Bittercon: The Problematic History of Speculative Fictions

[starshipcat]

Here's another interesting panel discussion from Chicon 8Sometimes works that were once popular don't age well. It can be elements that are now dated -- a major part of the plot hangs on a character being able to find a payphone, or a character dies dramatically of something that is easily curable today, etc. But all too often, something is handled

Comments

[kalimac]

In classical music we've long faced the second problem, as two of our most justifiably renowned creators, Richard Wagner and Ludwig van Beethoven, were pretty unpleasant people to deal with. Wagner was an anti-semite, a bold adulterer, and a guy who'd skip town on his debts and was pretty free with other people's money (and their talents). Beethoven was unpleasant to almost everybody and fought a long legal battle against his sister-in-law for custody of her son, his nephew, whose mentality did not survive the struggle.
Our solution? They're long dead and the music is still great, so go ahead and enjoy it.

[whswhs]

A moral that I think is not sufficiently often taken from this is that people in a century or a millennium from now will look back with the same horror and incomprehension at our own beliefs and conduct: and not only at what we ourselves are uncomfortable with or ashamed of, but at what we are proud of and think makes us better than the dark past. And fiction set in the future must assume that such change of viewpoints will have taken place-at least, if it's going to look at social issues at all

[livejournal]

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