Ursula K. Le Guin: Why 'Soft' Sci-Fi Still Needs Technology
Ursula K. Le Guin: A Rant About "Technology" (2005)
In this 2005 rant, Ursula K. Le Guin pushes back against the notion that her work avoids technology. She argues that technology is the active human interface with the material world, and that all science fiction—even the 'soft' kind—is inherently technological. She decries the misuse of the word to mean only high-tech, and points out that even simple objects like matches are remarkable inventions.
Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
- hungryhobbit
Le Guin is a master of fiction, period. While she's very different from modern sci-fi/fantasy, her work is almost as foundational as Tolkien, Lewis, or Asimov.
Take her Earthsea series (which was very loosely adapted as a Studio Ghibli movie). It's much slower paced than modern fantasy. Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here), and it almost reads more like an extended fairy tale.
But when you start reading it you can see how it influenced so much modern stuff (eg. she was telling stories about going off to wizard school decades before Harry Potter existed) and both the story and the writing itself are both so well crafted that (in many ways) no one who's come after has managed to surpass it.
If you like either sci-fi or fantasy, do yourself a favor and read some of the amazing writing this titan of an author created.
- joebergeron
> I could learn. We all can learn. That’s the neat thing about technologies. They’re what we can learn to do.
What a wonderfully humble sentiment, and so plainly said. It's disarming to hear an idea stated so precisely which you've treated largely as subintellectum, despite its truthiness having a foundational effect on how you move about the world [0]. This so perfectly distills my (and I suspect others' here as well) draw toward all things technical. They are all mysteries, whose workings we must largely abstract away for the sake of our own sanity. But they are categorically products of our collective knowledge, and that knowledge is out there for anyone to claim, or to extend! Looking at my surroundings, I see thousands of objects which I could not today begin to re-create myself, and for each object, thousands of questions which could be asked - all of which have at some point been answered, and whose answers await those who are interested to ask. What an endless and delightful thing for the curious! A lovely thought.
[0]: Perhaps this feeling is why Le Guin is such a celebrated author, and I am not ;)
- Swizec
I find the most practical distinction of scifi vs fantasy is that scifi calls it credits and fantasy calls it coin. This classification has never steered me wrong.
But honestly categories never quite work at the edges. Some of my favorite books are post apocalyptic fantasy where the characters are definitely using scifi technology that I recognize as advanced versions of existing technology but they just think of as magic.
- airstrafer
> Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
> But the word is consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialised technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.
This sentiment reminds me of the email steve jobs sent himself shortly before he died:
> I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow
I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
> I do not make any of my own clothing.
> I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
> I did not discover the mathematics I use.
> I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive
of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
> I am moved by music I did not create myself.
> When I needed medical attention, I was helpless
to help myself survive.
> I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology
I work with.
> I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am
totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
Indeed, it seems to me that true technologists do not take for granted a book of matches, or a simple garment, or music, or law. Innovation is innovation
- Groxx
Along somewhat similar lines, my main division between the two is that sci-fi generally touches on the interaction between "people" (often the main characters, but not usually limited to them) and the world's systems (politics, war, how future tech changes society, etc), while fantasy generally focuses on individual's internal struggles (how they deal with the violence in their swords and magic world, how they get along with their squad, how they deal with the politics they're stuck in).
Which isn't to say one is more personal than the other, just that the focus is different. How the world as a whole handles something can easily be covered with a single character's thoughts, and they can be worried about how they interact with the world that surrounds them.
No division is perfect of course, but I think it fits pretty well with a lot of the genre-bending works, and better predicts who will like what book. Some are totally in X genre because of the setting itself, but more often I find people sticking to one or the other because they like that kind of story.
(Also Le Guin is fantastic, very obviously an exceptional author, and you should absolutely read some of her works)