(no subject)

[tinyjo]

I've been reading Nialls posts about Accelerando and have come to an important realisation. These are stories I am not interested in. They're not stories about people and that's what I'm interested in. Telling stories which tells me something about people.

In a not entirely unrelated note, I re-watched A Few Good Men last night and noticed for the first time that it was written by Aaron Sorkin (the writer of the West Wing). Which, although unknown, was entirely unsurprising. The passion of the characters, the clear treatment of moral issues, acknowledging the ambiguities, and above all the rhetoric. It should have been obvious.

Comments

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

These are things which are going to make a vital difference to real people.

But then, I would argue, so do the things which are discussed in Accelerando, and in very similar ways. Manfred and Pamela argue about the importance of, say, taxation, or religion, in much the same way that Toby and Josh might. 'Survivor' is about whether killing a person to obtain information is justified. 'Elector' is about how you try to make an electorate look at more than its own self-interest. 'Curator' is about how you record history; who writes it, and who reads it, and why. 'Tourist' is about how you face up to a world where your skills are obsolete. And so on. It's just that their context is a little more, ah, gonzo than The West Wing. :)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I guess your reviews kind of make it sound like the characters diverge from human so early on that it's difficult for them to have those issues in a human way. You can still use the stories to explore them, but do the characters still experience them in a relatable-to way?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Depends what you count as 'human'. One of the book's big points is that 'posthuman' is a bit of a misnomer--there's no sharp line between this kind of intelligence and that kind of intelligence, it's all a continuum. At the high-end are the godlike AIs who move in mysterious ways, but none of the characters reach that kind of level. They may exist in multiple copies but they're still human--more so than in many other novels of this type, because you've seen the intermediate steps, as it were.

Again, characterisation is not the novel's strength, but the people are more recognisable than those in, say, a Greg Egan novel (I'm thinking of Disaspora in particular here).