[HN Gopher] The secretive world of North Korean science fiction
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The secretive world of North Korean science fiction
Author : isaacfrond
Score : 99 points
Date : 2023-08-28 07:39 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| raydiatian wrote:
| I feel like Andy Weir did a phenomenal job with his handful of
| books. The Martian, Project Hailmary. Both of these felt more
| like team effort emphasis, which I liked.
| 5040 wrote:
| Tangentially related:
|
| _NG You know, I was in China in 2007, and it was the first ever
| state-sponsored, Party-approved science-fiction convention. They
| brought in some people from the west and I was one of them, and I
| was talking to a number of the older science-fiction writers in
| China, who told me about how science fiction was not just looked
| down on, but seen as suspicious and counter-revolutionary,
| because you could write a story set in a giant ant colony in the
| future, when people were becoming ants, but nobody was quite
| sure: was this really a commentary on the state? As such, it was
| very, very dodgy._
|
| _I took aside one of the Party organisers, and said, "OK. Why
| are you now in 2007 endorsing a science-fiction convention?" And
| his reply was that the Party had been concerned that while China
| historically has been a culture of magical and radical invention,
| right now, they weren't inventing things. They were making things
| incredibly well but they weren't inventing. And they'd gone to
| America and interviewed the people at Google and Apple and
| Microsoft, and talked to the inventors, and discovered that in
| each case, when young, they'd read science fiction. That was why
| the Chinese had decided that they were going to officially now
| approve of science fiction and fantasy._
|
| https://www.newstatesman.com/2015/05/neil-gaiman-kazuo-ishig...
| contingencies wrote:
| While that article was written in 2015 about 2007, IMHO as a
| recent employer there and long term resident, the issues in
| China also stem from a lack of creativity in the educational
| environment, the political weaponisation of Confucianism,
| government-controlled media, a closed internet and the recent
| and unwaveringly vicious politically motivated disempowerment
| of high profile entrepreneurs. Nearly every single person a
| young person meets before the age of 25 is likely to scold them
| for original thinking, dreaming or playing: from their own
| parents to their state teachers, and all are co-witness to the
| public vilification, robbing or subsuming of successful
| innovators by the state. Meanwhile, the increasingly
| authoritarian government attempts to limit children's access to
| simple _computer games_. All are taught that the nail that
| sticks out is the one that is hammered down. In such an
| environment, who would dare to be different? Ideas are
| generally tolerated and evaluated on short term greed potential
| only.
|
| More reflectively, it is such a shame to see the current
| situation because as Joseph Needham's classic series shows, the
| China region is perhaps historically the longest serving and
| arguably in many ways the most significant bastion of human
| inventive potential, period.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_and_Civilisation_in_Ch...
| twic wrote:
| As an aside to this tangent, the World Science Fiction
| Convention is in China this year, for the first time in its
| history (by way of comparison, it's been in Kansas City twice):
|
| https://en.chengduworldcon.com/
| [deleted]
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| This seems to underlie their problem: if they're only
| supporting SciFi (and probably other creative outlets) as a
| means to an end, as a means to encourage innovation, _they 're
| doing it wrong_. Asimov didn't write because he foresaw all of
| the tech entrepreneurs who would read his work, he wrote
| because he wanted to, and because the society where he wrote
| supported him--and promoted artistic works (though of course
| there is perverse incentive for art here in the West, in the
| form of monetary incentive for artists). If China only supports
| SciFi to innovate, they won't produce good enough works to
| innovate.
| Knee_Pain wrote:
| [dead]
| gumby wrote:
| I look forward to reading some of this. SF is pretty much always
| about the current day.
|
| Soviet SF was quite illuminating to me (back when anybody cared
| about the USSR). I've always wanted to read a couple of the
| Soviet equivalent of the James Bond novels.
| rexpop wrote:
| > SF is pretty much always about the current day.
|
| I can't comprehend this. Scifi is famously occupied with the
| future, and not the current day. Space travel, advanced
| technologies, artificial intelligences, and generally things
| that don't yet exist are par for the course. Most of SF is
| literally _not_ about the present.
|
| Do you mean to say that SF's subtext reflects the zeitgeist at
| the time/place of its writing?
| worrycue wrote:
| > SF is pretty much always about the current day.
|
| SF is often speculative fiction that extrapolate current trends
| into the future - frequently taking them to their logic
| conclusion - to explore and critique. Good SF anyway.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Is it even worth reading? Genuine question. I thought it was
| campty sort of satirical old-timey stuff, but I never read
| it.
| [deleted]
| piperswe wrote:
| Are you talking about Soviet sci-fi or speculative sci-fi?
| If the latter, there's plenty of speculative sci-fi worth
| reading. I'd recommend giving "I, Robot" a read - much of
| it is about reasoning through a sort of moral philosophy,
| through the lens of robotics.
| Mainan_Tagonist wrote:
| Well, for the soviet equivalent to James Bond, look no further
| than Vsevolod Vladimirovich Vladimirov, better known as Max Von
| Stierlitz.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stierlitz
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Stierlitz is a typical noir character, entirely different
| from Bond. The entire premise of the James Bond series and of
| course Bond's lifestyle were completely incompatible with the
| ideology, so no real equivalent was possible.
| calimoro78 wrote:
| Can you share some examples of Soviet SF? Should be quite
| exciting.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| "It's Hard to be God"
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| For specifically Soviet look for Ivan Yefremov, "The Bull's
| Hour". Other interesting authors could be Genrich Altov and
| Sever Gansovsky.
| pigscantfly wrote:
| "The Dead Mountaineer's Inn" is a fairly unique sci-fi noir
| also from the Strugatsky brothers that was my first
| introduction to their work. It interested me enough that I
| read all their other books afterwards -- worth checking out!
|
| 1. https://www.npr.org/2015/03/19/392634682/mountaineer-is-a-
| mu...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Err, that's just a regular detective novel, no SF elements
| at all, you must be mistaken (nudge nudge)
| tetris11 wrote:
| Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were pretty prolific during this
| time (often writing in secret, and reciting their works only
| to trusted friends).
|
| "The Doomed City" is one of the best pieces of philosophical
| scifi I've ever read:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Doomed_City
| er4hn wrote:
| The Doomed City is a bad example since it was specifically
| released in a post-soviet era. It had very direct
| criticisms of communism which lead to the authors deciding
| to not release it during the soviet era they wrote it.
|
| "Hard to be a God", mentioned below, is a better example.
| Soviet era Sci-Fi where Star Trek esque space communists
| try to uplift a medieval society into modern political
| belief before establishing official first contact.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The Doomed City is _way_ deeper than "criticisms of
| communism".
|
| People literally wake up in The Doomed City when the
| pandemic has started in 2020, for example.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| "Roadside Picnic" is a well-known novel that was the basis
| for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of video games.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roadside_Picnic
| narrator wrote:
| Roadside picnic is so ridiculously melancholy. Everyone in
| that book is so depressed! I also don't think I've ever
| seen so much smoking and drinking in a sci-fi book. You
| could tell the brothers were really not enjoying communism.
| devindotcom wrote:
| Now watch the film adaptation, Stalker - even more
| depressing!
| UtopiaPunk wrote:
| I read Roadside Picnic a few months ago, and yeah, it's
| very good stuff. While there's a lot to be said for the
| context in which it was written, I think it also holds up
| on its own even if you're not very familiar with the
| history.
| 1shot37291007 wrote:
| > "Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent
| robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They
| lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real
| superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and
| technologists who carry the weight of the world on their
| shoulders."
|
| Here is an interesting symmetry as reflected by ideological
| mirrors. In NK, the state sanctioned imaginal worlds lack others
| that are superior, and superheroes are loyal technocrats. Here in
| the West, "market driven" Hollywood insists superheroes are
| distinct tiny subset of humanity and that it is to our benefit
| that they are hidden but highly organized. And no, you can't just
| become one of the special superheroes. Both are aiming to pacify
| the target society.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _And no, you can 't just become one of the special
| superheroes. Both are aiming to pacify the target society._
|
| Worse: You aren't such a superhero, but by random chance you
| might be chosen to become one and you are invited to imagine
| yourself in that situation. Any common person who might want to
| limit your hypothetical powers is an awful bigot and many of
| the stories revolve around tension between those with powers
| who would oppress the plebs vs those with powers who wish to
| benevolently rule over the plebs (but certainly not cede their
| power to them.) Also, when the superheroes abuse their position
| and power it's okay when they're motivated by good intentions,
| because the ends justify the means and they'll surely revert
| back to being good once the crisis is over. Power doesn't
| corrupt everybody who gets it, you can trust the good
| superheroes with their unchecked power.
|
| All of this mirrors the way Americans are encouraged to think
| about the ultra-rich, encouraged to believe they might randomly
| join the ranks of the ultra rich one day. Encouraged to believe
| that they could be a good and benevolent billionaire, and that
| the plebs who would limit their wealth are harmful bigots.
| Taught to believe that the meaningful conflict is between the
| good billionaires who would benevolently rule, opposed to the
| bad ones who can only be kept in check by the good ones.
| c_crank wrote:
| Reality: Americans have not been ruled by the superhero-like
| ultra rich for decades, and are starting to notice that
| little is improving and much is getting worse.
| darkmarmot wrote:
| Better: shows like "The Boys" at least provide a gruesome
| window into "realistic" superhero behavior in a corporate
| hellscape.
| Mainan_Tagonist wrote:
| And The Watchmen long before that
| [deleted]
| philwelch wrote:
| > And no, you can't just become one of the special superheroes.
|
| Two of the most iconic superheroes, Batman and Iron Man, are
| normal human beings who became superheroes from hard work.
| perardi wrote:
| "Normal" human beings, as in, the rich scions of super-genius
| hyper-capitalists who have a functionally unlimited amount of
| inherited capital to fall back on as they create their own
| super-hero enterprises.
| jborean93 wrote:
| Luckily they both didn't have rich parents in charge of large
| companies. Not saying they didn't work hard but they
| certainly had help financially that unfortunately normal
| people probably don't have.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| And with Batman, a healthy chunk of inheritance.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Fortunately, the 'West' is larger than just Hollywood.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The difference that makes that much less logical being that in
| the West the government is not determining what people can
| watch, they're watching what they enjoy.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Western writers (usually) aren't taking direct orders from
| the government, but that doesn't mean they're impartial
| weather vanes that reveal currents in society but never try
| to manipulate (or fabricate) those social currents as they
| see fit.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| And yet that doesn't support these conspiracies you and
| thread OP want to believe in.
| pessimizer wrote:
| _Op-Ed: Why does the Pentagon give a helping hand to
| films like 'Top Gun'?_
|
| https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-05-30/top-gun-
| mav...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaters_of_War
|
| _Pay No Attention to the G-Man Behind the Curtain_
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/membership/archive/2018/03/pa
| y-n...
|
| _In the '90s the U.S. Government Paid TV Networks to
| Weave "Anti-Drug" Messaging Into Their Plot Lines. Here
| Are the Worst Examples._
|
| https://www.columnblog.com/p/in-the-90s-the-us-
| government-pa...
|
| _Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law_
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20100722051019/http://www.usa
| tod...
|
| https://www.gao.gov/products/b-305368
| mcpackieh wrote:
| What conspiracies are you talking about?
|
| You should read _Manufacturing Consent_ by Noam Chompsky.
| Most of what seems to be a conspiracy in western media is
| not actually organized as a conspiracy, but is emergent
| behavior in a system in which individual actors have
| aligned incentives. Acting individually without
| coordination, people hire and promote people who think
| like them, and ape then adopt the beliefs of their
| superiors.
|
| I said _usually_ western writers don 't take direct
| orders from the government because sometimes they do, and
| this isn't even a secret. Hollywood lets the US military
| rewrite movies whenever they want access to military
| hardware and facilities. And during wartime, the US
| government employs writers to produce propaganda.
| Superhero comics in particular have their roots in overt
| war propaganda.
| smolder wrote:
| Chompsky makes a biting critique of the US military-
| industrial complex. It's a great book that I recommend
| everyone sink their teeth into at some point.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| The conspiracies being your attempt to argue that the
| superhero movie fad is some absurd attempt at making
| billionaires look good.
|
| If you look for a conspiracy in everything, you're going
| to find it in everything. Entertainment is generally just
| entertainment and this sort of overanalysis of things to
| push an agenda has been part of what has made so much of
| modern entertainment so cookie cutter.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I just told you it's not a conspiracy, you're tilting at
| windmills.
|
| I have not proposed a conspiracy to create movies like
| this, I don't think there's a cabal of billionaires who
| dreamed up and coordinate this as a deliberate propaganda
| campaign. I assert that the Hollywood system creates
| movies like this because because of the way it is
| structured and the nature of making movies. People who
| fit the mold and are naturally inclined to make movies
| like this get promoted and given opportunities by like-
| minded people. People who don't jive with the crowd never
| have the opportunity to make movies of their own, because
| making movies (particularly blockbusters) requires access
| to a system with lots of capital and manpower.
|
| I'm not the one looking for conspiracies. You're looking
| for a conspiracy in what I'm saying so that you can
| dismiss it. Read _Manufacturing Consent._
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I'm calling it a conspiracy not because I think you're
| saying there's a cabal of billionaires doing this. I get
| that you're trying to pull the popular claim these days
| about things being "systemic".
|
| My fundamental disagreement is that I don't care about
| what an obviously biased guy has to say about the media,
| I think a superhero movie is just a superhero movie and
| that of course Chomsky sees propaganda in everything,
| it'd be like expecting a politician anywhere in the world
| to not try to imply that all things wrong in the world
| are their opponent's fault.
|
| To bring in a lighthearted example of the impression I
| have, regarding the sexualized outfit worn by characters
| in Nier Automata, there's been tons of analysis and
| whining, and mocking all that and to the satisfaction of
| most fans of the game, the author, when asked about the
| decision, pretended to be giving some complex reasoning
| before just straight up saying that he just likes girls.
|
| It's the same with superhero stuff, the biggest takeaway
| from Iron Man isn't that irl billionaires are good guys,
| it's that an exoskeleton that can fly and shoot lasers is
| really fucking cool.
| johnnyworker wrote:
| > My fundamental disagreement is that I don't care about
| what an obviously biased guy has to say about the media
|
| That's not disagreement, that's just covering your ears
| and going la la la. You're barking up the wrong tree,
| that book is a good primer for you to find out how, if
| you don't read it you're still barking up the wrong tree.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| "Everyone who doesn't read my favorite book is just
| ignorant and not allowed to disagree" is not the argument
| you think it is.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| "Everybody who disagrees with me is a conspiracy
| theorist, even if they explicit say there is no
| conspiracy. Also they're biased but of course I'm not."
| mcpackieh wrote:
| It's literally not a conspiracy, you clearly want to
| substitute what I'm saying with your own strawman. I'm
| through, go talk to yourself in a mirror.
| philistine wrote:
| It's not complicated: are superheroes movies made to make
| billionaires look good?
|
| Yes, indirectly.
|
| Is the government the one dictating that?
|
| Absolutely not.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Asserting something does not make it true.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Yeah but just with literally everything else in life,
| everything is way more complex than first glance
| suggests, interconnected and if you actually care to dig
| deeper, you find interesting stuff. Nobody sane argues
| western Illuminati is steering and manipulating
| everything and everybody towards desired future, yet mass
| media manipulation is extremely common practice, ie mr
| Murdoch and similar folks have significant powers.
|
| Also lets not forget that CIA was very active in
| Hollywood for many decades with light and not so light
| touches here and there, I mean its _the_ propaganda tool
| for US hegemony and spreading western view on society,
| values, 'american dream' etc. If you want to shoot say
| an action movie with real US planes landing on real
| aircraft carriers, US navy will have non-trivial impact
| on your movie and its story (so most end up as over-
| patriotic to the point of being unwatchable for many non-
| US viewers).
|
| Its all natural and logical, all humans like to see or
| hear stories that make us feel good even if its not
| proper truth, much more than stories telling some ugly
| hard truths.
| norman_roman wrote:
| [flagged]
| sdsd wrote:
| [flagged]
| dotnet00 wrote:
| You're too absorbed in your own cynicisim to see the
| obvious.
|
| There is hundreds of thousands of hours of all sorts of
| content added to the internet every day from all over the
| world.
|
| Western governments have nowhere near the sort of control
| over what their people can see to pull off anything
| anywhere near comparable to NK's attempts at controlling
| their people's entertainment.
| c_crank wrote:
| The whims of the morally aggressive Western elite
| substitute for heavy handed regulation from top down.
| Although recent moves have been made to try and institute
| a CCP style bureau of misinformation even in America.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| While I agree that social media is way too aggressive
| with moral policing of content, I can still trivially
| watch any of the morally reprehensible stuff that would
| be banned from there.
| havelhovel wrote:
| I guess I'm also pretty naive then. Got any examples of the
| US government dictating what people can watch through
| censorship on par with North Korea or even China?
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| You watch from what's available.
| havelhovel wrote:
| And in the West what's available is the product of people
| making what they want to make with relatively few
| restrictions.
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| That is not categorically true. There is a great diversity of
| superhero origins. Some are allegories for minorities (X Men),
| some are not secretive at all and a regular part of society,
| sometimes it turns out that the organisation is not to our
| benefit, sometimes they are just plain evil. Still others are
| secretive but not organized
| narrator wrote:
| Jules Verne is fun to read in this regard because the people
| who organized to go to the moon in "From Earth To The Moon"
| were simply part of a gun club that chose to fund the effort
| privately, not the government. It reflects how people had a
| different relationship with the government in the 19th century.
|
| Before the income tax, people like Rockefeller would just bail
| companies out during panics from their personal bank accounts,
| much to the consternation of bankers like J.P Morgan. Private
| individuals were massively more economically powerful and
| that's were people looked for progress. Only Elon Musk comes
| close to this level of economic power in the modern era,
| especially because he is a hands on industrialist and not a
| financier, but there were probably a few hundred who had that
| level of influence back then and they were mostly
| industrialists.
| judge2020 wrote:
| While Elon is the only one with the _intuition_ to bail out a
| company as large as Twitter, there probably are a few dozen
| Rockefeller CEOs of various SV /tech-adjacent companies that
| can and do use their power to command acquisitions of medium
| size startups that have promising tech but suffer from issues
| of cash flow or business strategy.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Before the income tax, people like Rockefeller would just
| bail companies out during panics from their personal bank
| accounts, much to the consternation of bankers like J.P
| Morgan.
|
| To my understanding it was Morgan and not Rockefeller who
| engaged in these kinds of bailouts.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I think OP's point was that JP Morgan wanted to see that
| role supplanted by the government, even if he was forced to
| sometimes play guarantor himself.
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