Random Thought Depository

BOY the ancient Hainish messed with so many human planets’ genetics.

Reparations WHEN?

The Ekumen isn’t even the Hainish reparations project.

The Hainish reparations project consists of showing up with a middle-schooler-made card that looks like this:

I realize that this was a joke, but to take it seriously for a moment... How much continuity is there between the present Hainish civilization and the society that did the expansion? The expansion was a really long time ago, right? Supposedly in the Ekumen's universe Hain is the real human homeworld and the expansion was when humans became established on Terra, which really doesn't fit with what we now know of genetics and human evolution, but maybe aliens took some Homo erectus to Hain like a million years ago and then the first Terran Homo sapiens were descendants of a back-migration... Anyway, that would mean the expansion was, like, 200,000 years ago. I think even working from 1960s knowledge of human evolution and ignoring everything discovered since it couldn't be less than tens of thousands of years ago.

I think, realistically, the civilization that did the expansion is probably just gone, in the same way the Roman Empire is gone. Sure, their biological descendants are still around (though after 200,000 years it'd be a toss-up whether an expansion era Hainish would be closer genetically to a modern Hainish or an Anarresti), but with that much time having passed since there's probably not much cultural or institutional continuity. The Hainish paying reparations to the Seggrians would be like the Iraqis paying reparations to Israel for the Babylonian Exile.

Also, are there really a lot of really biologically weird humans in that universe? Let's see, there's the Gethenians (gender-changing hermaphrodites), the Seggrians (very skewed sex ratio), the Hainish themselves (the fertility control thing, really reads as them having applied some mild transhumanism to themselves at some point)... I think that's about it? The other human populations in the setting look to me like more-or-less plausible results of 200,000 years of divergent genetic drift and/or evolution.

I don't have much to say about that actual essay, but I'm nitpickily annoyed at the bad case of space filling empire syndrome that map has, cause one of the things I was very struck by and really liked about TLHoD was how well it avoided the Star Trek depicting a planet as a small and ethnically homogeneous country thing, in vibes if not so much in concrete worldbuilding. Like, yeah, the text only actually gives us descriptions of two states that share a border and an offhand mention of another continent or two, but it feels like we might be getting just plot/characterization-relevant glimpses of a more realistically big and diverse world. If I were drawing a fan map of Gethen I'd definitely at least leave some default land color "presumably misc. other states, tribes, etc. here" territory on the great continent.

Also, this makes me think about how I don't think Gethen's politics as described really fits with the "no history of war" concept. Gethen has at least two territorially extensive states that seem to have uncontested sovereignty in most of their territory, which have a framework for relating to each other that seems not that different from our Westphalian system. I don't know what exactly I'd expect the politics of a world with no history of war to look like, but it's not that.

Like, I think the politics of a world without a history of war would be much more decentralized (unless it's a set-up like my idea for how I'd write Yonada, where there was a hegemonic central authority there from day one). Without an implicit threat of violent coercion, why let somebody in a distant city control how your community is run? Like, "no war" removes possibly the biggest structural obstacle to anarchism. I think the closest thing to a geographically extensive territorial state on a world like that might be something kind of like the Medieval Catholic church; an organization which doesn't have uncontested sovereignty in most of its territory but does have a lot of political influence over a very big area. A brewing potential big war in a world like that would probably look more like a brewing civil war between factions with different political ideologies; the rival factions in a conflict like that would function more like political parties or religious sects than sovereign states.

I kind of hate to say this cause I like speculative fiction that explores worlds that are in some ways radically better than ours and I'm not fond of the "they're secretly shittier places than they look" approach to interpreting fiction like that, but I think the politics of Gethen as depicted in the book might make more sense if you assume Gethen doesn't have a history of wars between states but does have an extensive history of wars of conquest and subjugation waged by states against non-state people, analogous to the USA's "Indian Wars" and the wars historical Japanese states waged against the "Emishi."

— Ursula K. Le Guin, Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love (via queenofattolia)

I really recommend you click the link and read the whole thing, because it says everything I feel about the articifial boundaries between genre and literary fiction, but obviously says it much better than I ever could. Also:

And every now and then I come lumbering up like some sort of sewer monster out of the depths of genre onto the spotless lawns of literary realism—since realism, to my mind, is simply another genre, another domain of fiction, and all mine if I want it.

I know side eyeing LeGuin is heresy, but thought experiment guy?

Reinvent the space ships. Give us your aliens. Do not be afraid. There is no shame in being a newbie.

Science fiction by someone who learned about the genre yesterday must be fascinating! But I think this may be about someone who picked up the cliches without reading much science fiction first-hand.

(And in any case, the critic deserves all the eye-rolls.)

Fair. Again, as I keep saying and people seem to keep missing:

Where she loses me here is where she describes this writer who is supposedly bilking people as experiencing childlike wonder when they write sf/f.

If this person is experiencing childlike wonder when they write sf/f, they’re one of us. They’re just late to the party.

My response is “welcome.”

Sorry, I see that others made the point already. I just left the tab open to respond later and didn’t check.

You’re right, making fun of “innocent wonder” seems… not very nice.

Yeah. There are a lot of Le Guin quotes that hit me funny that other people think are clever. I may be reading wrong on purpose and not realizing it, but I get the general vibe from a lot of them that she really doesn’t like people who don’t devote themselves wholly to sf/f. That kind of thing just makes me worry I’m not good enough to write it, and I’m published, so. Yeah. Leave the gatekeeping to the publishers, they’re good enough to crush people’s dreams. Stop helping, Urs.

(I get the impression people like these quotes because they often mention JKR, and it’s a fad now to be like “I always knew HP was bad! I’m smarter than other sf/f fans!” Which i see as similar snobbery. I thought HP was good, and I’ve been reading sf/f long enough to know she DIDN’T invent Young Student Wizard. (My family recommended it to me because “it’s like those books you always loved,” in fact.)

There’s no shame in realizing something you legitimately loved and were inspired by was made by a horrid person and going AAAAAAAAA.

You don’t have to pretend you knew.)

I think the part of that essay where Le Guin says a lot of people consider "genre" an inferior form of fiction and talks about how she thinks that's bad for writing and literary criticism is an important context for that quote.

I think the primary target of Le Guin's criticism isn't writers who simply write genre fiction without doing their homework, it's litfic writers who write genre fiction without doing their homework because they approach that project from a place of assumed superiority. The target of her criticism isn't somebody who's simply a newbie. The target of her criticism is a litfic writer who branches off into genre fiction with approximately the attitude of "Why should I bother reading the juvenile pulp trash produced by the people who write genre literature as a career? I'm a Serious Writer of Serious Literature, I'm better than the third rate cringe nerds who write genre fiction as a career, and the point of this exercise is that I'm going to show up those third rate cringe nerds by elevating their genre by applying my Serious Writer talent to it; I'm going to do their job better than they ever could, because I'm a Serious Writer. Me, learn from those third rate cringe nerds? Don't insult me!"

Or, as much as that, her criticism is aimed at literary critics who assume that genre fiction written by somebody who's already established themselves as a big name litfic writer must be superior to genre fiction written by people who make genre writing a career.

It's similar to what a lot of complaints about cultural appropriation are about (or at least to the steelmanned version of those complaints).

I think nowadays science fiction and fantasy have probably achieved enough popularity and respectability in the mainstream that the sort of person who relates to them this way probably isn't super-prominent anymore, but I suspect, as with a lot of geek culture windmills, that's because that type of person was on the losing side of a culture war, and they used to be much more of a thing (I suspect if you want genres that are still often the target of "I'm going to write in this genre despite knowing almost nothing about it and being contemptuous of it and of course I expect the result to be superior to the stuff produced by the people who actually like the genre" they're probably comics, romance novels, Y.A., and fiction for children).

we absolutely did not appreciate Ursula Le Guin enough while she was around, y'all

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.” ― G.K. Chesterton, Tremendous Trifles.

cant remember if i already posted this but reading le guin again makes me think about her weird like, almost trad leanings, her affection for...idk the right word "primitive"... non-market, non-governmental, but not really "anarchist" just small societies. yknow, villages and stuff. and how sometimes it bothers me but theres a real and significant fact that like...humans living in small-ish groups of hunter gatherers lasted tens of thousands of years, it was...i dont want to say sustainable, or stable, but yknow. those things, it persisted. and then low-state-power agricultural living, that also persisted for thousands of years, although less. but modern technological capitalistic society is so young, and feels so deeply unstable, at least to some people. i find the idea that it will just keep being basically this way of life for another thousand years ridiculous. it will change. which is not a flaw. but it makes this way of life somehow insignificant, temporary in a way other ways of life arent. although of course it can support many more people, so even if its short there will be more person-hours, so maybe thats bullshit. but that feels like gerrymandering your metric to make yourself come out on top

i think "the nna mmoy language" is about this idea, among other things, and its probably my favorite story in changing planes so far

i think this is mostly an interesting perspective, but theres one part of it that rankles for me, that makes me respect le guin less, makes me want her to be better, which is that she like...she doesnt like to acknowledge the genuine poverty of societies without modern technology. she doesnt like to talk about the women born in childbirth, and the piles and piles of dead babies, and the hunger, and the sickness. she writes settings where nature is kind, and giving, and tame, where its not red in tooth and claw, and then paints us some nice pretty primitives in their harmless environment like that means anything. it feels to me like a very...outsider way of writing those cultures? when you visit another culture, they dont show you their sick, they dont tell you about all their dead babies, you see the ones who are doing okay so it doesnt look so harsh. its only looking at the top whatever percent and then exclaiming how well theyre doing, yknow?

I guess a charitable interpretation of societies like the narrator's mom's people in Always Coming Home and the one implied to have existed in the past on that planet in The Telling is they have:

Put these together and maybe you could have a relatively low-tech non-industrial society with relatively low child mortality and relatively long average lifespan? A low population density might help too. As might certain "cheats" like putting them on an alien planet where most native bacteria and viruses can't infect humans cause we're too different from the native animals (but the native plants and animals are still edible by humans). I suspect they'd still have a substantially shorter average lifespan than us though.

Also, in the case of the people in Always Coming Home, I remember getting some hints that could be interpreted as them being some super-advanced transhumanist space civilization's equivalent of the Amish and having some access to advanced technology, so maybe they benefit from that in subtle ways, i.e. they might actually be something like a more low-key version of these people.

But, yeah, I think in this Le Guin might suffer from something proximate to that thing George R.R. Martin said about studying history for the juicy stuff like love affairs and murders and political intrigue and not caring about stuff like changing patterns of land use. Like, epidemiology is not something she's particularly interested in, so she doesn't pay attention to it, but it's actually something that would realistically influence the stuff she is interested in.

Ah, damn. What an absolute treasure. May there be many more like her.

Sad. She was a real literary influence on me. I liked The Left Hand of Darkness and I have complicated feelings about The Telling.

Ursula Le Guin

(via invisibledragon)