[ExI] Defeatist Science Fiction Writers

[Damien Broderick]

At 03:44 PM 6/16/2008 +0200, Stefano wrote of:

<http://www.amazon.com/Technophobia-Science-Fiction-Posthuman-Technology/dp/0292709862/>

>Daniel Dinello, where the author, who is a proud technophobe and 
>neoluddite himself, argues with a very extensive and persuasive 
>range of exemple that science fiction's legacy is a grand, single 
>warning, indictment and  condemnation of any  transhuman temptation.

This is nonsense. I see at amazon he's praised for his extensive 
bibliography; I have to wonder how much of it is sci-fi (mostly 
drivel) and how much sf (the pure quill).

But--

>Of course, very important exceptions remains, such as Heinlein or 
>Anderson, but I wonder if we do not often find ourselves in SF 
>novels and movies meanings and inspirations that are radically 
>opposite to those intended by their authors and directors...

It's obvious that one major device available to the astute sf writer 
or editor (and about the only one available to the dickheads) is: 
given novum X, what can go wrong as a result? Who gets hurt by this? 
It's a classic narrative ploy in a commercial market. On top of that, 
there's the dystopian strain running through and adjacent to sf, 
where bulking up the aspects of current trends we dislike makes for 
an exciting tale with added moralizing vitamins for those who wish to 
feel improved. For all his madcap energy, Phil Dick did this a lot, 
which makes it easy to conscript and bastardize/dumb-down his stories 
into action movies full of Bad Things coming to get us, and at the 
same time hail and canonize him from within an academy where the word 
"anxiety" remains a touchstone to Deep Thought.

Damien Broderick