So I was talking to a friend of mine about movies and TV shows and the conversation veered into fiction in general. She said something off-hand, I can't even remember the exact words, but it was basically claiming that fiction is at best just a pleasant diversion and that any sort of deep analysis of it is inherently pointless. My reaction was one of stunned silence. At the time, I couldn't express how fundamentally I disagree, but now that my words have returned to me, I'll try to argue my case.
So what is the purpose of fiction? Mere entertainment? No. Initially, fiction was created to instruct kids on how to live. If I told you not to go near the caves because they're dangerous, you might not listen to me. But if I tell you there was a kid named Mort who went near the caves and sabertooth tigers tore him to pieces slowly as he screamed for hours and hours, that might stick with you better.
Fiction is how societies pass on their values. The determination of Odysseus, the might of Thor, the self-sacrifice of Jesus, etc. Conversely, you can tell what people value by the sorts of stories they tell. For example, let's take Spider-Man. He's a normal guy who became superhumanly powerful and uses it to help those in need. He doesn't serve himself, he serves his community. His most important lesson is "with great power comes great responsibility" - in other words, power comes with the obligation to help others. The fictional tales of Spider-Man is the vehicle to communicate this lesson. The fact that he's not a real person is neither here nor there.
Myth and legend is the mortar of civilization - national heroes and national gods helped to unite people into nations. (And yes, gods are fictional - we just made 'em up!) And not just civilizations, every society that has ever existed uses fiction to create common values. Specifically, lessons on how people should live (and not live)
And it doesn't stop there. Fiction allows us to put ourselves in other people's shoes - to briefly feel what they feel and experience their struggles. Fiction is both a vehicle for empathy and an engine of "what if?" scenarios, allowing us to both expand our tribe and to anticipate possible future events.
And finally, as Westworld pointed out, fiction shows us "the people we might become". As we take in these fictional people's struggles, we get a chance to examine ourselves and see the ways in which we might change for the better.
In summary, fiction is the most important human invention ever conceived. And I intend to die on this hill.
Quote from: Hydra009 on June 05, 2021, 09:49:34 PM
So I was talking to a friend of mine about movies and TV shows and the conversation veered into fiction in general. She said something off-hand, I can't even remember the exact words, but it was basically claiming that fiction is at best just a pleasant diversion and that any sort of deep analysis of it is inherently pointless. My reaction was one of stunned silence. At the time, I couldn't express how fundamentally I disagree, but now that my words have returned to me, I'll try to argue my case.
So what is the purpose of fiction? Mere entertainment? No. Initially, fiction was created to instruct kids on how to live. If I told you not to go near the caves because they're dangerous, you might not listen to me. But if I tell you there was a kid named Mort who went near the caves and sabertooth tigers tore him to pieces slowly as he screamed for hours and hours, that might stick with you better.
Fiction is how societies pass on their values. The determination of Odysseus, the might of Thor, the self-sacrifice of Jesus, etc. Conversely, you can tell what people value by the sorts of stories they tell. For example, let's take Spider-Man. He's a normal guy who became superhumanly powerful and uses it to help those in need. He doesn't serve himself, he serves his community. His most important lesson is "with great power comes great responsibility" - in other words, power comes with the obligation to help others. The fictional tales of Spider-Man is the vehicle to communicate this lesson. The fact that he's not a real person is neither here nor there.
Myth and legend is the mortar of civilization - national heroes and national gods helped to unite people into nations. (And yes, gods are fictional - we just made 'em up!) And not just civilizations, every society that has ever existed uses fiction to create common values. Specifically, lessons on how people should live (and not live)
And it doesn't stop there. Fiction allows us to put ourselves in other people's shoes - to briefly feel what they feel and experience their struggles. Fiction is both a vehicle for empathy and an engine of "what if?" scenarios, allowing us to both expand our tribe and to anticipate possible future events.
And finally, as Westworld pointed out, fiction shows us "the people we might become". As we take in these fictional people's struggles, we get a chance to examine ourselves and see the ways in which we might change for the better.
In summary, fiction is the most important human invention ever conceived. And I intend to die on this hill.
I won't kill you on that hill (or any other). And I do agree that writing was the most important human invention. But fiction doesn't have a purpose--not inherent purpose, anyway. I would suggest each piece of fiction has it's own purpose supplied by the author. Having said that, I may disagree with the author about it's purpose and assign it my own purpose. It's like life, or art, or beauty--all in the eye of the beholder.
Without fiction, there wouldn't be much to write down. And writing has its merits - it allowed for the first time for people to communicate to people they'll never meet. Greetings across vast distances and times. As Star Wars puts it, "the dead speak!"
Fiction gives lessons, inspiration and all things that might be possible as well as being a springboard for music, film, and visual arts. The trick is to be able to detect fiction when being used for deceit.
Important features of science fiction include sociology, philosophy, and morality. Starship Troopers examines one possible way a society could award the voting franchise. It asks "should it be a given or should a person earn the right to vote?" The Door Into Summer is, from one viewpoint, at story about an immigrant into a society he knows little about. Stranger in a Strange Land features a person who knows NOTHING about the society he's dropped into against his will. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls point up the problems inherent in trying to "fix" a "broken" society.
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on June 06, 2021, 01:40:18 PM
Important features of science fiction include sociology, philosophy, and morality. Starship Troopers examines one possible way a society could award the voting franchise. It asks "should it be a given or should a person earn the right to vote?" The Door Into Summer is, from one viewpoint, at story about an immigrant into a society he knows little about. Stranger in a Strange Land features a person who knows NOTHING about the society he's dropped into against his will. The Cat Who Walks Through Walls point up the problems inherent in trying to "fix" a "broken" society.
I've been drawn to SiFi all of my life because of a) it tells a good story, and b) it is a great platform to talk about social issues. Heinlein is a master at both of those. But I did cut my teeth on the Tom Swift series.
Quote from: Mike Cl on June 06, 2021, 01:48:32 PM
I've been drawn to SiFi all of my life because of a) it tells a good story, and b) it is a great platform to talk about social issues.
c) serves as an inspiration - a path humanity could take. I remember seeing the pocket communicators and PADDs in Star Trek and thinking how cool it'd be to have something like that. Well, now we do. The post-scarcity multicultural society is taking a bit longer to come to fruition. :/
Quote from: Mike Cl on June 06, 2021, 01:48:32 PM
I've been drawn to SiFi all of my life because of a) it tells a good story, and b) it is a great platform to talk about social issues. Heinlein is a master at both of those. But I did cut my teeth on the Tom Swift series.
My first scifi was a compilation of stories published under the title
Bullard of the Space Patrol. Pure 1950s fun. Then I, too, found Tom Swift and I was hooked hard.
I have been thinking of writing a Sci-Fi short story where the species currently known as homo sapiens sapiens has become God.
Some people colonize some planets and observe what it is going on in the world, and people of the world are ignorant of their existence.
I think sci-fi allows us to examine closely humanities views and opinion of our behaviors and beliefs at a “distance†We can show that our popular beliefs or behaviors can be a bad thing in certain ways and even our darkest secrets can at once be seen as a positive in another way. We are free to pass judgments without passing judgement. The writers get a pass to piss in an idea, behavior, belief or popular movement with relative impunity. Fiction is license to go off the rail.
Quote from: aitm on June 06, 2021, 04:44:18 PM
I think sci-fi allows us to examine closely humanities views and opinion of our behaviors and beliefs at a “distance†We can show that our popular beliefs or behaviors can be a bad thing in certain ways and even our darkest secrets can at once be seen as a positive in another way. We are free to pass judgments without passing judgement. The writers get a pass to piss in an idea, behavior, belief or popular movement with relative impunity. Fiction is license to go off the rail.
Could you please further clarify?
Quote from: SoldierofFortune on June 06, 2021, 04:53:05 PMCould you please further clarify?
Let's say there's an alien race called the Motzis and they consider themselves genetically superior and others genetically inferior, so they waged war against several other planets with the goal of genocide. Suffice it to say that everyone in this fictional universe really dislikes the Motzis. But it's just fiction and any resemblance to any real-life ideology or organization is purely coincidental. Published in 1938.
Quote from: SoldierofFortune on June 06, 2021, 04:53:05 PM
Could you please further clarify?
Well, consider the Star Trek series. They’ve skewered religion practically every time and no one calls them out. They’ve taken on racism and racist behavior in a variety of ways. They have been at the same time critical and glowing of human emotion. They as well are critical and glowing of the Vulcan way of logic sans emotion. They are forced by “law†to allow less than desirable beings to not only exist but to thrive and they have allowed better beings to go about their own path to destruction.
Science fiction allows the evil darth Vader to find his heart again, gives him a sense of forgiveness, when in reality he should have tasted a bitter and painful end. We are allowed to mock our ideas of patriotism as mere misguided ego, seen how blind obedience easily turns into pure evil and how beliefs can be used as weapon against the weak when it preaches the opposite. The writers have freedom to attack at will any and all “icons†of humanity to make one think.
The writers, for the very most part are free to dispense whatever lesson they can think of, tweak any ones nose, with...for the most part, impunity.
Quote from: aitm on June 06, 2021, 04:44:18 PM
I think sci-fi allows us to examine closely humanities views and opinion of our behaviors and beliefs at a “distance†We can show that our popular beliefs or behaviors can be a bad thing in certain ways and even our darkest secrets can at once be seen as a positive in another way. We are free to pass judgments without passing judgement. The writers get a pass to piss in an idea, behavior, belief or popular movement with relative impunity. Fiction is license to go off the rail.
"relative impunity"? Like they get published regardless?
I mean simply that under theâ€guise†of sci-fi there is a greater freedom to flout conventional norms. What if Copernicus and/or Galileo wrote a sci-fi about the earth rotating around the sun, sure the church might be skeptical of the claim of sci-fi but it would be considered too outrageous to take seriously. Or if Darwin concocted a story showing how a man came to his wild ass crazy ideas, who knows if they would even object. And if the science was included that proved the sci if right, why that’s just outright crazy amiright?
Never been down that road before. Fiction, ipso facto, lacks reality.
Quote from: aitm on June 06, 2021, 04:44:18 PM
I think sci-fi allows us to examine closely humanities views and opinion of our behaviors and beliefs at a “distance†We can show that our popular beliefs or behaviors can be a bad thing in certain ways and even our darkest secrets can at once be seen as a positive in another way. We are free to pass judgments without passing judgement. The writers get a pass to piss in an idea, behavior, belief or popular movement with relative impunity. Fiction is license to go off the rail.
Pretty much. The usual interpretation of H.G. Wells'
The War of the Worlds is that it was a commentary on British colonialism. Asimov's
Foundation trilogy is a riff on Gibbons'
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Clarke's
The Star, Harrison's
The Streets of Ashkelon and Moorcock's
Behold the Man all take more or less direct aim at the fundamentals of Christianity.
My own writing doesn't aim so high, although I have noticed I deal a lot with culture shock and trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No idea why...
Quote from: Gawdzilla Sama on June 07, 2021, 11:49:40 AM
Never been down that road before. Fiction, ipso facto, lacks reality.
Fiction generally isn't strange enough to be real. For example, if you look at the actual details of the Watergate break-inâ€"a campaign with a massive lead ordering the bugging of the offices of the other party when the risk was wholly unnecessary, the failure of the first bug, getting caught because a night watchman happened to notice tape on a door when they tried a second time, suit-and-tie wearing burglars, a savvy and intelligent (and ruthless) politician going for the coverup rather than going on TV and saying "I'm firing these sonsabitches, this is not how we operate, let the courts handle it" (which would have deepened Nixon's landslide, not hurt it), Deep Throat, the Saturday Night Massacre, the 18½ minute gap, not to mention the unrelated sideshow with the Vice President, everythingâ€"and tried to sell that story as a political thriller, no one would publish it for being completely unbelievable... and yet it all actually happened.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Quote from: Mike Cl on June 08, 2021, 03:00:32 PM
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Really? Recall the strangest true thing you can remember. Now imagine an android chimp wearing a Hitler outfit into that memory.
Quote from: Mr.Obvious on June 08, 2021, 03:43:09 PM
Really? Recall the strangest true thing you can remember. Now imagine an android chimp wearing a Hitler outfit into that memory.
That is amazing! I read 'recall the strangest true thing' -- so I did. And this is what I remember--an android chimp wearing a Hitler outfit.
How did you do that???
Fiction is meant to be an escape. We need escapes from reality in order to calm the chaos imposed upon our fragile minds by a sick society. Of course, there are varying forms of escape; some beneficial and some not so much. Religion is one form of escape I would deem quite damaging to the human psyche.
Quote from: Sorginak on June 08, 2021, 11:16:32 PM
Fiction is meant to be an escape. We need escapes from reality in order to calm the chaos imposed upon our fragile minds by a sick society. Of course, there are varying forms of escape; some beneficial and some not so much. Religion is one form of escape I would deem quite damaging to the human psyche.
How much escape is beneficial and how much is harmful?
I find myself more and more adopting a work-to-live approach, where the drudgery of everyday life is simply a means to an end - to fuel creativity and discovery.
It's similar to the idea that sleep is the default state and waking life is a state of frenzied activity and consumption necessary to facilitate more sleeping. ...It makes more sense to a bear.
Quote from: Hydra009 on June 08, 2021, 11:57:32 PM
I find myself more and more adopting a work-to-live approach.....
As I get older, I find myself toeing homelessness in preference over working myself to death for a capitalist economy.