nquixote
August 27th, 2010, 11:03 PM
From Cinefugitive (http://cinefugue.com/blog/2010/08/new-exotic-sci-fi-the-windup-girl-and-river-of-gods/):
New Exotic sci-fi: The Windup Girl and River of Gods
Science fiction stories are generally extrapolations of current trends. With the relative decline of the West and Japan, writers have begun to think about the possibility that the future might belong to Somewhere Else. The most popular choices for that Somewhere Else are countries that are just now on the upswing of their S-curve of economic development: Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Asia, or the Middle East.
Generally, I approve of this trend (which I will call “New Exotic” sci-fi). A Venetian sci-fi writer in 1450 (if such existed) would have been prescient if he had imagined the world of 1850 “belonging” to England, France, or Germany; a British sci-fi writer in 1850 would have been prescient to envision a 1920 in which Japan and America were the “wave of the future.” So it makes heaps of sense for us to postulate that in 50 years, it might be India, or Brazil, or Turkey, or Thailand driving the frontiers of technology and global culture.
But there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way is to recognize the historical fact that no country reaches the tech frontier without undergoing serious social changes. The faint echoes of samurai and cowboys in the Panasonics and Googles of today are just that – faint echoes. Writers who realize this will try to preserve some element of the spirit of the old in the form of the (imagined) new, rather than trying to cut-and-paste.
This is easier to explain with examples.
A prime example of what I consider a successful New Exotic vision is 2009′s blockbuster debut novel, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Set in a somewhat-near-future Thailand, The Windup Girl envisions a world where oil has run out, the seas have risen, gene-hacking has run wild, and civilization has declined markedly from its giddy heights (This is a great setup, and very much at the forefront of another movement I like to call the Declinepunk movement, which includes books like Robert Charles Wilson’s Julian Comstock). Thailand, as one of the few nation-states to survive the eco-collapse, is a global leader by default.
Bacigalupi’s future Thailand has some marked similarities with the modern version – the kingdom is still riven by competing rioting factions, for instance. And in some ways, it has retrogressed; the eco-collapse has driven many people toward superstitiousness. But in many ways, Bacigalupi’s Thailand has transcended the shackles of cultural history. Its relative economic success springs from a combination of gene-hacking tech prowess and draconian environmentalism. Its political fault lines are no longer between farmers and city-dwellers (as in the current “red-shirt/yellow-shirt” split) but between environmentalists and free-traders. Most importantly, people’s prejudices and assumptions and allegiances are driven as much by the memes of the future – gene-hacking, isolationism, etc. – as by the tropes of the ancient past (Buddhism, etc.). The characters talk about future stuff as if it has been happening for a long time. That’s change you can believe in, so to speak.
For an example of a book that I think doesn’t fulfill the potential of New Exotic sci-fi, I’d cite Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, another recent and much-lauded work. Set in 2047 in a politically fragmented India, its vision is more of a traditional Gibsonian cyberpunk one – AIs, virtual worlds, robots.
That part is fine. But what annoyed me about River of Gods was that culturally and economically, the India of 2047 looks a lot like the India of 2007 – or, even worse, like the India of 1977. Caste – already fading slowly to irrelevance now – has returned with a vengeance, or is assumed to have never left.. Hindu fundamentalist mobs continue to burn and pogrom Muslim neighborhoods (despite the fact that the last instance of this, in Gujarat in 2002, provoked plenty of reforms and self-conscious national soul-searching). References are made to chai-wallahs serving tea in call centers (in an age of robots and AIs, no less!). The tough, dynastic woman leader of the state of Bharat is a pretty direct copy of Indira Gandhi. Scions of rich Indian families continue to spend their youth in the United Kingdom.
Taken together, this just seems like sloppiness, with dash of old imperial British arrogance. In a future in which India is at the forefront of both artificial intelligence and energy technology, one would expect the culture to have evolved beyond the religiously hidebound, caste-segregated, politically immature society from which the British Empire withdrew in the 20th century. And indeed, visitors to modern India will see that caste, fundamentalism, and old-style politics are slowly fading in importance. It’s a safe bet that 2047 will see an India that Lord Mountbatten would scarcely recognize…but McDonald is not bold enough to envision that India.
(Of course, I should mention that I’m exaggerating the difference between the books. Bacigalupi drops far too many historical references – the Burmese invasion of Ayutthaya is especially flogged to death – and McDonald avoids certain old-India relics like arranged marriages. But the difference is there.)
Part of the difference between The Windup Girl and River of Gods is a result of book structure. Bacigalupi has four main points of view; McDonald has nine. Since the books are of comparable length (The Windup Girl is a bit shorter), this means that Bacigalupi has about twice as much page space with which to turn each character into a non-stereotype.
But part of it – and this is just my guess – is that Bacigalupi just knows his subject country a lot better. He has spent quite a bit of time in Thailand; he has seen the battles between the red-shirts and the yellow-shirts up close, he has seen the whorehouses and the foreign carpetbaggers and the monks. He knows the country well enough that he feels comfortable extrapolating how it might change.
McDonald, on the other hand, has not (to my knowledge) lived in India. And anyway, he has, to date, written sci-fi books set in Africa, India, Brazil, and Turkey; his knowledge of most or all of these places must be limited to what he has read and seen on TV (Bacigalupi’s only other novel is set in his home country, the U.S.). Reading the back cover of Brasyl, I see pretty much exactly what I expect – the characters are a Catholic priest and a telenovela producer. Yawn. This is travel fiction.
Moral of the story: Limited knowledge of a country’s present will lead to limited extrapolations of its future. If you think Country X is going to be pushing the boundaries in 2050, go live in Country X, meet the people, visit the companies, see the tiny little green shoots of the changes that will engulf it a few decades from now. You won’t get that knowledge from history books or BBC special reports or National Geographic photo spreads.
New Exotic sci-fi is a cool trend, and one that is hopefully here to stay. But authors need to dream big; the leading countries of the future will bear as much similarity their current selves as America bears to the days of cowboys, wildcat oilmen, and sewing circles.
New Exotic sci-fi: The Windup Girl and River of Gods
Science fiction stories are generally extrapolations of current trends. With the relative decline of the West and Japan, writers have begun to think about the possibility that the future might belong to Somewhere Else. The most popular choices for that Somewhere Else are countries that are just now on the upswing of their S-curve of economic development: Southeast Asia, Latin America, South Asia, or the Middle East.
Generally, I approve of this trend (which I will call “New Exotic” sci-fi). A Venetian sci-fi writer in 1450 (if such existed) would have been prescient if he had imagined the world of 1850 “belonging” to England, France, or Germany; a British sci-fi writer in 1850 would have been prescient to envision a 1920 in which Japan and America were the “wave of the future.” So it makes heaps of sense for us to postulate that in 50 years, it might be India, or Brazil, or Turkey, or Thailand driving the frontiers of technology and global culture.
But there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. The right way is to recognize the historical fact that no country reaches the tech frontier without undergoing serious social changes. The faint echoes of samurai and cowboys in the Panasonics and Googles of today are just that – faint echoes. Writers who realize this will try to preserve some element of the spirit of the old in the form of the (imagined) new, rather than trying to cut-and-paste.
This is easier to explain with examples.
A prime example of what I consider a successful New Exotic vision is 2009′s blockbuster debut novel, Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Set in a somewhat-near-future Thailand, The Windup Girl envisions a world where oil has run out, the seas have risen, gene-hacking has run wild, and civilization has declined markedly from its giddy heights (This is a great setup, and very much at the forefront of another movement I like to call the Declinepunk movement, which includes books like Robert Charles Wilson’s Julian Comstock). Thailand, as one of the few nation-states to survive the eco-collapse, is a global leader by default.
Bacigalupi’s future Thailand has some marked similarities with the modern version – the kingdom is still riven by competing rioting factions, for instance. And in some ways, it has retrogressed; the eco-collapse has driven many people toward superstitiousness. But in many ways, Bacigalupi’s Thailand has transcended the shackles of cultural history. Its relative economic success springs from a combination of gene-hacking tech prowess and draconian environmentalism. Its political fault lines are no longer between farmers and city-dwellers (as in the current “red-shirt/yellow-shirt” split) but between environmentalists and free-traders. Most importantly, people’s prejudices and assumptions and allegiances are driven as much by the memes of the future – gene-hacking, isolationism, etc. – as by the tropes of the ancient past (Buddhism, etc.). The characters talk about future stuff as if it has been happening for a long time. That’s change you can believe in, so to speak.
For an example of a book that I think doesn’t fulfill the potential of New Exotic sci-fi, I’d cite Ian McDonald’s River of Gods, another recent and much-lauded work. Set in 2047 in a politically fragmented India, its vision is more of a traditional Gibsonian cyberpunk one – AIs, virtual worlds, robots.
That part is fine. But what annoyed me about River of Gods was that culturally and economically, the India of 2047 looks a lot like the India of 2007 – or, even worse, like the India of 1977. Caste – already fading slowly to irrelevance now – has returned with a vengeance, or is assumed to have never left.. Hindu fundamentalist mobs continue to burn and pogrom Muslim neighborhoods (despite the fact that the last instance of this, in Gujarat in 2002, provoked plenty of reforms and self-conscious national soul-searching). References are made to chai-wallahs serving tea in call centers (in an age of robots and AIs, no less!). The tough, dynastic woman leader of the state of Bharat is a pretty direct copy of Indira Gandhi. Scions of rich Indian families continue to spend their youth in the United Kingdom.
Taken together, this just seems like sloppiness, with dash of old imperial British arrogance. In a future in which India is at the forefront of both artificial intelligence and energy technology, one would expect the culture to have evolved beyond the religiously hidebound, caste-segregated, politically immature society from which the British Empire withdrew in the 20th century. And indeed, visitors to modern India will see that caste, fundamentalism, and old-style politics are slowly fading in importance. It’s a safe bet that 2047 will see an India that Lord Mountbatten would scarcely recognize…but McDonald is not bold enough to envision that India.
(Of course, I should mention that I’m exaggerating the difference between the books. Bacigalupi drops far too many historical references – the Burmese invasion of Ayutthaya is especially flogged to death – and McDonald avoids certain old-India relics like arranged marriages. But the difference is there.)
Part of the difference between The Windup Girl and River of Gods is a result of book structure. Bacigalupi has four main points of view; McDonald has nine. Since the books are of comparable length (The Windup Girl is a bit shorter), this means that Bacigalupi has about twice as much page space with which to turn each character into a non-stereotype.
But part of it – and this is just my guess – is that Bacigalupi just knows his subject country a lot better. He has spent quite a bit of time in Thailand; he has seen the battles between the red-shirts and the yellow-shirts up close, he has seen the whorehouses and the foreign carpetbaggers and the monks. He knows the country well enough that he feels comfortable extrapolating how it might change.
McDonald, on the other hand, has not (to my knowledge) lived in India. And anyway, he has, to date, written sci-fi books set in Africa, India, Brazil, and Turkey; his knowledge of most or all of these places must be limited to what he has read and seen on TV (Bacigalupi’s only other novel is set in his home country, the U.S.). Reading the back cover of Brasyl, I see pretty much exactly what I expect – the characters are a Catholic priest and a telenovela producer. Yawn. This is travel fiction.
Moral of the story: Limited knowledge of a country’s present will lead to limited extrapolations of its future. If you think Country X is going to be pushing the boundaries in 2050, go live in Country X, meet the people, visit the companies, see the tiny little green shoots of the changes that will engulf it a few decades from now. You won’t get that knowledge from history books or BBC special reports or National Geographic photo spreads.
New Exotic sci-fi is a cool trend, and one that is hopefully here to stay. But authors need to dream big; the leading countries of the future will bear as much similarity their current selves as America bears to the days of cowboys, wildcat oilmen, and sewing circles.