A few thoughts on science fiction:
I'm embarrassed to say I don't think about the future much, other than serious unease about what we're doing to the planet and what steps we could take to lower our "carbon footprints." The writing here is fixated on a relentless present, which makes it hard even to look back at the past of what's already been said. (Although no one could be as amnesiac as the hapless Kevin Drum, who claims not to remember what lefty bloggers were saying before the Iraq War started.)
I still read a lot of science fiction but I think of it as travelling laterally in time, to parallel universes where technology has had this or that effect, or as a Swiftian satire of our moment. Or pure escape into a visionary world. I'm not apologetic about the latter, as long as the "visions" aren't too much about simple, obvious adolescent wish fullfillment ("If I could fly I'd show them!")
The film critic Raymond Durgnat once talked about the "mute poetry of the commercial cinema," such as a poignant shot of items in a display window in an otherwise awful film. That's what I'm most interested in in sf--the poetic content of imagining the future, which speaks to our time as opposed to just reiterating past writing conventions (e.g., having a character using a computer in a present day novel that is otherwise 19th Century in its structural particulars).
I remember a commentator in a documentary about Henri Langlois (founder of the French cinematheque) telling an anecdote about how a university somewhere in the US collects 16mm porn films, for their value as period-accurate documents of interior design. I always thought this was interesting (don't know if it's true) and it relates to the idea of "mute poetry" as a poignant way of envisaging the future (or in this case, the past)
there was actually a post somewhere recently about using porn as a model for digital art collecting. it seens that the porn industry is good at converting file formats and sharing information.
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A few thoughts on science fiction:
I'm embarrassed to say I don't think about the future much, other than serious unease about what we're doing to the planet and what steps we could take to lower our "carbon footprints." The writing here is fixated on a relentless present, which makes it hard even to look back at the past of what's already been said. (Although no one could be as amnesiac as the hapless Kevin Drum, who claims not to remember what lefty bloggers were saying before the Iraq War started.)
I still read a lot of science fiction but I think of it as travelling laterally in time, to parallel universes where technology has had this or that effect, or as a Swiftian satire of our moment. Or pure escape into a visionary world. I'm not apologetic about the latter, as long as the "visions" aren't too much about simple, obvious adolescent wish fullfillment ("If I could fly I'd show them!")
The film critic Raymond Durgnat once talked about the "mute poetry of the commercial cinema," such as a poignant shot of items in a display window in an otherwise awful film. That's what I'm most interested in in sf--the poetic content of imagining the future, which speaks to our time as opposed to just reiterating past writing conventions (e.g., having a character using a computer in a present day novel that is otherwise 19th Century in its structural particulars).
- tom moody 1-17-2007 9:42 pm
I remember a commentator in a documentary about Henri Langlois (founder of the French cinematheque) telling an anecdote about how a university somewhere in the US collects 16mm porn films, for their value as period-accurate documents of interior design. I always thought this was interesting (don't know if it's true) and it relates to the idea of "mute poetry" as a poignant way of envisaging the future (or in this case, the past)
- Jeff S (guest) 1-17-2007 11:54 pm
there was actually a post somewhere recently about using porn as a model for digital art collecting. it seens that the porn industry is good at converting file formats and sharing information.
- matthew w (guest) 1-23-2007 5:06 am