momebie: (NNoD Caleb smoke)
[personal profile] momebie
Before I get started in on the panel I just want to say that the Psycho City Roller Derby season opener was awesome and everyone in Orlando should go out to at least one date this season. You can find the info here. My favorite derby name from last night was Erin Gobrawl. Roller derby looks like a lot of fun to be involved in. Too bad I can't stand up on anything more unstable than a kitten heel.


The Military in Science Fiction panel was interesting, to say the least. The topic had promise, but the panel itself was kind of a train wreck after the final panelist showed up. He came in late and tried to set up a sign that said "War Is Not the Answer" before another panelist made him put it away. He then introduced himself with a long speech, the basic gist of which was that we need to be able to peacefully prevent deadly conflict. As unorganized as the panel was after that, the pacifist point of view was interesting to have in the discussion amongst the voices of ex-military folk sitting on the panel and in the room.

I'm a little scattered right now, so I'm going to do this in note form. There were several main points along the same line of thought that the panel kept coming around to, and those had to do with communication.

  • For stories to be accurate and engaging there should be a power struggle between the head of the military and the head of state over who has that negotiation with other worlds.
  • Who does the main negotiating with other cultures?
  • Can you really communicate with another being without years and lots of time and money spent trying to learn how.


In a lot of science fiction the communication barrier between beings (even those who are all human) is nullified by special tech. And while I love a good, hand-wavey explanation for something that should be a major problem, I feel like at the heart of it all, communication should be an important issue. Science fiction tends to be speculative in nature, and often reflects problems that we're facing in our own world by removing them from the familiar context so that we're better able to turn them over and look for the solutions. And these days it seems like everyone is struggling with communication.

Because the current technology is growing at what seems to be an exponential rate, a lot of people who would otherwise not be as connected and tuned in to everything all the time are struggling with where all of these people they've found themselves tethered to fit into their lives. It feels like we're discovering whole other worlds on our own. Sometimes we find that it takes more effort to keep up those relationships than it does to keep up with our close contacts. Distance and time are major stressors on interpersonal relationships. How does a distance of several thousand light years effect how we deal with relationships? How do we build channels of communication with beings who have languages based off of entirely alien structures?

You know, I never did like the nuts and bolts of hard science fiction until I started studying philosophy.

Those questions made me think about my own project. In the period leading up to the story the Earth is trying to get its act together so that it can be accepted into a sort of pan-galactic alliance with some of the other life we have found. This fails miserably of course, because people will be people, but in my planning I hadn't considered how we were to communicate with those other beings, because I'm so used to it not being a huge issue in my scifi media. And while I can work away how we communicate with the beings as a whole, there's the bigger problem of one of my characters having two alien consciousnesses trapped inside of her. How do these two consciousnesses interact with each other, let alone with her?

  • Another people would look at us and think "they can't even get on with each other, how could they get along with us."


People sure can be cunts, eh? Odds are, even if we don't mean to, we're going to upset someone eventually. And when you multiply that by six or so billion, the planet taken as a whole must look like a fucking mess. How can we expect another group of beings to trust us to do right by them when we let our own people starve and murder and go out of control? In the Big Damn Existential Scifi Novel we try it with brute force. The ruling parties put aside their differences long enough to figure out who they can loot to make the bad look better, and how to control the people who won't like the change. Of course, that doesn't work at all and we lose our bid, sending a planet people who are already out of control spiraling into pretty much chaos. And when things go wrong amongst ourselves, and between us and those who are alien to us, how do we fix them?

  • It's not peace by overwhelming fire power, but if it comes to that, you have to defend yourself.


The pacifist spent quite a bit of time trying to convince those of us in the room that we needed to find ways to solve conflicts that didn't involve fighting. That's a lovely notion and all, but as someone pointed out, if another group of people wants to eat you, you're pretty much past the stage where talking rationally works. In less extreme situations, we might be able to talk it out, but we as people are still largely being raised in a culture that does not view pacifism as strength. For better or worse, if you don't fight back and show you're teeth, then you're weak. And it's a mistake to assume that every other being we encounter will hold the same views or live within the boundaries of the same paradigms, but it's also a mistake to try and bend yourself to an invisible will. We cannot cultivate a society under what ifs.

Someone brought up the notion that the vikings would fight a people if they thought they were stronger than them, and trade with a people they felt they were weaker than. What better way is there to learn about your opposition than to assimilate some of their culture into your own? Because even though we dress ourselves and have a million different things and mannerisms that make us feel superior to the other life on this planet, we are still animals. This is still our territory, and when pushed, we are still going to defend it.

  • Pacifist said that war has consequences we don't understand. To us, it's fake. (And then everyone fought.)
  • We use the military in science fiction because that's what we want to see. We're pushing the crutch.


When the pacifist couldn't convince us that we could find a peaceful resolution to every situation he tried to tell us that all of the war and military in our media had made those concepts somehow fake to us. That we weren't taking it seriously. But here's the problem with that idea, not all media glorifies war. You can find beauty in conflict, but war itself is not a beautiful thing. It's harsh and horrifying and grotesque, and in most of the media I take in, it's a beast we can't really control. So why then, as several people suggested, are we driving media that portrays this ugly thing? Is it really that the genre of science fiction needs the military as a crutch, or does it use the military because it's something that we're familiar with and it's what we want to see?

The military gives us a structure we're familiar with. It takes what might have been chaotic violence and drops in a set of boundaries and rules that, even when repeatedly broke, we can identify with. I think that in some ways it does make the terrifying seem a little safer. But that doesn't mean that we use the military BECAUSE we enjoy death and violence. Merely that it's going to happen, and we'd like it to happen on our own terms.

Date: 2010-09-13 03:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] matthewbowers.livejournal.com
Those are some interesting points and I'm going to have to come back and read them again when I'm more coherent. Right now I'll just say that "Erin Gobrawl" is a fantastic Derby name. Was she red-headed / Irish?

Date: 2010-09-13 03:37 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Mighty Boosh Vince record)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
She had dark hair, but she may have been Irish. I didn't ask. :p Another favorite name of ours was Ellen Rage. I've had some fun the last day or so trying to decide what my name would be, were I to ever stop being such a raging pansy.

Date: 2010-09-13 03:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] matthewbowers.livejournal.com
You should do it! At least take a beginning skating class and see how you like it. Skating is a ton of fun, and once I get better / more comfortable I'm going to sign up for the Men's Derby League here in Portland.

Date: 2010-09-13 04:44 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (A:TLA Zuko/Aang Well shit)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
Negative Ghost Rider, the pattern is full of clumsy. I cannot stand up on anything that requires balance. I had people try and teach me to surf four years in a row when I was young. I've tried to ski and skateboard and roller skate and ice skate to no avail. I am just not made for move-y types of motion. That being said, if either of my friends does try out, I will totally volunteer.

Date: 2010-09-13 05:03 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-09-13 03:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ninepointfivemm.livejournal.com
This post might actually help to hammer down some details in the fractured fairytale. Which is weird, because there is definitely no military important in the verse. But it did help me re-look at the business politics of the company! Which, God, probably is run like a small country.

Date: 2010-09-13 04:48 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Architect Derek)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
Oh excellent! There are definitely things that were said during the panel that made me think about what I write as a whole, and not simply how they apply to military situations.

Date: 2010-09-13 04:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brilligspoons.livejournal.com
I've never really questioned the use of the military in science fiction - I mean, the genre might have its roots pre-World War I, but it became much more...widespread, I guess, post both World Wars, and probably more so post-Vietnam. Even Wells' War of the Worlds was published the same year as the Spanish-American War.

I sort of agree with whomever said sci-fi writers use it as a crutch, though. Military organizations everywhere, even imaginary ones, are guaranteed to garner some level of controversy, both on and off the page. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to have as a crutch - just that it's used often enough to have become something of a genre cliche.

Date: 2010-09-13 04:51 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Architect William)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
I think the question is whether or not the story can be told without those elements. If a military presence adds nothing to the story then I'd err on the side of taking it out. That being said, there is some truth to the notion that some people WANT to see those stories, and because of that you might sell more than you would have otherwise. Of course, then you have a whole other dilemma. Am I telling the story I want to tell, or am I writing for a readership?

Date: 2010-09-13 05:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] brilligspoons.livejournal.com
Well then my question is - why WOULDN'T we be able to write a science fiction story without the element of military presence? I mean, what's stopping people from doing so? Besides the question of writing what you love versus writing for readership, that is.

(Rhetorical questions...FOR NOW.)

Date: 2010-09-13 05:50 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Yellow gun)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
You can write A science fiction story without the military being present. There are quite a lot of them about. But it's very hard to write certain types of science fiction stories without that. I think it depends a lot on what kind of world you're building. Anything is certainly POSSIBLE in fiction. We're perfectly capable of writing a story without any kind of grounding in familiar military roles, but it takes more work to make it believable to an average audience. And of course, if you're working within a true to life frame then the military IS often part of negotiations and such. We can't just write them out of the story for the sake of being different.

We can take the BDESN, for instance, since I'm all for pulling my own things apart. How do I put the entire world under a police state without including a military? How do I make it believable that the heads of state wanted to leave their military out of it entirely? Would they make up an entirely new police type force? Would that not in some way be military-esque? It's not the same, I don't suppose, as your BSG's or Stargates or what have you, because my story isn't ABOUT the military, but it is a rather heavy presence throughout, and one of the characters is still in it. (He's actually research & design, which someone in the panel said you couldn't make interesting because it was such a boring job. Oh, I'll show you bitches.)
Edited Date: 2010-09-13 05:51 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-09-13 04:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sarahnfisk.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)
thanks for the recap! I wanted to get to that panel, but couldn't make the time. Very interesting.

Date: 2010-09-13 04:49 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Architect James)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
Glad to be of help! And while we're here, thank you for posting notes to your tumblr from the all those writing panels I didn't get a chance to go to. I've started following that, if it's okay, so I can keep track of them.

Date: 2010-09-14 11:46 am (UTC)
ext_51182: Luna Lovegood with a sunflower in her hair (HP - Cheers (goblet))
From: [identity profile] khana.livejournal.com
somewhat off topic for this post, but:

Happy Birthday!! :D

Date: 2010-09-14 01:42 pm (UTC)
ext_289215: (Being Human George/Mitchell cuddles)
From: [identity profile] momebie.livejournal.com
Haha, thank you!

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