Dunsanian Science Fiction

[SheikhJahbooty]

I once read that Lovecraft felt he had Poe pieces and Dunsany pieces.

I've noticed Poe's influence on science fiction, especially in films like Event Horizon and Black Hole.

But Dunsany seems absent from modern sci-fi, right?

Please tell me I'm wrong and site someone. I mean with all this nanotech/virtual reality/transhumanist sci-fi ideas bouncing around, there's got to be someone writing Dunsanian hard space opera style science fiction.

Ursula K. LeGuin maybe?

Philip K. Dick? He was too drugged up to write hard sci-fi but it has a fantastical feel.

I ask because I'm lately interested in De Profundis and Machine Zeit, like wouldn't it be cool to write emails to a friend as if you were a salvager exploring a haunted derelict space hulk orbiting a black hole. But then I think that there might be a lot of potential for lighter fair, kind of like a travel diary from an interstellar explorer.

Like maybe combine De Profundis with Pilgrims of the Flying Temple. I'm not sure. I don't know where this is going yet.

Oh, this might feed back into my Hebrew Alphabet cards. Here's how they're shaping up already:

Basic Card Game - Working title - Temurah, start with AB (father) or some similarly small word that uses letters up front of the alphabet, and go around clockwise, each player forming a new word by adding a letter or playing a card on top of an existing one, to try to get rid of all the cards in your hand.

RPG - no working title - basically Fiddler on the Roof meets Brothers Grimm.

Solitaire Card Game - having the most trouble with this one. I kind of want it to be like classic Battlestar Galactica, twelve space tribes searching through space for the promised planet, but I want to be able to deal cards and they tell you stuff about the planet, like the bright Alef card might have the words Aviva-Spring written on it somewhere, and the dark Alef card might have the words Abadon-Ruin written on it somewhere, but I'm not sure if that would be enough, or if I need more, like words that might describe the people if any, or if the type of letter should mean something, like if you get a letter that has more than one pronunciation, would that mean deal an extra card as well, and should it be possible to lose the game, like if you run out of necessary resources, or the tribes abandon the quest one at a time? Or maybe the solitaire game can be a sci-fi version of Kino's Journey, so you just deal cards and make up a world using those cards as inspiration, with that world's customs and history. Maybe you could write a captain's log and occasionally send it to a friend.

Having words on the face of the card might also help people playing Temurah.

[kylesgames]

I think some of the reason one doesn't see Dunsanian science fiction often is that his writings seem to be so stylistically similar to Lovecraft that a lot of people who actually are closer to Dunsany's writings are associated more frequently with Lovecraft. Of course, this is viewed through an American lens, where Lovecraft is much more well known among my contemporaries than Dunsany, despite the high qualities of both works.

EDIT: Another insight is that a lot of science-fiction is derivative, as thus it is often hard to trace a distinctive style between works though elements are often shared. For instance, a lot of the science fiction tabletop games I've read from pre-90's are heavy on Star Wars or Battletech stylings, while both of those series have since evolved into something indistinguishable. Writing styles tend to get trampled on quickly, since there's a sort of technobabble/awesome arms race, with a focus on science-fiction staying relevant to modern technology but still more exciting than its peers. Writing tends to take the back seat since the audience cares more about an explanation of how Pandora's Gates work rather than a quality or style of writing (though, that said, the writers of Eclipse Phase did wonders on their writing front).

EDIT 2: Of course, I may be misinterpreting the whole Dunsanian thing entirely.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I'll have to second that comment about a biased American lens - I've got a literature degree, and Dunsany's name doesn't ring a bell.

That said, the big division in Science Fiction tends more to be along the lines of H.G. Wells vs Jules Verne. One tended to use the science in the background to justify the story, the other tended to look at the actual developments of science, and try to work out what the ramifications might be. For example - robots are just background and assistants in Star Wars, while Issac Asimov reasoned out what kind of laws/programming you would need for them to exist in society relatively safely.

Battletech is actually a pretty well realized universe, and fairly hard SF. It does follow ideas like tech stagnation/advancement (though it might be a bit of a "Lensman arms race" given the big leaps made when the clans come and afterwards) Gundam seems a bit more fantastic (beam sabers and more maneuverable units) but it does try to follow ideas about what is some sort of jamming field limited space combat to visual range with no guidance systems. (Hence multiple limbs to shift to alter center of gravity/conservation of rotational momentum)

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are go to guys for hard SF world building. A lot of recommended novels can be found on the site. Neuromancer and its follow ups are pretty good adventures.