Pettit@PARC-MAXC@sri-unix (12/10/82)
In regard to csin!cjh at CCA-UNIX's statement in V6#99, "I happen to
think that 'True Names' was better than the winner, Anderson's
'The Saturn Game'; that may reflect my dislike of tSG's subject":
What does csin!cjh see as "tSG's subject"? It seems to me that
"True Names" and "The Saturn Game" had very nearly the SAME
subject, to wit, an extension of the Fantasy Role Playing idea to where
the fantasy world actually feels real to the player (or at least as real
as a dream does to the dreamer). In True Names, the fantasy world
was the way a human experienced direct neural IO linkage with a
computer; in "The Saturn Game" it was the result of genetic and other
enhancements to the imaginative capabilities of people sent on long
space missions. Both stories played off the advantages of this enhanced
experience against the dangers of being unable to respond properly to
the real world while living in the fantasy one. This conflict was the
major theme of "The Saturn Game"; it was a minor one in "True
Names", whose main theme was the implications of machine/human
symbiosis.
I too preferred "True Names" to "The Saturn Game", though I liked
them both a lot. My preference is partly because I'm a programmer
(not an astronaut or geologist), and Vinge did a very good job of capturing/extrapolating the culture of the programmer. I think Vinge
also did a better job than Anderson at capturing the flavor of the FRP
culture, and he was even quite good at representing the police-officer
mentality. The characterization in "The Saturn Game" was weaker.
But my main objection to "The Saturn Game" was that I could never
really suspend my disbelief in the notion that a fantasized ice castle
setting would have more emotional pull than the actual experience of
walking about on Saturn's moon, no matter how altered the imaginations
of the explorers were. In "True Names", the programmers were seated
in consoles, with almost all their sensory input coming from the
computer (near the end, it becomes a sensory overload, in fact), so
it is much easier to believe that the fantasy world could become real
than when it is an entirely internal construct competing with the
astounding and demanding real experience of exploring a beautiful
and dangerous new world.
Anderson probably won the Hugo not for the main theme of his work,
but for the subplot of clever people in dire straits figuring out an
ingenious way to rescue themselves. This plot has been a sure winner
for SF short stories and novelettes ever since Asimov's first published
story, "Marooned Off Vesta". In the same vein, I can recall a story
about a couple "walking" a bubble-tent back to a moon base after a
picnic in the nude, and getting a bad sunburn in the process. I don't
remember the name or author. And one of Varley's stories with the
clinging-mirror-spacesuits had a similar subplot ("Retrograde Summer",
I think it was). How many others can you think of?
-- Teri Pettit at Xerox OSD