From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Jun 13 13:57:35 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA07356 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Sat, 13 Jun 1998 13:57:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from techunix.technion.ac.il (mellon@techunix.technion.ac.il [132.68.1.28]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA07346 for ; Sat, 13 Jun 1998 13:57:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mellon@techunix.technion.ac.il) Received: (from mellon@localhost) by techunix.technion.ac.il (8.8.7/8.8.5) id XAA02748; Sat, 13 Jun 1998 23:56:46 +0300 (IDT) Message-ID: <19980613235641.01088@techunix.technion.ac.il> Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 23:56:41 +0300 From: Anatoly Vorobey To: Eivind Eklund Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: internationalization References: <199806121443.HAA09471@mailgate.cadence.com> <199806121619.JAA08857@usr02.primenet.com> <19980613212837.A17939@doriath.org> <19980613211430.51924@follo.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.88 In-Reply-To: <19980613211430.51924@follo.net>; from Eivind Eklund on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:14:30PM +0200 X-Disclaimer: I was young, I needed the money! Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org You, Eivind Eklund, were spotted writing this on Sat, Jun 13, 1998 at 09:14:30PM +0200: > I believe you're missing the point of SF[1]. I don't think so. I've done a _lot_ of SF reading, no less than your usual hacker ;) I somehow grew out of it, and haven't been reading much SF for some years, and carefully picking what SF I do read as to avoid what I see as the usual trashy novel in the genre. I understand very well the fascination of SF; I simply think that truly great literature is usually much more fascinating. Because it's usually not banal or clichesque, for one thing. > The point isn't to see > how many layers of allegories and symbols one can create, or how > clever one can be with words. But neither is this the point of good fiction. Allegories and symbols are but tools, which undo the beauty of a book when overused. Playing with words is crosswords, not literature. If you think great literature is about allegories and symbols and wordplay, you're seriously mistaken - maybe you had bad literature teachers? :) It's mainly about art, and about beauty, and about spontaneously recreating new reality. > The point is to evoke a sense of wonder > ("sensawunda"), to show how people could react to changes, Where are those people? Most of SF novels pay no attention to people at all. Even the main characters are unbelievably shallow; they only exist to illustrate author's ideas, they're not "real" by a long shot. Which SF author knows how to describe his main hero smiling - did you notice that almost any person you meet in your life smiles differently? When SF authors do try to attribute some unique characteristics to their heroes, they do it with banal metaphors and worn-out images. This is perfectly acceptable for SF readers only because of the non-written agreement between authors and readers - authors are pretending they are describing human beings (or alien beings for that matter), and readers are accustomed to not having any idea how they look like, what clothes they wear, what are their gestures, dreams, habits. It's OK because the reader is keen to skip to the next great hyperdrive invention the hero is about to unleash on the humanity. The people described aren't people, they're badly made dolls. The sense of wonder is truly a great thing. But is it all that one can enjoy in literature? What about the joy of words, of unusual images, of novel and ingenious ways to describe human existence, emotions, thoughts and ideas? Compared to a Kafka novel, most of SF's originality shrinks to utter banality! When Tolstoy describes Anna Karenina, you feel you know her better than people close to you in your own life - compare that to the usual doll-hero in SF! (and doll-heroes they almost always hero; the funky heroes of cyberpunk, for example, are as much dolls as in the mainstream, they're simply forced into a funky outlook by the author). > to make you > aware of the infinite potential of technology and people, to paint a > few brushstrokes at the edge of your imagination, showing what may yet > become your (or your descendants) normal day. > I certainly don't find it strange that this is what engineers prefer > reading - many of us became engineers by inspiration from SF, and all > of us work with shaping the future. We want to predict and shape, not > read anout what fictional people could have done in the last century, > unless it helps us understand the present or predict the future. Sure. That's the sign of our generation: look into the bright future, forget about the old and boring past. We're going to have nanotechnology soon, what do we care about Rabelais or Beethoven? The truth is that with all our wonders of technology, we find ourselves in less and less educated world, in the world where people are able to appreciate beauty and have taste in things less and less with every year. With all the wonders of alien technology, cyberpunk, subspace travel and mindwaves SF as a genre still remains on the same level as trashy romance novels and soap operas. The characters are just as shallow, the plots are just as banal, the reality is just as second-hand and trivial. And it plays the same social role, too: exclusively entertaining, rather than helping one to learn more, to understand more. I'm not surprised engineers love reading SF. I'm surprised that *good* engineers often still read only SF. I treat programming as art (as much as I'm able to): and I perceive really well-desgined OS kernel, really fast and nontrivial algorithm, as works of art. I'm surprised that people possessing amazing intelligence and sense of beauty, allowing them to create such extremely complex and yet extremely beautiful works of art are often uneducated in the vast body of amazing art accumulated by humanity in the last thousands of years, so blind to the beauty of good literature. Sincerely, Anatoly. -- Anatoly Vorobey, mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/ "Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message