streak where the morality is confidently presented but rather heavy-handed. Although The Dispossessed is politically ambiguous, it's not ambiguous in an unfathomable, mysterious, or unconfident way. Neither is something like Dune, or the Culture novels. Or even Asimov's Foundation. Part of the appeal of these authors is that they seem quite sure of their political and anthropological sophistication. While their characters may struggle, there's never a sense the authors feel they could be completely blindsided by human or alien anthropology, or steamrollered by non-human influences which are incomprehensible and impossible to deal with.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  A lot of science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy if your swap positron-brained AI -> wise elves/demi-god, alien invaders -> orcs or an elven race (depending on how advanced the plot demands they ought to be, relative to humans), teleportation -> teleportation, non-real-world tech/discovery/invention required by plot -> magic. A few stories managed to straddle both genres (like the Merchant Princess series by @cstross). My observation is that most sci-fi is set in a world mostly similar to ours, except for one aspect/tech that's dialed to 11. Fantasy has a much looser attachment to our world, and sometimes the weirder, the better. Also, each has its own genre-tropes that can be used (or subverted) but barely translate to the other - I'm yet to see a fantasy story that is grounded in egalitarianism.
  - akiselev 6y ago
    > My observation is that most sci-fi is set in a world mostly similar to ours, except for one aspect/tech that's dialed to 11. Fantasy has a much looser attachment to our world, and sometimes the weirder, the better. I don't remember where I read it but what you just described is one of the best strategies for writing scifi that many of the most well known authors used. I'd wager it is the defining quality of science fiction from a historical perspective: it's a form of fiction that split the difference between vanilla fiction and fantasy that just happened to grow popular in the 20th century's golden era of scientific research. This was the era of boundless optimism with flying cars and the World Fair's Futurama so a fuzzy genre that took our world and changed one abstract thing or dialed it up to 11 (alien invasion! total surveillance! AI! galaxy far far away!) became science fiction because authors chose convenient plot points based on the cultural zeitgeist of the time. On the surface the difference between science fiction and fantasy isn't all that big ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") but I think fundamentally they're different approaches to imagining a literary universe. The former is based in reality but the "science fiction" part is a plot device to implement the one aspect of the universe the author wants to change, whereas in fantasy it's supposed to be a new universe whose rules/laws are only vaguely related to our own because the author just happens to also be human. Edit five minutes later: Found it! Philip K Dick wrote in a letter (from The Collected Short Stories Volume 1): > I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as "a story (or novel or play) set in the future," since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf? > This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society -- or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one -- this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, > Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. > Thus "good science fiction" is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  "Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration." This is what I explained to my high school teacher when she talked sf down because I wanted to write about Alastor by Vance.
wishinghand 6y ago
Taking science fiction as positing a technological change and then writing a story about how the world is given that change, Left Hand of Darkness is absolutely scifi. It wonders what one human society might be like if cut off for centuries or more after a diaspora. The ambassador in the story seeing if the world can be brought back into the fold is classic scifi. It’s even more nuanced because the ambassador narrator isn’t some emotionless ubermensch, but a sexist fish out of water.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

Good to know. I tried "the left hand of darkness" and didn't like it. Somehow it read more like mediocre fantasy than scifi.

by k__ 6y ago

Good to know. I tried "the left hand of darkness" and didn't like it. Somehow it read more like mediocre fantasy than scifi.

Aeolun 6y ago

Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration. I guess that could be either fantasy or science fiction, but since it has spaceships it must be the latter.

kijin 6y ago
> since it has spaceships it must be the latter. I look forward to the day when spaceships become as mundane as trains and helicopters, so that their presence alone will not make a novel "science fiction". Le Guin never identified her books as science fiction. Sadly the world can't seem to look at a book without shoving it into the bounds of a familiar genre. This doesn't help readers, either, as GP was apparently given the wrong expectations by these labels.
- minnca 6y ago
  I'm a big Le Guin fan and I consider her books to be sort of like "anthropological science fiction," as in they're focused on the societies and people of science fictional societies and less so on the science behind those societies.
  - 8fGTBjZxBcHq 6y ago
    Yeah that's a big part of her thing right. She was raised by anthropologists I think? It's very present in a lot of her books and Always Coming Home is like 1/3 straight fictional ethnography.
    - vidarh 6y ago
      Both her parents were anthropologists. This is her father [1], and this was her mother [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Kroeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._L._Kroeber [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Kroeber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_Kroeber
k__ 6y ago
I don't know. Ada Palmer's "Terra Ignota" spoke more to me, and it's also more cultural exploration than science.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
That's true of most SF. SF is primarily political, and has been since at least the late 50s. Although there is hard SF where the science leads, it's rarer - and less interesting - than SF which uses imaginary technologies to set a scene for political and social questions. IMO Le Guin and someone like Heinlein were two sides of the same strand of SF. They're both moralists rather than technical speculators, and in their own way they have a didactic streak where the morality is confidently presented but rather heavy-handed. Although The Dispossessed is politically ambiguous, it's not ambiguous in an unfathomable, mysterious, or unconfident way. Neither is something like Dune, or the Culture novels. Or even Asimov's Foundation. Part of the appeal of these authors is that they seem quite sure of their political and anthropological sophistication. While their characters may struggle, there's never a sense the authors feel they could be completely blindsided by human or alien anthropology, or steamrollered by non-human influences which are incomprehensible and impossible to deal with.
sangnoir 6y ago
A lot of science fiction is indistinguishable from fantasy if your swap positron-brained AI -> wise elves/demi-god, alien invaders -> orcs or an elven race (depending on how advanced the plot demands they ought to be, relative to humans), teleportation -> teleportation, non-real-world tech/discovery/invention required by plot -> magic. A few stories managed to straddle both genres (like the Merchant Princess series by @cstross). My observation is that most sci-fi is set in a world mostly similar to ours, except for one aspect/tech that's dialed to 11. Fantasy has a much looser attachment to our world, and sometimes the weirder, the better. Also, each has its own genre-tropes that can be used (or subverted) but barely translate to the other - I'm yet to see a fantasy story that is grounded in egalitarianism.
- akiselev 6y ago
  > My observation is that most sci-fi is set in a world mostly similar to ours, except for one aspect/tech that's dialed to 11. Fantasy has a much looser attachment to our world, and sometimes the weirder, the better. I don't remember where I read it but what you just described is one of the best strategies for writing scifi that many of the most well known authors used. I'd wager it is the defining quality of science fiction from a historical perspective: it's a form of fiction that split the difference between vanilla fiction and fantasy that just happened to grow popular in the 20th century's golden era of scientific research. This was the era of boundless optimism with flying cars and the World Fair's Futurama so a fuzzy genre that took our world and changed one abstract thing or dialed it up to 11 (alien invasion! total surveillance! AI! galaxy far far away!) became science fiction because authors chose convenient plot points based on the cultural zeitgeist of the time. On the surface the difference between science fiction and fantasy isn't all that big ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") but I think fundamentally they're different approaches to imagining a literary universe. The former is based in reality but the "science fiction" part is a plot device to implement the one aspect of the universe the author wants to change, whereas in fantasy it's supposed to be a new universe whose rules/laws are only vaguely related to our own because the author just happens to also be human. Edit five minutes later: Found it! Philip K Dick wrote in a letter (from The Collected Short Stories Volume 1): > I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf is not. It cannot be defined as "a story (or novel or play) set in the future," since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf? > This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society -- or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one -- this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, > Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. > Thus "good science fiction" is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.
KingOfCoders 6y ago
"Because the science part takes a backseat to the cultural exploration." This is what I explained to my high school teacher when she talked sf down because I wanted to write about Alastor by Vance.

wishinghand 6y ago

Taking science fiction as positing a technological change and then writing a story about how the world is given that change, Left Hand of Darkness is absolutely scifi. It wonders what one human society might be like if cut off for centuries or more after a diaspora. The ambassador in the story seeing if the world can be brought back into the fold is classic scifi. It’s even more nuanced because the ambassador narrator isn’t some emotionless ubermensch, but a sexist fish out of water.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]