tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7456818260601216123.post9165737492077144820..comments2013-11-17T17:17:39.923+00:00Comments on Pointless Philosophical Asides: The Dead Spot by Jack WilliamsonPatrick Hudsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08483247439912550014noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7456818260601216123.post-26714367825102508552013-06-16T11:44:50.745+01:002013-06-16T11:44:50.745+01:00Hi Jonathan, great to see you here!
This is a the...Hi Jonathan, great to see you here!<br /><br />This is a theme I'll return to again, and a key one in why I think SF is dead: we've become the things are fore-fathers warned us about (and mothers, although they're conspicuously absent from these volumes). I think the rise of the Outsider is also important in the current popularity of H P Lovecraft, geek chic and literary genre claim jumpers.<br /><br />I think the post-post-human vioce is possibly the shouty gap year SF writer. I'm inclined to see cyberpunk as starting in the New Wave and ending with transhumanists, and as such the final arc of a distinctly SF voice. (Similarly, punk rock was the final flourish of the hippies, the end of the distinctive voice of rock.) It's a reaction against and deconstruction of the golden age, but once it's been thoroughly deconstructed there's nothing left to say, just new ways (and places) to cover the same ground: new ideas are supplanted by exoticism.<br /><br />I dunno,though. It takes some historical perspective - or a keener critical eye than mine - to sort these things out. We're possibly in danger of overly emphasising short-term factors, missing the forest while we catalogue the bark on individual trees. The transhumanist impulse is still going strong in the urban fantasy arena which continues to eat SF's lunch (although I'm beginning to wonder if there's a meaningful distinction between SF and fantasy beyond style tribalism - a question for another day).<br /><br />Anyway, there'll be a big old summing up of all this later in the year when I hope to articulate it all in a bit more detail and coherence. Before that I've got vol 3 of this to get to and also a Kingsley Amis-edited anthology called (handily!) 'The Golden Age of Science Fiction' which has a fantastic and thought-provoking introduction (another brilliant NZ 2nd hand bookshop find).<br /><br />This project is also intended to generate some fiction, on which topic more soon, hopefully...Patrick Hudsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08483247439912550014noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7456818260601216123.post-58065951069532033922013-06-13T07:26:21.434+01:002013-06-13T07:26:21.434+01:00Fascinating stuff about the difference between how...Fascinating stuff about the difference between how SF authors saw themselves then and how they saw themselves now.<br /><br />I would definitely associate alienated Outsiders with cyberpunk and iconoclastic patriarchs with Heinlein but I would also suggest that the mainstream of the genre has now moved on from the cool intellects of transhumanism. The personality exuded by most contemporary SF is one of extravagant bafflement.Jonathan Mhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12664070458542872255noreply@blogger.com