Imagination, low-hanging fruit, and the limits of human empathy
Re-posting off of my FB public page.
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Found this article via reddit and thought about it.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/im...
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1) The fear thing. That hasn't actually caused sf writers to be less imaginative.
The fear thing and a lack of understanding has affected much more significant things though. Non-science/tech people are much more likely these days to distrust scientists, engineers and doctors, which is why we get anti-science people in congress, various flavors of denialists, anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements.
Decades ago, scientists were usually the guys who came up with how to beat the alien invaders or cure the disease. Now, they're usually the cause of the disease, or it's "hubris" that causes the disaster.
In World War Z, who figured out the key to survival? Was it a scientist, or any of the many doctors who maybe should have noticed that zombies weren't going after super-sick patients? It was some UN inspector guy. Couldn't they have at least had Brad Pitt be a doctor from the WHO or Doctors Without Borders or something? That's probably not because the screenwriters didn't think of it, but because a lot of people tend to be underwhelmed by real experts.
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
2) Creativity/radical sf.
The low-hanging fruit has all been taken. By now, there have been millions of SF stories. Truly 'radical' and imaginative sf that hasn't already been covered by the past is difficult...
In the 1930s, almost 100 years ago, adventurers in space with ray guns coming across aliens drew in readers. The same sort of story *still* draws in readers, but they're not remotely new anymore, and there have been so many iterations, the newness happens in the plot and the characterization and the thoughts about civilization/humanity, rather than in science/tech concepts.
Truly original SF at this point is hard, and even when it happens, it usually ends up REALLY weird, far enough out there that it doesn't get traction with many readers and has little chance of propagating out to popular imagination.
In the end, people like to read about people, or if they read about aliens, the aliens are really just exotified humans. It would be a work of far greater creative and artistic power than most writers have to get readers into a story in which the main character isn't human, doesn't act human, has completely nonhuman cultural traits, and works with completely nonhuman tech. If any humans or human-like aliens show up, they end up being the protagonists to the story, because we're wired to be into ourselves.
Under The Skin could have been this far out story, except it still ended up a predator thing with shades of thought about society, sexuality and the objectification of women, rather than pondering how a truly alien creature stuck here might try to get by.
On the other hand, if the creature had been a sentient slime mold using those weird otherworldly person-dissolving sequences as an attempt to understand humans (because the alien species might communicate, say, by digesting samples of each others' nervous tissue) and there hadn't been a sexual component and it never looked like Scarlett Johansson, I don't think the movie would have been made at all!
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
For fiction about animals or aliens, we just can't bring ourselves to care about those characters much unless they're anthropomorphized. That's just being human. Even robots can't be heroes unless they're given human-like behaviors or certain recognizably human-like quirks, like Wall-E. Just look at the big eyes and how he moves! And he and Eva are even gendered, despite being robots, because we just wouldn't care as much if they weren't.
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
Having anthro characters is a major limiting element to the radicalness of sf. With human-ish characters, the imagined tech also has human-ish constraints, and at this point, I think most of the non-super-weird tech constraints for human-ish characters have been explored. And if it hasn't been done yet in SF, it's probably been done in fantasy with magic-equivalents to the technology. Alternate worlds, time travel, the creation of new life, the manipulation of existing life, new ways to kill, new ways to heal, new ways to communicate, new ways to share information, new ways to manipulate emotion, new ways to manipulate thought, new ways to end the world, new ways to save the world, new ways to survive past the end of the world--none of them are new anymore!
It's just harder now to break into something that hasn't been thought of before already in terms of human concerns. Humans have been writing in ways shaped by those concerns since we've had writing, and were telling stories affected by those same concerns since we've had complex speech. We have a few more fears now with the advent of our technologies and more knowledge, but they tend to be elaborate sub-flavors along the same lines of our discovery of fire and tools--that is, how they can be used and mis-used.
Then there are other constraints--those of taste, morality, etc. It's possible to write extremely interesting stories about the distant future of high tech drug culture and sexual profiteering, but... if the point is for sf to inspire future tech, I don't think people really want to be pushing these boundaries anyway (except for the ones who already do, and they tend to get stigmatized).
---
BTW, I haven't looked it up, but if nobody's written about sentient slime molds communicating by means of dissolving samples of each others' nerve tissues yet, I'm calling it as mine and using it in a story sometime!
---
---
Found this article via reddit and thought about it.
---
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/im...
---
1) The fear thing. That hasn't actually caused sf writers to be less imaginative.
The fear thing and a lack of understanding has affected much more significant things though. Non-science/tech people are much more likely these days to distrust scientists, engineers and doctors, which is why we get anti-science people in congress, various flavors of denialists, anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements.
Decades ago, scientists were usually the guys who came up with how to beat the alien invaders or cure the disease. Now, they're usually the cause of the disease, or it's "hubris" that causes the disaster.
In World War Z, who figured out the key to survival? Was it a scientist, or any of the many doctors who maybe should have noticed that zombies weren't going after super-sick patients? It was some UN inspector guy. Couldn't they have at least had Brad Pitt be a doctor from the WHO or Doctors Without Borders or something? That's probably not because the screenwriters didn't think of it, but because a lot of people tend to be underwhelmed by real experts.
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
2) Creativity/radical sf.
The low-hanging fruit has all been taken. By now, there have been millions of SF stories. Truly 'radical' and imaginative sf that hasn't already been covered by the past is difficult...
In the 1930s, almost 100 years ago, adventurers in space with ray guns coming across aliens drew in readers. The same sort of story *still* draws in readers, but they're not remotely new anymore, and there have been so many iterations, the newness happens in the plot and the characterization and the thoughts about civilization/humanity, rather than in science/tech concepts.
Truly original SF at this point is hard, and even when it happens, it usually ends up REALLY weird, far enough out there that it doesn't get traction with many readers and has little chance of propagating out to popular imagination.
In the end, people like to read about people, or if they read about aliens, the aliens are really just exotified humans. It would be a work of far greater creative and artistic power than most writers have to get readers into a story in which the main character isn't human, doesn't act human, has completely nonhuman cultural traits, and works with completely nonhuman tech. If any humans or human-like aliens show up, they end up being the protagonists to the story, because we're wired to be into ourselves.
Under The Skin could have been this far out story, except it still ended up a predator thing with shades of thought about society, sexuality and the objectification of women, rather than pondering how a truly alien creature stuck here might try to get by.
On the other hand, if the creature had been a sentient slime mold using those weird otherworldly person-dissolving sequences as an attempt to understand humans (because the alien species might communicate, say, by digesting samples of each others' nervous tissue) and there hadn't been a sexual component and it never looked like Scarlett Johansson, I don't think the movie would have been made at all!
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
For fiction about animals or aliens, we just can't bring ourselves to care about those characters much unless they're anthropomorphized. That's just being human. Even robots can't be heroes unless they're given human-like behaviors or certain recognizably human-like quirks, like Wall-E. Just look at the big eyes and how he moves! And he and Eva are even gendered, despite being robots, because we just wouldn't care as much if they weren't.
[Picture linked off of the IMDB page for the movie]
Having anthro characters is a major limiting element to the radicalness of sf. With human-ish characters, the imagined tech also has human-ish constraints, and at this point, I think most of the non-super-weird tech constraints for human-ish characters have been explored. And if it hasn't been done yet in SF, it's probably been done in fantasy with magic-equivalents to the technology. Alternate worlds, time travel, the creation of new life, the manipulation of existing life, new ways to kill, new ways to heal, new ways to communicate, new ways to share information, new ways to manipulate emotion, new ways to manipulate thought, new ways to end the world, new ways to save the world, new ways to survive past the end of the world--none of them are new anymore!
It's just harder now to break into something that hasn't been thought of before already in terms of human concerns. Humans have been writing in ways shaped by those concerns since we've had writing, and were telling stories affected by those same concerns since we've had complex speech. We have a few more fears now with the advent of our technologies and more knowledge, but they tend to be elaborate sub-flavors along the same lines of our discovery of fire and tools--that is, how they can be used and mis-used.
Then there are other constraints--those of taste, morality, etc. It's possible to write extremely interesting stories about the distant future of high tech drug culture and sexual profiteering, but... if the point is for sf to inspire future tech, I don't think people really want to be pushing these boundaries anyway (except for the ones who already do, and they tend to get stigmatized).
---
BTW, I haven't looked it up, but if nobody's written about sentient slime molds communicating by means of dissolving samples of each others' nerve tissues yet, I'm calling it as mine and using it in a story sometime!
---
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David Ramirez SFFWriter
As Facebook winds down its free organic reach, I'm exploring other places to begin posting regularly.
I've thought about messing with blogspot and tumblr, but I'd prefer something with a more naturall ...more
I've thought about messing with blogspot and tumblr, but I'd prefer something with a more naturall ...more
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