Oh, sure, I like space opera, like Star Wars; but all that is simply cops and robbers in space or the war against good and evil. There's a good guy, there's a bad guy, there's a pretty girl, there's a shoot em up and the good guy wins. And, of course, I love sword and sorcery, like the Lord of the Rings. There's a quest, there's a wizard, there's a warrior, together brains and brawn team up to find whatever it is they're looking for. Eh, I've seen those movies, read those books a thousand times. No, I gotta have more than that.
"Social science fiction," I don't suppose this will come as shock to anyone, has its roots in the social sciences. The author infuses her (and yes, it's mostly her) fiction with ideas from anthropology, linguistics, kinship, cultural studies, sociology, psychology, studies of the human character.
Ursula K. LeGuin
Like Ursula K. LeGuin. Although as an ex-English major I think looking into some writer's background to find out the underlying meaning of their words is a pointless and annoying way of understanding writing, I'll confess that I do know that the "K." stands for Kroeber. Ursula LeGuin's father was pioneer anthropologist A. L. Kroeber; but that's beside the point. My favorite LeGuin novel is The Lathe of Heaven, closely followed by The Left Hand of Darkness.The Lathe of Heaven is about George Orr, a fellow whose dreams effect reality; and that's not a misspelling for affect. He discovers that his dreams actually change the world, both events and the people who create them, and he ends up at a psychiatrist's office when he can't stop it. The psychiatrist decides that he can save the world from ourselves by controlling George's dreams. But--can you really control a dream?
The Left Hand of Darkness is the story of an ambassador to the planet Gethen. The people on Gethen change sexes monthly over the course of their adult lives, and much of the story is told from an inhabitant's point of view. It's a difficult story, because the inhabitant falls in love with the ambassador, and undergoes a sex change that has nothing to do with surgery. This book is not about alien sex, boys and girls, it's about how our personal worlds are shaped by our gender.
Octavia Butler
I love Octavia Butler, and was personally heartbroken when she died in March 2006. She wrote a couple of series, but my favorite has to be the Patternist series, that begins (within the logic of the series) with Wild Seed (1980). The plot of these several books centers around Doro, a genetic mutation, I suppose, who is immortal, and who sustains his immortality by taking over other people's bodies. Because this leaves him unimaginably alone--he has no family, no friends, no lovers that last long enough--he begins his own genetic experiment, searching the world for extrasensory talents and mating those people, in an attempt to build himself relatives. He is not a sympathetic character, and his family despises and fears the control he has over them. Subsequent novels follow the family in greater detail, as they grapple with their own power and enslavement. One way to look at the Patternist series is sort of a jazz riff on the process of domestication, with some very dark elements indeed.In 1995, the MacArthur Foundation awarded Butler a "genius grant." I can't think of anyone I'd rather have seen get one. Well, maybe me.
