I don't care if people write conservative SF, but when they start trying to make a "movement" out of a masturbatory molehill, and start writing up frickin "manifestos" I get really frickin' irked.
You need a manifesto in order to write fiction? Shit, why didn't anyone ever tell me sooner! I better start writing my pet interests into a manifesto, so I can never alter those interests again as I increase my breadth and range of interests as I get older and wiser. Only emotionless heroines! Only bisexuality! Only stories about war! No men allowed!
Now there's a great way to castrate my writing.
It's like watching somebody jumping up and down in a crowded room going, "Look at me! Look at me! I'm hot! I'm hot!" for about 15 mintues before the bullshit factor sets in, and you realize they're actually screaming without any clothes on.
I feel the old sniff of elitism: REAL SCIENCE vs. THOSE CRAZY SWORD & SOCIOLOGY BUG-TECH FREAKSHOWS.
We must get back to Real Science! Real Men Doing Real Science!
REAL MEN (science) vs. FEM FICTION (not "real" science)
Don't think there's not an undercurrent of that there, too. A lot of SF is already terribly conservative. We don't need to put more constraints on tech and social mores to make it more so. Really.
I'm hoping these guys will peter out soon enough.
The discussion's here.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Real Men Doing Real Science
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2 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
Hell's bells. I never thought there was anything remotely masculine in it. We're just tired of those boring cliche's that constrain normal f/sf. It's a constraint device, like choosing vegetarianism, that forces you out of a rut and up where you can see the wider horizon. That's why the Manifesto will be burnt as soon as it has served its purpose and gets boring. I don't think we are near that point yet.
Anyway, how can you call it "conservative"? Manifestos are what Communists write.
http://myron-ebell.blogspot.com/
Posted by goatchurch
I wasn't calling a general "manifesto" conservative (it depends on what said manifesto says), I was calling the Mundane manifesto conservative... and boring.
As I read it, a bunch of people who don't actually write much fiction appear to be trying to get a bunch of other people to write boring fiction that isn't throwing out cliche's so much as it is going back to the old "reality" crutch.
I'd say the manifesto's one-line description would be something like: Just cause you dream it, doesn't mean you can do it.
Might as well join the list of the literary snobs who say they're writing "absolute truth." It's another "we're real scientists, and you're not" elitist argument.
I think putting constraints on reality decapitates a writer's imagination, and limits our possibilities for the future.
Alex had the right idea: "It's a faux-intellectualism that wants to think it's smarter than it is, but is just prattling. And prattling doesn't enact societal change."
Loud voices who preach what should be written without writing really bore me.
Posted by Kameron Hurley
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