{"id":25701,"date":"2023-09-23T18:18:32","date_gmt":"2023-09-23T22:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=25701"},"modified":"2023-09-23T18:18:32","modified_gmt":"2023-09-23T22:18:32","slug":"23sep2023-generational-differences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/23\/23sep2023-generational-differences\/","title":{"rendered":"23SEP2023 \u2013 Generational Differences"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy first day of Fall here at the Autumnal Equinox.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, I looked around at the news to see if anything jumped out at me.\u00a0 Meh.\u00a0 Lots of stuff is going on.\u00a0 The Texas AG sat down with Tucker to talk about the impeachment hit the DOJ put out on him and how it failed.\u00a0 That was pretty interesting but I wasn\u2019t in the mood for that level of wonkery.<\/p>\n

There are all kinds of articles about Menendez but I\u2019ve got a weak stomach so the little bit I\u2019ve done already is about half the fatal dose for that stuff.<\/p>\n

But then I was watching a YouTube video by a sf critic<\/a> called Bookpilled, where he listed what he considered the top science fiction books in his opinion.\u00a0 The list was fairly interesting:<\/p>\n

Dune by Frank Herbert<\/p>\n

The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle<\/p>\n

The Stars My Destination \/ Tiger! Tiger! by Alfred Bester<\/p>\n

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley<\/p>\n

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells<\/p>\n

The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin<\/p>\n

Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith<\/p>\n

City by Clifford D. Simak<\/p>\n

Hothouse by Brian Aldiss<\/p>\n

Neuromancer by William Gibson<\/p>\n

Blood Music by Greg Bear<\/p>\n

The Dying Earth by Jack Vance<\/p>\n

Solaris by Stanislaw Lem<\/p>\n

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge<\/p>\n

Blindsight by Peter Watts<\/p>\n

So, because the list seemed thoughtful, I went onto one of his other videos.\u00a0 This one was called Battle of the Hard Sci-Fi Classics [100 Book Challenge #35-40]<\/a>.\u00a0 In this \u201cchallenge\u201d the host read one or more books by the \u201cBig Three.\u201d\u00a0 The works he read were \u201cRendezvous with Rama\u201d and \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d by Arthur C. Clarke; \u201cThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress\u201d by Robert Heinlein; \u201cI, Robot\u201d and \u201cThe Gods Themselves\u201d by Isaac Asimov.<\/p>\n

Well, I\u2019ll say Bookpilled was not particularly impressed by these golden age authors.\u00a0 Clarke and Asimov were damned with faint praise but his true scorn was reserved for poor old Bob Heinlein.\u00a0 Scathing would be a mild description of his comments about the Dean of Science Fiction.\u00a0 Not amused.<\/p>\n

And that brings me to the point of this little essay.\u00a0 The reviewer Bookpilled, is a Millennial.\u00a0 His sensibilities were formed in a different world from mine.\u00a0 Now, much of his criticism of Heinlein (and of the other two authors to a lesser degree) center around the merits of the works as literature.\u00a0 He finds fault with the characterizations of the protagonists, the seeming simplicity of the plot devices and even with the level of foreshadowing of events.<\/p>\n

And in a lot of ways, the criticism is justified.\u00a0 Heinlein\u2019s characters were very often \u201ctypes.\u201d\u00a0 The wise older man, the talented but na\u00efve young man, the omni-competent hero, the socially awkward scientist.\u00a0 And some of his books, especially in the later years were less successful as \u201cworks of art.\u201d \u00a0But Bookpilled didn\u2019t just give \u201cThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress\u201d low marks.\u00a0 He was viscerally outraged by almost everything in the book.\u00a0 He was especially upset about Heinlein\u2019s handling of sex.\u00a0 And, granted, sex is one of the truly weakest aspects of Heinlein\u2019s writing, especially (apparently) from the point of view of Millennial readers.\u00a0 But it\u2019s interesting that his writing is completely unreadable for this apparently enthusiastic science fiction reader.\u00a0 Why is this?\u00a0 Frank Herbert is approximately of Heinlein\u2019s generation but Herbert\u2019s Dune is on Bookpilled\u2019s top fifteen list of all time science fiction books.\u00a0 So, what\u2019s the deal?<\/p>\n

I think the generational difference is that when science fiction was a new art form its audience was entirely made up of young men.\u00a0 And the aspect of the work that earned it praise was almost entirely its capacity to inspire enthusiasm and wonder about the future.\u00a0 Whether it was interstellar space travel, nuclear power, or alien life forms the loftiness of the prose and the depth of characterization were almost unimportant to the success of the story.\u00a0 And so, when these older stories are read by 21st<\/sup> century critics they are not amused.\u00a0 It matters not at all that \u201cThe Moon is a Harsh Mistress\u201d is probably the first story to consider a political revolution between Earth and a space colony.\u00a0 He\u2019s read a host of books that took this concept and then updated for the present reader.<\/p>\n

In these updated versions, the protagonist may be a black trans-lesbian with anti-white-colonial credentials and the computer will be the disembodied mind of Che Guevera or Woody Allen or someone else, depending on whether it\u2019s an earnest political story, a comedy or something I can\u2019t even imagine.\u00a0 And the \u201cdiversity\u201d allows the author to virtue signal to his audience the correctness of his story.\u00a0 And if he\u2019s a talented writer it allows him to add exotic points to the writing.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s fine.\u00a0 Every generation has its own art.\u00a0 I think the important thing for me to note is that there is a place today for art that does not follow the template of the current day.\u00a0 Bookpilled is a guy that looks like he\u2019s somewhere in his early thirties.\u00a0 So, his sensibilities are in line with his generation.\u00a0 Now, I think he\u2019s probably a fair example of his cohort and I\u2019ll even say he\u2019s probably not hostile to the world view of his parents\u2019 generation.\u00a0 He just sees things from his point of view.\u00a0 But if he can enjoy Dune, Mote in God\u2019s Eye, The War of the Worlds and even Frankenstein then he is reachable through art that speaks with a very different voice than his here and now literature.<\/p>\n

So as an incipient science fiction author I think it behooves me to understand my potential market.\u00a0 These young people are intelligent (well, at least the ones I want to reach).\u00a0 Probably good writing, even if it comes from a different world view will interest them if it can provide sympathetic characters and interesting plot.\u00a0 But if my plot challenges their world view it will need to be persuasive.\u00a0 I won\u2019t be able to win them over with exposition.\u00a0 I\u2019ll need to show them what I want them to understand.\u00a0 That\u2019s the challenge.<\/p>\n

Well, why not?\u00a0 Propaganda for its own sake is pretty awful even if it\u2019s of your particular stripe.\u00a0 So, Bob Heinlein be warned.\u00a0 The Millennials have lost their patience and if you\u2019re not careful they\u2019ll take back your grandmaster\u2019s hat and robe.\u00a0 Get a copy of \u201cFifty Shades of Gray,\u201d a highlighter and drop all the dears!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy first day of Fall here at the Autumnal Equinox. So, I looked around at the news to see if anything jumped out at me.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,5,237,4,242],"tags":[68,1353,38,1355,265],"class_list":["post-25701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-current-events","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-book-review","tag-book-reviews","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n23SEP2023 \u2013 Generational Differences - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/23\/23sep2023-generational-differences\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"23SEP2023 \u2013 Generational Differences - Orion's Cold Fire\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Happy first day of Fall here at the Autumnal Equinox. 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