About.com: Why did you use the Mesopotamian civilization as a naming convention for the Moties?
Jennifer Pournelle: The first two books [A Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand] use naming conventions for Moties that imply various civilizations and levels of economic organization - the Arab Caliphate; the Ottoman Caliphate; the British East India Company; Steppic Hordes. So I wanted something that would imply intensive, marsh-based cultivation, as well as precociousness with optical technology. My actual archaeological research deals with these aspects of early Sumerian civilization (See Did the Cities Grow from Marshes), and my technical expertise in aerial photography and satellite imaging can trace its origins to the work of Alhazen Ibn al-Haitham (Alhacen), a 10th century native of Basra. Further, Sumerian sexual morality was starkly different from that of Christian tradition, so it leant itself to Motie reproductive practice. You write best from what you know, so I wrote from there. Incidentally, Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon, is often cited as "the world's oldest feminist" and it was no accident that I chose that name.
Could you discuss the connection between Outies and your research in archaeology?
JP: The direct connection is twofold. First, it's not possible to understand Sumerian politics separate from religion, and it's not possible to understand Sumerian religion apart from Sumerian sexual practices and morality. Second, a lot of science fiction makes sweeping assumptions about future "archaeology." But it's just hand-waving and tomb-raiding. You can't "date" things without establishing chronologies and geological sequences. You can't understand what you are looking at in a vacuum. You can't, fictionally speaking, send an untrained graduate student to do a "dig" absent those controls. Well, you can do that in fiction - but that's not science. I try to lay a groundwork in this book that could lead to a Motie archaeology. It remains to be seen if we get there.
Outies and Social Science Fiction
Finally, how would you define 'social science fiction'?
JP: I think the best way to define "social science fiction" is to start with a definition that is not oppositional. Speculative fiction has come a long way in the 40-or-so-years since this term was coined, so it is pointless to try to assert a definition that attempts to fence works out.
I view as "social science fiction" any work that is (1) primarily concerned with speculating about the nature, variety, and evolution of social interaction and social life, (2) that is informed by genuine engagement with social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, etc) (and by "engagement" I do not mean some vague recollection culled from a National Geographic magazine or a freshman lecture half-heard three decades ago), and (3) uses plot as a vehicle to explore that central theme. That engagement can be set up through a variety of prompts: post-apocalyptic settings; future technologies; new colonies; alternate histories; alien encounters.
Note what I do not require: the work does not have to be be well-written. It may utterly ignore gender. It may have appallingly flat and cardboard characters. It may inspire no sense at all of setting and place. It may be bad fiction in every way, but if it puts social science to the fore, genuinely draws upon that science, and the plot is just a secondary mechanism for getting at that social science, then it is social science fiction. I can think of several works in this category, but I'm not going to name them.
On the other hand, it may have all those positive attributes in spades, and not be social science fiction. It might have a string of excellent characters, settings so well-laid-out that they spawn fictional atlases, and a grab-bag of sexes, genders, races, and classes - and still be "about" the plot line. I'd hesitantly put Dune in the latter category, although that would be a tough call indeed. A lot of fabulous works explore the social impact of technology - but they are about the technology - the social impact is just a sidebar. That's a blurry line too. I see no need to police it.
The bottom line: is the plot just a vehicle (and one of many possible) for exploring the theme? Or are all those other characteristics (interchangeable) embellishments for exploring the plot?
Of course, great literature cannot be easily slotted, and may be (usually is) many things at once. In 1969, there were not many alternatives to space cowboys and sword-wavers. Now, the panoply of speculative fiction is so rich that sub-categories are more an indication of flavor or stylistic preference than explicit content.
In no particular order, here are some random works/authors that I'd call social science fiction. Several are also quite appropriately listed in other categories: Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Philip K. Dick); almost anything by Neal Stephenson; LeGuin of course; Ray Bradbury; and, at the top of my list, Terry Pratchett. I don't include, say, Margaret Atwood or Cormack McCarthy simply because they write (and are read) far beyond the boundaries of genre fiction. Obviously, there are many others.
About Jennifer Pournelle
Archaeologist Jennifer Pournelle is a Research Fellow at the School of the Environment at the University of South Carolina. Her archaeological research focuses on reconstructing landscapes surrounding ancient cities. She has worked in Turkey, Iraq and the Caucasus, and was past Mesopotamian Fellow at the School of Oriental Research. She is the daughter of science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle, and Outies is her first foray into social science fiction.
