I saw Prometheus last night. Absolute shit, don't waste your time. Me and my film-going accomplice just laughed at it's ludicrous pretensions for the last hour or so. I like SF, more in novels than cinema, but this is one of those films that makes the genre less defensible, and more like the sole province of tasteless idiots. It made me think well, what is it I actually like about SF anyway? One thing is the sense of a slightly tweaked version of the present being presented to you, in such a way that the slight exaggerations make you notice and reflect back on the current day. William Gibson is the master at this, but he's commented recently that he can't really write science fiction anymore, as the world is so unstable and changing so fast. One can't really imagine "the future" as such.
One other aspect of SF I enjoy but seem to encounter rarely is depictions of the alien. Not just as humans with pointy ears, but when the writer goes out on a limb (or tentacle) to construct an encounter with that which is hard to conceptualise and imagine. Part of the thrust of the writing seems to be and exploration of the question - what might it really be like to encounter something truly other?
Some examples - Frank Herbert in the Dune books, especially Emperor Leto's slow metamorphoses into a 3000 year old giant, oracular-prophesying, drug-secreting worm. Herbert's "Whipping Star" also explores the alien through a kinky SM filter.
Stanislaw Lem does it in Solaris - his descriptions of the mutations of Solaris' surface are reaching for sheer incomprehensibility, they're like something from an anatomy textbook, but with a hint of meaning or significance lurking behind them. On one level Solaris is about how unknowable people are, as well, as the protagonist's are haunted by the ghosts of past significant others, but I digress.
China Mieville seems to be reaching for this in Embassytown, but I get the sense that the alien is here a conceptual device designed to push the limits of language and description. A unknowable that one can't imagine, which exposes the limits of prose.
Anybody have any suggestions for anything similar? Alienate me.
One other aspect of SF I enjoy but seem to encounter rarely is depictions of the alien. Not just as humans with pointy ears, but when the writer goes out on a limb (or tentacle) to construct an encounter with that which is hard to conceptualise and imagine. Part of the thrust of the writing seems to be and exploration of the question - what might it really be like to encounter something truly other?
Some examples - Frank Herbert in the Dune books, especially Emperor Leto's slow metamorphoses into a 3000 year old giant, oracular-prophesying, drug-secreting worm. Herbert's "Whipping Star" also explores the alien through a kinky SM filter.
Stanislaw Lem does it in Solaris - his descriptions of the mutations of Solaris' surface are reaching for sheer incomprehensibility, they're like something from an anatomy textbook, but with a hint of meaning or significance lurking behind them. On one level Solaris is about how unknowable people are, as well, as the protagonist's are haunted by the ghosts of past significant others, but I digress.
China Mieville seems to be reaching for this in Embassytown, but I get the sense that the alien is here a conceptual device designed to push the limits of language and description. A unknowable that one can't imagine, which exposes the limits of prose.
Anybody have any suggestions for anything similar? Alienate me.
