Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 23:56:41 +0300 From: Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com> To: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: internationalization Message-ID: <19980613235641.01088@techunix.technion.ac.il> In-Reply-To: <19980613211430.51924@follo.net>; from Eivind Eklund on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:14:30PM %2B0200 References: <199806121443.HAA09471@mailgate.cadence.com> <199806121619.JAA08857@usr02.primenet.com> <19980613212837.A17939@doriath.org> <19980613211430.51924@follo.net>
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You, Eivind Eklund, were spotted writing this on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:14:30PM +0200:
> I believe you're missing the point of SF[1].
I don't think so. I've done a _lot_ of SF reading, no less than your
usual hacker ;) I somehow grew out of it, and haven't been reading
much SF for some years, and carefully picking what SF I do read as to
avoid what I see as the usual trashy novel in the genre. I understand
very well the fascination of SF; I simply think that truly great
literature is usually much more fascinating. Because it's usually
not banal or clichesque, for one thing.
> The point isn't to see
> how many layers of allegories and symbols one can create, or how
> clever one can be with words.
But neither is this the point of good fiction. Allegories and symbols
are but tools, which undo the beauty of a book when overused. Playing
with words is crosswords, not literature.
If you think great literature is about allegories and symbols and
wordplay, you're seriously mistaken - maybe you had bad literature
teachers? :) It's mainly about art, and about
beauty, and about spontaneously recreating new reality.
> The point is to evoke a sense of wonder
> ("sensawunda"), to show how people could react to changes,
Where are those people? Most of SF novels pay no attention to people
at all. Even the main characters are unbelievably shallow; they only
exist to illustrate author's ideas, they're not "real" by a long shot.
Which SF author knows how to describe his main hero smiling - did
you notice that almost any person you meet in your life smiles
differently? When SF authors do try to attribute some unique
characteristics to their heroes, they do it with banal metaphors and
worn-out images. This is perfectly acceptable for SF readers only
because of the non-written agreement between authors and readers -
authors are pretending they are describing human beings (or alien
beings for that matter), and readers are accustomed to not having
any idea how they look like, what clothes they wear, what are
their gestures, dreams, habits. It's OK because the reader is keen
to skip to the next great hyperdrive invention the hero is about
to unleash on the humanity. The people described aren't people,
they're badly made dolls.
The sense of wonder is truly a great thing. But is it all that
one can enjoy in literature? What about the joy of words, of
unusual images, of novel and ingenious ways to describe human
existence, emotions, thoughts and ideas? Compared to a Kafka
novel, most of SF's originality shrinks to utter banality! When
Tolstoy describes Anna Karenina, you feel you know her better than
people close to you in your own life - compare that to the usual
doll-hero in SF! (and doll-heroes they almost always hero; the funky
heroes of cyberpunk, for example, are as much dolls as in the mainstream,
they're simply forced into a funky outlook by the author).
> to make you
> aware of the infinite potential of technology and people, to paint a
> few brushstrokes at the edge of your imagination, showing what may yet
> become your (or your descendants) normal day.
> I certainly don't find it strange that this is what engineers prefer
> reading - many of us became engineers by inspiration from SF, and all
> of us work with shaping the future. We want to predict and shape, not
> read anout what fictional people could have done in the last century,
> unless it helps us understand the present or predict the future.
Sure. That's the sign of our generation: look into the bright future,
forget about the old and boring past. We're going to have nanotechnology
soon, what do we care about Rabelais or Beethoven? The truth is that
with all our wonders of technology, we find ourselves in less and less
educated world, in the world where people are able to appreciate
beauty and have taste in things less and less with every year. With
all the wonders of alien technology, cyberpunk, subspace travel and
mindwaves SF as a genre still remains on the same level as trashy
romance novels and soap operas. The characters are just as shallow,
the plots are just as banal, the reality is just as second-hand and
trivial. And it plays the same social role, too: exclusively
entertaining, rather than helping one to learn more, to understand more.
I'm not surprised engineers love reading SF. I'm surprised that *good*
engineers often still read only SF. I treat programming as art (as
much as I'm able to): and I perceive really well-desgined OS kernel, really
fast and nontrivial algorithm, as works of art. I'm surprised that
people possessing amazing intelligence and sense of beauty, allowing
them to create such extremely complex and yet extremely beautiful works of art
are often uneducated in the vast body of amazing art accumulated by
humanity in the last thousands of years, so blind to the beauty of
good literature.
Sincerely,
Anatoly.
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton
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