Realist fiction is actually more infra than sci-fi because it operates inside the infrastructure. Like, when you read Balzac or a good contemporary novel, the infrastructure isn’t a plot device—it’s the environment. Money, property relations, labor, how cities actually move. It’s not announcing itself. It’s just… the world the characters inhabit, and it crushes them or lifts them without needing to be explained.
Sci-fi has to expose infrastructure to make its point. It’s inherently didactic about it. Which is fine and valuable, but it’s like the difference between actually living in a system versus studying a diagram of it.
The real infra work is happening when an author can make you feel how completely determined you are by forces that never get named, never become plot. That’s realism. Sci-fi makes the infrastructure visible; realism makes it felt.
So maybe sci-fi is just the most obvious infra genre? Which is different from being the most actually infra-y.
glimshe•1mo ago
Why should I read anything recommended by the A16Z "Infra" team? What makes their recommendations better than my neighbor's, a lifelong sci-fi lover?
perfmode•1mo ago
100% …
… disagree!
I think this is confusing explicit with deep.
Realist fiction is actually more infra than sci-fi because it operates inside the infrastructure. Like, when you read Balzac or a good contemporary novel, the infrastructure isn’t a plot device—it’s the environment. Money, property relations, labor, how cities actually move. It’s not announcing itself. It’s just… the world the characters inhabit, and it crushes them or lifts them without needing to be explained.
Sci-fi has to expose infrastructure to make its point. It’s inherently didactic about it. Which is fine and valuable, but it’s like the difference between actually living in a system versus studying a diagram of it.
The real infra work is happening when an author can make you feel how completely determined you are by forces that never get named, never become plot. That’s realism. Sci-fi makes the infrastructure visible; realism makes it felt.
So maybe sci-fi is just the most obvious infra genre? Which is different from being the most actually infra-y.