Hot take re: 'sense of wonder':
It's a waste of time. If you know why an idea is interesting, and you're a competent enough stylist to express that to a reader, then you don't need it. If you don't *really* know why an idea attracts you, or you're unwilling to embrace that, or you can't explain it -- well, sense of wonder is just going to highlight that and make the whole thing feel cheap. Nothing ages worse than fake awe. SF is a literature of ideas, so the draw ought to be subject to analysis
This isn't the same thing as claiming that science fiction should not have style, or that it should wear its ideas on its sleeve. Interesting ideas can be encoded in stylistic flourishes (as Gibson does). But, they need to exist, and they need to be expressed in such a way that a critical reader can, with effort, identify them. Otherwise you're just transcribing a weird dream you had -- and that's not going to be interesting without the context to decode it.
@enkiv2 Oh hi so talking about weird dreams, my name is William Hope Hodgson and I just had this pretty awesome nightmare and I think I'm gonna make a novel out of it
heck if I know what it's about but it involves the sun being dead and me punching a bunch of monsters to rescue a girl and definitely there would be motorcycles and electric guitars if they had been invented yet which they haven't
@natecull
I think WHH basically knew how to emphasize the parts of his weird dreams that were gonna resonate with a pulp audience. (Lovecraft too.)
@enkiv2 It turns out that occult racism was VERY appealing to the early 20th century audience
also just plain ordinary racism
IN A GRIM, FORSAKEN WORLD OF TOMORROW where the Chinese have airships, there is a noodle stand on every corner
Next, on: Blade Rogers, Apocalypse Runner
@wrenpile @natecull @enkiv2 not hugely confident on this, but I've got a feeling that contemporary radical liberal individualism (you be you, you don't owe anyone else anything, rigid social structures are all forms of oppression) is going to end up getting smashed hard and there will be a real lurch back towards group identities. How that manifests itself, I dunno: could be socialism, could be fasvistic nationalism, could be TradCaths…
@natecull @wrenpile @enkiv2 I mean, there was a whole bunch of stuff that probably *did* need to be dismantled (see the rolling discovery of institutional child sexual abuse everywhere children could be found), but I don't think that will do much to temper the anti-PoMo pushback that's starting to build
@natecull @wrenpile @enkiv2 as an example, there's a startling lack of awareness about what the death of mainstream organised religion in Western countries actually means. Something that was at the social core of *every* community for at least the past millennium has basically vanished within two generations, and nothing seems to be replacing it. I don't think people truly appreciate how significant that is.
@spinflip @natecull @enkiv2 But it didn’t basically vanish, it got considerably smaller while to a large extent shifting in terms of sect and ritual.
And plenty of people appreciate how significant that is, but those people tend to be among the remaining believers.
You don’t see those people much on the Fediverse, but they exist.
@wrenpile @natecull @enkiv2 I'm not claiming that organised religion has vanished entirely, but that it's no longer at the centre of mainstream society (in places like the university I work at, being religious is uncommon enough for it to be a notable personality trait). The religious culture warriors are well aware of this, but the liberals and lefties I spend time with don't seem to realise what they've lost in that cultural transition.
As one of the 'remaining believers', I used to spend a lot of time thinking about this, and I guess I still do, although now I find that I see the institutional churches as a very complex set of institutions that have both good and qualities.
One of the interesting things I find is that the stated goals of churches (often, 'preaching' or 'worship') are kind of at odds with the actual goals (charity and social networking, which are actually more important).
Part of what's happened to religion, I think, is also what's happened to everything else, from the economy to the environment to media to politics: systems have been disintermediated and individualism has allowed more exploration of different combinations ... but has also reduced the social cohesion that comes from belonging to a group.
Maybe the pendulum will swing back from individuals to groups, again. That won't be entirely bad, but also not entirely good.
@natecull @wrenpile @enkiv2 yeah, I'm absolutely an atheist for various reasons, but I'm all up for going to churches for hymn-singing and drinking tea while catching up with the locals. I'd be happy to do that without the religious component (that said, not actually sure that "secular churches" could really get and keep regular attendees happy to give enough money to keep things going without invoking the fear of God)
I feel like 'fandom', as a literal modern mythology, is kind of accidentally filling the space left by religion.
It's also why 'fandom wars' and arguments over 'canonicity' have now become so vicious: because they are now literal religious disputes. They are about the canonical choice and representation of social virtues.
@natecull @spinflip @enkiv2 This isn’t exactly new; there was a vicious fan fight in the late 19th century over Richard Wagner’s work, to pick an example.
But you could say that dispute, which took place among a cosmopolitan elite, was post-religious, I guess.
Were there vicious fan fights in medieval Europe? I can’t think of any.
@wrenpile @natecull @enkiv2 the hippies are now seen as naive sellouts who indulged themselves with feel-good drugs and woo, got bored, and sold out to become investment bankers (I don't really accept this narrative, but it's perceived as real). I feel like today's views on the power of self-defining individuals are going to be seen way more harshly than that, at least for a while
(ffs, triple delete-repost for typos)