Space Princesses and Unrealistic Elements in Sci Fi
This is a message to Edward Willet, who, as the only voting member (the only member of any kind, actually) of that juggernaut of a new literary revival known as the Space Princess Movement, must be consulted on a matter of crucial import!
Edward Willet entered the Space Princess movement with his novel MARSEGURO, on the grounds that (1) the protagonist Emily Wood, selkie, is the daughter of one of the unelected governing families of the planet Marseguro, ergo, a princess from outer space; (2) she looks mighty luscious on the cover in a form-fiting wetsuit. Mr. Willet is also the Winner of the 2009 Prix Aurora Award for having the most prixed aurora. (Just kidding. The award was for Best English Long Form Work.)
Here is the question confronting us: namely, should Ken Macleod (who, as an upstanding fellow, would be acutely and rightfully embarrassed to have his name linked with mine in any capacity) be impressed and drafted against his will to the status of honorary member of the Space Princess movement??!
A related question is how many question marks and exclamation points can a fanboy place after a question before grammarians are offended????! What if the question concerns whether or not Kyle Rainer (?!) is the real Green Lantern???????????!
If he can be impressed, would Mr. MacLeod have full voting rights in the meetings of the Inner Circle? What about the key to the executive washroom? As a literary movement, do we get uniforms? With epaulets?
Here is the introduction to an interview with MacLeod perpetrated by io9 :
Ken MacLeod, author of The Execution Channel, has a new book coming out in the UK next month: The Restoration Game. I interviewed him for Bloggingheads, and he told me about his future projects – including one with galactic princesses.
He’s currently working on a book about synthetic biology called Sin Bio, but he’s also got two other books in mind – one of which will break all the rules of realistic SF. He’s responding to the mundane science fiction movement, whose proponents argue that we should chuck unrealistic things like faster-than-light travel and humanoid aliens. MacLeod’s idea is that there are actually scientific ways you can justify even the most preposterous ideas. But, as you’ll see in our interview, there are some rules that even MacLeod won’t break because the results are “just silly.”
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I notice that, like our own beloved literary movement, Mr. Macleod is reacting to the outrageous presumption of the New Mundane movement to eschew unrealistic elements in sci-fi.
I assume “unrealistic elements in sci-fi” means elements like Unobtainium, Arenak, Inoson, Durium, Chryadmantium, Dilithium, Vibranium, Wonderflonium, Upsidaisium, Plutonium-186, Scrith, and General Products hull material.
Yes, the New Mundane movement would require all pulp space opera authors to make all future space-dreadnoughts, motorized armor, Amazon bracelets, freeze-rays, and ringworld material out of plastic, carbon-steel or titanium! That idea of restricting sciffy to merely realistic elements is so outrageous, that I am immediately adding the element Outrageium to my next fictional description of anything outerspacey.
Query: Is the evidence in this interview sufficient to makes Ken MacLeod, a real science fiction author, one with us in spirit? If he is with us in spirit, can we communicate with him via Ouija board? These and other matters must be discussed with nauseating Ent-like patience to every conceivable legalistic hairsplitting detail, and at once! Hopefully, discussed by someone else.
In the meanwhile, here is a link to the interview:
http://io9.com/5564418/ken-macleod-explains-the-science-of-galactic-princesses
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
