In transformative fandom, the song of my people is a lonely tune

[extrapenguin]

So, after a very hectic week of work featuring lots of overtime, I daydreamed about what sorts of things I'd write for my letter for the 520 Guardian Reverse Exchange (I will totally write a letter of prompts for my author to choose from, because how else am I supposed to do an exchange???), and basically the answer is "porn prompts, cute scenes, plotty plot ideas, all the worldbuilding, and all the worldbuilding, except this time as if it were for a science fiction novel". The latter category includes stuff like relativity.

Assuming Shen Wei were slapped on a relativistic space ship that accelerated at 1 G for 5 000 years, then did some funky gravity assist swing stuff and decelerated at 1 G for 5 000 years more, he'd have from his POV spent 18 years on a relativistic space ship while the rest of the Universe ticked along by 10k years. This is obviously the best solution for reconciling Shen Wei saying he's sought Zhao Yunlan for 10k years yet have him not be an immortal!

(But seriously, someone sing me the song of my people. I would love to have someone take the chance to explain how the Hallows time travel is totally somehow due to the fact that they are e.g. a FTL drive left behind by a more advanced civilization that turned Zhao Yunlan into a tachyonic construct with imaginary mass who could thus break the speed limit and time travel! The pains of wanting science fiction/space AUs that aren't Star Wars or Star Trek based...)

(Guardian rewatch post ep 5 will take another few hours.)

Comments

[extrapenguin]

Murderbot and Imperial Radch are pretty solidly Space Opera (as is Peter F. Hamilton) – Hard SF is typically characterized by complete focus on the worldbuilding and little to no feelings. Poul Anderson's Tau Zero is perhaps the ur-example, though very noticeably a product of its time re: sexism. Stephen Baxter writes some decent Hard SF that I read recently (which prompted my sadface about the terribad romance and the infodump I already knew everything about). Other authors I'd name would be Alastair Reynolds and Greg Egan, who're generally good with female characters.

The three big subgenres I'm into are Hard SF, MilSF, and Space Opera; they're generally concerned with feelings other than romance-related ones. (For Hard SF, curiosity and the sense of wonder; for MilSF, loyalty and determination and sacrifice; for Space Opera, loyalty and larger than life things and here romance might exist but I prefer the epic spy plots.) There's a good chunk of romance with science fiction, but it seems to approach it from the romance end and thus write the tropiest crappiest science fiction backdrop for the romance, and I'm also just ... utterly done with heterosexual romances. Give me MilSF where the good Captain is a lesbian! Write space opera where there's a planet where sexes are segregated and same-sex attraction is normal and there's no "heterosexuality conquers all" plot! Argh.

[firestar]

Ooh, that breakdown is super helpful, thank you. I grew up more on the F side of SFF, so I'm used to the subgenres of fantasy but not so much SF. Seems like Space Opera is more my thing in that particular arena, though given that B5 and DS9 are my big tv SF loves that's... probably not a surprise. XD

I enjoyed Tanya Huff's Valour series but I came to her through her fantasy books and was more curious about her SF would work for me than checking it out for the MilSF itself. I am curious about the Honor Harrington books and the Vorkosigan (guess who had to look that name up >.>) books. I think I have Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books somewhere as well. Hm.

But yes, saaame on the romance front. I mean, I picked up Ancillary Justice more because it was doing different things with gender. That's something I appreciate about Elizabeth Bear's work as well, the wider range of gender and sexual orientations is satisfying. SF as a genre has so much potential on that front and it frustrates me that more writers don't explore that.

[extrapenguin]

Honor Harrington is very enjoyable MilSF, though the author has, uh, views that are on occasion a bit too clear in the text. The Vorkosigan saga is more space opera, and I'd actually class some installments as romance-y, though each book is in a slightly different subgenre. (I liked the plotty warfare books and was baffled by all the main romances. Lots of people like them, though, especially the first one, so I guess het has been ruined by oversaturation for me. *g*) Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars books are pretty hard IIRC, and I definitely enjoyed them.

I'm also in the hardish place of enjoying stories about things (cosmology, Ringworld, etc) and events more than about people or societies, but of course the people writing about things and events tend not to casualy include queer people, and the people who include queer people tend to be more into writing about people and societies.

[firestar]

*sighs* Oh dear. One of the ~old school~ then? Are said views along the same lines as Orson Scott Card and Robert Heinlein, perchance?

Ah, yes, that would be a bit awkward indeed. XD I'm the opposite on that, I think. I love worlds where I can sink my teeth into the worldbuilding of people and societies and focusing on things like cosmology and events tends to fly right over my head and not hold my interest. *laughs* I guess that's why I majored in history and not science. XD

[extrapenguin]

David Weber is pretty recent IIRC, but while the Honor Harrington series has a setting where sexism and racism don't exist (the Queen is black, half the military are women, etc), he completely forgets the existence of queer people and also the planet of the sexist Space Christians got narratively redeemed much before the planet of the socialists. His economic views are very right wing, and that on occasion shines through. I haven't read anything by Orson Scott Card or Robert Heinlein, so can't compare.

Ah, the pains of being in physics and wanting queer physicists to exist in media like the default-het ones do. (A lot of especially early, especially Hard SF was actually decent autism representation, even if accidentally. No Very Special Episodes, everyone agrees that the Science Thingy Of The Book is the most interesting thing ever and it's natural to be obsessed by it, and there's no judgement about being terrible at being a regular human.)

[firestar]

I shall keep that in mind, then. FWIW, I haven't read Card or Heinlein either but I've heard things about their sexism and homophobia that mean I don't really want to, either.

*squishes* Yeah, I get that. It'd be nice if more content creators outside of fannish spaces remembered that queer people exist and are right here, thanks. And huh, that sounds really cool, even though, yeah, I doubt it was intentional. Though maybe some of those early HSF writers were somewhere on the spectrum themselves, even if the terminology wasn't there.

[dhampyresa]

Give me MilSF where the good Captain is a lesbian!

Yoon ha Lee's Machineries of Empire? (Disclaimer: am friend of author, have not read.)

[extrapenguin]

Read it and enjoyed it! :)

[dhampyresa]

Yay!