Outies is a science fiction novel, written by archaeologist Jennifer Pournelle, as a sequel to the classic A Mote in God's Eye, published in 1974 by Pournelle's father Jerry Pournelle, and Larry Niven. Jennifer Pournelle, a Mesopotamian specialist working at the University of South Carolina's School of the Environment, has written her book as a social science fiction treatment of one of the ultimate examples of hard science fiction.
Outies cover art. Photo courtesy Jennifer Pournelle.
Social science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that applies the humanities to the events and characters in a book: it is usually in direct opposition to "hard science fiction", which focuses on possible future technologies, generally to the great detriment of character depiction. Hard science fiction, including Niven and Pournelle's works, is notorious for fabulous technology and completely flat, sexist male characters. Women are generally young, beautiful, mindless and rare; men are generally young, beautiful space cowboys and geeks. Social science fiction often sacrifices the glories of hard science ideas for emphasis on characters and their cultural aspects, such as kinship structure and relationships and history. (I'm being deliberately harsh here, so please feel free to argue with me.)
Outies attempts to cover both sides: to build on the marvelous hard science ideas first put to pen 35 years ago by adding deep ethnography and fully human characters. The book is interesting; flawed, a tad (aren't we all?), but interesting and well worth investigating.
- Read the complete review of Outies
- More on Social Science Fiction
- Outies, New Brookland Press
- Jennifer Pournelle's home page at South Carolina
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