alex_greene
Guest
Science Fiction Primer - Interview with Amy Sturgis
"Amy H. Sturgis is an author, speaker, and professor at Belmont University. She specializes in fantasy and science fiction and in Native American studies."
"Science fiction has of course gone through many different stages, waves, or movements since. The thing I like most about the history of science fiction is how closely it is connected to the question of what it means to be human.
"The science part of science fiction keeps expanding. It starts out as biology and chemistry, then takes in physics, then takes in linguistics and anthropology and sociology. As more disciplines get brought in under the science part of science fiction, we get new insights into what it means to be human.
"I think at some level, we always answer the question “What is human?” with something like “Whatever is like me.” That is just our frame of reference. But as science fiction has expanded its lens by incorporating the tools of different sciences, the notion of “what’s like me” gets bigger and bigger.
"So the answer starts out to include only well-educated, land-owning white men and then evolves to include people of both genders and all races. But then, what traits must a computer or an artificial intelligence possess in order for us to think of it as something like a human? What about different biological creatures, like a primate on our planet or a different life form on another planet? What of clones? What is necessary for us to consider any life human enough to be treated as human?
"Some of the most innovative questions about the very nature of how we understand the universe have come from writers using science fiction to get at these questions in a different way."
What follows is my comment on what I've read.
The Refereeing camp in which I sit is "human-centered." Actually, tell the truth, it's more specific than that: it's "player character-centered." The fate of the universe could rest on the shoulders of these hapless borderline criminals who just happen to be the avatars of the players gathering at my table.
A universe of big ships and mass movement of supersized machines of gross destruction in warfare is kind of worthless without the characters whose observations, and questions, give the setting value and purpose. Indeed, the question "what is human?" kind of pops its head round the doorframe many times in my games.
That, I guess, is why I tend to like psionics in a setting: they keep things on a human level. Because when you have mind readers, you need to have minds to be read, which brings things down to human thoughts and feelings - or at least, human motivations, even if the only recognisable motivation is hostility.
"Amy H. Sturgis is an author, speaker, and professor at Belmont University. She specializes in fantasy and science fiction and in Native American studies."
"Science fiction has of course gone through many different stages, waves, or movements since. The thing I like most about the history of science fiction is how closely it is connected to the question of what it means to be human.
"The science part of science fiction keeps expanding. It starts out as biology and chemistry, then takes in physics, then takes in linguistics and anthropology and sociology. As more disciplines get brought in under the science part of science fiction, we get new insights into what it means to be human.
"I think at some level, we always answer the question “What is human?” with something like “Whatever is like me.” That is just our frame of reference. But as science fiction has expanded its lens by incorporating the tools of different sciences, the notion of “what’s like me” gets bigger and bigger.
"So the answer starts out to include only well-educated, land-owning white men and then evolves to include people of both genders and all races. But then, what traits must a computer or an artificial intelligence possess in order for us to think of it as something like a human? What about different biological creatures, like a primate on our planet or a different life form on another planet? What of clones? What is necessary for us to consider any life human enough to be treated as human?
"Some of the most innovative questions about the very nature of how we understand the universe have come from writers using science fiction to get at these questions in a different way."
What follows is my comment on what I've read.
The Refereeing camp in which I sit is "human-centered." Actually, tell the truth, it's more specific than that: it's "player character-centered." The fate of the universe could rest on the shoulders of these hapless borderline criminals who just happen to be the avatars of the players gathering at my table.
A universe of big ships and mass movement of supersized machines of gross destruction in warfare is kind of worthless without the characters whose observations, and questions, give the setting value and purpose. Indeed, the question "what is human?" kind of pops its head round the doorframe many times in my games.
That, I guess, is why I tend to like psionics in a setting: they keep things on a human level. Because when you have mind readers, you need to have minds to be read, which brings things down to human thoughts and feelings - or at least, human motivations, even if the only recognisable motivation is hostility.
