The £1m deal that Al Reynolds has signed with Gollancz has been all over the blogosphere since it was announced, and deservedly so. Today The Guardian chimes in with a long interview. Reynolds is probably going to ruffle a few feathers with this:
“I don’t like a lot of what’s published as hard SF,” he says. “Much of it is rightwing, reactionary crap.”
I was particularly interested by what he had to say about his forthcoming trilogy:
The trilogy will explore a future where the dominant technological culture has come from Africa, something that has been partly inspired by a new-found fascination with African music, as well as an astronomer’s perspective on the possibilities for development. “They straddle the equator, the African nations,” he explains, “and that immediately puts you into an advantageous position for space elevators and things like that.”
Al is one of the three overseas guests at this year’s Finncon (the others are George RR Martin and Adam Roberts). I’ll make sure to try to snag a video interview. (Sorry, not in the sauna, the steam might damage my camera.)
I dislike the Guardian’s format here. Without fuller context from the question as Reynolds received it the right-wing claim isn’t clear. It sounds like he isn’t making a political claim. It sounds like he’s simply arguing that “science-like” science fiction is poorly constructed if it assumes no further revisions to fundamental human knowledge. That’s a pretty abstract claim to ruffle feathers, though it is also a very interesting one.
Are you reading it as making a (broadly) political claim, or the narrower one only (which, of course, would be political within the genre)?
Jason:
When I said it would ruffle feathers I assumed that many people would take it as being a broad political claim. When it comes to feather ruffling, especially online, people tend to assume the worst of everyone else. Whether that’s what Al meant or not is largely irrelevant, except to him of course.
I have ruffled at least one feather (I got an email pointing out in no uncertain terms that I was in error) but I must confess I can’t even remember the context in which that very off-the-cuff remark emerged. I think we’re talking about the “much hard SF is reactionary right ring crap” thing, aren’t we, rather than the other point, which is more of an aesthetic one? I suppose I was trying to distance myself from the “all ecologists and liberals are evil” type stuff – no need to mention any names here.
Anyway, see you in Finncon, Cheryl…
Well, that’s modern journalism for you. Give them the slightest sniff of something that supports their political slant and they will run with it as hard as they can.
Finncon will be wonderful, Al. The Finns are fabulous people and it is a great event.
To be fair, Cheryl, I had no sense that I was misquoted – merely that if you asked me to reconstruct the conversation leading up to that remark, I wouldn’t be able to. The Guardian journalist did a good job, I think – and he was careful to check with me where he did change the wording of some of the things I said.
Yes, my experience of Finnish conventions and fandom has been universally positive so far – they’re a great bunch of people.
An addendum to the last post: I wasn’t, of course, implying that you thought I’d been misquoted. What I meant to get across was that I felt the comment was a fair one to use in the article.
I’m quite pleased to see the author clarifying, that’s really interesting stuff. Clearly Reynolds sees these as two separate points, both one about the political content of some stuff in the ‘hard sf’ market space, and then an aesthetic one. Let me quote the relevant paragraph from the Guardian interview here to show how I read it:
I read the latter point in this paragraph as informing the first. Which is to say I thought the bridging text and the literal quotes attributed to Reynolds were most easily read as explaining the sense in which much hard sf “is rightwing, reactionary crap.” Conservative and reactionary in defending a static sense of science, not in the broad sense of politics. It looks as if I’m wrong, and these are two different points put together in such a way that I can read them that way.
Certainly both points seem valid, and are of particular interest to me since I’m leading a discussion on how sf subgenres and politics interact tomorrow.
Jason:
Thanks, that’s a convention I’d love to attend. Did you see my post on the Kincaid article?
I think I saw that post at the time, but I admit, it has fallen out of my immediate headspace. The entire take on Godwin is interesting, especially since one of the things I want to do to complicate the taxonomy on the genre side is to throw in Fiona Kelleghan’s Savage Humanists and their relationship to “The Cold Equations” as well as the apparently leftist resource-constraining Mundanes as a branch distinct from the space opera as exuberant expression of freedom alternative.
It should be fun, and I’ll certainly try and reference the problematized nature of the value judgment as it relates to gender in the Godwin.