SH Comments
Reged: Feb 16 2004
Posts: 1056
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This thread is for comments about Rapture, by Sally Gwylan.
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genebko
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Well done! The story is artfully written in both the manner and background. The story length was just about right for the plot to manifest and resolve. The only question I’m left with is, “How is it that the blue coast can’t find her and everyone else seems to be able to do so?” But, I suppose, That’s another story . . . .
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John Thiel
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Having looked over Sally Gwylan's story, I am wondering if there is any modern science fiction that isn't about warfare? It seems to me this author would have chosen a totally different topic if it seemed that anything else was marketable.
War isn't what's on a Strange Horizon, is it?
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Jed Hartman
Fiction Editor
Reged: Oct 15 2003
Posts: 151
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I'm a little unclear about what you're asking. I didn't see a war in this story; can you clarify?
Regarding the more general point, I would say that a great deal of modern science fiction doesn't involve warfare. We've certainly published a few stories in which wars are mentioned, but the last one I can think of in which a war figured prominently on-camera was about a year ago. And few of the science fiction stories that I read in other publications feature wars either. So maybe I'm using a different definition of "warfare" than you are; can you provide a little more context for your comment?
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Anonymous
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Perhaps I'm too general in my comment. I'm not referring to declared wars, but to the general presense of warfare, or preoccupation with it, or a warfare milieu, or social conditions which are influenced by the presense of warfare or the aftermath of one. I define warfare as any aggressive conflict or the tendency toward it. eg bootleg wars, wars over censorship, etc. Besides, except for being fictitious, many wars are declared ones in modern sf; leading the league in SF readership is STAR WARS, BATTLEFIELD EARTH, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, Full Metal Jackets, Beanfield and Chainsaw Massacres, wars with nature and ETs---and as in this story, when you have a depressing environment with a tendency toward conflict and dissonance, that's a warfare environment.
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John Thiel
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The above is not intended to be anonymous. I was very worried about how my posting would be treated, but did not allow this to concern me into concealing my name.The anonymous that is automatically used if one doesn't retype one's name over it appeared on the posting.
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Alan Lattimore
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John -
Common wisdom currently holds that stories about peace, happiness and prosperity aren't interesting, that stories must contain conflict in order to hold the reader's attention.
Personally, I wonder how true that premise is. Pastorals used to be a popular literary form. Q: Has anyone run across recent genre work that doesn't depend on conflict as a major source of narrative tension?
It is interesting to me--not in a good way--that violence seems to be the default value for generating that conflict, with sex--as distinct from love--a distant runner up. What happened to more complex motivations, like duty, friendship, honor or even revenge?
People in modern America can't quite comprehend why Sam Gamgee would follow Frodo Baggins into the very hell pits of Mordor. It's easier for an alarming number of people to imagine they have a gay relatioship than they're simply lifelong friends who would risk their lives for each other.
I don't want war ruled out of the literary exploration and discussion. Wars, the results, and the reaction to war shape (or distort, if you prefer) cultures long after the immediate effects have past. This country is still coming to terms with WWII; it is my opionion that WWI and even the Civil War have yet to be fully assimilated.
Throughout much of modern history, going off to war; witnessing wholesale destruction; the loss of superiors upon whom safety depends; the death of comrades; and to return home alive, if not necessarily whole in body or spirit; has been THE defining moment in the lives of the participants. I think obsession, a la Hemmingway, would be natural.
BTW, I strongly recommend "Achilles in Vietnam."
What I don't find acceptable is what I think you're pointing out: as much as war appears in populary literature, the discussion doesn't seem to advance much. The fixtures of war are constantly recycled--the grimy grunts, the reliable sargent, the over the top looey--but we view war, soldiers, the physical and spiritual costs in pretty much the same way as when M.A.S.H ended its prime time run. (Was that late 70's? Early 80's?)
Clearly popular media--M.A.S.H., Catch 22, All's Quiet on the Western Front--can affect/advance popular culture. But when war is constantly used without some reflection on what it means, I end up with a queasy voyuristic feeling. It's a bit like the stereotypical, ritualistic rape of the cop's wife/girlfriend at the beginning of a shoot-em-up that will "justify" him killing all of the bad guys at the end of the movie. It leave me ill, and, for me, it distances me emotionally from the characters, their situation and the movie. Writers and producers who use images of soldiers fighting and dying merely to titillate without critically addressing the reality of fighting and dying are little better than vampires, and it leaves me looking for the nearest Buffy.
Best Regards,
Alan Lattimore
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Anonymous
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Class warfare, perhaps?
I set the story when I did because I find the period fascinating, and because it fit the core of the story, which is (as I see it) the trap of fixed beliefs, and how one might come to hold them even in spite of oneself.
Marketability comes in, if at all, only at the end of the process of writing. Trust me on this! My brain is much to cantankerous to go at it the other way around.
Sally
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John Thiel
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True, one can go anywhere and the chief subject matter is war. But you point out the facts when you say that non-progressive stories of this type are turgid. Science-fiction would traditionally aim at solutions to war, rather than immersing themselves in it, as one does see in Eric Frank Russell's "Plus X" and "Somewhere A Voice."
Sally's story seems to express an all-pervading sense of warfare, as if war were one of the elements of existence. And this I would dispute, not with the author but where that philosophy existed.
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John Thiel
Unregistered
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Well, the author heard from! I'd call the idea that warfare is an element of existence a fixed belief of the kind you mention, and a trap for mankind.
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