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Mindblowing Science Fiction
Aug. 17th, 2009 08:29 amABW is looking for examples of Mindblowing Science Fiction by People of Color and it got me thinking about this mindblowing stuff again.
I can't really think of a mindblowing story. Am I just not thinking enough? Will something come to me if I keep thinking about it? Have I just not _read_ anything mindblowing or considered mindblowing? That seems unlikely. Am I too old and too set in my ways to have my mind blown, and have just forgotten all the times it was blown in my youth?
Maybe my mind is so elastic it cannot be blown?
Because I can certainly think of mind-stretching science fiction (and fantasy). Things, like.. 'hey, I didn't know that...', 'is that really true?', 'wow, that's a weird way of looking at the world', and 'wouldn't it be cool if that really were true?'
There's certainly fiction out there that opens doors to new things, which I think the best science fiction and fantasy does. But the doors don't need to be blown open. In some cases, having them just barely opened a crack is more enticing. Let me get a little peek, and maybe I'll venture further in my own good time. Curiousity should drive me there.
If you could really and truly blow my mind, wouldn't I reject your vision of the world? Because it would have to be so counter to what I already think I know that I'd have to reject it to preserve my sense of self. Or, I would have trouble understanding it at all. For something like that, I would need multiple exposures, from different angles. So one story just wouldn't cut it. I would consider it irrelevant or boring, or just not get the mindblowing bit of it. Until I read the next story, and got a little. Then the next, and the next.
But then we're back to mind-stretching. Because it didn't happen all at once.
So it might make more sense to talk about a writer's entire body of work. Or an assortment of stories within a subgenre. Or an anthology or two on a specific theme. Once I've read _enough_ about a topic or a way of seeing the world, then my mind is sufficiently different from where I started. But, still, not.. blown, because it didn't happen in a burst like that.
The slow burn version of mindblowing?
And I wonder if it's gendered at all. Except that other women seem to be readily joining in with the mindblowing idea, so maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me. And since the me I am now is not the me I'll be in 5, 10, or 100 years, I reserve the right to change my mind and say it has been blown. And to know specifically by what.
But... not right now.
I can't really think of a mindblowing story. Am I just not thinking enough? Will something come to me if I keep thinking about it? Have I just not _read_ anything mindblowing or considered mindblowing? That seems unlikely. Am I too old and too set in my ways to have my mind blown, and have just forgotten all the times it was blown in my youth?
Maybe my mind is so elastic it cannot be blown?
Because I can certainly think of mind-stretching science fiction (and fantasy). Things, like.. 'hey, I didn't know that...', 'is that really true?', 'wow, that's a weird way of looking at the world', and 'wouldn't it be cool if that really were true?'
There's certainly fiction out there that opens doors to new things, which I think the best science fiction and fantasy does. But the doors don't need to be blown open. In some cases, having them just barely opened a crack is more enticing. Let me get a little peek, and maybe I'll venture further in my own good time. Curiousity should drive me there.
If you could really and truly blow my mind, wouldn't I reject your vision of the world? Because it would have to be so counter to what I already think I know that I'd have to reject it to preserve my sense of self. Or, I would have trouble understanding it at all. For something like that, I would need multiple exposures, from different angles. So one story just wouldn't cut it. I would consider it irrelevant or boring, or just not get the mindblowing bit of it. Until I read the next story, and got a little. Then the next, and the next.
But then we're back to mind-stretching. Because it didn't happen all at once.
So it might make more sense to talk about a writer's entire body of work. Or an assortment of stories within a subgenre. Or an anthology or two on a specific theme. Once I've read _enough_ about a topic or a way of seeing the world, then my mind is sufficiently different from where I started. But, still, not.. blown, because it didn't happen in a burst like that.
The slow burn version of mindblowing?
And I wonder if it's gendered at all. Except that other women seem to be readily joining in with the mindblowing idea, so maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me. And since the me I am now is not the me I'll be in 5, 10, or 100 years, I reserve the right to change my mind and say it has been blown. And to know specifically by what.
But... not right now.