ARE THERE MINIMALIST SCIFI NOVELS?

so glad this is a poll

minimalist sci-fi is a feeling

a lot of sf novels seem p minimalist, what is the origin of this tho

just curious, scif seems pretty maximalist generally and interested in detail, not that i really know anything abt it but thats my impression

Whole libraries of minimalist scifi exist, somewhere or other, perhaps in a parallel dimension, the future, or the outer reaches of the galaxy.

charles stross's 'palimpsest' is a nice lil sparse novella

Geez, there must be at least a hundred books with the title "Palimpsest". Authors are just crazy in love with that title.

forever war?

generally though, minimalism is kind of a failure for a sci-fi novel? you can't just have a concept and not color it in. that is why world building is so emphasized.

maybe voyage to arcturus counts as minimalist? but you could argue that barely counts as sci-fi, and probably for the same reasons.

http://theasylum.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/0720612683-02-lzzzzzzz.jpg

high praise

also, compare the earthsea books to the hainish books. a more developed setting is expected of the sci-fi author.

voted yes seems to be no

What is an example of a minimalist novel? _The Making of Americans_?
Or do you just mean novels that don't have "as you know, Bob" speeches or some narrated variant of it?

I remember finding it really cool how Iain Banks didn't explain all his tech, just sorta assumed you'd infer from description of use. Turned out it was because I didn't start off with the first Culture books, where he did in fact describe it. Oh well.

How about something like Gene Wolfe's shadow books? I haven't read them, but I gather part of the charm is how the narrator clearly doesn't understand what he's seeing, so he, for instance, describes a picture of an astronaut as a picture of a knight?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YLMk1E41kE&feature=youtu.be&a

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F88Qtn42hww/UD6_PzSOisI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/m2KsSHnP1rY/s320/moon-walk.jpg

lol osthaat from mtv???

I mostly read sf in short story form, so minimalism seems the norm there.
Trends towards more Borges less Tom Clancy etc...

Tom Clancy short story would be interesting -- could be two spies explaining their fancy watches to each other.

wut is a minimalist novel

a lot of v constrained bradbury stories, like the one in illustrated man that's mostly or maybe only suit-radio dialogue between untethered astronauts as they fall to their doom

http://www.dottspot.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/High_Quality_Blank_Soft_Cover_Journal_Notebook1-620x412.jpg

http://www.stakeholdermap.com/Janet-John-book.png

See the UFO.
Come and see.
I want to believe.

lol

See the pod bay doors
Open them, HAL
I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave

super flat times by matthew derby

one of those asimov stories where tommy and billy are in a space ship, but instead of using high school science to solve a mechanical problem, they just smoke some pot and talk

"Norby, tell me again the three rules of robotics."
"OK... OK... One... shit, I forgot!"
"You're so high, Norby! Pass me the joint."
"MUST PROTECT BILLY FROM HARMFUL POT... BY SMOKING ALL OF IT!"
"Dammit, you did remember."

like delillo's 'body artist' right

yews

Vonnegut

j.g. ballard? certainly feel like the crystal world at least could fall under a vague undefined "minimalist" science fiction label

can minimalist novels still have made-up words in them?

ya i dont see why not, i mean all words are made up

then yes

cool

If Last Year at Marienbad is a minimalist film then Report on Probability A by Aldiss is a minimalist book since he was heavily influenced by it (and it shows). It's also totally dope.

the squirrel cage by thomas m. disch, though it's a short story

http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2008/10/a-bite-of-stars-a-slug-of-time-and-thou-episode-14/

As Philip mentioned, Borges has a lot of minimalist short stories. If you ever want to talk about Borges, let me know. I never tire of it :)

Lotta names come into play if you open it up to short stories as well.

guys im familiar w borges, ill just have to check my bookshelf over here to see if he wrote any novels, also to see if hes scfi brb

didn't harlan ellison sue borges for describing an infinite library that included ellison's books without compensation?

guys im familiar w borges, ill just have to check my bookshelf over here to see if he wrote any novels, also to see if hes scfi brb

― lag∞n, Sunday, August 18, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Also, I'm not familiar with what or how English speakers read Borges, but Spanish speakers definitely see strong links to science fiction and in fact, Borges was influenced by The Time Machine and other stories of early sci-fi.

Just as an example, "Tlön, Uqbar, Tertius": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertius

cool ty for this info regarding one of the most famous writers of the 20th century

Just to be clear, Borges's brand of sci-fi is more of a mix of styles, which I understand may not be interpreted as sci-fi to the casual Borges reader.

Philip, if you're after a more traditional form of sci-fi, then Borges is not for you.

Also, out of all the books on Borges I've read, I've never once heard about Borges being sued by Harlan Ellison.

I'm giving Harlan the benefit of the doubt that he might have had a chance to conceive of an infinite library at the tender age of 7.

cool ty for this info regarding one of the most famous writers of the 20th century

― lag∞n, Sunday, August 18, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, we weren't saying all of his short stories were sci-fi.

its just ridiculous he obviously does not fit the criteria of the thread, also someone already mentioned him, also he is very well known!

i mean if you want to make a thread 'is borges scifi' go right ahead, but i can tell you the answer: maybe a little, not really, also he didnt write novels

Some critics, such as Ivan Almeida and Rosa Pellicer, consider Six Problems for Isidro Parodi to be a novel, and the Benito Suarez Lynch pseudonym that wrote Un modelo para la muerte, which is an 80 page, standalone novella, describes "himself" as a novelist. I've also read of other apocryphal Borges detective novels that haven't been certainly identified.

It's not really controversial to call some of Borges' stories speculative fiction or sci fi. If you write some science fiction, you are a science fiction author. Tom Disch wrote poetry, so he is a poet. He wrote mysteries, so he is a mystery author. It's true, Borges didn't write any sci-fi or spec fic novels, but other people were talking about short stories before c.h., and you're being a jerk to him all out of proportion to his supposed sin of assuming you're not familiar with all of Borges' work or some other ineffable threadcop hogwash. Borges' speculative fiction even meets the "minimalist" benchmark: "The Circular Ruins" is an elliptically told story, and ellipsis is definitely one possible part of a minimalist aesthetic.

Your question doesn't seem sincere because s.f. is a genre so large that it must have many minimalist entries. It's not as if you asked, "Are there minimalist Harlequin romances?" If you're being persnickety, why not, "WHAT ARE THE MINIMALIST SCI FI NOVELS?"?

Emshwiller's The Mount has a minimalist vocabulary and point of view, and it's very good.

Well let's just wait for the poll results to decide this one, shall we?

"The Stars my Destination" or "The Stainless Steel Rat" perhaps? Both in the hardboiled tradition as well as being sci fi, at least.

more recent M John Harrison? Maybe earlier Christopher Priest. Minimalist isn't really part of my vocab for describing lit tho'. Makes more sense with music & art.

^^^report on probability a came immediately to mind. worth noting that aldiss was a champion of kavan's work (trying to remember his collection of stories that directly referenced her but failing)

Never Let Me Go. The premiss is speculative if not SF - it's a kind of dystopia, but there's no underground resistance, no revolution brewing, no desperate flights from brutally repressive authorities, not a single scene of even mild peril. He just quietly examines in plain prose the situation from the inside.

its just ridiculous he obviously does not fit the criteria of the thread, also someone already mentioned him, also he is very well known!

― lag∞n, Monday, August 19, 2013 5:57 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude ilu but imagining you huffing and puffing while writing this post is making me lol

im sry but its just unacceptable!

i mean of course short sotriy are gonna be kinda minimalist

and also borges isnt really scifi

dwarves are minimalist, film at 11

uh i tihnk they like to be called minimal people

the preferred nomenclature is 'judds'

If you write some science fiction, you are a science fiction author. Tom Disch wrote poetry, so he is a poet. He wrote mysteries, so he is a mystery author.

― bamcquern, Monday, August 19, 2013 3:48 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

disagree

also borges most scifi stories are scifi-ish at most

they're sci fi your definition is flawed

well this is ilx, where crying of lot 49 placed in a speculative fiction poll

i tihnk when we talk abt scifi really what were talking abt is a culture, the definition of scifi or speculative fiction where everything that wonders abt the future is scifi is pretty ridiculous, thats more of a cross reference imho, like theres those websites where they list all the movies that have famous actresses boobs in them, but even they wouldnt be so audacious as to call them all boobs movies

ARE THERE MINIMALIST BOOBS MOVIES?

we call them small boobs movies

or indie films

eyyyyyyyyyyyy

just a pair of boobs, that's the whole movie

i think ive seen that one

Iain m Banks' _Inversions_ perhaps? I may misremember, but it's a Culture novel set on a sort of "medieval planet". There's a whole lot of castly-kingly crap going down, with some occasional fantastic weirdness that makes a lot more sense if you're familiar with the Culture and can come up with some science fictional explanations.
Have no idea how the book reads for someone who knows nothing about his Culture novels.

Alien and Moon = definitely minimalist sci-fi movies.

Borges.

For some reason this keeps making me think of Lethem's "As She Climbed Across the Table".

i was actually thinking 'girl in landscape.' man, i haven't read that one in years, i should revisit it.

I'm going to assume minimalist means no lengthy exposition, a certain tonal flatness, a lack of detail, etc. in which case there are absolutely minimalist sci-fi novels - the first that spring to mind being the 70s sci-fi work of Barry Malzberg, and, more recently, Charles Yu. Brian Aldiss' "Report on Probability A". Michael Moorcock's "The Black Corridor"... a lot of these are novels where really very little *happens* in the conventional sense, and characters/events are described in often intentionally frustrating or deliberately oblique terms.

I only read a bit of the Foundation series, but the parts I did read was all talking talking talking.

Asimov is ALL exposition!

isn't it at least first order minimalism?
like if you watched a movie about people describing terminator, that would be a minimalist movie, no? even though terminator is a maximal movie.

well t2 anyway.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_K4Gn-Ez7nDM/TIJ4RQRTsiI/AAAAAAAAAPo/GVUh2spTito/s320/wittgensteinmistress.jpg

Yeah, that might qualify.