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RAYMONDS_FOLLY


About esr's stab at making hard sf
and libertarianism the core of SF:

   "A Political History of SF":
   [ref]

   (An earlier version was titled:
    "Libertarianism and the Hard SF Renaissance")

These essays by Eric S. Raymond (aka esr)
are purported to be histories of science
fiction, intended to show that the one       I contend that he made a serious
true SF is Hard SF and that there's some     mistake in writing his ideas up
intimate link between it and libertarian     as a "history": he would have
politics.                                    done better by his cause if he'd
                                             written a manifesto.

                                               It would be far better if he
                                               he'd tried to establish why
                                               more Libertarian Hard SF should
                                               be written...  you might not
                                               agree, but at least it wouldn't
                                               be factually wrong.

                                               Re-writing history to fit his
                                               view of the world is crazy on
                                               all counts; it just isn't going
                                               to persuade anyone that has any
                                               familarity with the field; and
                                               it hurts his credibility
                                               overall.


Esr (following Gregory Benford)
makes the claim "Hard SF is the        THE_HARD_EQUATIONS
core of the field".

Problems:

 (1)  Hard SF itself typically isn't very
      hard-- it's rare that it doesn't
      incorporate a rank absurdity like     FTL
      faster-than-light travel.

 (2)  It's not difficult to think of lists
      of works that are not pure Hard SF, but        Esr claims he's applying
      would seem peculiar to exclude from            the linguistic concept
      SF's core.  Here's a quick list of             of "radial categories".
      things (some well-known, some not):
                                                         The idea is that a
      Theodore Sturgeon                                  few counter-examples
        "More than Human"                                don't matter,
      Alfred Bester                                      because he's after a
        "The Stars My Destination"                       general concept.
      Clifford D. Simak's
        "Time is the Simplest Thing"                       How many would be
      James Blish                                          too many?
        "Jack of Eagles"     JACK_OF_EAGLES
      A. E. van Vogt
        "Slan"
      Roger Zelazny
        "Lord of Light"
      Samuel R. Delany        DELANY
        "Babel-17"
      Fritz Leiber
        "The Big Time"
      E.E. Smith          THROUGH_THE_LENS
        "Lensman" series.

 (3)  In general, esr continually gives short-shrift
      to writers that might contradict (or at least
      complicate) his thesis:

         Ursula LeGuin,
         Samuel R. Delany,
         Cordwainer Smith,
         Philip K. Dick,
         William Gibson,
         Bruce Sterling...


That a respect for freedom is necessary for
progress is probably indisputable (though
exactly what that means could be argued).

   What that has to do with SF isn't clear                IN_DEEP
   to me; the suggestion that SF has to
   remain grounded in reality in order for      Sounds good to
   it to remain a popular success seems         me, but it ain't
   like quite a leap of faith.                  what post-Trek
                                                SF is about.
            (Are you tempted to invoke
            another standard of quality
            besides popularity?  I'd go
            along, but remember that esr    Notably, Gregory Benford
            is being a free-market          has no such illusions:
            libertarian here.)
                                                "Pursuit of the technically
                                                complex and aesthetically
Esr essentially claims that the                 unfamiliar limits the hard
central feature of SF is an                     SF audience."
embrace of change, and that's
what it has in common with the                  THE_HARD_EQUATIONS
'tarians.

             But the people who call
             themselves "Progressives"     (And nor do the people
             don't think of themselves     who call themselves
             as the enemies of change,     "Conservatives" regard
                                           themselves as the
                                           enemies of progress.)


Does it really make sense to look
at the Futurian/Galaxy school of         (And how does he feel about
SF as Marxist?                           Star Trek?  Tremendously
                                         popular, but hardly
  "The Space-Merchants" by               libertarian in premise.)
  Pohl and Kornbluth is a
  well-regarded satire of
  advertising and one might
  say "capitalism raging        And very few things published
  out of control".  Does        in Galaxy were anywhere
  that make it "marxist"?       near as political as this.
  I think Esr betrays a "if
  you're not with me you
  must be against me"
  mind-set here...


Was cyberpunk really a "failed revolution"?
I'm not so sure it deserves to be thought of
as a revolution (and esr pretty much says so
as well), and I'm pretty certain it wasn't a                     Maybe it's
failure (e.g. Gibson and Sterling are both                       a cultural
critical and commercial successes).                              mismatch...
                                                                 For esr,
  The role that the cyberpunk                                    punk == bad?
  revolution needs to play in
  esr's story here seems pretty    Possibly, the real reason
  forced: is cyberpunk hostile to  esr regards cyberpunk as an
  hard SF?  To libertarianism?     affront is because it's not     (or not
                                   romantic?                        always)

                                      "Hard" SF has always been
                                      uncomfortable with the notion
                                      that human beings can be
                                      considered as material
                                      entities, biological machines.

                                          The human spirit must not
                                          be completely dependant on
                                          a physical substrate.

                                            Though as premises go, that
                                            would seem pretty Hard.

                                               HARD_PURPOSE



                        Can Philip K. Dick be
                        classified as a "new
                        wave relic"?  Dick is
                        increasingly respected      And he started
                        and more widely read        writing a decade
                        as time goes on.            or so before the
                                                    "new wave".
     Did Heinlein reach his "peak"
     with "The Moon is a Harsh
     Mistress"?  I might be inclined
     to think so, but it certainly
     wasn't the peak of his sales
     and popularity.  By that            Possibly, esr is presuming
     standard it was a minor work        (unconsciously?)  the existence
     compared to the books published     of a "real SF fandom" that's a
     by Heinlein during his long         smaller set than the people who
     decline.  How can those later       are actually reading the books?
     sales be shrugged off?  (Isn't
     the market always right?)


             Think about the absences in this
             history, e.g. no mention of Ursula
             LeGuin.  Now *I* don't
             particularly like her stuff, but       LEGUIN
             many people do, and for this to
             be a tale of hard libertarian sf
             triumphant you've got to write
             her out of the story...



Another issue: how "hard" was Campbellian hard SF,
anyway?  Esr shrugs off faster than light travel as
a minor exception to the rule of scientific rigor,
but is that at all reasonable?  If you're dealing
with the future of human interstellar exploration,     FTL
sticking in FTL automatically shoves you off into
the realm of non-rational fantasies...

And you could argue that Campbell's later obessions
with flaky nonsense (Dean drive, dianetics,
hieronymus machine, etc) somewhat undermines his
claim for intellectual rigor.


There's all sorts of odd stuff here:

   "Reagan's threat to build SDI at the
   Reykjavik summit with Gorbachev in 1986
   triggered the collapse of Soviet                                
   strategic ambitions as Mikhail Gorbachev                                     
   realized that the Soviet Union could not                     Aug 16, 2023
   match the U.S.'s raise in the                                
   geopolitical poker game. The Berlin Wall       Yes: a devotee of scientific
   fell three years later; science fiction        materialism envisioning Saint
   saved the world. Somewhere, Campbell and       Campbell and Saint Heinlein
   Heinlein were probably smiling."               smiling down from heaven.

Myself I regard the connection bettween
SDI and the collapse of the Berlin Wall       Surely, a true libertarian
as an interesting hypothesis, but I've        would not presume a communist
never seen anything that I would call         dictatorship to be a viable
proof on the subject.  I could also           form of government in the long
easily believe that it was total luck         term...
that the Soviet Union collapsed on
Reagan's watch.                                       Why was it necessary for
                                                      anyone to do or say
I'm not even sure that I buy                          anything to get the
that "optimism" is a key                              Soviet Union to fall?
component of hard SF...  Algis
Budrys has made the point that
much of "modern sf" (including
the sf written by Campbell) has
a certain somber tone to it.         How about some of
                                     Asimov's early work on
 Consider the "Galaxy Core"          the Foundation series?
 series of Gregory Benford,
 whose premise is that humanity      DEAD_HAND
 is attacked by a powerful alien
 force and loses.

   Humanity must survive as a
   conquered, subject race from
   then on... there is no
   feel-good revolution pulled
   out of a hat in the last chapter.


Esr mentions L. Neil Smith, J. Neil
Schulman and so on -- and alludes to how
bad their stuff really is-- but claims
we're supposed to regard their strong
sales to SF fans as significant.

   Are we tracking artistic success or are
   we tracking popular sales?  If it's         DHALGREN
   sales, what happened to "Dhalgren" in
   this history? He claims that explicitly
   libertarian SF books "sell astonishingly    Maybe he means it's astonishing
   well"...  more so than than Ursula K        considering their obvious lack
   LeGuin?  William Gibson?  Bruce             of quality.
   Sterling?  Philip K. Dick?




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