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This is just rambling - when I'm writing, I constantly have to re-clairify myself to myself. I'm feeling stymied this morning, so I'm going over some fundimentals. Obviously feel free to read if you want to - there's nothing of my mental state or day to day, but you might still be entertained if this is your bag. If it gets really long, I might put it under a cut.
So, I know that saying that science fiction has roots in the right wing is really unfairly simplistic. I can't stop there. There've long been writers on the left, and sci-fi ends up covering a pretty diverse array of topics and sensibilities. But I might suggest that, very broadly, you've got some hard science speculation, some utopianism, you've got your mil sci-fi which tends to feel pretty nationalistic, militiristic - generally we have a fascination with technology. I think that if you've got a fascination with the use of technology, you're going to see a focus on the use of technology as answers to problems, and the outcomes of that. I think that sci-fi writers have had a tendency to feel that technically sexuality, race, gender - these aren't hard science, they're social constructs, and social constructs aren't 'real', so all we have to do is get to a point where these fluffy social protocols are technologically irrellevent. Technology and the outsider occasionally cause problems - and technology and bringing the outsider in fix them.
Broad, broad strokes - but I don't think I'm too far off. When things get fixed, the bloody details of the day to day are usually left off the page. Most short sci-fi leaves right at the moment of discovery when the protagonists leave the details to the drudges they're not too keen on, and go to fix another problem secure in their own success.
I think Foundation kind of subverts that a little, but Foundation is still stuck on the Great Man complex a bit. ("A bit, he says!")
I mean, a lot of this is 1980 or before. I read a huge amount of that growing up. It gets into the early 90's, because a lot of that gist comes from the decade worth of Analog short stories I read - some of which are on my shelf still, and I page through from time to time. I'm not suggesting I don't like sci-fi, obviously, but I'm looking for a specific kind of hole. I'm not going to spend too much time here.
I'm not going to suggest that cyberpunk "solves" these problems - actually, the contrary of that. But when it comes along, there's a different attitude. It's a Cold War narrative, it's coming along at a time when Japan's industry really looks like it's going to knock America on its heels. You've got Regan and Thatcher, and personal computing is hitting the street in a really unprecedented way. It's legit a transitional period - Gibson starts writing Neuromancer on a typewriter. Not because he's a fuckin' luddite, but because he's poor, and that's what was available. That's the kludge, though. The guy who writes a foundational novel about street technology meeting global power structures on a typewriter, because it's more available than cheap word processors. It's not irony - it's apropo for the genre.
Cyberpunk assumes that people get access to technology that, you know, in theory could break certain kinds of power structures wide open - in a vacuume. If that's what we wanted to do. In practice, technology changes people's lives in some ways, but the underlying fabric is very much the same. There's still inequality - drastic, ever-widening degrees of inequality. Technology - electronics specifically, but not only, because we're also talking access to transportation, clean water, reliable electricity, healthy food, humane architecture, clean air, so - technology - is present but doesn't automatically fix problems simply by dint of being present. Cyberpunk is a literature, in some important ways, about availability and scarcity that's hidden under tropes of leather jackets, mirrorshades, and bulky pre-1995 laptops.
So, I know that saying that science fiction has roots in the right wing is really unfairly simplistic. I can't stop there. There've long been writers on the left, and sci-fi ends up covering a pretty diverse array of topics and sensibilities. But I might suggest that, very broadly, you've got some hard science speculation, some utopianism, you've got your mil sci-fi which tends to feel pretty nationalistic, militiristic - generally we have a fascination with technology. I think that if you've got a fascination with the use of technology, you're going to see a focus on the use of technology as answers to problems, and the outcomes of that. I think that sci-fi writers have had a tendency to feel that technically sexuality, race, gender - these aren't hard science, they're social constructs, and social constructs aren't 'real', so all we have to do is get to a point where these fluffy social protocols are technologically irrellevent. Technology and the outsider occasionally cause problems - and technology and bringing the outsider in fix them.
Broad, broad strokes - but I don't think I'm too far off. When things get fixed, the bloody details of the day to day are usually left off the page. Most short sci-fi leaves right at the moment of discovery when the protagonists leave the details to the drudges they're not too keen on, and go to fix another problem secure in their own success.
I think Foundation kind of subverts that a little, but Foundation is still stuck on the Great Man complex a bit. ("A bit, he says!")
I mean, a lot of this is 1980 or before. I read a huge amount of that growing up. It gets into the early 90's, because a lot of that gist comes from the decade worth of Analog short stories I read - some of which are on my shelf still, and I page through from time to time. I'm not suggesting I don't like sci-fi, obviously, but I'm looking for a specific kind of hole. I'm not going to spend too much time here.
I'm not going to suggest that cyberpunk "solves" these problems - actually, the contrary of that. But when it comes along, there's a different attitude. It's a Cold War narrative, it's coming along at a time when Japan's industry really looks like it's going to knock America on its heels. You've got Regan and Thatcher, and personal computing is hitting the street in a really unprecedented way. It's legit a transitional period - Gibson starts writing Neuromancer on a typewriter. Not because he's a fuckin' luddite, but because he's poor, and that's what was available. That's the kludge, though. The guy who writes a foundational novel about street technology meeting global power structures on a typewriter, because it's more available than cheap word processors. It's not irony - it's apropo for the genre.
Cyberpunk assumes that people get access to technology that, you know, in theory could break certain kinds of power structures wide open - in a vacuume. If that's what we wanted to do. In practice, technology changes people's lives in some ways, but the underlying fabric is very much the same. There's still inequality - drastic, ever-widening degrees of inequality. Technology - electronics specifically, but not only, because we're also talking access to transportation, clean water, reliable electricity, healthy food, humane architecture, clean air, so - technology - is present but doesn't automatically fix problems simply by dint of being present. Cyberpunk is a literature, in some important ways, about availability and scarcity that's hidden under tropes of leather jackets, mirrorshades, and bulky pre-1995 laptops.