Thanks for the tip, Kokipy.  Found it and reading now.  Luckily for me it's not behind a paywall.
 

I’ve continued to think a lot about Aurora. In the New Yorker article he is quoted as saying when writing it, he felt like he was “taking a model of the Starship Enterprise and smashing it with a hammer”. There really is a moralism in his approach: this is the way I think science fiction should be and what the human attitude ought to be about the future. While I agree with him, certainly, that our efforts need to focus on the one habitable place for humans in the universe, I recoil at the message that artists and writers have a legitimate and an illegitimate approach to their content. I find it troubling that anyone ought to go anywhere but where the spirit moves them creatively….

Kokipy wrote:

It must be a bit devastating for a science fiction writer  to learn that science won’t support something generations of writers have dreamed about. If we can’t feasibly fly to the stars - if there is no home there for us even if we could get there- science fiction isn’t really anything other than fantasy, is it? I liked Aurora, because KSR is one of my very reliable favorites also, but it was a bit of a downer for me to see he had given up on space for humanity.

I don’t think really there’s anything new for SF writers here. It’s just that KSR has focused on it in Aurora. At any time in the last half century, one could have expressed doubt about how our biology will interact with alien biology. But also note that it’s not that KSR is correct - no one knows that, and one could well argue the point. For one thing, we have no other examples of life anywhere in the universe. For another, life on earth is made from the most plentiful substances in the universe, admittedly with our particular chemical arrangements, and who knows whether this is inconsistent with the chemistry of other planets. It’s speculation on KSR’s part. And finally, there’s the mathematical reality of the universe: quintillions of planets, some of which may be very Earthlike. So it’s not like KSR has somehow closed the door on the habitability of exoplanets. Note that CJC used a similar idea in 1981(?) - Cyteen’s biology being somewhat poisonous to Earthers, though they were able to adapt areas to be safe.

I think the case KSR makes in Aurora is less about scientific certainty and more in support for his politics and ideology. I don’t necessarily disagree with those things. Safeguarding Earth must be our priority, for example. Absolutely. But where I disagree is that SF must be in the service of solving human problems. It’s a noble sentiment, highly focused on fictional realism, but I reject the moral imperative suggested. Censorship is too strong a word, but I think the moral suggestion is clear. As you know, this is from someone with the utmost respect for the author.

So no, we are not in the situation where we could necessarily never get there and could necessarily not survive there if we did. It’s a question at this point. Add a million years - or 10,000 - and who knows? So no, Interstellar fiction doesn’t reduce to fantasy. But it's not KSR's thang either.

Last edited by starexplorer (2/22/2022 10:58 pm)