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9/2/2008 11:46:36 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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http://eclipticplane.blogspot.com/2008/09/resigning-from-interzone.html
You know, I almost used a line from that Patrick Swayze movie. "You ain't seen bad yet, but it's comin'," but Jetse doesn't deserve that and neither does Andy Cox.
Still, the entry says changes are afoot at Interzone on the fiction front.
I guess we'll learn about these changes soon enough. Surely Andy won't try to top Gardner's replacement.
Then again . . . .
Too bad I don't have a spare 10 to 20K around, I'd grab Strange Horizons 501 whatever non profit battleplan and set up my own publication (much as I do not want to be an editor, I think we are starting to reach a limit here).
Then again, if a spare 10 to 20K does land in my lap, I just might do that.
Anyway, best wishes to Jetse. Hopefully he'll use this opportunity to get some more fiction written.
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9/3/2008 3:56:51 AM
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Andy Cox
Posts 1
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It's all news to me. There are no changes afoot, no new direction, we've been doing what we've always done, and will continue to do it: simply, publish the best entertaining and thought-provoking modern sf and fantasy we can find, introducing more than our fair share of new writers along the way, and staying uniquely Interzone. We might try to redress a balance if it looks like we need to, but we've always done that too.
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9/3/2008 5:45:32 AM
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Marian
Posts 2176
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Of course, what one person considers entertaining and thoughtprovoking might not be another person's cup of tea (Boy! Talk about a mixed metaphor). I'm assuming that's what's happening.
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"Know the truth and the truth shall make you odd."
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9/3/2008 5:54:59 PM
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Mark Pontin
Posts 645
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Of course, what one person considers entertaining and thought-provoking might not be another person's cup of tea ... I'm assuming that's what's happening.
Not necessarily. Mr. de Vries's blogging and critical writing has been increasingly concerned about how unrelentingly pessimistic and dystopian most of the SF he was seeing was.
And his criticisms of what he's been seeing aren't just unsophisticated calls for some kind of return to a notional 'golden age' of SF uplift, resembling, say, Heinlein's, Poul Anderson's or Keith Laumer's heroic adventure fiction.
Rather, he's been pointing out -- and in his professional life he's a technologist -- that almost all technologies are ethically neutral, and almost all technological advance promotes both good and bad ends. Nevertheless, in much of the SF he's been seeing -- and, presumably, that Interzone will publish next year -- the default position has been unrelentingly to view technological advances in terms of their dystopian possibilities. In other words, to always see all technological change as necessarily bad. Which, if true, would be a pretty sad place for a 'literature of change' -- as opposed to the status quo-worshipping mainstream culture -- to have arrived in.
Of course, I haven't seen Interzone's specific purchases. So what de Vries is saying may be true there. However, it's also true that stories need conflict and it's a lot easier for writers to write about protagonists who have to confront dystopias.
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9/3/2008 8:19:26 PM
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Matt Hughes
Posts 270
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Mark Pontin wrote:
However, it's also true that stories need conflict and it's a lot easier for writers to write about protagonists who have to confront dystopias.
Yes, heroically confronting paradise tends to leave you with a protag who's hard to sell to the reader. Although Milton gave it a good stab with Paradise Lost.
For myself, I don't do dystopian futures. I figure we'll bumble on pretty much as we always have, making it up as we go along, living life forwards, understanding it backwards, that sort of thing.
Matt Hughes
http://www.archonate.com
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9/3/2008 8:37:41 PM
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fotsgreg
Posts 316
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I guess I'm one of the (unfortunate) few who doesn't read Interzone very often (haven't seen an issue this year in fact), but I can understand that, if this is the way that de Vries is feeling, where it might be coming from. There does seem to be a general undercurrent of anti-technology feeling running through the mainstream (I cite Dr. Easton's blog on a certain incident in Denver a few weeks ago as an example) and that does seem to be bleeding into a lot of science fiction that I've read recently.
It's also a millenial type issue in that we're still early in the new millenium and fear of technology and newness in the next century does seem to be an infectious sort of malady suffered by many people's at the turn of centuries (one would have thought we were well beyond that now, but what's old is always new again). Many writers have allowed, I fear, a sense of the fear that society holds towards new things such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and nuclear power, just to name a few examples, to creep into a viewpoint in science fiction that technology and new things hold more inherent possibility for evil than they do for societal good. Not all, to be sure, but some authors have done little more than pound away at the evils of science, technology, and western civilization. That they manage to do so and create interesting science fiction is, I think, a testimony more to their skill than to the dystopian view the masses hold. It's not like most of them are actually getting incredibly rich off their writing after all.
It's not science fiction's fault that its writers in the genre tend to reflect some societal viewpoints spread largely by a lack of adequate (or any) scientific training in our schools or general scientific knowledge among the masses. Most people know about as much about real science as they do about how to build a spaceship. They get their scientific knowledge from the mass media and movies on the SciFi Channel and at the theaters (which are all fairly dystopian in viewpoint). You can't swing a dead cat over at the SciFi Channel without running into some so-called science fiction movie (which is 99% more likely to be horror or pure fantasy rather than science fiction) which portrays scientists as seeking to change the balance of nature through gene manipulation or some other less likely means. Fantasy on TV is almost invariably a portrayal of pseudoscientific crap where the scientist is the bad guy trying to create a race of supersoldiers for the Nazi's or the world's only hope is a tough, young person whose long dead relative was of royal birth, but whose ancestor also raised some evil that's threatening the entire world unless it's stopped.
Science fiction is also the realm of conflict, as Mark said above and it's difficult to create believable conflict today without somehow bringing some sort of science or technology into the mix. However, writers in the genre might think more about bringing believable science into their fiction and allowing a believable scientist or engineer or technician into the mix as a hero instead of the plucky young teenager to save the day.
In an era where 60% of the population never picks up a book it can hardly be surprising that the masses have a distaste and distrust of science and technology and that this bleeds into science fiction as our writers are also products of our culture and times. They (the writers) just need to recognize this in their writing and find a better way forward - and so do the editors who decide what material from those writers they're going to buy.
edited by fotsgreg on 9/3/2008
edited by fotsgreg on 9/3/2008
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9/3/2008 9:01:35 PM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 400
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fotsgreg wrote:
Many writers have allowed, I fear, a sense of the fear that society holds towards new things such as genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and nuclear power, just to name a few examples, to creep into a viewpoint in science fiction that technology and new things hold more inherent possibility for evil than they do for societal good. Not all, to be sure, but some authors have done little more than pound away at the evils of science, technology, and western civilization. That they manage to do so and create interesting science fiction is, I think, a testimony more to their skill than to the dystopian view the masses hold.
This can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies, to a degree. A negative view of science will discourage kids from pursuing it, you get fewer people understanding it or caring enough to take the time to understand it, which leads to less competent oversight of the science (and technology development) that is done. In more simple-minded terms, if science/technology are viewed as evil, then good-hearted folks will steer clear of it and evil-hearted folks will do it, with little regard for consequence.
(Yeah, a drastic simplification, but it conveys the point.)
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- Alastair
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9/3/2008 9:23:24 PM
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Juliette Wade
Posts 129
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Best wishes to Mr. deVries in his future endeavors.
I try not to be dystopian myself, but it seems to be a symptom of our current era in some respects.
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Juliette
"You're a linguist - talk to them!" (Stargate)
Blogging about language and culture in SFF at http://talktoyouniverse.blogspot.com
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9/3/2008 9:37:38 PM
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gdozois
Posts 3110
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This is going to amuse those who consider me to be the poster boy for Downbeat SF, but the unrelieved bleakness and hopelessness of a lot of modern SF sometimes bothers me too. Sometimes it seems to be a kind of fashionable nilism and stylized despair, almost a default setting--the kind of attitude that eventually soured me on reading horror, although there at least that kind of atmosphere has some justification since things are SUPPOSED to go wrong. I suspect a lot of it is lazy writing--it's a lot easier to figure out how things can go wrong than to figure out how things can go RIGHT.
As I said in my review of SEEDS OF CHANGE: "Like last year's FOUNDATION 100, which was looking for hopeful human futures, and didn't find many of them, SEEDS OF CHANGE, which sought stories that would inspire people to plant "seeds of change" that would change the future for the better, ends up instead featuring stories whose future scenarios are actually rather glum, with little real prospect that they're going to change for the better. SF writers in the Oughts seem to have trouble imagining positive futures, unable to look beyond the bleak present that they're mired in. That doesn't bode well for either SF or society in general, since it's always seemed to me that one of the jobs of science fiction was to imagine viable human futures that might actually be good to live in, and hope to conjure them into existence by the imagining, much as the writers of the '40s and '50s helped conjure up the space program by dreaming it with such fierce intensity that it inspired others to make it real."
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9/3/2008 10:44:38 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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Glad I'm not planning on buying Seeds of Change.
Anyway, per Mark's point above, Jetse has stated, in very clear terms, his feelings about the current state of affairs. I remember that blog entry and I took some issue with the gist, some of which has been repeated by others here. Namely heroes confronting paradise do not a story make.
The ironic thing is that Jetse told me that he thought my story had an upbeat and positive ending. Funny, I didn't see it that way, but then again the Reader gets a vote.
Anyway, just chiming in to say I see Mark's point.
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9/3/2008 10:58:46 PM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 400
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themasterknitter wrote:
Namely heroes confronting paradise do not a story make.
They make a hell of a lot more interesting story than heroes confronting a dystopia, no? Harder work for the writer, of course. But then, who says a story set in a paradise has to be about the hero confronting the paradise?
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- Alastair
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9/3/2008 11:30:30 PM
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themasterknitter
Posts 425
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To borrow from Slick Willie, "It all depends on what the definition of 'paradise' is?" Right?
I write what I want to write and I find that challenging enough.
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9/4/2008 1:06:38 AM
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fotsgreg
Posts 316
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I find Gardner's remarks above enlightening, but then all one really has to do is look through the slush over at Baen's or coming through Critters to see a lot of science fiction where the writer seems mired in despair and unrelenting gloom. I don't really find it all that surprising (somewhat, but then I read Analog and novels for the most part so my views might be somewhat colored) that uplifting stories or stories which are seeds for change for anthologies are hard to come by - it's the attitude of the writer and the society they believe they live in (note that - it's the attitude of the society they believe they live in, not necessarily the one they really do live in) coming through loud and clear and a lot of those people don;t believe they're going to live to see their 50th year these days (I know some young people who are now in their teens and early 20's who don't believe they'll live to see 30 or 40). Its what they've been taught by the media, their schools, and society to believe because they don't really know anything about what they're trying to write (IMNSHO of course).
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9/4/2008 1:29:07 AM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 400
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I dunno, a whole generation grew up knowing -- half expecting -- that the world could end within less than an hour of somebody pushing a button and yet managed to produce some pretty optimistic SF. Apocalyptic stuff, too, of course. (What was it with John Wyndham anyway? -- Triffids, krakens, chrysalids, Midwich cuckoos -- at least his stories had survivors.)
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- Alastair
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9/4/2008 1:42:34 AM
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fotsgreg
Posts 316
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Alastair, You're right, of course, but it might have been a different society then as well. Optimism was still alive in the US and in the way children were taught and brought up. While they were learning "duck & cover" maneuvers at school and where to find the shelters when the big one dropped, they were also learning that the US could put men in space and even on the moon. When they were watching race riots on television they were also watching Martin Luther King and learning that there was hope for a better future for everyone. When Mom was telling them to eat their vegetables and that there were starving children in China they were also learning that the United States was the breadbasket of the world.
Today they hear that the US is an evil gluttonous empire that's refused to sign onto Kyoto and has thus doomed the entire planet if we don;t do something RIGHT NOW! and they don't learn that solutions to problems take time and the best of those solutions will come through technology, not turning one's back on science and technology.. They learn that the US space program has a nasty habit of getting people killed while folks like Russia and China can put people in space just fine. They don't learn that the Chinese and Russians have had their own problems in that area. They've grown up learning that the government owes them something rather than learning that they have to build something for themselves.
One does wonder why some of them bother to write at all, sometimes, when the future they see is so bleak. I mean, there must be some hope in them to want to write and succeed somewhere, right (though most of them don't seem to understand that they ought not to quit their day jobs and that the primary goal of a writer is to entertain one's readers)?
edited by fotsgreg on 9/4/2008
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9/4/2008 2:00:01 AM
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alastair_mayer
Posts 400
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Fair points, Greg.
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- Alastair
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9/4/2008 2:06:40 AM
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mark-h
Posts 44
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Just look back at the letters columns in Interzone in the 80s and 90s. There were always complaints about Interzone stories being too pessimistic. This is not a new discussion. This is not about a trend or some "PC conspiracy".
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9/4/2008 4:52:32 AM
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damiengwalter
Posts 27
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Exactly. Interzone has always been the home of much dark, pessimistic fiction. It is British after all.
But I'm interested in the need for more optimism in SF. Hmmm...
http://damiengwalter.wordpress.com/2008/09/04/happy-sf/
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Survivor of Clarion 2008
http://damiengwalter.wordpress.com
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9/4/2008 5:38:03 AM
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Thomas R
Posts 2725
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It's easier to break a glass vase than it is to make one. Most buildings can be destroyed much faster than they are made. So it's easier in a way to imagine things worse. Take now and essentially break stuff. (By "stuff" I mean technologies, institutions, countries, etc) However if you take now and make stuff, build stuff, it can be significantly harder.
I found depressing stories much easier to write when I still wrote. And I'm a generally jolly person who can be happy staring at wall for an hour. Even my mental problem was mania without any real period of depression.
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To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow His chance is tonight it might be thine tomorrow - William Dunbar
I don't lend money to eight-year-olds, at least not anymore. And if you see Billy tell him I'm looking for him - Coach McGuirk
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9/4/2008 9:14:16 AM
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StevenLP
Posts 498
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I think one of the reasons people write or read depressing stories is because its cathartic - you've confronted your concerns or demons: so, most of us don't wander around moping even if we read a lot of stories that end unhappily.
But the short form is perhaps ideal for the more negative tale - we are less happy after ready three hundred pages of a novel to find all the goodies die horribly, but reading 20-30 pages for the same message is more acceptable. Ian Watson says* that Donald A Wollheim included a novella of his in one of his years bests - so he submitted an expanded version of the story to him as a novel ('Whores of Babylon') but Wollheim rejected it saying something like "Why would anyone pay their hard earned cash to read a depressing novel about a bunch of degenerates?"
I don't think the past was more optimistic - its human nature to complain, either about the mess the human race is in, or complaining about people who complain about the mess we're in. The latter people feeling its unpatriotic to complain about your country (but, hell, if people didn't complain the USA would still be part of the British Empire!) - and they come dangerously close to saying that bad news about their country should be supressed and good news manufactured to keep everyone happy and optimistic - as, I believe, happens in China and Russia (as you can see, I like complaining about the people who complain about people who complain about the mess we're in).
I think the big difference is that up until the sixties stories often** had a happy ending tagged on - the hero winning over impossible odds***. But the thing about impossible odds is that they're impossible, and authors wanting to be more realistic decided they either had to tone the stories down ("earth versus the half hearted invasion of the aliens who had FTL travel and technology way in advance of ours, but who were frighful cowards really") or, if they wanted to keep the odds high, have an unhappy ending. I think the change reflects a change in society and SF publishing - up until the mid-sixties editors were more likely to insist on happy endings, but authors now had a greater freedom - and you know what a miserable lot authors are!
* in his introduction to his story in the DAW Book of SF
** but by no means always
*** fortunately the alien invaders had a weak spot: our hero - whilst eating fish and chips, accidentally spills some vinegar apon a passing alien who immediately dies, their last words probably being "what a world, what a world!"
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