Why the deep norms of the SF genre matter. In the book reviews I’ve been writing recently I have been applying some very specific ideas about the nature and scope of science fiction, particularly in contrast to other genres such as fantasy, mystery, and horror. I have not hesitated to describe some works found in SF anthologies as defective SF, as non- SF, or even as anti- SF. It is not fashionable these days to be so normative about any kind of artistic form, let alone SF. The insistence that we should embrace diversity is constant, even if it means giving up having any standards at all. In a genre like SF where the core traditions include neophilia and openness to possibility, the argument for exclusive definitions and hard boundaries seems especially problematic. I think it is an argument very much worth making nevertheless. This essay is my stake in the ground, one I intend to refer readers back to when (as sometimes happens) I’m accused of being stuck on an outmoded and narrow conception of the genre. I will argue three propositions: that artistic genres are functionally important, that genre constraints are an aid to creativity and communication rather than a hindrance, and that science fiction has a particular mission which both justifies and requires its genre constraints.(Some parts of this essay are excerpts from earlier related writing.)First, I want to be clear on what I think a genre is. It’s two things: one is a set of expectations a reader has about the kind of experience an instance of the genre will deliver, the other is a set of genre- specific codes and expressive techniques that the genre writer uses in the expectation that readers will receive them as the author intended. Like all codes and languages, the purpose of genres is to make communication easier by allowing both parties to assume a repertoire of common referents. Genre art fails when the production of the writer fails to match the genre referents and constraints as known by the reader. In the book reviews I’ve been writing recently I have been applying some very specific ideas about the nature and scope of science fiction, particularly in contrast. Reversible Changes. Learn about reversible & irreversible changes by testing what happens to different substances as you experiment with them in this fun, interactive. A menu of 6 interactive science experiments for 9-10 year olds. Try. KS2 Bitesize Science. Play the all-new BBC Bitesize Science activities with your. Matter Project Overview. Key Unit Questions. 1. How are elements similar and different from one another? 2. What are the properties of each element studied? The Way Cool Game Of Science Matter For KidsThis analysis generalizes Samuel Delany’s observation that SF is not merely, or even mostly, a way of writing; it is a way of reading, too. The same is true of other genres, in different ways. Genre is functional. I’ve already described how genre conventions help artists and audiences communicate. Another obvious way is that genre categories reduce search costs in the market for art by helping artists signal about their production and giving art consumers a language for requesting what they want. This is a benefit to both artists and the audience. Genre has a more subtle function as well – it assists creativity. Meaning relies on context; the frame defines the picture. Usually, artists do their best work when grappling with and using the constraints of a genre or artistic medium rather than attempting to abolish them. Back to zero” sounds brave, but tends to produce art that is flabby, self- indulgent, and vacuous. A genre can be seen as a conversation among its authors and readers (what postmodernists call “shared discourse”). As in every long running conversation, a genre tends to develop internal themes, motives, and a shared history. Works that are disconnected from the main conversation may be seen by people in that conversation as outside of the genre even if they fulfill many of its thematic and structural requirements and seem like they ought to belong “in” to outsiders. For historical and contingent reasons which would be worth an essay in themselves, the conversational aspect of the SF genre has been exceptionally important relative to other fiction genres. SF works are often written as implicit or explicit replies to other works. Enjoy fun science games for kids while learning more about science and technology. There's a range of free online activities to try with something for everyone. The Way Cool Game Of Science Matter DefinitionAuthors and fans cultivate a detailed awareness of how works are situated in the conversation. This makes analytical and normative analysis of the SF genre both more fruitful and more contentious than it would be otherwise. Now we will require the following definition of science fiction (due in its most developed form to Gregory Benford): that branch of fantastic literature which affirms the rational knowability of the universe, and has as its most particular reader experience the sense of conceptual breakthrough – of having understood the universe in a new and larger way. Benford’s definition of SF implies that SF stories must have important structural features in common with murder mysteries, and a reason crossovers between these two genres are so often successful. In both forms the author is required to play by the rules of rational deduction. The writer wins the game if the reader reaches the big reveal without having anticipated it but with the realization that the solution is correct; the reader wins the game if he or she gets to the truth before the author’s reveal. The author plays fair by leaving open the possibility that a sharp enough reader can win, the work is judged as much or more by how well and how audaciously the author plays the game more than by conventional literary criteria. Within discussion of the SF genre (though not to my knowledge among mystery fans) “the game” has the specific meaning of this dance between author and reader. What distinguishes an SF story from a murder mystery isn’t the absence of murder but the presence of at least one premise in the story that is fantastic, e. There’s a convention in SF called the “one- Mc. Guffin rule”; you’re allowed one impossible premise per story, but FTL travel doesn’t count. Larry Niven is famous for this prescription: “Make one change to the world as it is now, and then explore the ramifications of that change – but don’t mess with anything else. Similar definitions go back to the beginnings of modern SF, as invented by John W. Campbell and Robert Heinlein in the 1. They are not really adequate; good SF can change lots of things about its settings. The “don’t mess with anything else” should be read as “keep your secondary world rationally accessible to the reader” in Benford’s sense. Note the absence in this analysis of any reference to the obvious stage furniture of genre SF – spaceships, robots, aliens, time travel, and the like. These things in themselves do not an SF story make; when the structure underneath them violates the core promise of rational knowability you get what is at best defective SF and at worst a sort of anti- SF which informed readers of the genre are likely to receive as willfully perverse. One of SF’s central impulses is to extend the perimeter of the rationally knowable, sweeping in not merely unknown places and times and aliens accessible to science but also motifs and images that originated in myth and fantasy and horror. The evolution of SF can be charted as a steady widening of that perimeter – to other planets, beyond the solar system, to other times and alternate histories, then to technology- of- magic and possibilities even more estranged from the world of immediate experience. Having advanced this definition of SF, I’m now going to make a temporary concession to people who consider it too narrow by relabeling what it covers “classical SF”, or c. SF. Those with a little historical awareness of the field will recognize that the classical period began in 1. Robert Heinlein’s first publication under John W. Campbell, the then- new editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. Almost anyone with any exposure to SF will recognize that much but not all of what is popularly labeled SF is c. SF. The question I will address in the remainder of this essay is: why should we consider c. SF normative? What grounds do we have for regarding a work that claims to be SF but is not c. SF to be defective SF, non- SF, or anti- SF? One reason is historical. Previous attempts to abandon the deep norms of c. SF while preserving its stage furniture and surface tropes have not aged well. The “New Wave” of the late 1. Later insurgencies within the field, notably the cyberpunks of the late 1. SF’s assumption of rational knowability (and all that followed from it) even while trying to radically transform the genre in other ways. The reason beneath that history is reader response. SF doesn’t exist in a vacuum; people who want fantasies or Westerns or romances know how to find them, and in general the kind of person who can be attracted by the way SF is packaged (spaceships and other high technology on covers, etc.) wants rational knowability and wants to play the kind of game with the author that is characteristic of c. SF, even if he or she is not very introspective about that desire and not very good at the game yet. This is why SF readers – even inexperienced ones – often experience violation of the deep norms of c. SF as a kind of dishonesty or malicious subversion. They can tell they’re being cheated of something even if they don’t know quite what. Forty years ago this feeling was often articulated against the New Wave by complaining that its works were “depressing” – which was true, and remains true of a lot of defective SF and anti- SF today, but doesn’t get at the actual root of the problem. Correspondingly, most of the demand for non- classic SF comes not from readers but from critics/authors/editors (people who think of themselves as tastemakers) who are bent on imposing the deep norms of other genres onto the SF field. Such people are especially apt to think SF would be improved by adopting the norms and technical apparatus of modern literary fiction, itself a genre which developed not long prior to modern SF in the early 2. SF. One reliable way to spot one of these literary improvers in action is unending complaints about the low standards of characterization that the majority of both SF readers and writers consider acceptable. If you scratch a person making this complaint you’ll generally find someone who doesn’t realize that, while characters may be required to give an SF story emotional life, the idea is the hero. Reversible & Irreversible Changes - Dissolving. Reversible Changes. Learn about reversible & irreversible changes by testing what happens to different substances as you experiment with them in this fun, interactive activity for kids. Find out what substances dissolve in water and lots of other interesting chemistry related facts. Can all substances be turned back to their original form after they mix with water or will they stay that way forever? Try dissolving flour, sugar and sand in a beaker of water, what happens? Is it what you expected? Is melting ice an irreversible change? How about cooking an egg? Challenge yourself to answer these questions and more with this cool science game.
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