Conference noted::sf

Well, for starters, Paul Muad'dib (sp) sure turned things upside down in
Dune.

�Any thoughts on the reason for this pattern, if it is
    a pattern?

Most fantasy stories are about a struggle between good and evil.  And the
good most of the time prevails.  That's why I like them.  If the bad guys
always won, I wouldn't read it.  I see the "great epics" as allegory in a
great many ways. 

-Patrick 

    
    The good guys definitely won by overthrowing Nehemiah Scudder's
    theocracy in "If This Goes On..." / "Revolt in 2100".  And in "The Moon
    is a Harsh Mistress"
    
    JP

    Re .1:
    
    	"Most fantasy stories are about a struggle between good and evil. 
    	 And the good most of the time prevails."
    
    Yes, but why is the good so often the way things are now or the way
    things used to be?
    
    Re .1 & .2:
    
    I'll accept "Dune" and "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" as
    counter-examples, since the heroes produce a novel situation, rather
    than saving or restoring an old situation.  However, it isn't clear
    what *good* Paul Muad'dib does for the world at large; of course, I
    might see it differently if I'd been able to wade through all the rest
    of the series.  Does "Revolt in 2100" produce a new situation, or
    merely remove an evil that had been in place since before the action
    started?
    
    Another counter-example, now that I've thought a little more, would be
    the "Zeor" stories (written in the '70s), in which we start with
    humanity split into "symes" and "gens" related pretty much as predator
    and prey, except in the House of Zeor where they've figured out a mode
    of symbiosis.  The heroes are working for the symbiosis, not trying to
    abolish the gen/syme split, and so trying to introduce a wholly novel
    situation.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

�    Yes, but why is the good so often the way things are now or the way
�    things used to be?

Well, Earl, doesn't that cover about all situations?

-Pat

I can think of several fantasy stories that buck this trend. The series by
Margaret Weisman "Star of the Guardians" ends up with a very surprising twist.
It's never clear through out the series exactly who the "good" guy really is.
I have to admit. I was totally surprised by the ending of the 4th book.

Kathleen O'Neal's "treasures of Light and Darkness" series is similar. 

I prefer my books to have grey areas of ethics and morals where the protagonist
is neither completely right nor wrong. Just one side of a many sided struggle.

Jennifer Roberson also writes this sort of book. liesl

    Re .4: "Well, Earl, doesn't that cover about all situations?"
    
    No, there remains the way things never were but will be, or at least 
    the way they ought to become.  Such a futurist orientation is
    especially appropriate to SF.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

What about the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card?

The people we meet are pretty much happy at the beginning of the series (very 
similar to the way people felt in the newly formed United States around 1780),
where there was a sense of optimism and feeling that things were good and
getting better with lots of frontiers to explore and grow with.  Not all
people are deliriously happy (this is no Utopia, and the 2nd and 3rd books 
detail the plight of the Reds and the Blacks) but it isn't a Dystopia either.

Alvin is fighting the Un-maker who wants to tear down everything (this does
fit .0 where the antagonist is trying to destroy the status quo).

But (and this seems to me to be different from .0), Alvin is trying to figure 
out how to make things dramatically better than they are now (ie, the Crystal
City), which will potentially destroy the status quo just as much as the 
Un-maker will.  The result will be "better", but it will still change almost
everything...

-- Ken Moreau

    Greg Bear's Blood Music.

RE: .0

>    What stories are there in which the good guys overthrow a rotten status
>    quo and usher in a much better one?  

Isn't this a matter of when the book/story starts, as opposed to when the
situation starts?

In your examples, suppose Tolkein had only written "Return of the King",
while keeping the same basic plot (ie, all of the events of the other books
happened to the characters and were mentioned, but Tolkein never wrote the
books themselves).  Would this have made the fairly horrid state of affairs
the "rotten status quo" to be overthrown and replaced with a better one?

Or if Doc Smith had only written "Children of the Lens" (again with all other
events having happened to the characters).  Things were looking bad for the
Patrol and Civilization at that point.  Could this be a "rotten status quo"?

In other words, when does the "status quo" begin, and how long can the bad
guys "temporarily" have the upper hand without it becoming the "status quo"?

-- Ken Moreau

    .9:
    
    But in both "Return of the King" and the "Children of the Lens," the
    end result is not a new and better world than there ever was before,
    just one that is better than before the crisis and somewhat better than
    the status quo for a long time before the crisis.  (Leaving out of
    account remote golden ages of the past (for Tolkien) or (for Smith)
    great sweeps of future progress.)
    
    .7 and .8 are probably good counter-examples.  In both, the plot
    produces an outcome both novel and good.
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    I can think of several possible reasons for the trend. For example:
    
    It is easy to imagine believable ways in which the world could get
    worse, but it harder to imagine ways in which it could get better.
    After all, it it was easy to do it would have already been done.
    
    Most stories have a small group of heroes. Small groups taking control
    of the world to make it better is not democratic, and thus is difficult
    to associate with good.
    
    Peter

    re .11
    
    Good point on the democracy angle.  It's pretty hard to put together a
    gripping story involving 30-50 years of lobbying and coalition forming
    culminating in improvements via an accumulation of legislative acts,
    regulatory agency hearings, and judicial decisions.  Take one amazing
    writer to turn that into a good SF scenario.
    
    /Butch

RE: .10 (the democracy angle)

Consider the Dragonrider series by Ann McCaffrey:  A small group of heroes
(F'lar, Lessa, Robinton, Jaxom, AIVAS and a few others) dramatically affect 
most if not all of Pern's systems of leadership, culture and technology, but
by no stretch of the imagination could they be called democratic.  (Certainly
the method of choosing a Weyrleader is not, and the method for each Craft
to choose a Master or for Lord Holders to be confirmed is completely feudal).

And yet the world at the end of "All the Weyrs of Pern" seems to me to be
better than at the beginning of "Dragonflight".  I think that the people of 
"Dragonsdawn" would certainly prefer the former to the latter.

Or would you say that the Long Interval was "the bad guy's temporarily
holding sway"?

-- Ken Moreau

    Re .13 
    
    The Dragonrider series is a prime example of a save the world story,
    the main object of most of the heroes is to save Pern from Thread. Also
    a bad guy - Fax - does temporarily hold sway, from about ten years
    prior to Dragonflight, not for the whole long interval. AIVAS did make
    major changes to the society, by making lost technology available, but
    that was incidental to its primary aim of eliminating the threat of
    thread.
    
    Peter 

RE: .-1

I appreciate your point of the changes to society being an un-intended
side-effect of the prime goal (rid Pern of Thread forever).  My main
point was that democracy is not always present, nor is it always the
goal of the main characters, as .11 and such seemed to be implying.

And as for Fax, I saw him as one of the series of opponents, rather than
a primary antagonist.  He was no more (or less) important than Lord Meron,
Weyrwoman Kylara, T'kul, Toric, Thella, Lord Sigomal, Master Norist, ...

-- Ken Moreau

    I have long considered the Katherine Kurtz Deryni books to be just this
    sort of thing, in which a small group of people fight against
    tremendous odds to make the world a better place for all persons
    concerned.  The books are not about a massive change in society, or a
    complete upheaval of society, but really about the effort to end
    racism.  The achievement of that goal is also, by no mean sure, no
    matter what the skills and abilities of the protagonists.  But it does
    fulfil the requirements of the basenote.  The protagonists are
    attempting to achieve a future that is different from the now and the
    past;  they are not trying to uphold the status quo, because the status
    quo seeks to kill them, they are not trying to restore the past,
    because the past lead them to the present, they seek something new.
    
    Andrew
    

    >What stories are there in which the good guys overthrow a rotten status
    >quo and usher in a much better one?  
    
    Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End."

RE: .17 -<Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End.">-

Pardon me, but I don't think of the ending of that book as a "much better"
world than the state before the Overlords arrived.

And if you are thinking of the transition period (from when the Overlords 
first showed themselves until right near the end of the book) as a much
better world, I tend to think of it in the same way cattle and hogs are
fed and taken care of pretty well right up to the end, where they get a
nasty surprise.  Not a "better" world, IMHO.

-- Ken Moreau

Rathole alert:

re -1
>better world, I tend to think of it in the same way cattle and hogs are
>fed and taken care of pretty well right up to the end, where they get a
>nasty surprise.  Not a "better" world, IMHO.

Remember the short story "To Serve Man".?  :)

Chele

    Some of John Brunner's stories, eg The World Swappers, The Shockwave
    Rider, seem to fulfill some of the criteria.  But the ultimate must be
    van Vogt's The Silkie, where the main protanonist rebuilds the universe
    from memory, edits out the bits he doesn't like and enormously extends
    his friends' life spans....  Anybody thinking of doing anything like
    this, Hi there!
    
    Richard

re .12
    
>>    Good point on the democracy angle.  It's pretty hard to put together a
>>    gripping story involving 30-50 years of lobbying and coalition forming
>>    culminating in improvements via an accumulation of legislative acts,
>>    regulatory agency hearings, and judicial decisions.  Take one amazing
>>    writer to turn that into a good SF scenario.
    
	Isaac Asimov's _Foundation_ series comes to mind.  Then again, I found
it hard to be interested in when I first read it.  But you're right, there
aren't too many other examples.

	Brian W.

    No, actually, I look upon metamorphosis into a different, infinitely
    more powerful (yet more "spiritual") life form as "much better."
    
    The middle part wasn't too shabby, either.  If you must equate
    our being taken care of to animals, I see the situation more
    as a nature preserve, rather than a feed lot.

    How about Heinlein's "Stranger in Strange Land"?

RE: .22

>    No, actually, I look upon metamorphosis into a different, infinitely
>    more powerful (yet more "spiritual") life form as "much better."
    
I appreciate your point of view, and I partially shared it when I first read
"Childhood's End" back as a callow youth ;-)

But I re-read it recently (after the birth of my 2 children) and identified
so very strongly with the parents and their grief that I saw it as a tragedy,
not as a metamorphisis.

And consider the final scene, where the Overlord (don't remember his name) is
watching the group join the mass-mind:  his reaction is almost sadness at the
destruction of a group of beings he has known for a time, not joy at the
accomplishment of his mission.  There are hints here and there in the book
that the Overlords are not exactly thrilled with their mission or their 
relationship with the mass-mind:  they seem to fear it more than anything else.

So I cannot agree it is much better.  IMHO of course.

-- Ken Moreau

    Yet further into the rathole...
    
    There is a  novel by Jack Williamson called "The Humanoids" where a
    race of indestructible robots (the humanoids) discovers Earth and proceeds 
    to 'save' its inhabitants from dangerous occupations--including hard 
    scientific research.  Our hero is part of a small human resistance 
    movement who fights the humanoids to the bitter end, only to get 
    re-educated at the end of the book by the humanoids to accept/like them.
    Its something of a cross between 1984 and Childhood's End...
    
    If I were to put this book in the terms of the base note, I guess
    it would be: "Good guys attempt to overthrow a new order, fail,
    and become part of the new order"
    
    -Randy

    I'm not a parent, so that angle never occurred to me.
    
    					andrew

        Check out this new book about one possible future for the 
    human race:

        Stock, Gregory, METAMAN: THE MERGING OF HUMANS AND MACHINES 
    INTO A GLOBAL SUPERORGANISM, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York,
    1993, ISBN 0-671-70723-X ($24.00 hardcover).

        Larry 

    Re .15
    
    I did not mean to imply that democracy was always the goal of the
    "heroes", just that is is difficult to meet the requirements of the
    base note when democracy is not the aim.
    
    Yes, the only thing special about Fax is that he is the first opponent.
    The point was that the "heroes" are aiming to restore a previous
    society, rather than to create a new one.
    
    Re .16
    
    In seems to me that in the Deryni books the 'heroes' aim is to restore a
    previously existing situation. I.e. to get society back to what it was
    like before the Interregnum(?). They want to restore a past situation,
    and to maintain it.
    
    Peter

    The heroes of the Deryni books are not really trying to re-establish
    the time before the Festillic invasion, though it would seem so at
    first blush.  Camber's family as well as the Michaelines were products
    of that invasion and had little or no stake in the time before the
    invasion.  The society that bred them was a Deryni dominated society in
    which Deryni ruled with privelege and impunity over humans.  The
    pre-Festillic Gwynnedd was Human dominated with a deryni being in a
    tenuous position.   What Camber was attempting, along with his
    supporters, was to set the groundwork for a society where people were
    valued for who they were, not what they were, a society where human and
    deryni could walk side by side without fear and without suspicion.  In
    many ways, the Deryni stories are an allegory for our own struggles
    with racism in the U.S. and represent a Kennedy-esque vision.  What is
    more, the Deryni stories deal with the issue of radical social change
    realistically, that is to say, they recognize that such significant
    change is not easily wrought in the light of human and deryni nature.
    The struggle is long and by no means sure.  Already it has lasted
    centuries and brought about the rise and fall of great men and women as
    well as children who may have become great men and women, but never got
    the chance.  Perhaps the greatest hope of the cause sits the throne in
    the Chronologically latest books, in the person of Kelson, whose
    greatest virtue is that he always tries to do what is right.
    
    These are heroic stories and by no means do they reflect a return to
    status quo message, they are also much more liberal than conservative
    in politics relative to their setting at least.
    
    Andrew  a devoted Deryni fan
    
    

    Re .29
    
    That's not how I read the books. In the books about Kelson, the long
    term aim appears to be to end the persecution of the Deryni, which
    started after the restoration. There is plenty of evidence that it did
    not exist earlier.
    
    Certainly they are not trying to build a society where everyone is
    valued for who they are. There is no suggestion that the heroes wish to
    change the feudal nature of their society.
    
    Peter

    but there is also a lot of evidence that there have always been
    anti-deryni grumblings and periods where sentiments swung back and
    forth along with the balance of power.  For instance, there was a time,
    before Camber, when Pargan of Howicce was writing poetry as well as the
    time when the great Orin was practicing.  If there had been no
    anti-Deryni periods of oppression between Orin's time and Camber's,
    then it is unlikely that the teachings of Orin would have been lost. 
    The time of Camber is time when the Deryni are flourishing under a
    deryni king, but it is alsoa  period where knowledge is being
    re-discovered that had existed before but had been lost.  This would
    indicate a prior period of persecutions.  Frankly, the culture of Kurtz
    novels would tend to indicate substantial hostility in the
    "establishment" against the deryni.  The Christian religion is
    extremely hostile to anything that even hints of the occult.  Deryni
    powers and magics are literally contrary to scriptural prohibitions
    against sorcery and witchcraft, which the church of the middle ages
    took very seriously and the church of the time was very jealous of it's
    own "proximity to Divinity"; they had some definite difficulties with
    the fact that the average Deryni of moderate training was seemingly
    capable of stronger perception of the Divine than the average human
    churchman.  The occaisonal jealousy of human churchmen for deryni
    churchmen was also obvious in the Camber books.
    	There is a difference in goals between Camber and Kelson as well. 
    Camber was planning out of a time when the Deryni, while a minority,
    were still fairly powerful, though waning in influence and popularity,
    He could afford to think about creating a situation wherin humans and
    deryni could live in a state of racial equality (within the feudal
    hierarchy of the time)  The effort was to remove the fear of humans for
    deryni as well as to remove the sense of superiority to humans that
    some Deryni felt.  Obviously the plan fell to pieces when people other
    than the tremendously wise and forward thinking McCrories and Thuryn's
    got involved, but the original intent was highly idealistic and
    radical.   Unfortunately all had to be put on hold to survive the
    backlash of anti-deryni feelings which developed following the
    overthrow of Imre.   
    	Kelson was operating out of a different time.  Kelson is
    functioning at the van of a deryni resurgence which began in his
    grandfather and father's times.  Coming out of the darkness of the
    deepest of the persecutions, Kelson's understanding of deryniness is
    smaller than Camber's as is his vision of what could be.  Kelson is
    fighting for a chance to prove that the Deryni are not demons, he is
    fighting for simple legitimacy, though the long term plan is for
    racial equality.  Kelson has an advantage over Camber in one simple
    way,  He is king.     " It's good to be the king."   
    
    Andrew
    

    Kelson has also experienced some of the disadvantages of being king.
    
    Certainly there was some oppression of deryni before the Festils, but
    the extreme feeling against them seem to come after the restoration.
    Deryni seem to have been priests in earlier times, and the healers seem
    to have a long history.
    
    The theme of creating a *new* society seems to be an aim only in some
    of the later books of the 'Camber stories'. Actually I don't think
    racial equality is a realist goal in that setting since, unlike in real
    life, the races in the books are not created equal. The deryni have
    capablities that humans do not have. If they are allowed to use them
    freely then they will dominate. If they are restricted sufficiently to
    cancel the advantages, then some of them would rebel, as they would
    consider themselves oppressed.
    
    Peter