Clever story, dirty tricks. Make them unemotional, neotenous, r-strategy reproducers, bigoted and politically untrustworthy. Imply a short lifespan with no attempt at anti-aging. That variant of humanity is no fun, but what does that tell you about the propaganda topic, the value of long dependent childhood? Almost nothing. Too many confounding factors.
Whenever the New Yorker prints a science fiction story, the relatively low quality (compared to both SF as a whole and the fiction that appears in the New Yorker as a whole) makes it feel very much like a bone is being thrown. (It also makes me think gee, this is why readers of realist/”literary” fiction think SF is trash.)
Clever story, dirty tricks. Make them unemotional, neotenous, r-strategy reproducers, bigoted and politically untrustworthy. Imply a short lifespan with no attempt at anti-aging. That variant of humanity is no fun, but what does that tell you about the propaganda topic, the value of long dependent childhood? Almost nothing. Too many confounding factors.
Whenever the New Yorker prints a science fiction story, the relatively low quality (compared to both SF as a whole and the fiction that appears in the New Yorker as a whole) makes it feel very much like a bone is being thrown. (It also makes me think gee, this is why readers of realist/”literary” fiction think SF is trash.)