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While Science Fiction and Fantasy have helped lead the way to some extraordinary things in our world, there are some things that just shouldn't be. Hopefully a few people will take this topic and run with it as I shall quite lazily point out only the simplest and most obvious things being the shiftless and not to bright person that i am.
Perhaps the greatest evil for which the world has Science Fiction, one author and a nearly invisible editor to thank is "cyber bullying". Long before most people could even hazard a guess at what "cyber" meant. Before people had screennames, and instant messengers, and email. Before the world wide web was all that wide, or a world of its own a man created a way of reaching out and hurting ones enemies in a way that few would realize the would be the new wedgie, His proxy a boy called Ender (a use name) humiliated his opponent in a way that let him cause trouble and get away with it. Today we write new laws to deal with the technology that enables this crime, and continue to handwring at the crime itself. Orson Scott Card has much to answer for.
Death Shouldn't Find Me!
This is a trope that abounds in both Science Fiction and Fantasy. I can't blame either genre for creating it, just for perpetuating it. Raymond E Feist should shoulder his share of this simply for the early Midkemia books. Not only is the book littered with glamorous, graceful and ageless Elves two of the main characters from Magician become effectively immortal. Pug and Thomas go from keep rascals to not just towering heros, but unaging towering heros. Truly unfair.
Science fiction can't leave not dying alone either. In science fiction not only have anti-aging techniques like Weber's attempts to drive the entire future of mankind nuts by extending both puberty and menopause with his prolong treatment. Honestly, this one should really be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I can't honestly imagine people developing healthily mentally when they spend from eleven to thirty-nine looking unfinished, gangling and wondering when people are gonna stop calling them the Honorverse equivalent of "pizza face".
Lois Bujold is not without blame for perpetuating this bit of cultural denial. She's invented two totally different ways of not aging like a normal human. Her Betans (almost all of whom seem to be like 'the good kids" in A Brave New World) simply don't age. They don't age because they just live right, and their doctors have a pill for that. Simply disgusting. Not to out do this she has tweaked an entire twelve planet society with the use of trickle down genetics. They are smart, beautiful, healthy, resistant to poisons and yup, long lived. Utterly vulgar.
Then of course there are the weapons of play war where people almost play for keeps. Stunner, cryo-revival, shock nets, knockout gas, and virtual reality combat. What type of sissyness is this? This doesn't provide any reason for the other side to stop being your enemy. And how the hell do you establish discipline in a war where the greatest danger is ripping and dirtying your uniform when theenemy reasonable-wonderful-valuable-unique-beautiful-caring-person-who-we-have-yet-to-reach-a
-reasonable-accord-with-through-no-fault-of-anyone stuns you. Oh no! What if their pain killers don't work as fast as our or they don't taste as good!Heaven Whatevereachreaderbelievesornotbelivesinwithoutpreferenceorjudgementwithfullsupportandornonsupportas itbestvalidatesthatreaderatthisoranyothermomentinwhatwenowcalltime forfend!
Kill Something Bitches! Really, it's one of the few things that humans are actually good at finding new ways to do. Death and sex. These are the two things that most people wonder about first when contemplating a new technologies possible applications.
Perhaps the greatest evil for which the world has Science Fiction, one author and a nearly invisible editor to thank is "cyber bullying". Long before most people could even hazard a guess at what "cyber" meant. Before people had screennames, and instant messengers, and email. Before the world wide web was all that wide, or a world of its own a man created a way of reaching out and hurting ones enemies in a way that few would realize the would be the new wedgie, His proxy a boy called Ender (a use name) humiliated his opponent in a way that let him cause trouble and get away with it. Today we write new laws to deal with the technology that enables this crime, and continue to handwring at the crime itself. Orson Scott Card has much to answer for.
Death Shouldn't Find Me!
This is a trope that abounds in both Science Fiction and Fantasy. I can't blame either genre for creating it, just for perpetuating it. Raymond E Feist should shoulder his share of this simply for the early Midkemia books. Not only is the book littered with glamorous, graceful and ageless Elves two of the main characters from Magician become effectively immortal. Pug and Thomas go from keep rascals to not just towering heros, but unaging towering heros. Truly unfair.
Science fiction can't leave not dying alone either. In science fiction not only have anti-aging techniques like Weber's attempts to drive the entire future of mankind nuts by extending both puberty and menopause with his prolong treatment. Honestly, this one should really be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I can't honestly imagine people developing healthily mentally when they spend from eleven to thirty-nine looking unfinished, gangling and wondering when people are gonna stop calling them the Honorverse equivalent of "pizza face".
Lois Bujold is not without blame for perpetuating this bit of cultural denial. She's invented two totally different ways of not aging like a normal human. Her Betans (almost all of whom seem to be like 'the good kids" in A Brave New World) simply don't age. They don't age because they just live right, and their doctors have a pill for that. Simply disgusting. Not to out do this she has tweaked an entire twelve planet society with the use of trickle down genetics. They are smart, beautiful, healthy, resistant to poisons and yup, long lived. Utterly vulgar.
Then of course there are the weapons of play war where people almost play for keeps. Stunner, cryo-revival, shock nets, knockout gas, and virtual reality combat. What type of sissyness is this? This doesn't provide any reason for the other side to stop being your enemy. And how the hell do you establish discipline in a war where the greatest danger is ripping and dirtying your uniform when the
-reasonable-accord-with-through-no-fault-of-anyone stuns you. Oh no! What if their pain killers don't work as fast as our or they don't taste as good!
Kill Something Bitches! Really, it's one of the few things that humans are actually good at finding new ways to do. Death and sex. These are the two things that most people wonder about first when contemplating a new technologies possible applications.
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From:
Non-aging
From your description, sounds like Bujold's SF is pretty much the same way. The only novel of hers I've read is a fantasy in which she massacres the entire cast of characters on about page 50, and then has to start all over again.
2) Contrast this with Tolkien, where the thematic purpose of eternal beauty and agelessness of the Elves is to focus on the awe and the envy this creates in those who don't have it, and - surprise! - the envy of Death among the Elves. Much more interesting.
From:
Re: Non-aging
Onyxhawke (a big LMB fan, btw) is being funny in his criticism of her. The Betans are not actually held up as an ideal but rather as yet another extreme to which her universe full of distant-future humans have gone to.
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Re: Non-aging
I'm not. That is why I carefully wrote, From your description, sounds like ...
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Re: Non-aging
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Re: Non-aging
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no subject
Death. As a writer, I do realize that I have to kill enough people to make the reader wonder how many of the good guys are going to die. However, too many writers do this by killing the cute puppy or kitten or kid. Oh, and the infamous dying-in-childbirth. (Note to self: Never marry a hero who needs motivation.)
Now, mind you, at the moment I have a hero so overwhelmingly good that the only thing to do is send off the love of his life to be executed by the Bad Guys so the Hero quits and goes on a vendetta . . . wait, I'm sliding into _another_ Standard Plot. Aiiii! What else can I do? Amnesia? No. False accusation of treason? Blech. Ah Ha! I've got it! I'm going to promote him into a desk job. That'll teach him to be Mr. Prefect!
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no subject
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no subject
And just to be obnoxious, I am going to use my Bujold icon here...
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no subject
I read the entire Horatio Hornblower series a few years ago (not SF but it has inspired some good genre work -- the Honor Harrington series, Naomi Novik's Temeraire books, classic Star Trek), and there is a major character death in the late-middle of the series which happens off-stage. I read to the end of the book in complete, genre-programmed denial, expecting this character's return the entire time. When I reached the end of the book and realized this character was really, really dead, I was devastated.
The impact of a well-done, permanent death is massively underrated by most writers. What served the series so well was the way the writer used loss to develop the main character in a very realistic and not always endearing way.
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no subject
Maybe there's no way to do one of these things without doing the other. But maybe one way to keep them separate is the idea of a price paid for immortality, so that it's not just a get-out-of-death-free card. The myth of Admetus is like this; he has a sort of gift certificate from Apollo that says he can escape from death when his time comes. The trick is that he has to convince someone else to take his place, which isn't so easy to do and turns out not to be so great when he succeeds.
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no subject
I'm a lot more picky with reading since there's so much more to choose from there than in TV/movies, but I know this vein is worked in print spec fic, too.
Stop. It.
From:
Magic
I tend to waffle between 1 & 2. I mean, anyone can play music if they try hard enough, but there's going to be such a large range in resulting ability that #1 might as well be said to be true.
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Re: Magic
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Re: Magic
Some people are inherently good at hitting targets from the moment they first pick up a rifle, most people have to spend a bit of time on the range before they get accurate, with "a bit" varying from person to person for a certain level of "accurate", and a handful of people can't hit crap no matter how hard they try.
Mind, 3) has its potential, too. Maybe the distinction between "wizard" and "cleric".
From:
Magic
Wizard vs. Cleric is great for gaming, but please, please base novels on something other than D&D magic rules. I don't mean that there can't be more than one type of magic, just, don't let me hear the dice rolling.
Which gets me to another thing I hate. Stories that start with a human a dwarf and an elf in a tavern. Some variety of fighter, mage, thief. Oh, forgot the girl for the proper stereotyped story start . . .
It's almost as bad as the twenty page History of Wherever as a prologue. Or the huge battle that gets the reader attached to the hero, only to find out on the next page that that was a thousand years ago, and here's the real start to the story . . .
And then there's Board Meetings, Wise Old Men Telling Stories, and Waking up Somewhere Else.
Avoid those, and I'll even forgive starting with the weather, so long as you keep it to less than three sentences and none of the little breezes wafting about are 'happy'.
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no subject
There's a valid reason for longevity research. Basically, space is so huge, even with respect to planetary systems, that if you don't do some serious research in extending lifespans along with finding the silver bullet against cancer, doing any kind of mass exploitation is sort of like a death sentence.
This also keys into dealing with long-term sociological issues inherent in keeping people within close proximity to each other without inciting mass murder. The idea of the "holo-deck", as goofy and stupid as the sci-magic of STtNG was, has a place.
Anyway, two comments just because I wanted to see if I could post now.
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Death and writing
I agree that it is an overdone plot device in SF/fantasy, but in my mind it can be and often is done right, or at least in a semi-plausible way (authors: please keep in mind that there are people out there like me who will know when you don't have a clue about basic 1. medicine, 2. human physiology, 3. physics). As a reader, I appreciate an author who fully understands the impact of death and does not squander characters--or the reader's emotional attachment to them.