I’m impressed by the essay. I think it’s quite good. I’m unsure about the name of “programmer fiction” or all the exact categorizations or influences, but I think he’s pointing at a real cluster, and correct to exclude both “mainstream” genre fiction and the more explicitly “ratfic”, as well as others, for reasons I can’t quite precisely articulate.
One thing I especially appreciate about it is that the categorization is mostly nonsocial. Like exploring the works themselves and the intellectual influences rather than the social graph. The few times where it does go social (including eg linking my own review on Chiang) is imo among the weakest points of this essay.
I agree ‘programmer fiction’ is an unlovely name (as well as misleading), but I don’t see any obviously superior name for this cluster. (The first one that sprung to mind for me is “mechanical fiction”—an interesting name, which captures the deep uncanniness of it when done well and the author has truly stared into the void.)
I would probably offer something like ‘loopfic’ or ‘systems fiction’. Both because of the general ideological tie to Hofstadter’s work (as the essay notes), and because the most concise way of describing the pinpoint of the authors’ fixations is “the workings and immense failure cases of strange/recursive loops.”
It’s why, as the author notes, Infinite Jest and House of Leaves fit so well, despite not really fitting the S part of SF. The common ground between all entries that fit clearly in the genre is dealing with recursion (whether as an explicit focus of the story, like in AIfics, or implicitly, like in the sub-subgenre of libertarian governance fics) in a deeper way than most other genres. This approach to storytelling bleeds into nearly everything about the stories told in the genre, down to the interactions characters have.
My problem with “systems fiction” is that it sounds too much like “System Fiction” a la progression fantasy. Same issue with “loopfic” (reminds me of time loop stories).
Possible alternatives:
Borgesian science fiction
strange loop stories
axiomatic fiction
imo a good description of Alexander, Borges, and Chiang, but a poorer description of Stephenson, Stross, qntm, and Bjartur.
I’m impressed by the essay. I think it’s quite good. I’m unsure about the name of “programmer fiction” or all the exact categorizations or influences, but I think he’s pointing at a real cluster, and correct to exclude both “mainstream” genre fiction and the more explicitly “ratfic”, as well as others, for reasons I can’t quite precisely articulate.
One thing I especially appreciate about it is that the categorization is mostly nonsocial. Like exploring the works themselves and the intellectual influences rather than the social graph. The few times where it does go social (including eg linking my own review on Chiang) is imo among the weakest points of this essay.
I agree ‘programmer fiction’ is an unlovely name (as well as misleading), but I don’t see any obviously superior name for this cluster. (The first one that sprung to mind for me is “mechanical fiction”—an interesting name, which captures the deep uncanniness of it when done well and the author has truly stared into the void.)
I would probably offer something like ‘loopfic’ or ‘systems fiction’. Both because of the general ideological tie to Hofstadter’s work (as the essay notes), and because the most concise way of describing the pinpoint of the authors’ fixations is “the workings and immense failure cases of strange/recursive loops.”
It’s why, as the author notes, Infinite Jest and House of Leaves fit so well, despite not really fitting the S part of SF. The common ground between all entries that fit clearly in the genre is dealing with recursion (whether as an explicit focus of the story, like in AIfics, or implicitly, like in the sub-subgenre of libertarian governance fics) in a deeper way than most other genres. This approach to storytelling bleeds into nearly everything about the stories told in the genre, down to the interactions characters have.
My problem with “systems fiction” is that it sounds too much like “System Fiction” a la progression fantasy. Same issue with “loopfic” (reminds me of time loop stories).
Possible alternatives:
Borgesian science fiction
strange loop stories
axiomatic fiction
imo a good description of Alexander, Borges, and Chiang, but a poorer description of Stephenson, Stross, qntm, and Bjartur.