![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Bilenkin and me
Jan. 13th, 2014 06:06 pmSometimes I meet someone who likes science fiction, and they'll ask me if I read science fiction, and I'll say, "I used to." And they'll ask me who my favorite SF author is.
My standard answer for years has been Dmitri Bilenkin.
( Read more... )
Dmitri Bilenkin wrote real speculative fiction in the best mold. No, it wasn't exactly biting satire, not, "If only," nor, "If this goes on." But it was smart speculative fiction: Imagine a situation that we do not yet know to exist, such as a technology not yet invented, and imagine its possible repercussions, that we can anticipate possible problems if we ever encounter it in reality. Fiction as forewarning and forearming.
He had several stories in this mold, but the one that I tend to think of as a perfect version of this is one called something like, "Through Strangers' Eyes."
I'm going to summarize its basic plot here, to explain what I mean. Sorry to spoil, but I think that's the right call here.
( Read more... )
This is fiction that teaches us, that helps us understand, that prepares us against making such horrible errors in reality, if we will but heed it. That story convinced that fiction wasn't a mistake, nor just a frippery, but necessary. Even if most fiction isn't.
Frank Herbert called science fiction the, "real literature of ideas," as I recall. And Bilenkin lived up to that.
My standard answer for years has been Dmitri Bilenkin.
( Read more... )
Dmitri Bilenkin wrote real speculative fiction in the best mold. No, it wasn't exactly biting satire, not, "If only," nor, "If this goes on." But it was smart speculative fiction: Imagine a situation that we do not yet know to exist, such as a technology not yet invented, and imagine its possible repercussions, that we can anticipate possible problems if we ever encounter it in reality. Fiction as forewarning and forearming.
He had several stories in this mold, but the one that I tend to think of as a perfect version of this is one called something like, "Through Strangers' Eyes."
I'm going to summarize its basic plot here, to explain what I mean. Sorry to spoil, but I think that's the right call here.
( Read more... )
This is fiction that teaches us, that helps us understand, that prepares us against making such horrible errors in reality, if we will but heed it. That story convinced that fiction wasn't a mistake, nor just a frippery, but necessary. Even if most fiction isn't.
Frank Herbert called science fiction the, "real literature of ideas," as I recall. And Bilenkin lived up to that.
