Kindle Notes: Asimov’s SF, Aug. 2010

“Crimes, Follies, Misfortunes, and Love” appears in the Novelettes section of the current issue ofAsimov’s Science Fiction magazine.  Ian Creasey’s dialogue is a little stilted, I admit, but the story does tackle a topic I’m interested in–not just the history, but historical methodology, of the future:

A Highlight and Note from Isabela Morales

“I don’t think we’re sneering at our ancestors if we notice the minor moments in their lives,” Sonia said. “We’re acknowledging that they’re like us, that they had ordinary days full of nothing much. Why are you so obsessed with finding what you call the best moments, the most uplifting anecdotes?

Note: Kind of a microdebate about historical methodology

***

I’m sure everyone’s wondered, if only just once, about what historians and archeologists of the future will think about us.  Even more bizarre to think about, they won’t be paging through old newspapers (or at least not entirely): future historians will have to be computer scientists too.

Sonia is an historian in a “post-Oil Age” culture that disdains the “effete,” self-indulgent impracticalities of introspection or–heaven forbid!–blogging (now every time I post I’m going to be wondering how much some history major at the University of Ganymede is going to be making fun of me).

And one scene actually went into a debate over what seemed to me to be the Great Men theory of history versus social history, which focuses more on daily life and what Sonia’s rival Lianne calls “banal.”  Sonia defends history in not so many words.

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