Spider Robinson And The State Of Science Fiction

pcb writes "There is a rather decent rant in today's Globe & Mail from Spider Robinson (of the Callahan series fame) regarding the dismal state of science fiction, in which he laments that the future is not what it used to be. While attending Torcon 3, the 61st World SF Convention, he notes that SF readers today seem to prefer the Tolkienesque fantasies of some forgotten past, rather than the forward-looking works of science and space travel that used to dominate the genre. Are SF stories from authors like Heinlein, Clarke or Asimov irrelevant today, as people look into the past to dream rather than the future? Robinson asks: 'Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?'"

Comments

Re:It's all about the chicks

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no. You don't mate with the green ones. They're not ripe yet.

So let me get this straight.

[Doktor Memory]

Spider Robinson, the living definition of the hack SF author who survives purely by pandering to his arrested-adolescent fanbase and recycling the same appallingly trite scenario into an endless stream of identical "novels," is complaining about the state of modern SF writing?

Oh! The! Irony!

If speculative fiction needs to be saved from anything, it's the Spider Robinsons, Mercedes Lackeys and Piers Anthonys of the world. If they're complaining, that's probably a good sign -- hopefully that people are starting to spend their money on books by authors with actual talent rather than the 2,387th entry in the Callahan's Cross-Time Dragonquest for Telepathic Cats series.

Re:Magic Vs. Technology

[PetoskeyGuy]

I found an article that explained the whole thing. From the Onion...

VOLUME 31 ISSUE 18 -- 13 MAY 1997
Study: Uneducated Outbreeding Intelligentsia 2-To-1
CHICAGO--In a report with dire implications for the intellectual future of America, a University of Chicago study revealed Monday that the nation's uneducated are breeding twice as soon and twice as often as those with university diplomas. "The average member of the American underclass spawns at age 15, compared to age 30 for the average college-educated professional," study leader Kenneth Stalls said. "America's intellectual elite, as a result, is badly losing the genetic marathon, with two generations of dullards born for every one generation of cultured literates." Added Stalls: "At this rate, by the year 2100 there will be five smart people on Earth, swallowed whole by more than 12 billion mouth-breathers incapable of understanding the binary exponentiation that swamped the Earth with their like." High-school dropout Mandi Drucker, 16, said of the findings, "All I know is, we're in love."

Re:Research vs not researching

[ccp]

Believe me, I don't want to be mean, but you read Asimov for the characters?

Oh, boy!