Friday, October 30, 2020

Why I Stopped Reading Sci-fi

Throughout the last century, I obsessively read science fiction ... what would now be thought of as classic sci-fi but which was then the mainstream.  For me, authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Zelazny and Bradbury defined bad science fiction in a way that ruined me for the sort of dreck being written today.  I've tried a few authors over the years; I've even slogged my way to the end of several novels, but without much pleasure.

For the most part, the writing in modern sci-fi is juvenile; the plot development as well.  No substantial risks are ever taken with the book's theme.  Usually it boils down to pap like, "racism is bad" or "cooperation is necessary."  These are themes that might be news to a 12-y.o., but thank you, I've digested these gems of wisdom already.  It's even worse when the plot, characters and general context of the novel resembles taking a modern day story and crossing out "car" and writing in "spaceship."

But the quintessential sort of bad science fiction -- and eternally the most popular form of sci-fi -- is any story in which a technology that is built turns on its master so that everything goes disastrously wrong.  For my money, 2001: a Space Odyssey is the supreme example of absolute garbage ever written and slapped onto film.  Of course it's popular.  It preaches the endlessly popular theme, "science is bad."  The theme that is at the center of climate-change-isn't-real, covid-isn't-real, too much computer use is toxic, cellphones are toxic, power lines are toxic, the world is flat, everything is a conspiracy and so on.  What is Hal?  A machine.  And what does Hal do?  Turns on mankind.  And oh, wow, so deep!  See, humans invented tools, and tools create misery, aha!  If only we had never created tools, we'd all be so happy now!  Thank you, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I'm certain that most readers here fall into two categories: those of you who have no idea who Rousseau was, and those of you who love him to death.  There might be a very, very tiny fraction of you who have read him, are familiar with him and recognize what a miserable, ignorant prat he was.  But I doubt it.  Voltaire thought him a prat.  Voltaire and I would have gotten along.

This is not, however, a post about Rousseau.  I learned a long, long time ago that people who love Rousseau are far past having any rational comprehension about the man's writing, while people who have no idea about Rousseau just don't give a shit.  If you're the former, fuck you.  If you're the latter, look up Rousseau on wikipedia and believe whatever you like.  If you're older than 25, and you haven't read Rousseau yet, you're sure to find him so unconscionably boring that I have little doubt you won't get far.  I read Rousseau's Confessions sometime when I was about 17, in high school.  Then I read a smattering of works by him in university, in my late 20s.  What a prat.

Rousseau died in 1778, well before the French Revolution that seized on his writings and used them to build guillotines and commit all sorts of atrocities in the name of "natural law" and "justice."  We can be quite sure that Mary Shelley, born in 1797, the future writer of Frankenstein, was fed a steady diet of both Voltaire and Rousseau.  I don't know who here has ever read Frankenstein.  I imagine most of you have seen one or more versions of the book committed to film, but let me rush to say that those are all way, way off the message in the book.  Usually, it's presumed that Frankenstein, the scientist, builds the monster, who turns on the scientist and then, as a monster, rampages throughout the countryside until he's destroyed.

Um, no.  For one thing, at the end of the book, both the scientist and the "monster" are alive (for one thing, the book is written by Frankenstein in 1st person; though I vaguely remember some postscript by the ship captain that might have said that Frankenstein was dead; it's been some years; maybe it's time to read it again).

Rousseau argued vehemently in his writings that human beings are naturally peaceful and kind, but that society makes them into monsters.  It is the famous and hopelessly wrong notion of "the noble savage," a concept that is still pitched today but has been proved wrong for only two centuries and a bit more.  Frankenstein is a novel about how a perfectly empty vessel of a creation is made into a monster by the truly awful way that it's treated.  Which then, faced with such ruthless injustice, acts as it is taught to act.  For those who haven't read the book, or who have read an expurgated version of it, the distinction might seem subtle.  For the remainder of my audience, the difference is staggering.

Frankenstein's monster is taught to be a monster, and so it sets out to wreak vengeance.  Hal is built to be a computer; it is in no way taught to be a monster, but it becomes one anyway, because ... well, because the author thought it would play better that way.  And it certainly did.  It played great.  It is really popular and really beloved ... none of which exempts the ridiculousness of the premise.

Nor does it excuse the decades of science fiction that is so, so anxious to get in on that sweet, sweet fear-mongering gravy that 2001 has made over the decades.  Fear sells.  And the irrational fear that we will build machines that will ultimately bring about our destruction sells best of all.  We can't open a science website anywhere on the internet without hearing shrill, terrified cries that A.I. is destined to dig our graves.  Of course, this stuff works best with ignorant, panicky people who haven't any personal experience with either science or technology ... which is most of the world ... and even scientists have a tendency to buy in because there is no such discipline as "science."  People in physics freak out about studies in neurology, while neurologists freak out about space; the astronomers sweat bullets about psychology while the psychologists lie awake at night worrying about contagious diseases.  Everyone in their own field is ignorant about every other, and so they're all ready to be sold on the science fiction horror scenario that's based on some flimsy concept not in their bailywick.  And thankfully, we have the internet to make sure we promote every terror every day.

Personally, I find it hard to convince readers that even a scientist, especially one that has a name popular enough that they will be encouraged to speak "candidly" on Big Think, is more likely to be promoting themselves in order to vie for grants and graft than they are interested in speaking the truth.  I mean, after all, if Max Tegmark is actually FULL OF SHIT when he talks about the terror-horror of A.I., what consequence does he face?  I can't think of a "leading scientist" today that hasn't shrugged his shoulders at some point and said, "Well, we can't predict the future."  Fair enough.  But why, then, do they spend so much time predicting the future whenever someone turns a camera in their direction?

In good science fiction, all the technology that's built works exactly like it is supposed to work.  The computers all function like machines, the robots perform the labours they're built to perform, the algorithms and formulas produce the results they were intended to produce.  It's the humans that fuck up and commit atrocities, not the machines and not the science.  It is made perfectly clear that Rousseau had his head up his ass and that technology and advancement have served to make our lives vastly better every step along the way ... and would have done even more if the dumb-ass, doom-crying dead-brained shitheeled selfish miserly greedy wrathful pig-ignorant humans might have been taken out of the equation.  In good science fiction, the heroes are those who use their education, intelligence and innovation to make fools out of the ignorant -- just as it actually happens, every day, in real life.  

Every day, trained and experienced doctors are saving lives and doing their level best to manage the terror-horror of this real disease ravaging the population, using every ounce of profoundly complex and effective technical equipment and innovation they can possibly lay their hands on.  The real crisis at present comes in two forms: (1) we don't have ENOUGH equipment, in the form of ICU beds and other innovations, to keep as many people alive as we ought to; and (2) we don't have enough trained, knowledgable persons in the medical field to manage an infectious disease on this scale.

A bad science fiction novel would invent some technological breakthrough that spread the disease and the disaster more quickly, promoting suffering and the deaths of hundreds of millions, feeding what the public fears to hear and wants to hear.

A good science fiction novel would have the experts cure the disease, only to find themselves restrained from saving the people by stupid people in power.  But it's okay, because the experts would then use their knowledge and reason to get around the morons and save the people anyway -- although that would require the writer to actually figure out a way to use knowledge to get around morons.

See, bad science fiction doesn't require any intelligence to write.  But good science fiction ... well, to write good science fiction, you have to actually innovate.  That's why we see so little of it.

Anyway ... I was supposed to be writing a post about why I don't employ the D&D game rule where golems have a percentage of getting out of control and slaughtering their creators.  My personal feeling is that golems ought to do exactly what they're built to do.  Full page here.




22 comments:

  1. Well I'm in that very small percentage, but I think you'll be disappointed to hear I subscribe to Locke's theories instead.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Actually, not in the least - except that they were used as an excuse to rape Scottish farmers and institute the monopoly of rich men. But that wasn't Locke's fault. Like Oppenheimer, he didn't know the destruction his ideas were enabling.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry, that should read "Scottish herders."

    ReplyDelete
  4. I haven’t read Rousseau since my 1st year at university...if I read him at all (I can’t for the life of me remember anything about his writing but the name, and it’s quite possible I found him unconscionably boring even then).

    I do remember liking Locke...maybe. I don’t remember what he wrote either.

    I spent a lot of my misspent youth as an anti-intellectual; it stroked my fragile ego to take down academics and their admirers. This was a sad, miserable version of me...I think high school must have really screwed up my brain.

    Anyway.

    You’re right, of course, although I do still consider the idea of “science for the sake of science,” unencumbered by ethics or a moral compass to be (generally) a Bad Idea. A lot of “innovations” in farming tech led to wrecked soil and chemically altered crops of possibly dubious healthfulness, and feeding cows to cows to make bigger cows appears to have led to brain spongification (maybe). I’m not such a Luddite to think that machines will some day rise up against their masters, but I’m not a fan and of ALL scientific progress (Twitter, for example).

    Plus a small chance of berserk golems is kind of fun. It’s a dash of salsa to a dish.
    ; )

    ReplyDelete
  5. No, science for science's sake also makes an awful science fiction.

    I find it duplicitous to describe the irresponsible use of chemicals, whether in producing poisons or weapons, as "scientific progress." Obviously, they were not. The fact that Monsanto and Dow realized that poisons could be made to kill plants, or that refridgerators could be run on CFC's, or that lead in gasoline would stop engine knock, and were willing to shell out cash to reprehensible lab techs who often had no actual training in the field, is in no way "Progress" and it's disingenuous to term it so. Of course, its not your dissembulation at work here, JB -- you're repeating bullshit political phrasing invented a century ago in order to win votes among ignorant boobs in the sticks ... and yet here you are, in 2020, making the same specious parallel without giving it much thought.

    Actual PROGRESS is not destructive. The very fact that actions taken were destructive pretty well defines those actions as clearly NOT progress. It was SCIENCE that identified the wrecked soil and the blasted environment, it is SCIENCE that argues we should stop feeding cows to cows and it is fucking SCIENCE that is screaming at the top of its lungs right now to stop cramming chickens into tiny disease batching hothouses and to wake the fuck up and stop destroying the planet. If we listened to SCIENCE, we would actually have PROGRESS, instead of this ignorant money-focused planetary gang-rape.

    Clear?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your point is clear.

      That being said, many tech innovations that are later found to be destructive and/or reprehensible aren’t usually introduced as such; rather they’re introduced as “good things” based on “improved” (or improving) science.

      Delete
  6. I find I share your opinion vis a vis modern sf being of inferior quality to earlier work, I have never read Rousseau. That being said, the definition of good seems needlessly restrictive. How do you justify the exclusion of seminal works with a more cautionary tone like Dan Simmon's Hyperion or William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy from your catalogue?

    ReplyDelete
  7. No, no Prince, that's not fair. Let me try to appropriately answer your question, that being, how do I justify the exclusion of "seminal works."

    To begin with, I don't consider the books you mentioned to be seminal at all; I don't consider Gibson to be a very good author; and outside of a sci-fi audience, among literary scholars, there isn't a single one that wouldn't instantly agree with me. Virtually everything written in the field of science fiction is of value only to a certain species of fetishist who is prepared to accept a certain kind of literature because it suits their fetish.

    Let me draw a metaphor. Many people, most particularly men, like porn. Many men collect thousands of porn pictures; and of those pictures, these men are quite able to tell you which of the models, and even the photographers, are "seminal." [pun intended] Porn is very popular. It is an industry that dwarfs most others, including the industry of tourism that drives people to Europe to see Van Gogh, Bernini, Rodan, Botticelli, Raphael and so on. Porn drives technological progress on scales that are hardly recognized. Without porn, we wouldn't even have the internet freedom we have today. Without porn, we'd have never had VHS, or the present movie industry. Without porn, we'd still be living under the Hays Code. The advancement of technology and social freedoms all owe their existence to a group of extremely dedicated enthusiasts who will break any rule and innovate themselves around any rule so long as at the end of it, there is porn.

    And yet, for all that, porn is still just porn. And a hundred years from now, every pornographic picture on every website right now, will almost certainly be lost to eternity.

    Just as Gibson, a hundred years from now, will get the same response as you've just given Rousseau.

    But they will still be performing Shakespeare. See? The reason why I can exclude your so-called "seminal works" is because I compare everything to authors who still have influence over our culture, despite being two centuries or more dead.

    If I were to name four works of science fiction I expect to still be referenced a hundred years from now, I would name Fahrenheit 451; I, Robot, 1984 and Starship Troopers. Gibson? Simmon? Come on. People have already forgotten Larry Niven.

    Doesn't matter. They did all right. They got their money. I promise as a writer, neither of those fellows understand what the hell you're talking about comparing their work to something as incomprehensibly genius as Shakespeare. As writers, they would never imagine they write that well. No writer living does ... except those you never, ever want to meet.

    ReplyDelete
  8. You can add Frankenstein to that list. It's lasted 2 centuries so far.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dammit, JB, I wish you'd watch your language.

    They're not "introduced," they're MARKETED as "good things." They're ADVERTISED as "improvements."

    You won't hear scientists or engineers using that crappy language, and you won't find sci-fi protagonists talking like that except in juvenile fiction written by hacks.

    ReplyDelete
  10. My apologies, JB.

    It is just that it infuriates me that scientists are constantly blamed for making claims they would never make themselves; or that they are somehow responsible for the way in which others use science or technology (not the same thing); and that "blaming the scientists" has become a defacto way of shifting the blame from companies that behave directly contrary to the advice that professional, experienced, educated scientists proscribe.

    If an engineer designs a pipe, is it the engineer's fault if the pipe is used to dump sewage into a river?

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm curious about your opinion of Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series. Or, if you haven't tried it, take this as a recommendation to something that could, potentially, surprise you. It's a tetralogy, comprised of Too Like the Lightning, Seven Surrenders, The Will to Battle, and, sometime next year, Perhaps the Stars. But if the word tetralogy brings images of poorly written, repetitive fantasy or SF tomes, not so. It's a deep, risky, structurally and narratively atypical book (at least, atypical in the SF field) in four parts (or perhaps, two books in two parts would be a better description) about a future almost-utopia finding itself at a crossroad.

    Palmer's a scholar, specializing in the Renaissance, and it shows. A lot. I've been reading SF all my life, I'm short of patience for shitty derivative works and badly, badly written crap. And I honestly think Terra Ignota is, so far, the best SF&F from the 21st century.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I don't know it Lektu, and I will keep an open mind until I read it.

    ReplyDelete
  13. HAL didn't just randomly go crazy, he it contradicting orders and the only way to resolve them was to kill the crew. Or at least he did in the novel, I couldn't get through the movie.

    Giving your AI poor orders is an entirely realistic technical error. Many Azimov stories are based around similar errors. Having technology always work the way the user/designer wants is simply unrealistic.

    The notion that a technical error could even result in some sort of apocalypse (superintelligent AI, gray goo etc) is entirely plausible, and dismissing plausible hypotheses based on emotional feelings about science is ... well, anti-scientific.

    Chernobyl didn't do what it was designed to. Yes, they were sloppy, etc. People are sloppy under the right conditions. The Manhattan Project seriously considered the possibility that their first test might ignite Earth's atmosphere, killing everyone on Earth instantly, and decided the risk was within acceptable limits given the threat of the Nazis developing a nuke first.

    With all that said, yeah, it is a bit weird to have golems go crazy like that isn't it? Never liked that, super clunky. In folklore, they only go crazy if you exceed the design tolerances by making them work on the Sabbath; I suppose that's hard to work into a D&D game. But the "they follow your poorly worded order to the letter" story is easier to work in.

    ReplyDelete
  14. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" says Henry II, some say fictionally, some say not, that preceded the death of Thomas Becket at the hands of four knights who acted, so it was said, upon orders understood erroneously. That was 850 years ago, come this Christmas day.

    Chernobyl exploded after UNSANCTIONED experiments on the reactor by plant operators were done improperly. The consequence of an imbecilic government, budget cuts, irrational expectations and poor oversight, brought on by a political cold war that empowered corrupt powermongers and bound the hands of scientists.

    Oppenheimer, not "the Manhatten Project", which incidently doesn't possess the human power to "consider" anything, being that it is not alive, postulated that ridiculous possibility and physicists in his company laughed.

    When computers get contradicting orders, they stop working. That was also true in 1951. There was no original novel. The movie was based on an Arthur C. Clarke 1951 story, "Sentinel of Eternity." If you read a novel, it was a novelization of the movie.

    Jeez. I sound like Sheldon.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Arthur C Clarke wrote a novelization of the film which IMO was surprisingly good and spun off into a series of novels. It benefits from the ability to explain and narrate things the film merely tries to imply (if that) IMO. E.g. the opening sequence is much better from the perspective of the apes.

      I just double-checked the script to 2001 and they say explicitly in the film that what happened is simple: HAL developed a minor fault as a result of the conflict in his instructions, then the crew tried to deactivate him because they were worried by the fault and he simply defended himself/the mission. Seems fairly realistic to me. I've caused far worse glitches than mis-registering that a component is damaged.

      Regarding Chernobyl... yeah, there were reasons it happened. Even the most poorly-written scifi schlock horror gives at least some lip-service motive to the scientists who unleash horrors. But the fact remains that sometimes, for human reasons, people do screw up and unleash horrors, or at least (less melodramatically) serious problems.

      Delete
  15. Hm. I myself have never had any technological device or computer resist any attempt I've made to turn it off. I would find that MOST unrealistic.

    In point of fact, you've exactly expressed what I contended is the problem with crap science fiction. HAL was built to be turned off. The plot hinges on HAL doing something it wasn't built to do. Q.E.D.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I concur on the golem rampage.
    Even a 1% chance is way too high for it to be worth a wizard doing anything but saying "go to the nearest town and wreck it" because if it goes mad then they suffer no penalties.

    A 1% chance means that the thousands of gold you invested will likely blow up in your face 3.5 times a year.

    I'd rather hire a bunch of peasants or mercenaries for like what... a few years? Maybe decades depending on your game economy. (And whether or not you're using those hirelings to CREATE money)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Oh and on computers resisting turning off... I once miswired my power button once and had to pull the plug, took me about 10 minutes to figure that one out. I don't think it would make a particularly good Science Fiction story though. OH NOES WHAT HAS MAN WROUGHT WIRING RESET INTO POWER!?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Oddbit,

    Since I'm arguing the other doesn't produce a good science fiction novel either ...

    How about a science fiction novel based around ACTUAL problems relating to interspatial travel, without the hokum of enemy aliens, where the thing to be overcome is not some technical error or clumsily stumbling around an environment we're already able to predict, but how the science and technology changes our impressions of the universe and ourselves, either for good or for ill? You know, like Asimov did with robots, or Heinlein did with colonization of other planets? Hm?

    Oh, wait ... that would mean the writer would actually have to reach forward and postulate, without evidence, how culture would logically evolve if interstellar space travel became a thing! Oh, just forget it then. Let's write a story about how something breaks and people get killed. We'll brand it science fiction because it happens in space.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd say it's probably a symptom of commercialization corrupting a genre. Young enough people saw the commercialized stuff and were inspired to make more of it. Which is of course encouraged by the folks looking to make money on it...

      Delete

If you wish to leave a comment on this blog, contact alexiss1@telus.net with a direct message. Comments, agreed upon by reader and author, are published every Saturday.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.