Is Science Fiction Aspie literature?

Post Reply New Topic

I am not talking about the newer watered down Science Fiction. Original Science fiction with "technobabble" and logic that works. It kind of makes sense that it is because it focuses on science and how it relates to society.

Is this actually effectively Aspie literature? Has it been here all along?

I'm in an online SF/F writers group and from what I can see, SF writers are far more likely to be English majors than science majors (I'm a science major myself), and I think that's always been the case (think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein). However, there have always been scientists who've used SF as a forum for speculation.

However, I suspect they have generally not been autistic. I suspect that if autistic people have been writing anything at all (and with disorganized brains they may not write much if anything, especially before computers - I know I find it infernally hard to structure a plot), it's been more along the lines of technical manuals.

That doesn't mean that SF isn't popular with autistic readers. Did you mean writers or readers? (I took you to mean writers.)

Choice of L'Auterature topic

Sci Fi is probably closer to being Aspie styled, due to the technological jargon, special effects descriptions and the otherworldly settings.

But I like a story with a problem solving feature, or else a moral of some kind, so I prefer fiction by Kafka Orwell, and Munroe, among others. In the non-fiction I also like reading technical manuals, history, analytical essays, biographies, interpretive literature, and scholarly philosophical tomes.
Plath's poetry is always interesting.

Hard science fiction from the 50's & 60's was the best, my dad got me into reading it, when I was very young, although he wasn't diagnosed an aspie, me and my dad shared alot of aspie traits, bed time stories were always sci fi related, that he would make up

I love both reading and writing science fiction, but I am finding that my aspie-ness gets in the way of my writing. I either overdo the context (my latest false start basically started with somebody getting a message... and then two pages of context for that before the character who gets the message actually reads it), or I'll hit a spot where I have to work out some weird detail before I move on (Wait, is the alien standing or lying down? Is it important? How does their physiology enter into it? Is there any cultural significance to leaning on a wall?) and get so dragged into the universe-creation and the backstory that I can't write the plot.

i always enjoyed SF litrature and programs on tv and that was before i was diagnosed AS but i still like it , i even went to the starwars expo.Think the wrong planet idea is also SF related
or feeling alien

i also buy the old EC archives comics Wierd fantasy reprints from the 50
now recently been reprinted

I’ve always loved star trek, and other worlds and space and such… Identification with characters like data and such. Also there is so much structure and story meaning or issues brought up in these shows that you don’t often get with other shows that just spend so much time staring at navels.

I could not get into Science Fiction as literature though. I went through a phase where I read all of Murray Leinster and that was great fun but it had a kind of cool retro or historical appeal as well.

In terms of fiction I have to say that upon discovering it, I was smitten and amazed by E. Annie. Proux’s The Shipping News, the style and the story just wrapped around my heart in a way no other fiction has done. This was about ten years before I even knew about the concept of autism or aspergers. Now I think in retrospect that talking about and thinking about this novel was kind of a way of addressing the Aspergers in me. It still is, I think, after all this time a total work of art.

So that’s my personal aspergers literature.

I'll add that it may actually be the opposite - literary fiction actually has a lot more writers and books with aspergers or autistic elements, poetically embedded, than science fiction which tends to have more stock characters. Many (if not most) literary greats radiate it, like Joyce, Anne Carson, Emily Dickenson or William Faulkner for instance, maybe because genius is linked to this skill. Science fiction can be more formulaic.

When I was a kid, I was into Star Trek, and still appreciate it, but seldom get into sci-fi or fantasy stuff.
My BOYfriend on the other hand... ...

Definitely sci-fi gives us the context to describe our problem. The Native Terrans (NTs) Do Things Differently Here.

I posted a science fiction story here that I felt captured the "wrong planet" feeling of many Aspies. Also, someone once said that science fiction is the genre where the idea is the hero, so it's bound to appeal to readers who don't care for human interaction. On the other hand, neither Jules Verne, the inventor of "hard" sf, nor H.G. Wells, who came up with most of the standard concepts in science fiction, were the least bit Aspie, nor do I think Asimov, Heinlein or Niven fit the criteria.

[quote="Icheb"]Also, someone once said that science fiction is the genre where the idea is the hero, so it's bound to appeal to readers who don't care for human interaction. quote]

Wow, thats a great quote. Well said