On Books: Retro Versus Visionary

[Bick]

Without wanting to be rude to anyone on this thread

Perish the thought Toby, I'm sure we wouldn't think that

I don't think this argument really helps anyone.

Personally speaking my intention on these boards isn't (in the main) to try and help people, it's just to discuss SF issues that interest me.

No matter what you think Star Wars is, the great majority of people are going to keep calling it science fiction because of the space ships and the aliens. I'm also not sure that anyone will really change their minds.

I'm quite sure you're correct on both these points.

Psik - I have some sympathy with your world view on this - but bringing up IQ as a limiting factor in the definitions of SF maybe sailing a little close to the wind. I think the idea that in recent years publishers have increasingly released works that comprise less scientifically valid plots, but still under the umbrella SF, has some merit. However its probably too sweeping. In the last 20 years there have been plenty of good 'hard' speculative fiction books written - e.g. Greg Bear, David Brin, Stephen Baxter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Forward, Ben Bova etc. This sector of the genre (what you and I would call 'real' SF ) is alive and well. These writers are well known for their high intelligence - which may or may not be coincidence.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Psik - I have some sympathy with your world view on this - but bringing up IQ as a limiting factor in the definitions of SF maybe sailing a little close to the wind. I think the idea that in recent years publishers have increasingly released works that comprise less scientifically valid plots, but still under the umbrella SF, has some merit..

Definition and "quality" are not the same thing.

There is plenty of music that is crap but is still music and some people like it. There are even people who would put Rock and Roll in that category.

I agree this raises some people's hackles because of their egos. The connections between science and science fiction is unavoidable however. Stories about space were written before Sputnik was launched in 1957. That was before the birth of anyone under the age of 57. But vacuum is still vacuum and it costs about $10,000 to put one pound into orbit. I saw some program a few months ago that said fewer than 500 people had been into space so far.

Not many for a so called space age when science fiction in the 40s had Moon colonies.

Some stuff called Science Fiction is just plane Dumb.

It is Techno-Fantasy being called science fiction.

People who only care about making money off of it do not really care about precise definitions. But they would not want to call it something that might reduce sales. So it is up to the readers to decide. I doubt that arguing about "science fiction" would be productive that is why I suggested STEM Fiction. It would still have the same acronym.

psik

 

[Nerds_feather]

psikeyhackr - I don't know if IQ is a very useful lens through which to view the issue. Understanding of STEM reflects only one form or manifestation of intelligence, and Asimov's 160 IQ didn't save him from writing a lot of really terrible books.

As for defining SF and the rest, I gave it a shot last year. For the meta-categories, I argued:

Speculative fiction is the literature of plausible alternatives to present-day reality.

Fantastic fiction is the literature of implausible alternatives to present-day reality.

For the specific categories, I argued:

Science fiction is the literature of physical or technological alternatives to present-day reality.​

Fantasy is the literature of magical or metaphysical alternatives to present-day reality.

Horror is the literature of paranormal or supernatural alternatives to present-day reality, in which the alternatives are presented as necessarily malignant.​

 

[psikeyhackr]

psikeyhackr - I don't know if IQ is a very useful lens through which to view the issue. Understanding of STEM reflects only one form or manifestation of intelligence, and Asimov's 160 IQ didn't save him from writing a lot of really terrible books.

Did I say we need to know the IQs of authors?

And I don't know which ones you regard as terrible. I have had someone tell me that Asimov could not write.

The next time you take a jet flight I doubt that you will think about the IQs of the designers of the plane but would you bet they were below 111? I was commenting on the number of people who must be attracted to make a blockbuster movie. The Hunger Games did much better than Ender's Game at the theatre. But they did make EG 20 or 30 minutes too short. Not enough of Battle School, but lots of Zero G shooting would have been expensive.

We need a new name for the category that Hard SF fits into. Science Fiction has gotten too huge and vague over the last 30 years.

psik

 

[Bick]

... Asimov's 160 IQ didn't save him from writing a lot of really terrible books.

Examples and justification please Mr Feather; I'll not have the good doctor so maligned without a fight!

 

[Brian G Turner]

science fiction must be fiction based on a speculative element that does not knowingly violate the current scientific concept of the laws of mass and energy

Surely any form of travel by light speed, hyperspace, warp, or similar, violates this principle?

In which case, wouldn't that remove Asimov and Heinlein from the science fiction genre?!

Or did I misunderstand his meaning?

 

[Bick]

That's always been a thorny one, Brian! The usual excuse is that the genre gets one free pass, and that is FTL travel. However, there is usually a pseudo-sciencey kind of explanation that suggests that spaceships don't actually go FTL. i.e. they bend the spacetime fabric, or they skip through alternative universes, or ride wormholes, or do something else that avoids directly travelling at speeds greater than c. There aren't too many examples I can immediately think of where ships are described as travelling at multiples of c per se. Star Trek is an obvious example, and there are those who might plonk it in the Star Wars box of things that look like SF but which may be closer to technical fantasy.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Did I say we need to know the IQs of authors?

And I don't know which ones you regard as terrible. I have had someone tell me that Asimov could not write.

The next time you take a jet flight I doubt that you will think about the IQs of the designers of the plane but would you bet they were below 111? I was commenting on the number of people who must be attracted to make a blockbuster movie. The Hunger Games did much better than Ender's Game at the theatre. But they did make EG 20 or 30 minutes too short. Not enough of Battle School, but lots of Zero G shooting would have been expensive.

We need a new name for the category that Hard SF fits into. Science Fiction has gotten too huge and vague over the last 30 years.

psik

Asimov's prose, characterization, etc. are pretty bad in most of his work (Foundation, Robots series, etc.). Aside from "Nightfall" I'm hard pressed to think of anything he wrote that was particularly good. And he doesn't have the benefit of being a visionary like Clarke either. That said, I do appreciate Asimov for helping me get into SF as a 12 year old.

...but I think you misunderstood me--of course being good at math or engineering is a sign of intelligence. STEM corresponds to one area of intelligence only. But it may not denote intelligence in other arena, for example the ability to account for uncertainty in social or political analysis. And lack of interest in STEM doesn't denote lack of intelligence, as there are other areas than just STEM. (Along those lines, I'm going to hazard a guess that a lot of very intelligent people do like Star Wars a lot for what it is: an archetypal myth transported from its ancient roots to a space operatic setting.)

That said, I think STEM fiction does seem to correspond closely to what most people mean when they say "hard" SF. And this may be the sense Spinrad intends in the linked article.

 

[Bick]

Aside from "Nightfall" I'm hard pressed to think of anything he wrote that was particularly good.

We're going to have to agree to disagree. In addition to Nightfall (which I personally feel is slightly overrated) I could rattle off 40+ short stories and at least 10 novels that I think are very good.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Asimov's prose, characterization, etc. are pretty bad in most of his work (Foundation, Robots series, etc.). Aside from "Nightfall" I'm hard pressed to think of anything he wrote that was particularly good.

But it is up to the reader to decide what he or she cares about while reading. I don't want to read a great "writer" that comes up with crappy "science fiction" stories. Joanna Russ discussed this before Star Wars showed up.

Joanna Russ- Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction

psik

 

[Nerds_feather]

But it is up to the reader to decide what he or she cares about while reading. I don't want to read a great "writer" that comes up with crappy "science fiction" stories. Joanna Russ discussed this before Star Wars showed up.

Joanna Russ- Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction

psik

That's totally fair--to each their own. I have a hard time reading hard SF where the "science" takes over other elements of storytelling. I do, however, love well-written hard SF, e.g. KSR's Mars trilogy. Ian Sales' Apollo Quartet is probably the best hard SF I've read in a while (though the first two each have one not-so-hard element).

 

[psikeyhackr]

That's totally fair--to each their own. I have a hard time reading hard SF where the "science" takes over other elements of storytelling. I do, however, love well-written hard SF, e.g. KSR's Mars trilogy. Ian Sales' Apollo Quartet is probably the best hard SF I've read in a while (though the first two each have one not-so-hard element).

But the essay linked to by the OP is about being VISIONARY.

Moriarty has taken two cutting edge science fiction schticks, technological teleportation and the so-called Singularity, and explored their true ultimate scientific, logical, and, yes, psychological, emotional, and spiritual realities with a visionary speculative depth and an up-to-date convincing scientific and humanistic rigor beyond anything that I have ever read before. And, done it in the same novel.

I have seen lots of comments about the writing in Hyperion being great.

But is the story Visionary in any way.

I think the Mars Trilogy by KSR qualifies in that respect. But I regard Hyperion as Fantasy/Horror.

The Vorkosigan Series by Bujold I think is great but visionary? Not too much. The bio-chip implant in Memory with biological vulnerabilities might qualify.

psik

 

[J-Sun]

I've really enjoyed reading all the comments from every one on this thread.

I thought it was an interesting essay, though phrases like "macrocultural seppuku" were a bit...eh.

Yeah, while Spinrad can write with a variety of fictional styles, he has a definite non-fiction style that might not appeal to all (and doesn't always to me) but the substance is almost invariably intriguing at the least.

Substantively, I don't agree with the assumption that it is the "hardness" of the science that defines science fiction, nor the extrapolation that replacing "science" with "speculative" is a function of literary "value."
...
That doesn't make it bad, just different.

That's one of the sub-points he's making. He is saying that, without a certain degree of hardness, it's not SF but, otherwise, he's making a non-literary argument - rather a social one.

Seems like a lot of people are taking this as a "definition of SF" essay and a "hard SF" essay on top of that. I took the point of the essay to be that, while China consciously and intentionally became backward, we are perhaps doing the same unconsciously and accidentally. Whether it is cause/effect, effect/cause, or mere connection, our society and science fiction both seem to be losing their visionary qualities. I recently read someone say that Poe believed art should only be beautiful and Shaw believed it should only be didactic. I believe it has to be beautiful but should have social relevance as well. Spinrad seems to agree that SF has a social component as well as a literary one: our visionary dreams of SF and our visionary scientific endeavors feed on each other and improve society. When either fail, we begin to fail. He's not so much seeking to start a debate on the precise nuances of how to define SF and takes great pains to say he's not favoring nuts-and-bolts hard SF or denigrating fantasy or steampunk as literary endeavors. He's just saying that a failure to even attempt some kind of distinction and an insufficiency of something at least more science fictional than fantasy or steampunk is what is bad. There is actually an implicit distinction in the essay between "speculative fiction" and "[hard] science fiction" and he's talking about spec vs. fantasy (visionary vs. retro), not hard sf vs. not-hard. Hard SF would be a stricter subset of spec fic if it were distinguished but its razor-sharp definition isn't the focus at all.

Also, speculative fiction doesn't and, as I understand it, never has meant speculation about the future. Most of JG Ballard's fiction is speculative about the present.

JG Ballard's work that is typically described as "speculative fiction" isn't fantasy; nor is it "science fiction," of the kind written by, say, the American SF "masters" of the 40s and 50s. This is the kind of stuff that the term can capture that isn't adequately captured by the term SF. I'm thinking Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, Super-Cannes, etc.

As Bick said, Spinrad is using the term "speculative fiction" more in the Heinleinian sense. I haven't read those titles but what Ballard I've read ("Prima Belladonna", "The Sound Sweep", "The Drowned Giant", etc. - all very good) are indeed not SF and not visionary in Spinrad's sense here but are what would be called "surrealism" or something of the sort if they were published outside of genre mags. I think "present" is a tricky term in this context. What Spinrad probably means is that if one is not talking about something impossible or past (retro) and not talking about "the present" (mainstream), then one is necessarily talking about a possible future, even if it's a future only a microsecond from now. If I write a story about the "present", I've thought about it in the past and am targeting a reader who will read it in the future, so what "present" am I really talking about? If I'm trying to mimetically capture something in that fuzzy area, I might be writing about "now" but, otherwise, I'm varying reality, displacing it toward the future. And if it's not the future, it's not "visionary" but only a "dream". It can still have relevance to the future, but then we're opening a different can of worms on secondary effects/metaphorical reference rather than initial nature/literal reference.

Joanna Russ- Towards an Aesthetic of Science Fiction

I've read that link from you before - keep linking to it so no one misses it. I've never read Russ beyond a few stories but I have picked up one of her books not so long ago as I think I've misjudged her. Either way, this essay surprised me in a positive way.

Maybe we need a new name: STEM Fiction.

S.T.E.M. == Science Technology Engineering Mathematics

Again, I don't think that's entirely to Spinrad's point (though it certainly underlies part of it) but that strikes me as a very valuable idea. It would certainly make a priori definitions easier. The problem with definitions of SF is that they try to be logically consistent and historically comprehensive, which are incompatible goals. It leads to

Surely any form of travel by light speed, hyperspace, warp, or similar, violates this principle?

In which case, wouldn't that remove Asimov and Heinlein from the science fiction genre?!

I think Bick addressed that well - when Asimov has a ship travel through what might be a higher-dimensional space which merely makes the human body feel weird for a moment, he's playing the get-out-of-light-speed-jail-free card. It sneaks into a crevice of extreme theory and is otherwise just a story-telling gimmick to allow the rest of the "hard sf" to take over. When Edmond Hamilton has a ship traveling through this space/time continuum at "many thousands of light-speeds" and the crew seeing the enemy ships they're flying towards and lining them up in the gunsights, he's writing spaceship fantasy. But insofar as Heinlein or Asimov wrote impossible things, they were indeed not writing "visionary science fiction" in Spinrad's sense. After all, Heinlein wrote Glory Road and Asimov wrote Azazel stories and those weren't SF just because they were from their pens. FTL could remove certain works, though not the authors as monolithic entities.

Examples and justification please Mr Feather; I'll not have the good doctor so maligned without a fight!

But speaking of Dr. Asimov, amen to that!

We're going to have to agree to disagree. In addition to Nightfall (which I personally feel is slightly overrated) I could rattle off 40+ short stories and at least 10 novels that I think are very good.

Agreed - I think "Nightfall" is one of the greats but it is somehow overrated even for it's greatness. And it's only one of dozens of great stories and novels.

Well, I've got a few more thoughts I might squeeze into a later post but I've gone on far too long already for now. I hope nobody (including you, Toby) gets upset about another tired definitional "argument" and keeps posting insights and reactions, especially social.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Again, I don't think that's entirely to Spinrad's point (though it certainly underlies part of it) but that strikes me as a very valuable idea. It would certainly make a priori definitions easier. The problem with definitions of SF is that they try to be logically consistent and historically comprehensive, which are incompatible goals.

Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin would not qualify as Hard or STEM Science Fiction but it is a serious SF story because it brings up the question of WHO OWNS KNOWLEDGE? That question raises the issue of how societies structure themselves by controlling the distribution of knowledge.

I find it very curious that Western countries do not make double-entry accounting mandatory in the schools even though it is 700 years old. A Swedish Socialist who claimed to teach English in high school said he objected to the idea on the grounds that it would make Capitalism seem logical to the students. Why don't we have National Recommended Reading Lists.

How societies work is a concept on which plenty of science fiction does thought experiments. I consider things like that more important than writing styles.

But calling it STEM Fiction instead of whatever other kind of science fiction would create more distinction in people's minds.

psik

 

[Nerds_feather]

I

That's one of the sub-points he's making. He is saying that, without a certain degree of hardness, it's not SF but, otherwise, he's making a non-literary argument - rather a social one.

Seems like a lot of people are taking this as a "definition of SF" essay and a "hard SF" essay on top of that. I took the point of the essay to be that, while China consciously and intentionally became backward, we are perhaps doing the same unconsciously and accidentally. Whether it is cause/effect, effect/cause, or mere connection, our society and science fiction both seem to be losing their visionary qualities. I recently read someone say that Poe believed art should only be beautiful and Shaw believed it should only be didactic. I believe it has to be beautiful but should have social relevance as well. Spinrad seems to agree that SF has a social component as well as a literary one: our visionary dreams of SF and our visionary scientific endeavors feed on each other and improve society. When either fail, we begin to fail. He's not so much seeking to start a debate on the precise nuances of how to define SF and takes great pains to say he's not favoring nuts-and-bolts hard SF or denigrating fantasy or steampunk as literary endeavors. He's just saying that a failure to even attempt some kind of distinction and an insufficiency of something at least more science fictional than fantasy or steampunk is what is bad. There is actually an implicit distinction in the essay between "speculative fiction" and "[hard] science fiction" and he's talking about spec vs. fantasy (visionary vs. retro), not hard sf vs. not-hard. Hard SF would be a stricter subset of spec fic if it were distinguished but its razor-sharp definition isn't the focus at all.

In a sense then, it's a bit like Paul Kincaid's argument that SF has lost its ability to say anything about the future with any degree of certainty, with the added bit that he sees this as emblematic of a broader retreat from "futurism" in society.

I don't know if that holds water for me, to be honest. In what sense? Certainly true if you narrowly look at space exploration, but otherwise?

Also, as far as speculative fiction goes, Heinlein might have been using it as a synonym for science ficiton, but in general that's not how the term is used. During the 1960s:

The use of "speculative fiction" in the sense of expressing dissatisfaction with traditional or establishment science fiction was popularized in the 1960s and early 1970s by Judith Merril and other writers and editors, in connection with the New Wave movement.

In the 2000s, the term came into wider use as a convenient collective term for a set of genres. However, some writers, such as Margaret Atwood, continue to maintain a distinction between "speculative fiction" as a "no Martians" type of science fiction, "about things that really could happen."

For me it's always been an intrinsic part of the New Wave's reaction against "the rules" of Campbellian SF.

 

[Nerds_feather]

Just another thought: maybe Spinrad is arguing for positivist science fiction?

 

[J-Sun]

In a sense then, it's a bit like Paul Kincaid's argument that SF has lost its ability to say anything about the future with any degree of certainty, with the added bit that he sees this as emblematic of a broader retreat from "futurism" in society.

I don't know if that holds water for me, to be honest. In what sense? Certainly true if you narrowly look at space exploration, but otherwise?

I think if you look at funding cuts for science in general (space suffering the worst, but far from the only place that's bleeding) in both the public and private sectors (many corporations have no R&D to speak of because it doesn't return immediate profits) and you look at the polls of the number of people who believe in elves or whatever and you look at the success of Harry Potter to Star Wars vs., say, Europa Report and on and on, you can make a pretty good case for at least feeling an anecdotal sense that society is not as scientifically and technologically on the ball as it was. We have mainframes in our pocket telephones and increased surveillance technology (including those very phones) but today's accomplishments do not seem to be on the same level as curing polio and going to the moon and establishing satellite communications and providing clean drinking water (a skill we seem to be losing in the US public sector). I'm not saying you can't make an argument that there is no societal retreat but the argument doesn't depend on space alone, either way. Indeed, with space, you can argue that private space exploration and our current exoplanet bonanza and other things makes space an area of mild or potential progress running counter to more emphatic non-space retreats.

As far as Kincaid's argument, IIRC, that started up shortly after I read and wrote up Dozois' 29th annual and I remember being struck by similarities but I also forget the details where I had sharp disagreements with his position (or some assumptions) and so I also can't remember it well enough to say how Spinrad would align with it. I think there's definitely some common ground, though.

Also, as far as speculative fiction goes, Heinlein might have been using it as a synonym for science ficiton, but in general that's not how the term is used. During the 1960s:



For me it's always been an intrinsic part of the New Wave's reaction against "the rules" of Campbellian SF.

I'll grant the connotations but Spinrad defines his usage within the article and it has to be taken that way in that case. And if anyone would be aware of the connotations, it'd be Spinrad who was published in New Worlds and has had his books banned left and right and is generally seen as a New Wave author (despite also having sold a story to John W. Campbell and having a harder science fictional core than many of his New Wave companions).

Just another thought: maybe Spinrad is arguing for positivist science fiction?

Speaking of the connotations of a word generally used otherwise! I either missed or forgot this debate and had to look it up. To me "positivist" means the philosophical position (and I actually think "logical positivism" even before "positivism" but here, it's being used just in the sense of "upbeat, non-negative". I don't think Spinrad would really be advocating that. He cites Orwell as an example of speculative fiction and I think he would grant that dystopias can be "visionary" and serve a social function. I feel like you're probably right that there's an underlying assumption that most visionary things would be positive, but I don't think he's consciously signing up for the positive "platform". Kind of like Kincaid - probably common ground but not a pure alignment.

 

[Null_Zone]

Sorry but that "essay" could come straight from the "Why China is cool" bureau of Mao. When the basics are so wrong it is hard to take anything else superior.

 

[J-Sun]

Sorry but that "essay" could come straight from the "Why China is cool" bureau of Mao. When the basics are so wrong it is hard to take anything else superior.

The Bureau of Zhu Di, maybe. I didn't get any sense of "yay Red China" from it, so much as saying that they had something cool when Europe was in its Dark Ages but blew it - "fell into a retrograde malaise for centuries from which it is only now emerging".

But you do put your finger on one of the points I was meaning to ask folks: "Is his China, both progressive and regressive, not overstated for thematic purposes?" IOW, I don't think China was as advanced as he portrays ("sophisticated powder and rocket weapons" seems like an overstatement) but I'm a dead white European male and don't really know.

Also, I'm surprised at the lack of comment on America's cultural and science fictional "hegemony". Spinrad's American-born, but lives in France. And I actually see a British hegemony in two ways: Americans tend to write SF but talk about it much less - most of the critics and critical writing are UK (or non-American). So time is turning SF back into a British book thing as the canons and critical discussion (mindshare) is shaped by UK critics. And the British seem to have bought all the publishing firms which more or less corresponds to the New Wave of British Space Opera. Not to mention the whole thing of "steampunk" - while some of it is set in America (and it was founded by two American cyberpunks according to some), the center-core of it is "Victorian" which doesn't even have a correlate in the US. That was our expanding nation, civil war, robber barons, fight the Mexicans and Spanish era.

 

[Nerds_feather]

I think if you look at funding cuts for science in general (space suffering the worst, but far from the only place that's bleeding) in both the public and private sectors (many corporations have no R&D to speak of because it doesn't return immediate profits) and you look at the polls of the number of people who believe in elves or whatever and you look at the success of Harry Potter to Star Wars vs., say, Europa Report and on and on, you can make a pretty good case for at least feeling an anecdotal sense that society is not as scientifically and technologically on the ball as it was. We have mainframes in our pocket telephones and increased surveillance technology (including those very phones) but today's accomplishments do not seem to be on the same level as curing polio and going to the moon and establishing satellite communications and providing clean drinking water (a skill we seem to be losing in the US public sector). I'm not saying you can't make an argument that there is no societal retreat but the argument doesn't depend on space alone, either way. Indeed, with space, you can argue that private space exploration and our current exoplanet bonanza and other things makes space an area of mild or potential progress running counter to more emphatic non-space retreats.

From my vantage point at a university, I see gobs of money being thrown around, but it's often going to things like neuroscience and genetics rather than the old, space and defense-driven areas of the physical sciences. (The social sciences are faring even worse in the US, what with the insane cuts proposed to social science research funding via the NSF and the Fulbright Foundation.) And I think you are right that we are in a period where, at least in the US, science is undervalued relative to how it should be and how it has been in the past.

As far as Kincaid's argument, IIRC, that started up shortly after I read and wrote up Dozois' 29th annual and I remember being struck by similarities but I also forget the details where I had sharp disagreements with his position (or some assumptions) and so I also can't remember it well enough to say how Spinrad would align with it. I think there's definitely some common ground, though.

I also have some points of contention, but his basic premise is that science fiction has lost its sense of itself and lost faith that the future is comprehensible, leading to a lot more genre-bending across the borders with fantasy and weird fiction and a lot more cynical story-telling. That seems fairly similar, though he's not drawing connections to things at a cultural or societal level.

I'll grant the connotations but Spinrad defines his usage within the article and it has to be taken that way in that case. And if anyone would be aware of the connotations, it'd be Spinrad who was published in New Worlds and has had his books banned left and right and is generally seen as a New Wave author (despite also having sold a story to John W. Campbell and having a harder science fictional core than many of his New Wave companions).

He's using it to mean "literary" or "high-level" science fiction, which to me is an odd use of the term, and out of step with its general usage. But this is a footnote to the broader discussion.

(And how awesome was New Worlds, btw?)

Speaking of the connotations of a word generally used otherwise! I either missed or forgot this debate and had to look it up. To me "positivist" means the philosophical position (and I actually think "logical positivism" even before "positivism" but here, it's being used just in the sense of "upbeat, non-negative". I don't think Spinrad would really be advocating that. He cites Orwell as an example of speculative fiction and I think he would grant that dystopias can be "visionary" and serve a social function. I feel like you're probably right that there's an underlying assumption that most visionary things would be positive, but I don't think he's consciously signing up for the positive "platform". Kind of like Kincaid - probably common ground but not a pure alignment.

I mean it in the Popperian/Durkheimian philosophy of science way: that truth is knowable and emerges from observation, deduction, experimentation and verification.