This is not an exhaustive model and it will inevitably break under the weight of counter examples (which is a good thing). However, like all models it helps to conceptualize underlying ideas and so allows us to see how reality departs from the model.
The axes are:
Reality distortion: Magic versus science. How is the fundamental reality different from the one we know about? Is it via new scientific principles (faster than light drives etc) or magic? What if it is both? (then the work is a line rather than a point!)
Plot interaction: is this story driven by interaction with things or people? Aliens, elves all count as ‘people’! More action orientated plot events counts as ‘things’ i.e. shooting at people doesn’t count as interaction with people! What I mean by ‘people’ is interpersonal interaction, social interaction, smooching etc.
Fictional setting: Fictional future or fictional past?
The blue rectangle projected onto axes 2 & 3 shows a space in which the story doesn’t play with magic or science. A blue dot shows a possible position for a historical romance. A book like 1984 would sit in a near future space (ignore the title date – it is set in the reader’s near future).
In the next graph I’ve shaded a rectangle projected onto the space which shows only stories set in the present. A blue blob shows a position for a paranormal romance story.
There is a section in the Sandifer-Day discussion (review here and transcript here)
Sandifer: Right, but when we’re talking about a world where people are – where there are subtle evils and mocking misrepresentations, isn’t a degree of skepticism a good thing? Isn’t a resistance to anyone’s demand that you should obey them a good thing?
Day: No! Not if what is being told is true! How is being skeptical about the truth a good thing? All that means is that you’re opening yourself up to something that is false. Are you skeptical about 2+2?
Sandifer: I am not skeptical about 2+2, but the question becomes…
Day: Right, but would you consider it to be good for someone to be skeptical about 2+2?
Sandifer: But at least within this story, we’re not talking…
Day: Then you agree with me.
Sandifer sensibly ignores Day’s point because it is a distraction. 2+2=4 is an analytical truth whereas the issues that Sandifer was referring to is not even obviously something to which truth values can be applied (whether you should obey your superior in general) but if it was would be a synthetic truth. However I would also say that she is wrong to be not skeptical about 2+2=4. The right thing to say is either “Yes, I am skeptical about 2+2=4 although I have strong reasons to regard it as true universally”. I’ll need to explain that particularly as I’m obviously very much in the pro-mathematics-isn’t-it-great-camp.
[In which our hero learns the future fate of the Sad Puppy campaign and discovers a list of the Puppy Slates of the future]
I had been sitting in the small library in the south wing of Felapton Hall, perusing the annals of the Felapton estate in my set of antique Kindles, when I was jarred from my studies by a sudden ache in my ankle. Such an ache could mean one of two things – either my gout had returned or there was a disturbance in the space-time continuum.
I jumped to my feet, which displaced Timothy the talking cat from my lap and sent him scurrying up the pile of dusty Kobo’s at my feet, where he perched complaining loudly about something called “Jade Helm”. As always I ignored both the cat and the pain in my ankle and strode purposely to the croquet-green. It has been my long experience that temporal occurrences are most apt to happen in the vicinity of sporting activities. It is for this reason that I had been dispatched to Australia only recently to ensure that a time-displaced troop of Varangian guard did not slaughter the Collingwood Australian-Rules Football team under a mistaken belief that they were the hereditary enemies of the Emperor of Byzantium.
Sure enough as I approached the exquisitely manicured turf of the croquet green, I could smell the heady scent of burnt grass and tachyons. A late 23rd century chronoPrius had manifested itself and all the visual evidence suggested that it had arrived without sufficient due care and attention to the vagaries of the space-time vortex.
The hatch cracked open and a chrononaut part-stepped and part collapsed out of the opening. [Timothy advises that I should say “a beautiful chronoatrix” so readers are not too alarmed when I reveal shortly that the chrononaut was a woman. Instead I’m placing this brief note here so that any sensitive minds can anticipate this revelation. Also she wasn’t that beautiful in the circumstances, having just crashed through the time-walls without an adequate temporal-paradox shield] Continue reading “A warning from the future”
I mentioned in my last post on Pink SF Puppies the Rabid Puppy’s objection to any vague hint of romance fiction in science fiction.
Even the tank is pink
According to Day, Pink SF has the following qualities and is supposedly the dominant form of SF currently: (edited excepts)
It is ‘necrobestial’ love triangles.
It is using the superficial trappings of science fiction to tell ‘goopy, narcissistic female-oriented story’
Pink SF primarily concerns a) choosing between two lovers
b) being true to yourself,
c) enacting ex post facto revenge upon the badthinkers and meanies who made the author feel bad about herself at school
Pink SF is about feelings rather than ideas or actions.
He contrasts it with “Blue SF” which is supposedly like this:
avoids strong independent female protagonists
avoids sexual equality, salutes la difference
Yes – it is like they color coded the two movies to make this post easier
doesn’t deign to throw bones to women
shows disdain for [I’m being polite] to ‘every idiot of either sex who whines about it being too this or not enough that’
does not apologize for being male, for being insufficiently inclusive, or for refusing to fall in line with the dynamic demand for character quotas concerning sex, race, religion, and sexual preferences.
So here is a thing. This year two movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe were nominated for a Hugo: Captain America: Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy.
Captain America was the non-Puppy pick (why? because it was a great movie)
[warning some spoilers below the fold]
It is easy to see the puppies as an amorphous block – a single set of uniform beliefs held by all the main puppy leaders informing their every action. That would be an error though and even a cursory glance at the multiple rationales for the SP’s actions shows a great deal of diversity of belief.
In reality the Sad Puppies as a movement have a lot in common with the tradition of populist movements in the United States. Such movements often make significant political gains with a show of apparent unity, only to seemingly evaporate when the various agendas, personalities and ideologies of key players in the movement assert themselves.
So it shouldn’t be surprising to see quite different viewpoints on the roll of women ad the intersection between SF and Romance genres.
Pink Puppies – apologies to Artraccoon
The most extreme examples can be found by contrasting statements from some Sad Puppies with those of Rabid Puppies.
he fear that someone who writes fantasy with a distinct romance bent might be nominated, much less win was so over the top. It was as if those making the complaint truly believes science fiction and fantasy are still pure genres. Obviously they haven’t read much lately. If they had, they would see that there is genre crossing all around. Yes, you can, with a lot of searching, find a pure hard science fiction novel, but they are few and far between. Fantasy has, for years, had some aspect of mystery or romance or the like in it. The mixing of genres, when done well, is a good thing.
I’ll repeat that, mixing of genres when done well is a good thing.
Contrast with Vox Day’s attitude:
Pink SF is the dominant form of science fiction today. Or rather, more properly, the currently dominant form of SyFy. It is necrobestial love triangles. It is using the superficial trappings of science fiction or fantasy or war fiction to tell exactly the same sort of goopy, narcissistic female-oriented story that has already been told in ten thousand Harlequin novels and children’s tales and Hollywood comeuppance fantasies.
Pink SF primarily concerns a) choosing between two lovers, b) being true to yourself, or c) enacting ex post facto revenge upon the badthinkers and meanies who made the author feel bad about herself at school. Pink SF is about feelings rather than ideas or actions.
Pink SF is an invasion. Pink SF is a cancer. Pink SF is a parasitical perversion.
For Day/Beale it as if even the mere hint of something ‘girly’ will contaminate his reading and render it unclean in the manner of some clause in Leviticus.
What is notable is at this point pro-Romance Sad Puppies are not directing their ire at anti-Romance (actually anti-any hint of romance) Rabid Puppies. Long term these differences lead to populist movements dividing and mutating.
[Note on image: apologies to the artist Artraccoon for the parody of his excellent Puppy logos. I can’t say there is much I like about either camp but the logos were excellent. Note also that I can only draw beagles – I’ve a very limited range]
