SciFi history?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Politics in sci-fi are ready for a makeover.

In Arthur C. Clarke's Imperial Earth (I think it was that one), he depicted the government of the U.S. A. at its tricentennial as using a computer program to choose the President every 4 years. Most Presidents, not having political aspirations, and mainly not wanting to go down in history as being a total f***up, did their best to do a good job in office.

In a number of my books, I've hinted at (but not provided detail for) a government centered around a computer program that analyzed the country's stats and needs and made the top-level decisions, and it was up to human representatives to carry them out. I called it a Logocracy.

Of course, sci-fi has given us a lot of the present government forms. Even in Star Trek's supposedly "utopian" future, we have seen corrupt politicians (and Starfleet officers). We've also seen utopias, dystopias, and corporatocracies, run by humans, robots, and occasionally by aliens. But rarely do they turn out to be benign... even the utopias are generally considered "stagnant." Or the best governments, even when they can work, are usually staffed with idiots.

Why can't sci-fi depict working, desirable governments?

[BenG]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Why can't sci-fi depict working, desirable governments?

They have nothing in real life to model it on.

[mike_bike_kite]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Why can't sci-fi depict working, desirable governments?

and what would our heroes be fighting for?
where would be the story?

besides SciFi should always try and stick to plausable story lines.

[jeffcobb]

I kinda like the governmental model on Firefly; order and status quo here, freedom-lovers over there. Yep, definitely a Browncoat. Can't wait for the movie.

[Joebill]

Only some of the sf I have read had non-functional governments.

Some don't even mention governments at all. There are some, but they aren't part of the plot, what the good guys are against, etc.

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I believe the technical term for that usage is "As you know, Bob...", and applied to the sort of expository blobs intended to convey background to the reader.

SF writers may succeed or fail based on how deftly they handle it.
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Dennis

The technical term that my friends and I use for it is AWAKing: "As we all know..." Except it's not really expository blobs; it's dialogue serving the function of exposition.

I listened to a radio play of the Foundation trilogy, and there's a conversation that actually starts with those words. <wince>

It's the mark of a good writer to be able to accomplish the purpose of an AWAK without actually doing it. Or, as Dennis says, by doing it so deftly the reader doesn't notice, or mind. In most cases, smart exposition is a better choice. Weaving it into the thread is the best choice.

[Williamlk]

Originally Posted by HamsterRage

It's fun to go back and read hard SciFi from the 30s to the 50s just to see how much they missed. EE Doc Smith stuff is especially cool for that.

Miniaturization seems to have completely passed by most authors. They make everything huge to accommodate the gigantic machines.

I couldn't agree more. You said it perfectly! There is something to be said for keeping it real and keeping it simple.

[Joebill]

Which brings up one of my pet peeves... the claim that all sf predicts something.

Even the Grand Masters never predicted home computers, their futures had kids take calculus in elementary school, with slide rules.

Uhm, old bamboo item to work with log tables.

What are log tables ?

Uhm. You'll just have to look it up.

a web page with an actual photo of a slide rule:
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/slidrul.htm

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by starrigger

The technical term that my friends and I use for it is AWAKing: "As we all know..." Except it's not really expository blobs; it's dialogue serving the function of exposition.

I listened to a radio play of the Foundation trilogy, and there's a conversation that actually starts with those words. <wince>

It's the mark of a good writer to be able to accomplish the purpose of an AWAK without actually doing it. Or, as Dennis says, by doing it so deftly the reader doesn't notice, or mind. In most cases, smart exposition is a better choice. Weaving it into the thread is the best choice.

The worst example I can think of was an early John Norman Gor novel (before female slavery and BDSM took over the series). He's describing an impending sea battle between two fleets, nicely building the mood, and then stops for a multi-page exposition on Gorean warship design and naval tactics (largely adapted from Roman galleys,) before getting down to the actual battle. Talk about a mood breaker. I decided his editor had to be asleep at the switch.

The best example was brought to mind by the recent report of the death of British SF writer E. C. Tubb at 91. Tubb is best known here for the Dumarest of Terra series. Earl Dumarest stows away as a boy in an interstellar tramp freighter, whose captain takes a liking to him. He travels further and further into the galaxy, learning along the way to be a deadly fighter. He decides as an adult that he'd like to see Earth again, but he's traveled so far people have either never heard of Earth or think it's a myth. The series is about his efforts to find Earth again, traveling from world to world looking for clues. In the process, he finds himself repeatedly running up against the Cyclan, a quasi-religious order with hidden motives. Members of the order voluntarily undergo an operation that removes their ability to feel emotion, and their goal is to succeed well enough at their appointed tasks to be selected to have their brains removed and connected in parallel in a great organic computer that is answering all the questions of the universe.

Tubb wrote 33 Dumarest books all told. He couldn't assume readers had read any other books in the series aside from the one they were reading at the moment, so he had to recapitulate the back story enough for them to understand who Dumarest was and what he was doing. He did it in a paragraph or so in each book, and did it differently every time.

I just saw a note that he got word he had sold his most recent novel just before he died, which pleased me no end.
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Clearly some authors handle those chores better than others. A lot also depends on the content. In the Doc Savage pulps, the authors generally described the main characters in every book of the series, as well as details about where they lived, what they did, about their toys and tools and vehicles, etc, etc... but in such a way as not to bog down the story.

They were also good at concise explanations, applied only at the point where it fit into the story, and rarely as exposition. Occasionally, a character would say something that would obliquely provide such detail, such as: "Boy, Ham, your snappy outfits must drive the Saville Row tailors wild with envy!" "Sure, but they know that if they touch him, he's also great at suing their eyeballs off."

The DS stories also expounded on whatever technology was being used to threaten the good guys, but as they knew they were largely writing to young readers, they avoided technobabble and kept details thin, usually suggesting some scientific theory and then saying, "They must have used that principle to create the contraption"... or they narrated about characters having a "highly complex discussion that would have boggled the mind of most laymen," or something to that effect.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

The DS stories also expounded on whatever technology was being used to threaten the good guys, but as they knew they were largely writing to young readers, they avoided technobabble and kept details thin, usually suggesting some scientific theory and then saying, "They must have used that principle to create the contraption"... or they narrated about characters having a "highly complex discussion that would have boggled the mind of most laymen," or something to that effect.

The technique is effective regardless of the age of the reader. In most cases, the story revolves around what the technology will let you do. Exactly how it does it is largely beside the point. You're better showing your characters doing whatever it does and exploring the effects and implications, than going into extensive detail about How It All Works. A couple of sentences of handwaving ("The Freneticizer allows a starship to open a wormhole to an arbitrary destination...") is usually enough. The point isn't the wormhole - it's where it lets you go instantly, and what you find when you get there.
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Dennis

[kindlekitten]

Originally Posted by Joebill

Which brings up one of my pet peeves... the claim that all sf predicts something.

Even the Grand Masters never predicted home computers, their futures had kids take calculus in elementary school, with slide rules.

Uhm, old bamboo item to work with log tables.

What are log tables ?

Uhm. You'll just have to look it up.

a web page with an actual photo of a slide rule:
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/slidrul.htm

oh I have to disagree! Heinlein had home computers!

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

oh I have to disagree! Heinlein had home computers!

In later books. In earlier ones, his characters used mechanical devices, like circular slide rules. Andy Libby's interest as an early character was his ability to do math in his head that everyone else had to use a calculator or a slide rule for.

He did have things like ebook viewers, which implied that sort of capability, but he simply presented them as existing and didn't go into how they worked.

For that matter, Asimov's Foundation series has a character using what we would consider voice recognition software to write an essay for a class, but again, he just presents it as something they can do, and doesn't try to explain how it works.

Heinlein told a story about unrolling a sheet of butcher paper on his kitchen table, and he and his wife Virginia then independently worked a problem in orbital ballistics to check that a spacecraft could get from point X to point Y in time Z as required by a story. (He wanted Virginia to cross-check him because he thought her math was better than his.) He told this story to a visitng West Point cadet who said "But sir, why didn't you just use a computer?", and was properly abashed when Heinlein replied "My dear boy, this was in 1947!"
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Dennis

[BenG]

Tom Swift (or maybe it was Tom Swift Jr.) invented several specialized "little idiot" desktop computers. There was one for calculating orbits,one for translations, etc. They had "a million transistors per square inch".

[starrigger]

Originally Posted by BenG

Tom Swift (or maybe it was Tom Swift Jr.) invented several specialized "little idiot" desktop computers. There was one for calculating orbits,one for translations, etc. They had "a million transistors per square inch".

That must have been very late Tom Swift Jr. In the TS Jr books I grew up with (the first twenty or so), he still used a slide rule.

In the Tom Corbett Space Cadet series, the cadets studied from book tapes. In fact, one plot line starts with trouble over there being only one set of tapes on a subject, and they don't share nicely the way their mothers taught them. The creators envisioned electronic reading, but not the ease of copying. I'm not sure anyone foresaw that.