final lecture 2015, with Ted Chiang (2)

A memory of the future.

The shape of things to come.

One shape into which sf fits.

One governing metaphor for sf in general.

One complement to that metaphor.

Single-novum sf, as in Powers.

Or new worlds, far-future or otherwise.

One novum after another.

Another model for sf.

Fabula and sujet: a refresher. A metaphor.

One subgenre of sf.

Another subgenre of sf.

What happens to time?

A detailed but outdated nonacademic Ted Chiang fan site.

An interview with Ted Chiang from 2010 (at Boing Boing).

A more recent interview with Chiang (Asian American Writers Workshop). Another interview (Clarion Writers' Workshop).

Oh, the Clarion Workshop itself, and the associated Clarion Foundation.

Want more book-oriented SF? Go here. Or, closer to home, here.

Analyzing aspects of language.

No substitute for face to face interaction. Not that face. Maybe that face?

What about that face?

The old Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. No, that face.

A real-life spatial language. With its own literature.

Other sf protagonists unstuck in time, for example.

The ideal unity of the work of art. And of the poem, in particular.

Nietzschean Eternal Return.

Ideas about characters.

Narrative usually works like that. Real life works like that.

What if we could see our lives like that? Or see that? Or that?

QOTDs & a trip to Hell

Is "Hell" SF? How is "Hell" SF?

Do any real members of real Abrahamic faiths believe in a God like that?

How are the faiths in "Oceanic" like our faiths?

Is the world of "Oceanic" less sexist than our world?

Do they really switch genitalia?

Is faith the evidence of things not seen?

Can experiments have negative results?

Emily Dickinson's opinion.

Are we looking at nonoverlapping magisteria?

Does "Liking" take a position? (See Chiang, p.331; also some YA SF.

Should we talk world-building, rather than seeking one novum?

Some 1980s music.

Greg Egan; Ted Chiang (1)

Greg Egan's author site.

The full text of Egan's novella "Oceanic."

World-building at one scale. And at another.

Philip K. Dick's lecture: "How to Build a Universe..."

An earlier, much-noted work with a gendered novum.

SF as experiment.

Sex and gender can change.

Famous people named Martin. Famous people named Daniel.

Not quite, but not unrelated to, the beliefs on Covenant.

Diving right in.

Not this kind of bridge.

The argument from design.

Faith isn't an argument.

Is it a chemical?



Review: the science-fictional triangle whose points are explanation, and wonder and warnings about the unknowable or unknown.

Review: sf as experiment, real world and realist fiction as controls.

Review: the novum. Novums within novums.

Review: the idea of genres and subgenres, which branch out over time.

One particularly reflexive subgenre.

Review: sf asks about historical change.

SF also asks about an afterlife.



A new story, "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling," by Ted Chiang.

"Liking What You See" helped inspire influential YA SF.

"Story of Your Life" is somehow becoming a Hollywood movie.

An interview with Chiang.

Louise is a reader.

Fiction as face.

Fiction as mirror.

People who misunderstood Hopi.

Nietzschean Eternal Return.

Ideas about characters.

Narrative usually works like that. Real life works like that.

What if we could see our lives like that?

Stalker QOTD

A song about a dog. Some sacred music.

Why the black dog? Why animals, and where?

Did Stalker hallucinate everything? Why are there syringes?

Is this SF or fantasy? Is the Zone the nouum? Is the novum cognitively explicable?

Why did it have to be a film?

Why the speeches to the camera? Why the wife's speech?

"Why the constant almost breaking of the fourth wall?"

What's the role of Monkey, Stalker's daughter?

Why the crown of thorns? Why the water?

Does the film resist empiricism? or "go beyond" it?

Is the film about a children's game?

Why did the movie have to be so looooong?

New media fictions, and a few more stories: Noon, Egan, Anders, Walton, Ryman

"You've become a ghost" (Masters of the Obvious)

Charlie Jane Anders's "Six Months, Three Days."

Anders's story "Love Might Be Too Strong a Word." CJA's day job.

I have been asked to show you this super villain. And yes, of course superhero comics are science fiction. Here's my favorite right now.

About the Angel of the North. Looking right at the Angel.

Jo Walton's sad meta-sf.

Walton's less sad, book-length meta-sf, also reviewed by Le Guin.

SF is time travel: forwards, backwards and sideways, including alternate histories.

SF is also an http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/fire-emergency-escape-ladder-13664131.jpg">escape from history.

The Hitler wins topos/trope/meme. The map of America in the most famous Hitler wins story, now a TV show too.

SF is an experiment whose control is not just the real world; it's also other genres.

You can experiment with alternate phenotypes, but also with alternate language.

An earlier innovation in physical substrate that clearly affected what sf writers did.

An even earlier innovation.

Egan's "Black Box," Paste Magazine online version.

Egan's "Black Box" in the original Twitter version thanks to Storify.

The New Yorker interviews Egan about "Black Box."

To read the famous or infamous PowerPoint chapter from Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, go to her own main site and click on the extreme right-hand label "Great Rock and Roll Pauses." You may also be able to view the chapter here.

More material from and about Egan's novel A Visit from the Goon Squad.

A story about spies. Another story about ghosts.

You can go back to your body, or you can end up in the night sky.

Joe Winkler's Twitter-style review of Egan's "Black Box."

Nick Montfort (and collaborators') interactive fiction. His monograph (2003-05) on interactive fiction.

The first widely influential interactive fiction.

Planetfall, by John Burnett. Burnett's main site. (Warning: may start audio automatically.)

Jeff Noon's Metamorphiction main site.

Noon's Microspores, main site.

Noon's Microspore 05: "This machine consists of twenty-six..."

The ghostly feel of obsolete or obsolescent technology.

Noon's Sparkletown and The Fog Catchers.

Noon's source story for "spore:Mix."

Noon's instructions for remixed fiction.

The @jeffnoon Twitter feed. The @echovirus12 feed.

An interview with Noon, from a zine in London.

Why is Mab called Mab?

Love might be… Petrarchism. Or it might be a lot of other things that turn you on.

A vivid dream, with another angel.

London and Zoline QOTD

1. Is Zoline SF?

2. How can Zoline be SF?

3. I loved Zoline but is it really SF?

4. Why did anyone think Zoline was SF?

5. Is Zoline's society ours? Is it all a trap?

1. Does Jack London hate poor people?

2. Does Jack London hate Native Americans?

3. Is London warning us about germs and contagion?

4. To what subgenres does London's story belong?

4. Are we meant to regret the collapse of civilization?

Civilization's dying. She doesn't have political views.

Jack London; Pamela Zoline and the New Wave

Quite a lot of Jack London online, through Sonoma State Univ.

The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, as photographed by (possibly) London himself.

More earthquake: SF City Hall after the quake and fire, again in a photo that may be by London himself.

Attractive pack animals. Violent but attractive herd animals. The results of predation.

Can you live off the dry terrain in much of California?

West Coast beaches and the end of humanity (Shell Beach, Sonoma County).

"The Scarlet Plague" in a new, better academic edition online.

More of London's sf. His famous book-length proto-fascist dystopia.

London was in some ways against white supremacy, but in some ways horrifyingly racist.

"The fleeting systems lapse like foam."

"The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry.

A history of New Worlds magazine. (Click links for covers.)

Another contributor to NW: Eduardo Paolozzi. More Paolozzi.

Order and entropic disorder. Another order and entropic disorder.

Another order and disorder.

"How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?"

Hands can't be clean. The word incarnadine.

A symbol for older SF.

Dr. Weiner's neighborhood.

The world will end in fire and/or ice.

Gateway QOTDs

Song of the Gateway day.

What's up with the black hole at the end?

Why do black holes have Cherenkov radiation if they're in the vacuum of space?

Why all the interpolated documents and ads? It starts here.

Why dose Bob/ Robbie/ Robinette have a feminine name?

Why does Pohl have Klara believe in astrology?

Why all the gambling?

Why the odd narrative structure, which drains the novel of what would have been its suspense?

Are the Heechee still around?

Does Bob mean to save himself, or to save the others?

John Crowley (including QOTDs)

We might go see The Martian. Consider seeing Ghost in the Shell this Saturday (late). Will somebody please see this big-budget sf movie too?

Everybody's favorite kind of cord.

Paradoxes and other fun aspects of time travel, also a symbol for sf itself (or maybe for fiction itself). Never-ending circles.

Stories that loop. Stories that frame other stories. Stories that are mirrors, in which you see yourself.

An interview with Crowley. And another. And another, with internal links.

Crowley has his own blog.

A quote-acrostic.

The Kool-Aid guy.

The Four Dead Men.

A classic Howard Johnson's motel.

A symbol of pilgrimage.

The original Avvenger.

The basis of Little Belaire's filing system. Some files.

A similar educational machine.

Another magic ball and glove.

One model for the head-shaped cabin in part IV.

Pretty widely accepted in the 1970s.

Its purpose is killing people.

Thinking about knots.

Inside the mind of Doctor Boots?

Insects in Lucite are art (or literature).

Time Life Books.

Literature is an afterlife.

Science fiction is heaven (or not).

Literature is circular, or at least closed, where life is not.

Or, the cycle of the seasons is closed, and predictable, whereas stories and literature are not.

A path where you might lose yourself.

Tiptree QOTD

Why are there talking animals in "Slow Music"?

Is Paul catfishing? Is Cavaná?

How much (in Butler, in Tiptree, in real life) are we programmed or limited by our bodies?

Is virtual reality an awesome escape, or a terrible temptation? What about space travel? Or science? Or science fiction? Or fiction?

Is the future Chicagoland of the Courier an alternate reality, or a delusion, or what? Do we care? Are we familiar with the similar structure of a Buffy episode?

How do we explain the slangy prose style and the implied reader and narrator in "The Girl Who Was Plugged In"?

How do you write, or think, like a talking exoplanet spider, or like anything else truly alien?

Why is Butler so interested in power and powerlessness?

QOTD: Firefly &c.

1.What's up with the amygdala? (See below.)

2. Is anything funny? What's funny?

3. Why is everyone chasing River and Simon? Why is anyone chasing Mal?

4. Is Mal a good leader? (See below.) Why doesn't he kill Jayne? Why does anybody put up with Jayne?

5. Is Sheckley anti-science? What's up with Pushing?

Academic work on Firefly, and on the Whedonverses generally.

HOUSEKEEPING STUFF: Your papers are due at 4pm in any form accepted by your TF; if that's a problem speak to us right away. Next QOTD's will come from Evan's section, Th 1pm.

Bradbury, Sheckley, Ballard

The official promotional site for the late Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury's New York Times obit.

A nonacademic but detailed Bradbury fan site.

Waukegan, Bradbury's home town.

But he writes Martian Chronicles in southern California:

The arid and expanding metropolis of midcentury L.A.

The California desert. People settle there.

Mars is our dying planet, says Robert Markley.

Where a lot of sf really takes place. A place for you in it.

A place beyond it.

That Teasdale poem. A Longfellow poem.

A poem about a ruin that you guys might know. A poem about a ruin that you might prefer.

A military rank.

Some funny aliens. Some funny body parts.

A scary big institution. Another scary big institution.

But maybe we should be more afraid of this. Or of this.

A very good and very serious nonacademic Ballard journal and fan site.

An important word. A once very famous poem.

Obsolescent tech. Also these. And this?

Would you rather build these, or live in these?

Thinking about television: Firefly

An active Firefly fan site. Joss Whedon fandom.

Several generations of sf on television.

One thing that sets TV apart.

Another thing that sets TV apart.

One consequence of serial form.

Visual forms can make explanations harder.

A lot of televised sf might as well not be.

This episode, though, has to be.

The planet and its buildings look new. Mal & company not so much.

Fans debate Jayne's motives, as well as Mal's decision to "forgive" him. Other fans recap & debate.

Other fans look out for your amygdala.

Where the sf is. What's in there?

SF in visual media alludes to other visual media, and to its genres.

Three kinds of Weberian authority: this one and this one and this one, which would also be this one.

Still liking that one. SF characters who are living in there.

A total institution. And another. Some, though not I, would allege another.

Here's looking at you.

Better to look at you.

Philip K. Dick: QOTD + Extrapolation Reactions

Futures with telepaths: this or this or this.

Futures with no pregnancy: this; not this??

Futures with corn: apparently, this!


*

1. What??

2. Who's dead? What happened?

3. Why would you want to disorient your reader or leave a major plot point unresolved?

4.What was up with cryogenics and corpse-preservation in the years that Dick wrote? (A lot, though it didn't include Disney's head.)

4.5 Why so much about these?

5. Why are there telepaths when the plot revolves around cryogenic stasis?

5.5 (w/ ref to Dick and to Asimov) Why not more of this?

6. Why involve Pat? isn't she dangerous? Is she a clichéd femme fatale?

7. Is UBIK (the substance, not the novel) a religion?

8.Is this guy on drugs?

Heinlein and Asimov: Questions of the Day

1. For whom are these works written? Is it difficult for works "written for teenage boys" to command respect?

2. What is Heinlein's opinion of women? Where are the women in the story, why are there so few, and what does this mean for gender issues in this story overall? Were the women presented in such a misogynistic way in order to prove a point about the fictional society presented, or due to the author's actual beliefs? Is this misogyny unique to Heinlein? We see Hugh take two wives, one of whom is clearly a victim of domestic assault; is there any way to redeem this narrative construction? Why is such a sexist asshole one of the most famous American science fiction writers?

This is a problem not unique to this text, with several explanations, some bad anthropology, but no excuse.

3. Are the "logical" thinkers in Heinlein and Asimov (who use deductive reasoning correctly but reach ridiculous conclusions) satires of something? Of what? Is there a tension here between observation and "pure" reason?

Or between induction and deduction? Between a literature for engineers and a literature of first principles? What would Hume do?

4. Cutie's reasoning could be interpreted as a parody of how religious thought develops. Was Asimov anti-religion? Does Heinlein think of the Bible as a fiction created by man, just as the "holy scriptures" of the novel are simply the works of NASA-like exploratory scientists? Does SF, in general, mock or oppose religion?

What's up with the Shahada??

5. Why is the Ship spinning? Are the physics plausible?

Actually, yes! Here's why.

6. What do you call one of these?

Gilman: questions of the day

1. What does Gilman's opinion of women reveal about [her] opinion of men? Are they fundamentally different?

2. How well does Herland stand up as work of modern feminism, especially considering the focus on motherhood (simplifying language for children, considering motherhood the “one great personal contribution" of a woman)?

3. Was Gilman a proponent of eugenics? Herland seems to be a utopia where the less desirable individuals don't breed.

4. Is the novum in Herland really cognitively explicable? The explanation given for the evolution of the parthenogenetic race seems more like magic than science. I could understand if Gilman meant this development to be explained or supported by Darwinism, but such a significant change as asexual reproduction would have to take place over millions of years.

Not sf. By most standards, sf, but not hard sf. Hard sf.

5. A lot of the latter part of the book revolves around the three characters' marriages—in particular, the different ways they deal with the question of sex... Does [Gilman] think there's a place for sex, or consider it outmoded?