Turn-About Is Fair-Play
Posted by Trent Walters at 4:33 PM
I got no end of ribbing this weekend about Mundane SF this weekend (online and off), so here are a few of mine:
The cartoon-version of the Anti-Mundanes (courtesy of one of the best cartoons running these days, Non-Sequitur).
Hal Duncan's biting satire of the Anti-Mundanes (you--maybe he--thought he was mocking the Mundanes? Au contraire).
S.M. Stirling finds life without starships and light-sabres unendurable. He visits the mailbox in a Cylon suit. (I'm just joking. He's valiantly defending his right to space operas and such, which is fine by me.)
The cartoon-version of the Anti-Mundanes (courtesy of one of the best cartoons running these days, Non-Sequitur).
Hal Duncan's biting satire of the Anti-Mundanes (you--maybe he--thought he was mocking the Mundanes? Au contraire).
S.M. Stirling finds life without starships and light-sabres unendurable. He visits the mailbox in a Cylon suit. (I'm just joking. He's valiantly defending his right to space operas and such, which is fine by me.)
4 Comments:
nice to see a bit more traffic through the site. Did the trick, didn't it? Infernokrusher? Pah! I 'm from Belfast. We eat these things with salt.
It is much more steady--thanks! But it also depends on my regular postings. I'm curious to hear reactions to an upcoming post on evolution and accepted genre tropes.
Ian: Belfast? Pah! I'm from Glasgow. We eat everything with salt. Deep-fried.
Trent: Hope you took that blog entry in good humour... as ribbing rather than mockery. To be serious (for once) I don't know if I'd characterise Infernokrusher as "Anti-Mundane", it being a rebranding (ssssss, "MooOO!") of "slipstream" rather than anything to do with Hard SF whatsoever. Way I read the Mundane Manifesto, it's about tightening the focus of SF, rejecting the escapist balderdash and bringing it back to basics -- plausible scientific speculations and their extrapolated impact on humanity. Yes? A laudably rigorous approach to SF-as-Science-Fiction.
Slipstream -- sorry, Infernokrusher -- is a whole 'nother creature, as I see it, equally concerned with focusing on humanity, but more interested in extended metaphor than extrapolated scenario as a means to that end. SF-as-Structural-Fabulation. An entirely different fictive mode.
But as for them tired old cliches? Fuck it; if ye've read my rants on SF-as-Symbolic-Formulation (regurgitating the same old tropes, "unquestioned and unjustified"), you know I'm all for "burning the Stupidities". I think you guys don't dig down quite deep enough to attack the core "Stupidities", which are structural, as I see it, to do with the Romance form itself (all that juvenile heroic power fantasy bollocks, you know), rather than the surface-level use of magic science McGuffins (which are just symptomatic, I'd say, of the deeper escapist purpose of the narrative); but if by Anti-Mundane you're talking about what I'd call Symbolic Formulation, then yes, that's as much my target as it is yours.
The key difference between Mundane and Slip- *ahem* Infernokrusher, for me, is just that I rejoice in chucking the "Rationalities" on the bonfire alongside them. And then driving over them with a monster truck. The irruption of the irrational into the... uh... mundane is a core component of infernokrusher. So I couldn't resist that big solid wall of Mundane-SF with its firm foundations and edifice looking so solemn. Forgive me. I like fire.
I like your comments, Hal (I tried to point out one in the s1ngularity blog, but the comments always seemed down).
I was responding more to the response to your blog than to the entry itself. I fear some feel we're treading on their belief system (i.e. Zen or postmodern philosophy or Christianity that focuses on the mysteries), which I do not feel we are. I believe in possibilities, but our focus is on the probabilities.
I hear lots of raves about your forthcoming novel--and it isn't even out yet. I look forward to seeing it.
Post a Comment
<< Home