Culture Question

[sartorias]

A lot of people have expressed a wish to be reading sf and f (in addition to other genres) in other settings besides western civ

Comments

[swan_tower]

I can't solve that problem, but if people are looking for that kind of book, I've got a list.

(And I welcome recommendations for titles I've overlooked.)

The only solution is, as you say, as much immersion as you can manage. Read lots of books, not just one or two. Watch movies. Listen to music. Read the literature of the place, as well as about it. Go there, if you can. Do your best.

Heck, it isn't just a non-western thing, either; I feel that same challenge in writing about the western past, even if I've got a bit of a comparative head start. There are always more details you don't know or understand or remember to include.

[sartorias]

Some of those on your list didn't work for me, some did. (Some noted down to try.)

I think there's always going to be that perception thing.

[swan_tower]

I've only read a fraction of those books. Some of the ones I've read, weren't very good. But I make the list as complete as I can.

[sartorias]

Ah! That makes sense.

[swan_tower]

I figure, there's value in knowing who's done it, even if they've done it badly. :-)

[sartorias]

Well, and badly is a relative term--what reader A can't bear, Reader B thinks worked like gangbusters.

[swan_tower]

Yes and no. Apropos of the discussion down-thread: sometimes a story is just badly researched, or even offensive to the culture it purports to represent. But I also tend to think like an academic, who finds that just as interesting (intellectually speaking) as the good stuff. :-)

[sartorias]

Yes! Like studying George Elliott's view of the Renaissance in Romola, or her take on Jews in Daniel Deronda.

[oyceter]

Sorry I am randomly jumping in! I am obsessive about adding to book lists

[sartorias]

Also to American Frontier I'd add Lois McMaster Bujold's recently finished tetrology (pioneer-era Ohio, one universe over) and Patricia Wrede's recent Thirteenth Child (also pioneer era, though I have not obtained it and read it yet)

[oyceter]

With a note that apparently Wrede's book has no actual Native Americans.

[sartorias]

Ooooh, I had not heard that. Ah.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I hadn't either until now. And I mean, the premise is that the America the Europeans discover has never been populated, not just that no Native Americans show up in the book. Which freaks me out a bit.

[sartorias]

Well, if it's set in the period after the Spanish introduced diseases into North America that might have wiped out a good deal of the population, I guess I could see that. But, well, I think I'll just not speculate not having read the book.

[c_bibliophagist]

Why? I haven't read the book yet, but hearing about that aspect I just assumed that in this alternate universe the ancestors of the Native Americans just never happened to mosey across the Bering Strait.

[oyceter]

There are links collected here explaining.