“I am just a science fiction writer.”

February 7, 2022 2:20 PM

qntm (previously, previously), author of the sci-fi short story Lena (previously), has a bit more to say: “Lena” isn’t about uploading.
posted by mbrubeck (21 comments total)

I wonder who missed the point so thoroughly that he felt compelled to explain his story.
posted by simmering octagon at 2:28 PM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I thought this was interesting because the previous MetaFilter discussion focused almost entirely on what the story said about hypothetical uploading, and only barely touched on what it said about present-day reality.
posted by mbrubeck at 2:31 PM on February 7, 2022 [9 favorites]

Is it the case that the audience has mistaken a metaphor for a reality when it is steeped in technology?
posted by njohnson23 at 3:23 PM on February 7, 2022

This is just the "Wow cool robot" meme but it's "wow cool uploading" instead. The beauty, and danger, of well-written Sci-Fi is it uses some speculative technology in the future to illustrate a real problem we actually face right now. When you do that a good portion of your audience will always just focus on the cool robot instead of the actual message, which is that war is hell or that exploitation requires dehumanization.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 3:28 PM on February 7, 2022 [3 favorites]

I wonder who missed the point so thoroughly that he felt compelled to explain his story.

Let me introduce you to HackerNews, who are probably trying hard to commercialize NFTs of uploaded consciousnesses as we speak
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 3:29 PM on February 7, 2022 [15 favorites]

I mean, I get being worried about future cruelty as addressed in speculative fiction….but there is (from a privileged American view) an unbelievable amount of exploitation and cruelty now, as the author mentions, even in the US.

I’m not sure if the hand wringing is over readers missing the right on the nose point, or pre-doom scrolling the future.

We should always consider the social and other repercussions of our consumption habits.
posted by I will not be Heiled at 5:33 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

The beauty, and danger, of well-written Sci-Fi is it uses some speculative technology in the future to illustrate a real problem we actually face right now.

I think there's also well-written Sci-Fi that is literally speculating about possible future problems and that this is also worthwhile.
posted by straight at 7:38 PM on February 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ah, the antimemetics guy! I was fascinated by those stories - discovered thanks to Metafilter, of course.
posted by Termite at 9:02 PM on February 7, 2022

Previously and sort of related. Especially this comment I made in that thread, about readers who connect less to characters and feelings in fiction.
posted by brainwane at 10:25 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm ashamed to admit that I am one of those who missed the point, and I appreciate the coda.

Not that I needed to be told that exploitation is bad, etc, I'm firmly in that camp already. I'm just incredibly credulous when reading fiction. It is sometimes nice to be hit over the head with The Point and have the story recontextualized as it really should have been when I was first reading it, were I a little less disposed to just get lost in the telling of the tale.
posted by Imperfect at 11:11 PM on February 7, 2022 [2 favorites]

Reminds me of:

Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus

(tweet by @alexblechman)
posted by nickzoic at 12:22 AM on February 8, 2022 [24 favorites]

I hadn’t heard of this story and was pleasantly shocked at the impact such a short tale could have. And I was pleasantly shocked again when I saw that I had missed the most obvious parallels with how we treat others today, “abstracting away” their humanity through technology.

The literature graduate in me wants to roll my eyes at the spectacle of the author insisting that their reading is the Correct and Most Interesting one but in this instance the coda is as good as the story itself.
posted by Probabilitics at 2:06 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’ve been a regular reader of qntm for years now, and read Lena in both its first draft NaNoWriMo version and the later polished version, so I had a lot of time to mull this one over. I pretty much made the same point as the author makes here in. this comment from the previously thread.

The uploading is far-fetched. The inhumanity is not.
posted by notoriety public at 4:49 AM on February 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

On a related note: I get fan mail for Accelerando from people who think the future it depicts is a utopia, not a horrible warning. (They somehow fail to notice that by the end of the book 99.9% of humanity is extinct and the survivors are living like rats in the walls.)

Such readers are almost universally tech-bro types who swallow the Silicon Valley ideology uncritically.

Probabilitics: The author's reading may not be the correct or most interesting one with readers but it should be respected as the consciously intended one—that is, the message the work was meant to convey. And while you might opine that the received signal is more important than the transmitted one, I'd just like to note that the crazification factor applies to media audiences as well as politics.
posted by cstross at 5:31 AM on February 8, 2022 [20 favorites]

The literature graduate in me wants to roll my eyes at the spectacle of the author insisting that their reading is the Correct and Most Interesting one

Well, they have heard of this before, I think:

2022-01-26 13:50:27 by qntm:
As a reader, you get to have an opinion about what a thing is about, but I do too.
posted by thelonius at 5:35 AM on February 8, 2022 [5 favorites]

Ah, the absurdle creator! Also of these interesting things - discovered thanks to Metafilter, of course.
posted by otherchaz at 8:00 AM on February 8, 2022

I read the story and thought immediately of Henrietta Lacks.
posted by cnidaria at 8:05 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

The title Lena references Lenna Forsen, whose image was used without her consent and later against her explicit wishes, for image processing studies. One recent Metafilter discussion about this has a very appropriate title, Can Data Die. Most of the comments there seem sympathetic towards Lenna herself. OTOH, an older discussion, Playmate meets the nerds seems notably less concerned about the impact on her and more about how hot she and her contemporaries were back in the day.
posted by mrgoldenbrown at 8:27 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

I wonder who missed the point so thoroughly that he felt compelled to explain his story.

I think in the last year, no matter what one’s individual view on vaccines and mandates, we’ve all met people deeply invested in Missing The Point.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:19 AM on February 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

we’ve all met people deeply invested in Missing The Point

Somewhere (maybe on Metafilter!) I read somebody say that you can't wake somebody up who is only pretending to be asleep, and it has haunted me ever since.
posted by joannemerriam at 10:57 AM on February 8, 2022 [8 favorites]

Well, that's going to stay with me.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:26 AM on February 8, 2022 [1 favorite]