Thanks for the review of this book - it sounds really interesting to me. The sense of history is one of my favorite things about the SF I like. Not surprisingly, I'm a fan of CJ Cherryh. One of these days I need to reread my favorite novel of hers, "Serpent's Reach", which has my favorite depiction of cloning technology ever - human beings have traded human embryos to giant intelligent ants in exchange for immortality. Needless to say, the ants have no interest in educating the human clones to act like human beings. As so often with Cherryh's best concepts, this is not even the main point of the story.
When I was in 8th grade, Samuel Delaney came to give a lecture at the college in my town, and of course I had to go. It all went way over my head, but I do remember him saying how much he hated SF stories with kings and emperors, as he felt it showed a lack of the proper kind of creativity. He also set out a theory of SF and Fantasy as genres that ultimately derived from the genre of history writing - SF was the reflection of history into the future, using scientific possibility to make the relocation work, and Fantasy was a secondary reflection of SF-style projection back into the place of history, but now with independent world-building and magic taking the place of historical laws and technology. This may not be an accurate account of his original point, as I completely failed to understand what he meant at the time, and my rendition of it here is the result of decades of reflection on what he could have meant based on what I thought I remembered. In any case, the model seems relevant to your remarks on Holland's book.
Interesting.… I wonder if Delany read this book? I can kind of imagine him going either way on it. I really like reading his thoughts about genres, though I don't always find it persuasive when he's talking about individual books (like his long essay about The Dispossessed).
Incidentally I don't think I can find the source for this again but Holland was apparently pretty open about why she only ever published the one sci fi novel—she couldn't really afford to write science fiction! So she went back to writing historical fiction.
Thanks for the review of this book - it sounds really interesting to me. The sense of history is one of my favorite things about the SF I like. Not surprisingly, I'm a fan of CJ Cherryh. One of these days I need to reread my favorite novel of hers, "Serpent's Reach", which has my favorite depiction of cloning technology ever - human beings have traded human embryos to giant intelligent ants in exchange for immortality. Needless to say, the ants have no interest in educating the human clones to act like human beings. As so often with Cherryh's best concepts, this is not even the main point of the story.
When I was in 8th grade, Samuel Delaney came to give a lecture at the college in my town, and of course I had to go. It all went way over my head, but I do remember him saying how much he hated SF stories with kings and emperors, as he felt it showed a lack of the proper kind of creativity. He also set out a theory of SF and Fantasy as genres that ultimately derived from the genre of history writing - SF was the reflection of history into the future, using scientific possibility to make the relocation work, and Fantasy was a secondary reflection of SF-style projection back into the place of history, but now with independent world-building and magic taking the place of historical laws and technology. This may not be an accurate account of his original point, as I completely failed to understand what he meant at the time, and my rendition of it here is the result of decades of reflection on what he could have meant based on what I thought I remembered. In any case, the model seems relevant to your remarks on Holland's book.
Interesting.… I wonder if Delany read this book? I can kind of imagine him going either way on it. I really like reading his thoughts about genres, though I don't always find it persuasive when he's talking about individual books (like his long essay about The Dispossessed).
Incidentally I don't think I can find the source for this again but Holland was apparently pretty open about why she only ever published the one sci fi novel—she couldn't really afford to write science fiction! So she went back to writing historical fiction.