A Rant About “Technology” (2005)
ursulakleguin.com
ursulakleguin.com
Take her Earthsea series (which was very loosely adapted as a Studio Ghibli movie). It's much slower paced than modern fantasy. Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here), and it almost reads more like an extended fairy tale.
But when you start reading it you can see how it influenced so much modern stuff (eg. she was telling stories about going off to wizard school decades before Harry Potter existed) and both the story and the writing itself are both so well crafted that (in many ways) no one who's come after has managed to surpass it.
If you like either sci-fi or fantasy, do yourself a favor and read some of the amazing writing this titan of an author created.
As for Asimov, well, one can argue about his long term influence but who can avoid calling it foundation-al?
Agree completely on Le Guin
Harry Potter and its own spawn bears fairly distinct influences, less "direct plot copies" (Narnia itself borrowing heavily there from the Christian Bible, of course) but more mechanically and "YA fantasy vibes."
His Dark Materials is basically a deliberate Narnia rebuttal/counter-argument. I think I've heard of a couple other "intentionally darker/twisted Narnia" inspirations in series, but am blanking on them.
Terry Pratchett made a few direct references pointing that assumed a high level of ubiquity.
IMO certainly as enduringly foundational as Asimov.
Dick would belong there too at the same level of a Lewis or Asimov.
Can I make a side-rant how since Game of Thrones, it seems to have become an expectation that characters must be killed off? Apparently readers are (expected to) be so desensitized that nothing below "the main party that is the main reason you're reading this story can die at any moment" registers anymore.
In fact, even that is just the bare minimum. To really make an impact, we need some mass casualties like the Red Wedding or Thanos' "snap" in the Avenger movies.
Can we go back on all of that?
Also, Dune, which is certainly not a "The good guys win" story.
And movies like Soylent Green.
The Disney trope turns out not to be a trope at all. The good guys win/hero's journey is much older than Disney, and it's popular because we'd like to be believe it's how the world works.
But GoT didn't do anything really new, except wrap some porn around the various murder plots.
Both are based on pre-existing material but GoT source material predates the Walking Dead by 7 years.
Too many modern writers would have ended The Shawshank Redemption by having Andy Dufresne get shot by a prison sniper the minute he got free.
Game of Thrones broke the spell, bad things suddenly could happen, substories could be ended badly. Writers learned there are two possible formulas not just one. Suddenly there was a tension and drama.
> There are good and bad and good must always win and if bad thing happening is always punishment for moral failure forced formula got overfed.
I mean, maybe there are different moral horizons behind this. I would expect some basic "doing good is in the end more successful than doing evil" morality in shows.
The alternate message seems to be an uncaring universe where it plays absolutely no role if you're an asshole or try to help people, because deaths happen randomly anyway.
Which would be an omen of how our world developed in the following years for real...
(GoT never went completely nihilist though, which I appreciate. Even the most random deaths had at least long-term consequences for the rest of the story, and a lot of characters kept their morality through all the carnage)
I dont and find it annoying when it is there all the time. It removes the tension too. Good people end up poor or die of cancer, attempts to save climate or prevent wars failed, those who fight fascism find themselves maligned and out of power.
> The alternate message seems to be an uncaring universe where it plays absolutely no role if you're an asshole or try to help people, because deaths happen randomly anyway.
That is how the real universe works, why should we insist on repetitive message that is not true?
On the positive side, real people dont help people just to get something in exchange. Real people dont avoid being asshole only for transactional reasons. They do that, because of who you want to be and because of being able to resist the temptation.
And the danger is that when people believe the above, they make the opposite implication - if you had success you must have been good. That is not true. In fact, being willing to lie or take advantage of people makes you more likely to be successful - you have more options at your disposal then honest people.
> It is not about message.
I do not really think shows were that influential. But, large part of harm is from people simply assuming that once someone is a winner and billionaire, they must have been good and moral and right the whole time. I dont believe in prosperity gospel.
Nihilists who call themselves "sophisticated."
Unless your culture sphere consists solely of children's books and Disney movies, that is just a bizarre thing to say. Heroic deaths and tragedys has been a staple of storytelling since the dawn of time. Greeks even had a word for it. Any random book (for adults) during the past several centuries is likely to include the subject, with a hundful exceptions of course. But a classic way to build tension in storytellin is with a tragedy.
> We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all.
remarkable given the similarity in your comment yet that it was about something completely different: violence vs technology.
The opposing view is weirder, why should characters be preserved for consumption by the audience? Death is something that can happen, let it happen. I quite like KJ Parkers 2 of Swords, where most PoV characters are dead by the end of the trilogy. Theres a real bittersweet note where, 2 of the remaining characters, one is basically trying to get killed and the other keeps bending the law and releasing him, unable to stomach even one more, no matter how deserved.
I don't see how characters are "consumed" by the audience, unless the audience is vampires.
But my answer would be: Because the entire story exists for the audience. There isn't actually a separate universe that lives on independently of the people watching or reading the story.
Fan service maximalism? Authors should avoid treading on favourite characters, erring on the side of making them immortal?
And instead of this, much later, the not-at-all ready son, Goro Miyazaki, had a go without having done the massive thought-work that you can for example glimpse Hayao doing on the emotional arc of Ponyo
It might have been inspirational decades ago. Now, it reads dated. Tastes are different, but I’d not call it well-crafted at all.
What a wonderfully humble sentiment, and so plainly said. It's disarming to hear an idea stated so precisely which you've treated largely as subintellectum, despite its truthiness having a foundational effect on how you move about the world [0]. This so perfectly distills my (and I suspect others' here as well) draw toward all things technical. They are all mysteries, whose workings we must largely abstract away for the sake of our own sanity. But they are categorically products of our collective knowledge, and that knowledge is out there for anyone to claim, or to extend! Looking at my surroundings, I see thousands of objects which I could not today begin to re-create myself, and for each object, thousands of questions which could be asked - all of which have at some point been answered, and whose answers await those who are interested to ask. What an endless and delightful thing for the curious! A lovely thought.
[0]: Perhaps this feeling is why Le Guin is such a celebrated author, and I am not ;)
“Maybe a good start would be to recognize within yourself the ability to understand anything, because that ability is there as long as it's explained clearly enough, and then go and ask for explanations”
> But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.
This sentiment reminds me of the email steve jobs sent himself shortly before he died:
> I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
> I do not make any of my own clothing.
> I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
> I did not discover the mathematics I use.
> I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
> I am moved by music I did not create myself.
> When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.
> I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.
> I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
Indeed, it seems to me that true technologists do not take for granted a book of matches, or a simple garment, or music, or law. Innovation is innovation
This is really poignant considering that he tried to handle this himself and refused conventional treatment for months - likely causing his death. It's interesting that he doesn't seem aware of this even afterwards, but it's probably for the best.
I guess the whole letter explains a personal crisis and probably explains why he did what he did. Is there any more writing from him on the subject?
"I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being."
It feels forced. Like the author is trying to convince himself of that belief.
I'm always suspicious when I see these. Does the person genuinely feel grateful, or are they simulating a gratitude that they cannot feel?
Makes me question their emotional sincerity.
> Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
It's also the exact interface that wealth allows you to bypass.
But honestly categories never quite work at the edges. Some of my favorite books are post apocalyptic fantasy where the characters are definitely using scifi technology that I recognize as advanced versions of existing technology but they just think of as magic.
Which isn't to say one is more personal than the other, just that the focus is different. How the world as a whole handles something can easily be covered with a single character's thoughts, and they can be worried about how they interact with the world that surrounds them.
No division is perfect of course, but I think it fits pretty well with a lot of the genre-bending works, and better predicts who will like what book. Some are totally in X genre because of the setting itself, but more often I find people sticking to one or the other because they like that kind of story.
(Also Le Guin is fantastic, very obviously an exceptional author, and you should absolutely read some of her works)
But good literature is good literature and she sure had the knack, which is why I believe her work will continue to be read for quite some time to come.
In her brief essay (more of a note), she uses the word “technology” to invoke its own root: τέχνη, just means practical art (hence artifact).
The inclined plane is as much technology as the lithographed transistor. Yet when I was on a school board 15 years ago the teachers and in particular the heads were quite concerned that the kids be tought “technology” by which they meant Word and PowerPoint, lest the kids be left behind in the technological future.
I’m sure those hours helped exactly zero of the students who could have spent the time on something useful, like mathematics, painting or recess. At least the classical Greeks understood that better than the pedagogues of today. Le Guin did too.
The issue with knowledge is it's really hard to know what bits of it are going to be important in your future. Learning powerpoint probably put food on the table of a great number of people, it turns out our economy had a lot of places for that, and seemingly less, or less new jobs that wanted a deep knowledge of mathematics.
However I don’t think hard sci-fi has ever been strictly limited to known physics. It just requires consistency with it.
Greg Egan is one of the OGs of hard sci-fi, and a lot of his work is borderline psychedelic in how far he takes speculative-yet-consistent physics.
There are plenty of physically consistent “FTL” mechanisms in the family of “bend spacetime” that don’t violate c and have not been disproven.
Interesting, I always thought that the modern interpretation is that hard sci-fi is "rooted in science" or close to it. The ansible (i.e. FTL communication) is, to our current knowledge, not possible. But it is such a useful plot device that it could be viewed as "close enough".
I understand the opposite of hard sci-fi to be the hand wavy "magic" stuff like photon torpedoes, teleportation, phasers, hyperspace, and so on.
This ends up driving most hard sci fi to current understanding of physics, with maybe one tweak. If you diverge more from that, it's difficult or impossible to establish the rules and their implications early on, and so choices about them later end up serving the narrative.
Though, a certain irony: hard sci-fi doesn't seem to offer much predictive insight about the future compared to other subgenres. The 20th century sci-fi genre that seems to offer the most insight into our current moment is probably the one with the wildest imaginings: cyberpunk.
No that's just competent writing. Hard sci-fi is very much about real science.
"Hell is the Absence of God" by Ted Chiang deals with a world in which god, heaven and hell are unambiguously real.
Both are definitely "hard sci fi"
Speaking of prediction powers, there's one that stands out and turned out to be quite prescient on a bunch of topics, both tech and social. Ender's Game was published (fleshed out, novel version) in `85 and it got quite a few things pretty accurate:
- tablets & touchscreen widely used as a common interface to content
- the Internet as a wide web, everyone using it, instant messaging, and so on
- Social networks, forums where debates are held, and more importantly sock puppet accounts and wide scale manipulation (for politics, etc)
- AI for world generation, military use for training, adaptive difficulty, etc.
In the later books there are concepts like digital currency, AI controlled corps/accounts, AI becoming "sentient" and moving itself between mediums, etc (well, that one is not yet here, but who knows...)
The hard/soft axis is fuzzy. The extreme of hard is "known physics only" and generally modest technical leaps or changes (e.g. solarpunk imagines known physics but a very different technical vocabulary for how it's used).
The extreme of soft becomes fantasy with sci-fi veneer, like Star Wars.
Fiction is art. It's all valid. It just depends on the style you're going for and what kind of story you're trying to tell.
I like hard SF because I'm an engineer, but I also think there's not a lot of well written hard SF in terms of prose style and character development. I wish there was more.
“The balance is the penalty of being human: the danger of allowing yourself to feel. For this we walk a narrow path high above rocky ground. On one side we have the descent into animalism, on the other a godhead delusion. Both pulling at us, both tempting. But without these forces tugging at your psyche, stirring it into conflict, you can never love. They awaken us, you see, these warring sides, they arouse our passion.” ― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
“Life alone is precious, but conscious thought is the greatest gift the universe offers.” ― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
“Resolution, the ability and determination to see things through to the end. However unexpected or disappointing that end turns out to be.” ― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
“He had used drugs and nanonic supplements to compensate at first, then supplements became replacements, with bones exchanged for carbon-fibre struts. Electrical consumption supplanted food intake. The final transition was his skin, replacing the eczema-ridden epidermis with a smooth ochre silicon membrane. Warlow didn’t need a spacesuit to work in the vacuum, he could survive for over three weeks without a power and oxygen recharge. His facial features had become purely cosmetic, a crude mannequin-like caricature of human physiognomy, although there was an inlet valve at the back of his throat for fluid intake. There was no hair, and he certainly didn’t bother with clothes. Sex was something he lost in his fifties.” ― Peter F. Hamilton, The Reality Dysfunction
It "features the development of the mathematical theory underlying a fictional ansible, a device capable of faster-than-light communication, which can send messages without delay, even between star systems." [1]
It doesn't get better than that. Certainly not "harder".
She uses science and technology to amazing affect to tell the story she wanted to tell in Dispossessed. Key points, the starship that travels between the moon and the sun, the freight rail system etc.
She also uses it poorly, in the creation of the weird Ansible device.
I understand the Ansible is required for some of her other works but tbh leaving the creation of instantaneous interstellar communication as a footnote without societal impact feels like a bit of a letdown.
I think this goes too far and then everything is science fiction? She talks about low tech. Is Hatchet science fiction?
Hatchet has technology - the titular hatchet, along with the airplane that crashed and the various items the protagonist collects at the end. But the presence of technology in the work does not determine if it is science fiction or not.
This is straying away from the article, but if Hatchet were dictated to a tribe who didn’t have metallurgy, perhaps it could be perceived as science fiction.
Sounded pretty reasonable to me anyway.
It's the original title, she labeled it a rant herself.
EDIT: The person I replied to has significantly edited their comment since my original reply so my comment now appears as a non sequitur. This is why I quote people, or wait a couple hours to reply once I know they're the sort to do this kind of thing.
I think a more interesting tack on this argument would be to say that hard sci-fi tends to be more pro-technology and soft sci-fi tends to be more technology-critical. But some soft sci-fi is genuinely technology-neutral, using futuristic settings for aesthetic reasons only, not for any kind of investigation or argument either way.
That's not quite right. There are FTL ships in the Hainish books, but they carry no passengers because living things cannot survive FTL travel.
This is not at all what Le Guin is saying! It's right there at the end of the essay: "I agree with my reviewer that I don’t write hard science fiction."
Now I want to write a science fiction story where the core technology is never written about explicitly and can only be inferred from its effect on the characters :P
Besides, it's not even her best work.
Looking forward to reading your story! You might consider Ted Chiang.
I'll bump up Chiang on my reading list, I have heard a lot of good things!
There's no requirement to centrally feature technology, and it would be a weaker genre if there was.
Sci-fi has elements other than technology, such as how the humans interact with the technology. Sure! Again, I can't imagine anybody's arguing that Sci-fi is only when you write about technology and any mention of feelings or other human stuff disqualifies it.
But what a non-sequitur to say that therefore, _science_ isn't the main focus of Sci-fi. It's fiction about _science_. If the story isn't centred around the science, then the Sci-fi is the backdrop and the genre is something else you've chosen.
The most famous example is Star Wars. You can take that trilogy and replace every spaceship with a ship, every planet with a country, and lose nothing other than fun visuals.