From: jessec@yang.earlham.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Diamond-hard SF
Date: 18 Nov 92 21:58:19 GMT
 <1992Nov17.130534.20533@yang.earlham.edu> <1ecae0INNsqf@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana

Now what's all this, then?

   Curtis Yarvin (curtis@cs.berkeley.edu) writes:

>In article <1992Nov17.130534.20533@yang.earlham.edu> 
>jessec@yang.earlham.edu writes: 
>>
>>   More importantly: why read fiction if it can't tell you anything about 
>>what it is to be human? To be alive?
>
>I don't know about you, Jesse, but I already have a pretty good feeling
>of what it is to be alive.
>
>Perhaps a little coffee in the morning would do you good?
>
>c

   At the risk of appearing to have no operating sarcasm meter, I'll take 
that seriously for a minute... You think you really understand it? Human 
experience? We all *live* it, but what *is* it and what on earth does it 
mean?... These questions aren't answered by simply saying "Well, I am 
alive, no further explanation needed".  Not to my satisfaction, anyway; 
and I daresay it shouldn't be to yours.  What was it that dead Greek dude 
said-- something about the unexamined life...? But I digress.

   Curtis continues, next post:

> jessec@yang.earlham.edu (Jesse) takes 'em on:
> 
>>   As for cliched ideas: traditionally, hard SF has been full of them.  
> 
> The man has perception.  Real perception.  You got to admit it.

   Sorry, felt I had to point out the obvious...

>>You refer to several of them, including the enshrinement of an idea of 
>>the inevitability of space colonization.
> 
> Ouch!  What a blow.  We're seeing vicious jabs, here.  It can't
> be long for Szabo.
> 
>>Gibson, far from a computer engineer, or even a
>>computer-literate layperson, understood the emerging reality of
>>a postindustrial technosphere far better than the hard SF
>>contingent of the late seventies or early eighties did-- maybe
>>because he understood it as a series of changes in the patterns
>>of everyday human life, and tried to grasp at it through
>>techniques such as the hijacked language (i.e., "virus" and
>>"sarariman") of *Neuromancer*, *Count Zero*, etc.
> 
> A monster non-sequitur to the jaw!  And it's all over, folks.
> The referee is stepping in.  Gentlemen, we have a winner.

   Why is it a non sequitur? I was trying to respond to Szabo's contention 
that whatever it is that is not "diamond-hard SF"-- "spongy-soft SF", 
perhaps?-- somehow fails to connect to reality.  Gibson, to many, 
epitomizes spongy-softness, since he got his feel for the emerging global 
network culture by chatting up hackers instead of reading electronics 
manuals.  He didn't even (gasp) own a computer until more recently; of 
course, it's not like most of the writers of hard SF have gone to other 
planets or operated nuclear reactors themselves, but hey.
   In particular, Szabo praised hard SF for understanding economics in a 
high tech society, which ironically is one of "soft" Gibson's strong 
points.  He saw the new electronic economy as something more and more 
seamlessly integrated with other information systems, with a corresponding 
erosion of privacy, and understood the relationship of the black market to 
its legal counterpart, its dynamics and ironies.  Anyway, this kind of 
grasp of social reality seems to elude the writers of hard SF, probably 
because its human focus is outside their interests...

> "That last blow was really what did it, Tom."
> 
> "Yeah, Joey, a tremendous hit.  We haven't seen anything like
> it since the great days of Maroney.  The way he just rolled
> those two points off, rat-tat-tat, same paragraph - it
> was beautiful, Tom.  It was."
> 
> "I have to agree with that, Joey.  Why, I haven't seen the likes
> of that since the day I was twelve and my older brother nailed
> me with 'Disco is dead - punk lives!'  I saw stars for an hour.
> The - the sheer myopia!"

   Hope you're not comparing my arguments to a simple bashing-one's-
aesthetic-preference-over-another's-head.  I think we can dispute 
judgements about literature without being quite so Cro-Magnon as all that.

> "We've heard rumors, Tom, of illegal substance abuse in the
> Jesse camp, and while we're certainly not ready to come to
> a conclusion on this delicate question without a definitive
> urinalysis report, I think that last blow does bear witness
> that something mysterious is going on."

   Illegal substance abuse, yet?? Hmm.

   This has got to be the strangest argument I've seen in a while.  Can't 
tell what you're saying for the life of me, but it sure as hell is an 
entertaining read. :-)


   --Jesse.