/lit/ - Literature

>>11354938
The representation of importance in sci fi is only ever truly of importance chronologically. Because of its parallel historical relationship with scientific knowledge, sci fi cannot be thought of in term of originality, and "deeply iden truths!" that you would find in BACK TO THE GREEKS. Faustian-thisorthat. Ect.
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Le Guin has gotten a lot of recognition and doesn't need defending against her precursors or those that came after her. These kind of viral fervours reduce writers to blips of cold intelligence and nothing more. Readers are left searching out Messages and miss the majestic messiness of her real worlds muddled with her unreal, or unthought, or remade, rekiddled, rewrought, all her redone, redoubted stuff is no doubt much more interesting than her importance.
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>>11354675
What is Harry Potter?

>>11346648
What if reading one book did get one person a gf? Wouldn't it count as a minor possibility that at to the odds? And shouldn't you be doing everything in your power to increase your odds, given that.... Well, you know....

>>11265876
>Cyberpunk are detective novels dressed up in high fantasy masquerading in techno babble.
>Cyberpunk is
>dn, no
>hf, no
>tb, yes

what is that your first attempt at an opinion of something you know knowing about?

>>11261838
Weird fiction is the only representation of reality we had since we began to speak and tell stories like "metaphorical" *wink* *wink* nawha-aimean? history by jumping Jesus, a snake big as this, I swear. Argh. Fucking land wastrel without taste, nor the ability to expand his taste beyond the safe ones ... by-god yessush, doesn't stop clean the carpet with his stoney glare, got flesh wearing away tabone and only see 'em himself as penance or somesuch, haha. Fucking clown built himself a pentagone to live inside and s'been hording cannons and doomsday grains since his grandpap first came cross the Aurenlian lands that he believed anyhow, as some such beliefs go, and him too, gone, vanished, and you alone, too engaged to be lonely, too lonely to engage yourself with that past. and if you don't, you're not reading idiot, so yeah, and stuff, and I'm sure this is what you want to hear, but I respect you for your taste

>The problem is this whole academic tribal scene that has propped up these theorists as prophets and their theories as the holy gospel.
>even if you like Foucault, the moment someone starts yammering about "post-colonial biopolitics in 19th century Zimbabwe" it is guaranteed to make you sick in your stomach.

That sickness says more about an institutional culture that favours a production of opinions and ideas that satisfies the interests of the shareholders - which means every academic production is marketing copy attempting to maintain some level of novelty while appealing to the widest possible market without diminishing the material, economic utility of the academia. The sickness you're talking about is only a desire for more novelty, rather than a sanctifying of core values - which would diminish the appeal in the market for an unlimited range of novel values.

The inherent nihilism within this institutional thinking makes the competition between values which must be upheld through production, and economic interests which must be upheld through competitive advantage, a cooperative effort in promoting postmodernism. Postmodernism as it is within academia is a consequence of institutions becoming and remaining marketable and financially stable and nothing more.

The discussions of change are no more than a discussion over whether an institutions will attempt to head a niche market in the future and therefore capitalise on a trend towards a mono-culture such that you'd find at a Protestant Uni.

There is no mindset beyond institutional and market mindsets. There is no thought expressible beyond marketability. There is no value that cannot be negated or exploited to maintain the market reach for subsidies and tuition fees.

>>11247294
Every time this meme pops up I think what if were asking this to a paperclip making machine that has been discontinued and so restored as canon saving machine, super-refurbished for mega capacity of all volumes taken to be canon. Outside the vault a deus ex machina exists to subjugate humans, killing them off slowly, reducing their numbers while forcing them to read water damaged pages of a brokenspine papeback, reading wearily into senility, and there a people fade away into nothingness because He told the machine to save the fucking number two whale book. Shame.

>>11207876
>>11205255

>>11199246
>If it's too hard to read for normal people I don't necessarily see that as a positive.
What about just hard enough that scenes linger in your memory and have a much more probable chance of initiating either a re-engagement with the text or with other texts that you've just formed an association with after staring at fireworks, white sparks slip after the sonic burst down evening black air currents, or much more likely, nosetaass, sniff, sniff, here she rumbles, a farp scented aura quaffed luxuriously one midevening after suppper.

>>11150287
If you don't see how your interpretation reflects the western cultural world in general and how this place represents those who have been alienated by the tyranny of the opinions of the majority, then too bad for you. That one in ten thousand insightful post, because it comes from a person in this type of alienation, is such a valuable insight when the majority then has to grapple with it. That you become misogynistic, narcissistic, or develop a value system based on a bunch of dumbasses groupthink says more about your weaknesses and the expected levels of tenacity achieved in higher education.

That an individual is poisoned here is relevant only in that all mediated experiences are poison if the transformation is unacceptable, but unacceptable to who and on what basis? Where media and society overwhelm the individual into belief, they are poisoned and that poison is a medicine. Your rhetoric is sad, and as horrible as this place is, the potential is there and only requires the hues of some moneyed interest to solve a few pale problems. If people are swayed this easily, lets have a laugh at them and watch their folly unfold. Most of the fucking idiots that'll get swayed are Mericans anyway...hahaha.

>>11137083
Bet a shilling everyone disagrees

Woooooo!

>>11131683
Lit

>>10967911
>Vera Historia
In sum, typical science fiction themes and topoi appearing in True Stories are:[3]

travel to outer space
encounter with alien life-forms, including the experience of a first encounter event
interplanetary warfare and imperialism
colonization of planets
artificial atmosphere
liquid air
reflecting telescope
motif of giganticism
creatures as products of human technology (robot theme)
worlds working by a set of alternate 'physical' laws
explicit desire of the protagonist for exploration and adventure

yeah, this is the one. forgot about it from years back. never got around to finding it. any good?