# Why the West is in love with SF&F



## Parson (Jun 18, 2013)

Interesting article here about the differences between the Westernized countries and others in regard to SF and F.

I believe it makes sense. At least it makes sense to me. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...fi-and-fantasy-a-cultural-explanation/276816/


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## gully_foyle (Jun 19, 2013)

"The world in which we live feels explainable, predictable, and boring. " and hence we seek escapism? I'm not buying into that one. I prefer to think that western culture has been heavily influenced by rapid technological advances and the possibilities they have suggested. Both cautionary (Frankenstein, The Time Machine) and celebratory (Star Wars/Trek, etc). Escapism does help me in shutting out a sometimes overly complex world, but science tells me it is still far from explainable, predictable and boring. The article compares the perspective of two industries and does not bring in British cinema (gritty realism?), Chinese cinema (significant fantasy elements) and NZ cinema (lets turn 
The Hobbit into an action movie).


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## Parson (Jun 19, 2013)

Good points Gully. If I had to take my shot at this I would say that the most aimed at goal in life is the difference. In the developed world the most aimed at goal is to be a rich and/or powerful individual which is often supposed to happen due to your gifts either physical or mental. It is my thought that in the less developed world the ultimate goal is more often relationships which is less determined by mental or physical gifts.


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## Boneman (Jun 19, 2013)

Daniel Abraham said this: "Fantasy is, at heart, involved with nostalgia and the (sometimes imperfect) healing of the world. We are in a place as a world community in which nostalgia and healing are profoundly comforting ideas."

Perhaps, in the west, we have (nearly) always had the freedoms that allowed us to know we could make changes, and hence we could dream of changes we wished we could make. It says in the article that desires and needs are cultural, and perhaps the cultural wishes in India don't need change as much as we did - their culture of fantastic Gods and fantasy exist in Indian storytelling from the earliest age, and they are in effect surrounded by fantastical imagery in their temples, whereas (dare I say it?) not many churches are built as fantastical images - maybe some gargoyles and stained-glass windows fit the part, but in the main, they are impressive architecture, but more restrained. And our storytelling to children doesn't often include Gods (except perhaps the Norse Gods) - it's usually fairies and dragons. The Gods told in Indian stories still 'exist' today, worshipped by millions, as an aspect of one God. Perhaps the Indian culture doesn't take to fantasy as much as the west, because it's surrounded by it far more, become more 'everyday'? 

So the fantasy they like in Bollywood reflects their culture better: 



> Whereas Bollywood takes quotidian family dramas and imbues them with spectacular tales of love and wealth found-lost-regained amidst the pageantry of choreographed dance pieces,


 
which don't exist in real-life, do they? It's fantasy, just a different take on it. Be interesting to know which stays in the memory longer. I'm not sure Iron man is a particularly good example, but I'm damned if I can remember a great deal of Iron Man 1 (but that could be my age...), whereas I recall a great deal of LOTR. Presumably, the best Bollywood films are still talked about, long after the fantasy image has faded from the screen... But I'm sure I read (here?) somewhere, that fantasy writing is gaining strength in India, sales are increasing.


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## Parson (Jun 19, 2013)

Boneman said:


> Perhaps, in the west, we have (nearly) always had the freedoms that allowed us to know we could make changes, and hence we could dream of changes we wished we could make. It says in the article that desires and needs are cultural, and perhaps the cultural wishes in India don't need change as much as we did - their culture of fantastic Gods and fantasy exist in Indian storytelling from the earliest age, and they are in effect surrounded by fantastical imagery in their temples, whereas (dare I say it?) not many churches are built as fantastical images - maybe some gargoyles and stained-glass windows fit the part, but in the main, they are impressive architecture, but more restrained.


Obviously you do dare say it.  
Now remember you are talking to a Calvinist here. We look askance at the over ornateness and ostentation of the traditional cathedral. We want nothing to detract from the "pure" worship of Christ. --- Seriously --- Okay that was the Reformation view and we've moderated a good deal from that. 
I do take your  point and think you have a good one. But that doesn't quite address why SF&F tend to be a Westernized phenomenon.  





> And our storytelling to children doesn't often include Gods (except perhaps the Norse Gods) - it's usually fairies and dragons. The Gods told in Indian stories still 'exist' today, worshipped by millions, as an aspect of one God. Perhaps the Indian culture doesn't take to fantasy as much as the west, because it's surrounded by it far more, become more 'everyday'?
> 
> So the fantasy they like in Bollywood reflects their culture better:
> 
> ...



For me books are the things that linger in the mind. There are very few visual images from movies that do that for me. A curse of my over active imagination I would expect. I do also suspect that from the little I've seen of "Bollywood" films they would linger, but since I basically hate musicals, I suspect it would be like the aftertaste of a slightly funky radish.


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## Boneman (Jun 20, 2013)

I love funky radish!! Best found at the Stuttgart Octoberfest...

I absolutely agree about books (and the article was about films, anyway - can you imagine a bollywood film as a book? 'they break into a choreographed dance routing that lasts for five minutes' kind of thing) being able to pore over a sentence, a paragraph, a whole chapter, reading and re-reading, getting more out of it, is incomparable. Yes, you can rewind a movie and watch it over and over, but it's not the same, because a view is imposed on you, which is open to less interpretation than the written word. Reacher the Movie is a good example...


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## Nightspore (Jul 7, 2013)

I'd argue that science fiction is predominantly a Western phenomena primarily. Although I can understand the need for escapism for some demographic groups, particularly teenagers. Darko Suvin ascribed this desire to escape to a familiar yet different world as some form of _cognitive estrangement_. 

Science fiction is difficult to define though. It is such a large genre it can be about almost anything from aliens & alien worlds, androids, black holes, computers & conceptual breakthroughs to time travel, terraforming & utopias. 

There are themes that science fiction has covered that can be found in other world literature. Such as the search for immortality can be seen in the Epic of Gilgamesh & Homer's Odyssey is essentially a _fantastic voyage_. There is a history of sci fi from Asia:

China:

'Chinese literature has a long tradition of the fantastic that prepared the way for, and leads up to, modern Chinese sf. Like modernism itself, the sf genre reached China through the unexpected route of Japanese contacts, in particular the foreign studies of the author Lu Xun (1881-1936). Long before his domestic fame as a novelist in his own right, the young Lu read and later translated Jules Verne's De la Terre à la Lune (1865) from the Japanese edition in 1902, protesting in his preface that science fiction was "as rare as unicorn horns, which shows in a way the intellectual poverty of our time." Lu's ire was not merely directed at the topic, but at the language itself, bemoaning China's predilection for the ossified constrictions of classical language: good for poetry and oracle bones, but not engineering and science. "Yueqiu zhi Mindi Xiaoshuo" ["A Tale of Moon Colonists"] (1904-1905 Xiuxiang Xiaoshuo), written by the pseudonymous and never-identified Huangjiang Diaosuo, might be described as a picaresque Edisonade in which exiles from modern China tour the world in a hot-air Balloon, trying new Inventions, encountering strange races and customs, and eventually reaching the Moon. - See more at: Culture : China : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia'

Japan:

'The history of Japanese sf proper begins in 1868, the year of the Meiji Restoration that heralded the onset of Japanese modernity, with the translation of Anno 2065: een blik in de toekomst (1865 chap; vt Anno 2070: een blik in de toekomst 1870 chap; trans Alex V W Bikkers as Anno Domini 2071 1871 UK) by Pieter Harting; notably the anonymous Japanese translation preceded the English version by three years. The book swiftly revitalized the mirai-ki mode, leading to numerous popular publications of Futures Studies, accentuating the contemporary sense of Time Abyss. Yasuo Nagayama, a historian of early Japanese SF, has observed in his Nippon SF Seishin-shi: Bakumatsu, Meiji Kara Sengo Made ["A History of Japanese SF Spirit: From the Late Bakufu/Early Meiji Period Until the Post War Era"] (2009) that writings of the period often seemed confused about the difference between "the future" and simple "modernity" – what in Europe might be regarded as a simple Technothriller could often be consumed in Japan as a glimpse of things to come, whereas other readers seemed unaware that, for example, the fanciful imaginings of Albert Robida were fictional. - See more at: Culture : Japan : SFE : Science Fiction Encyclopedia

~ _The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction_ (online).


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 7, 2013)

I would suggest another reason for cultural attitudes to science fiction - the West has historically been a diverse group of countries looking to expand geographically and socially. In other words, the West is used to challenging barriers and discovering frontiers.

However, many Asian countries are very inward looking - China has never been an expansive power, and neither has India. These are countries that have suffered invasion, but never seen fit to explore past their own borders except in a limited sense.

I suspect that as the Chinese and Indian space programs continue to develop we'll see more interest here - not least taking their own cultural values into space and how they might be affected.

However, I would suggest fantasy is very much culturally driven and a major part of Western, Chinese, and Indian cultures - but less disconnected with "modern life" as in Europe, where fantasy is as much an attempt to harken to a pre-industrial "Golden Age". 

India has that as an integral part of Hinduism (Sanatama Drama) and can be found underlying Bollywood films as part of their context, rather than as a focus - whereas Chinese storytelling is often profoundly fantastical.

Just a thought, anyway.


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## Stephen Palmer (Jul 8, 2013)

Neither China nor India - but particularly China - have much of the individual-as-isolated-adventurer ethos that prevails in the West. In the East it's much more about society as a whole. I think that is changing though, thanks to the overwhelming influence of the West, and if China becomes an outwardly capitalist nation the individual may come to the fore much more.

Unfortunately the lure of the West is delivered via greed. We still think owning stuff is important.


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## Callen Clarke (Jul 10, 2013)

Hello Chronicles!
Looks like a great forum. I am a Yank, so please forgive the intrusion if this is a UK specific community. I've always been a bit of an Anglophile, so I hope I'm not too out of place here. I feel that the true home of Science Fiction is in Britain, and have always been impressed with the similarities and differences between American and British attitudes towards SF.

Ok!

So, to comment on this topic... I've been thinking a good deal about this question lately, and I think it remarkable that the rise of SF coincides more or less with Industrialization. James Burke, one of your compatriots produced a great documentary round about 1980 called 'Connections.' It deals with the nature of Technological Change and its effect on Humanity. I won't go into detail about his thesis, but I find it very compelling.

It seems to me that the Mainstream Literary Community may have missed out on the fact that we live in a society that _changes_, changes the way it changes, and is changing more and faster than ever before. SF, to my mind is the only branch of literature that sincerely takes up the consequences of the change we see all around us. We tend to think of SF and Fantasy as 'escapism' and I'm sure there's an element of that, but there is also a profound _realism_ to the subtext of SF— _this is what happens if things continue to change_... Which is why we often hear phrases in the media about new technology like: 'Straight out of Science Fiction' etc. We live in a reality that would have been considered Science Fiction only eighty years ago, and this has never been more true than it is now, and is only becoming more so. SF is compelling in many ways because it is True to Life... Things change, and the results are profound.

Fantasy, in that regard might be seen as the opposite side of the coin: harking back to a changeless world of tradition and ritual...

Well that's my 2c... or 'tuppence' as used to be said over there. Cheers!


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## Nightspore (Jul 10, 2013)

Callen Clarke said:


> Well that's my 2c... or 'tuppence' as used to be said over there. Cheers!



We'd say 'two pence' these days.


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## Parson (Jul 10, 2013)

Callen Clarke said:


> Hello Chronicles!
> Looks like a great forum. I am a Yank, so please forgive the intrusion if this is a UK specific community. I've always been a bit of an Anglophile, so I hope I'm not too out of place here. I feel that the true home of Science Fiction is in Britain, and have always been impressed with the similarities and differences between American and British attitudes towards SF.
> 
> Ok!
> ...


 
This "Yank" has been welcomed here for a long time. There are Chroners from many different places on this globe. Some of long for a day when we are not limited to it.


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## Brian G Turner (Jul 10, 2013)

Callen Clarke said:


> Hello Chronicles!



Welcome to chronicles, Callen. 

We have quite an international community here, which is nice.


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## clovis-man (Jul 10, 2013)

I'm reminded of a "truism" that I heard many years ago about SF. It maintained that tales of futuristic events would usually involve a dilemma in which someone (a town, a country, a planet, a galaxy, etc.) is being threatened by some overwhelmingly bad or all-powerful force. The situation will ultimately be resolved, in large part, by the efforts of one person, who is a rugged individualist and not afraid of confrontation (or at least is forced into it). 

You can morph the individual hero into a group of protagonists, but the concept remains of someone or a group rising to a challenge irrespective of the odds or the potential difficuilty. This is often the hallmark of the "pioneer spirit" of western society (or of British imperialism, if you care to blur the definition ). If a simplistic explanation works, this could be it.


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## Parson (Jul 10, 2013)

clovis-man said:


> I'm reminded of a "truism" that I heard many years ago about SF. It maintained that tales of futuristic events would usually involve a dilemma in which someone (a town, a country, a planet, a galaxy, etc.) is being threatened by some overwhelmingly bad or all-powerful force. The situation will ultimately be resolved, in large part, by the efforts of one person, who is a rugged individualist and not afraid of confrontation (or at least is forced into it).
> 
> You can morph the individual hero into a group of protagonists, but the concept remains of someone or a group rising to a challenge irrespective of the odds or the potential difficuilty. This is often the hallmark of the "pioneer spirit" of western society (or of British imperialism, if you care to blur the definition ). If a simplistic explanation works, this could be it.


 
You might be on to something here. It's not universally true, but true enough to build a strong case.


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## Nightspore (Jul 10, 2013)

clovis-man said:


> I'm reminded of a "truism" that I heard many years ago about SF. It maintained that tales of futuristic events would usually involve a dilemma in which someone (a town, a country, a planet, a galaxy, etc.) is being threatened by some overwhelmingly bad or all-powerful force. The situation will ultimately be resolved, in large part, by the efforts of one person, who is a rugged individualist and not afraid of confrontation (or at least is forced into it).
> 
> You can morph the individual hero into a group of protagonists, but the concept remains of someone or a group rising to a challenge irrespective of the odds or the potential difficuilty. This is often the hallmark of the "pioneer spirit" of western society (or of British imperialism, if you care to blur the definition ). If a simplistic explanation works, this could be it.



You may find this on SF definitions from The Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction quite interesting:

Definitions of SF


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 10, 2013)

With all due respect, Parsons, I think the article strongly undervalues the appeal of SF/F outside the West. In Indonesia, fantasy books sell like hotcakes (as does Hindu mythology-based fiction, which is viewed by the 96% of Indonesians who are not Hindus as great and culturally-relevant stories but not holy stories). Horror and weird fiction are massively popular there too. SF less so, but in ex-Yugoslavia (where I've also lived) SF has a long tradition that people in the West are just unaware of. Russia has an amazing SF tradition. Latin America has magic realism, which Gene Wolfe famously described as "fantasy written by Spanish speakers." The Philippines has an incredibly rich community of SF writers, etc. 

So to me, the reason why SF/F seem so much more central to the West than "the rest" is because all the big publishing houses are in the West, they aren't marketing/publishing a lot of non-Western SF/F and--as a result--Western SF/F fans often don't know that this stuff is out there!


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 10, 2013)

I said:


> China has never been an expansive power



Historical quibble: Today's (PRC) China reflects past military expansions into Tibet, Xinjiang and Manchuria, among other places. Other historical expansions (not in today's PRC) included Vietnam, Taiwan and Korea.


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## Parson (Jul 10, 2013)

Nerds_feather said:


> With all due respect, Parsons, I think the article strongly undervalues the appeal of SF/F outside the West. In Indonesia, fantasy books sell like hotcakes (as does Hindu mythology-based fiction, which is viewed by the 96% of Indonesians who are not Hindus as great and culturally-relevant stories but not holy stories). Horror and weird fiction are massively popular there too. SF less so, but in ex-Yugoslavia (where I've also lived) SF has a long tradition that people in the West are just unaware of. Russia has an amazing SF tradition. Latin America has magic realism, which Gene Wolfe famously described as "fantasy written by Spanish speakers." The Philippines has an incredibly rich community of SF writers, etc.
> 
> So to me, the reason why SF/F seem so much more central to the West than "the rest" is because all the big publishing houses are in the West, they aren't marketing/publishing a lot of non-Western SF/F and--as a result--Western SF/F fans often don't know that this stuff is out there!


 
Perhaps I misunderstood the article. I thought that the article was making a division between SF and F. Granted there is all kinds of debate as to what really is SF and what really is F, but anything away from the fuzzy dividing line becomes increasingly clear. No one would accuse Heinlein of writing High Fantasy or Tolkien of writing Science Fiction. 

I am not surprised in the least that Fantasy is very popular in the East, especially among the "Hindu" population. Much of their religious literature is self recognized as mythological. I would consider Easter Europe to be part of the "west" or at least the "First World" countries.  I imagine that Japan has quite an appetite for SF, judging by their movie and television tastes. So I think the major emphasis of the article remains valid, perhaps oversold, but valid.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 10, 2013)

No it's definitely talking about both SF and F, though I guess it is also just talking about film. That makes a huge difference from a discussion about books or including other media like video games.

A huge barrier to doing SF in film would be the cost, though there are some amazing Soviet SF films from back in the day (Solyaris, Stalker, etc.).


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## JoanDrake (Jul 11, 2013)

Parson said:


> Good points Gully. If I had to take my shot at this I would say that the most aimed at goal in life is the difference. In the developed world the most aimed at goal is to be a rich and/or powerful individual which is often supposed to happen due to your gifts either physical or mental. It is my thought that in the less developed world the ultimate goal is more often relationships which is less determined by mental or physical gifts.


 
With all due respect I have to disagree. People in the less developed world want to get rich too. It's just that their version of rich is having enough to eat.

Weber's theories came out in the later 19thc, yes? Why then was SFF a literary "ghetto" where some of the best writers in the world languished and died poor until the 1960's? Philip K. Dick wrote 44 novels, won the Hugo and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in his lifetime. He shouldn't have died virtually penniless if everyone was "loving" SF and Fantasy so. 

I've never placed much stock in Weber anyway. He always seemed to be just updating the old argument of, "The people have it too good, we need a war and some new taxes, because we all know everyone really loves suffering. It's good for moral fibre" 

As far as Science destroying our sense of wonder I think Heinlein, as usual, said it best: "





> To be matter-of-fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy - and dull
> fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful."


 
Maybe that's what the article is complaining about, and in that case, I agree.

Bollywood movies in general context resemble nothing more than HOLLYwood movies made during the 30's (except the women all wear Saris) The reason many 30's Hollywood movies (and some of them were great movies, no dispute there) looked that way was largely because of the Motion Picture Production Code. The reason Bollywood looks that way can, I think, largely be traced to the Central Board of Film Certification rather than any sense of _anomie _that has somehow taken 100 years to catch up to modernity.

Interesting article though, and thank you for bringing it to us.


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## Parson (Jul 11, 2013)

JoanDrake said:


> With all due respect I have to disagree. People in the less developed world want to get rich too. It's just that their version of rich is having enough to eat.



I don't live, neither have I lived in those countries. I'm sure what you say is right that they want to get rich too. But I would maintain that where the living is poorer, friends are held more dear. 



> Interesting article though, and thank you for bringing it to us.


  You're most welcome!


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## Nightspore (Jul 11, 2013)

Parson said:


> But I would maintain that where the living is poorer, friends are held more dear.



I wouldn't bet on it.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 12, 2013)

Parson said:


> I don't live, neither have I lived in those countries. I'm sure what you say is right that they want to get rich too. But I would maintain that where the living is poorer, friends are held more dear.



I've lived in two developing countries and there are actually a decent number of rich people--just not much of a middle class. If Western countries have diamond structures for inequality, many developing world countries look more like a beaker. (The US and UK are starting to look a bit more like that as well.)

I don't think there's much difference in the valuation of friends, but I do see that extended families are more central to people's lives in developing countries--including for the rich. Extended families = networks and networks are the best resource for getting things done in most of the world.


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## Parson (Jul 12, 2013)

*Nerds feather: *That is exactly what I was getting at, the need for networking.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 12, 2013)

Parson said:


> *Nerds feather: *That is exactly what I was getting at, the need for networking.



Yup. Networks are always important but I think in most developing countries networks are more heavily based on familial connections than in Western countries. Not entirely, of course. Just more.


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## JoanDrake (Jul 13, 2013)

Parson said:


> I don't live, neither have I lived in those countries. I'm sure what you say is right that they want to get rich too. But I would maintain that where the living is poorer, friends are held more dear.
> 
> You're most welcome!


 
Again, with all due respect, I must disagree. I think the only difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich have more money, and all the benefits money brings. I don't think poverty has any benefits at all.

How dear you hold your friends is more a matter of personal preference than environment. Many poor people are very self-centered and understandably so, they literally do "have their own problems."


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## Parson (Jul 13, 2013)

JoanDrake said:


> Again, with all due respect, I must disagree. I think the only difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich have more money, and all the benefits money brings. I don't think poverty has any benefits at all.
> 
> How dear you hold your friends is more a matter of personal preference than environment. Many poor people are very self-centered and understandably so, they literally do "have their own problems."



It is my turn to respectfully disagree. I believe poverty usually brings some benefits. It brings a greater appreciation for everything you have. It does not allow you to easily hold the false notion that you can make it on your own. It increases your gratitude toward the acts of kindness that are done for you. 

In the United States, and I suspect this is true around the world, the amount of money that is given to charity is higher by percentage of income among the less advantaged economic classes. It is much easier to find the heart to help someone else when you have or you can imagine being in such a situation yourself. 

I would not willingly choose poverty, but poverty is not an unmitigated evil.


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## Nightspore (Jul 14, 2013)

Parson said:


> I believe poverty usually brings some benefits.



I'm sorry Parson but I can't think of any benefits poverty brings to anyone.



Parson said:


> but poverty is not an unmitigated evil.



Yes it is.


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## Abernovo (Jul 14, 2013)

(I apologise if I get a little political here, but recent events in my life brought this into perspective. I also apologise for the length of this post.)

Parson and Nightspore, there is poverty and there is poverty. 

To paraphrase an actress (might have been Emma Stone, but not sure): I'm fed up of seeing wealthy people (especially those who've never known hardship) smugly opining that money doesn't buy happiness; it doesn't, but if you're not working three jobs, not worried about every bill, about putting food on the table, about ending up on the street, you can spend more time doing things that make you happy -- money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy a security buffer. (That isn't directed at you, Parson, as I know that most priests/preachers survive on a small income.  Nor is it aimed at anyone here.)

Constant worry is what I grew up with. I still live with it, and despite what some of the neocon types seem to suggest, it's not due to stupidity, laziness or lack of ambition.

#​
However, getting back on topic, I'm in what is still referred to by some as a Second World country these days (Second World = Soviet Bloc and allied countries). Whilst Western in most ways, it is not Western Europe or North America* . In some ways, it provides a link--both literally and figuratively--between the affluent West, and the Middle East and beyond, perhaps giving a slight insight.

There are science fiction and fantasy writers outside the 'West', but their experience isn't always the same and the bods who control media empires (we know who we're talking about and it's not the agents) regard the general public as idiots. They don't pursue the stories because they decide, without proper research, that the public won't be interested** or won't understand. So you get remakes, with US actors, and US settings, and none of the flavour of the originals (Oldboy is the latest one that's being done); or you get the condescending pat on the head that smiles at Bollywood or Nollywood (among others), congratulates them, then ushers them back into the corridor. I say the general public isn't as stupid as the politicians and media moguls think. *WE* can identify with our fellow human beings and find commonalities in stories. Of course, it might make money for the original directors/writers rather than the big corporations in Hollywood, New York and London if we did.

Oh, and poverty and lack of investment (a form of communal poverty) also stifles voices. There are plenty of people with good imaginations (and stories to tell), but who have difficulty harnessing them, due to lack of computers, poor education, social inequalities and communications deficits. I haven't been able to access the original Atlantic article, Parson. I'm only in Chrons on a short window (lack of communications infrastructure investment).

#​
*South America is Western, do the countries there share the philosophies of the US -- discuss 
Western is a loaded term that can have different meanings depending upon who uses it.

**In some cases, the public are not interested in foreign, dubbed films***. How much of this is due to lack of exposure and being told that it's not for them? Populism has long been used to control the public and create divisions, as well as sell products and worldviews.

***This doesn't necessarily translate to foreign, translated books, although the populist, anti-intellectual argument does. If you're told that X is the sort of thing read by 'them' enough times, it's easier to dismiss it without thought -- something that's happened to sff, as it happens.

Just my opinion and two penn'orth.


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## JoanDrake (Jul 14, 2013)

Parson said:


> It is my turn to respectfully disagree. I believe poverty usually brings some benefits. It brings a greater appreciation for everything you have. It does not allow you to easily hold the false notion that you can make it on your own. It increases your gratitude toward the acts of kindness that are done for you.
> 
> In the United States, and I suspect this is true around the world, the amount of money that is given to charity is higher by percentage of income among the less advantaged economic classes. It is much easier to find the heart to help someone else when you have or you can imagine being in such a situation yourself.
> 
> I would not willingly choose poverty, but poverty is not an unmitigated evil.


 


The things you mention in the first para are ways of coping with poverty, not benefits it brings. I find that rich people have mostly gotten rich because they know they can only succeed by being of service to others and showing tangible gratitude to those who do service for them. Poor people, more often than not, can't really do those things as well as the rich, however much they may wish to, (you may have the heart to help somebody, but you also need the resources) thus poverty, indeed, usually breeds more poverty rather than anything else.

Nothing, I suppose, is an unmitigated evil, but I find poverty to cause far more handicaps than advantages.


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## Nightspore (Jul 14, 2013)

Abernovo said:


> Oh, and poverty and lack of investment (a form of communal poverty) also stifles voices. There are plenty of people with good imaginations (and stories to tell), but who have difficulty harnessing them, due to lack of computers, poor education, social inequalities and communications deficits.



I couldn't agree more.


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## J-Sun (Jul 18, 2013)

Tom Purdom has a reply to the article that kicked off this thread. He doesn't specifically address the "Western" part but I thought it was interesting, anyway. (Thanks to Marian on the FSF board for the link.)

On a different angle from Mr. Purdom's article, I'm not sure if I've seen it mentioned yet and it's really begging the question - just one step removed - but science fiction is a very subversive literature in the sense that it frequently questions "common sense" and "the way we've always done it" and traditional values and assumptions. For whatever reason, the West had thrown off its caste system by the time SF came to prominence, especially in the US. India had a much more rigid caste system for much longer and China and other cultures placed great emphasis on "respect for elders" and the traditional ways of doing things. So, naturally, with SF being about "new things", it would be a "foreign" way of looking at things and could be seen as more dangerous to social stability. This is ridiculously simplified and the West can be very tradition-bound and place emphasis on "class" of some kind and the "East" is not so purely and rigidly static as simple broad statements might make it seem but it does seem that there could be some degree of relevance to the idea - after all, one of the famous anthologies of the genre is called "Dangerous Visions".


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## Parson (Jul 18, 2013)

*J-Sun* I like what you say here and it makes sense to me. I'd not really thought about SF being subversive, but I now believe that you are right. It often takes things that "are" and asks "Why?" and it often takes things that "are not" and asks "Why not?" Asking those kinds of questions will inevitably challenge the status quo. And sometimes begin a process of change. In societies that promote change more readily it makes sense that there would be less resistance to that kind of thinking. Ergo: Why the West is in love with Science Fiction.


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## Nerds_feather (Jul 18, 2013)

Just of note: SF (literature) is hugely popular in China right now. Many writers use SF as a vehicle for criticizing the government in ways they couldn't do directly. Others are just, well, writing SF.


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## NovaZero (Jul 19, 2013)

The West is becoming very inward-looking. For those of us raised on a healthy diet of individualism and personal freedom, it rubs the wrong way. I believe the mind naturally looks for ways to avoid being pushed against a wall, and escaping into our imaginations is a simple coping mechanism for the feeling that we're living in an ever-shrinking bubble. I'm speaking as someone from the U.S. here—we're being told by our leaders not to dream; not to look to the stars as we once did in our formative years as a nation. Of course that's going to have major impact on the people who were raised by dreamers and became dreamers themselves! Science fiction and fantasy both have no limits, and the more restricted we are in real life, the bigger the wings of our dreams.


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## psikeyhackr (Jul 24, 2013)

JoanDrake said:


> As far as Science destroying our sense of wonder I think Heinlein, as usual, said it best:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Thanks, that is a great quote.  I have never encountered it before.

I had a conversation with a man who told me he LOVED cars.  I asked him what a cam shaft was.  He didn't know.  He had a May 2004 Automobile Magazine.  It had lots of pictures with autoparts laid out in geometric patterns.  I know I could not stand that magazine if I didn't understand what I was looking at.  As it is I find car magazines uninteresting.  A cam shaft today may be more precise than 60 years ago because of computer controlled machining but it is still a cam shaft.  

psik


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