Hacker News Reader

Comment by tsally | Hacker News Reader

I've found the success of a work Science Fiction as a work of literature is closely correlated to how far removed it is from present day society. Fahrenheit 451 and Brave New World are both fairly close to society today, as far as Science Fiction goes. Richard Powers has had great success writing about things like virtual reality (Plowing the Dark) and artificial intelligence (Galatea 2.2), but his works are even closer to present day than Bradbury or Huxley. The Foundation Series, while not quite on Powers's level, are still incredible books that might just belong in the class of real literature. I don't think it will ever get there though because its world isn't coupled closely enough with the one we know.

View on HN

Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five is a sci-fi story that's also considered real literature. It's mostly set in the 20th century.

I don't like terms like "real literature". I would say the Foundation series despite its weaknesses is worth reading for anyone who wants to be well rounded in his/her book choices.

I don't like the term "real literature" either. I'm using it colloquially to mean works that have some combination of the following:

* Taught by mainstream college professors

* Well received by mainstream literary critics

* Winner of a notable, mainstream literary award

* Will be found on the desk of a character in several movies to indicate the character is of above average intelligence

> Will be found on the desk of a character in several movies to indicate the character is of above average intelligence

I guess that's why I'm hesitant to use term like "real literature". I'm very picky about what I read, that is I tend to stick to books like those you described. On the other hand I don't like to appear that I read those books just so I can name drop or look smart when someone sees my bookshelf.

The term I usually hear is "literary fiction." Everything else, including sci-fi, is "genre fiction." I suspect that's not much of an improvement to your ears.

I just finished David Forrest Wallace's Infinite Jest and was surprised that is was sci-fi. DFW was such a literary golden boy, i think people don't mention that IJ was a sci-fi book to avoid belittling him. total crap, if you ask me.

There are sci-fi elements in IJ for sure. I just think IJ is too broad in scope to label it sci-fi though.

David Foster Wallace.

And another successful adaptation to film (IMHO).

I think when you say “how far removed it is from present day society”, what I hear is rather “how rich, subtle, and believable its characters and societies are”. Because real societies are rich and textured, full of contradictions and moral ambiguities, characters with complex motivations.

Snow Crash has a bitmap pattern that can hack into programmers’ brains and knock them unconscious and the complete collapse of nation-states and The Diamond Age has pervasive nanotechnology. Dune has gigantic sand worms and psycho telepaths. China Miéville’s books have giant mutant bird-people. Speaker for the Dead includes aliens, artificial superintelligence, faster-than-light communication. &c. &c. &c.

“Real literature” (any way you define it) has many of the same building-blocks: gods (The Illiad), fairies (Twelfth Night), voyages through the underworld (Dante’s Inferno), characters who hop from one body to another (Death in Venice), interesting new interpretations of language and cognition and radically different cultural/social customs, etc. etc.

But works (including those set in space) that oversimplify and preach at us, or just serve as fantasies for us to insert ourselves into as passive escapism are little better than Horatio Alger novels, or, say, the trashiest kinds of romances. They can be fun, but ultimately they don't have quite so much staying power.

One of my favourite sci-fi narratives is that found in Bungie's 'Marathon' series. Not a book, obviously, but a game - however the story is still text-based. I suppose you could look at the game elements as illustrations to go with the text. But the text (the story unfolds when the player reaches and accesses various computer 'terminals' strewn about the levels, sometimes hidden) is much more than just prose, it's really a hybrid between prose, code, and 'concrete poetry' (poetry where the position/spacing of letters creates a visual impression). The characters who narrate the story are powerful AI constructs for the most part, in possession of their own psychology/pathology and free from their human masters/creators, and from human concerns.

I think in creating a new voice (that of the AIs), Bungie used an entirely new mode of expression, with brilliant results (I bet the Marathon's Story website is still active). The story, by the way, is relatively far removed from the present day.

I loved the Foundation trilogy for its ideas, but you can't get much more stark and dull as far as prose goes. The art of literature isn't what you write about, it's how well you write it, and there's very little of that in the Foundation trilogy. There's no artistry in the prose or characterization: it's just a straight translation of ideas to text. Of course, the ideas are very interesting and good, which is what justifies it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com