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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?'"
UNBELIEVABLE! Anyone who has read Vance's works, please feel free to tell me your favs as I look forward to reading many more, as I've just finished the last of the aforementioned books. I'll give you a million SVU and a bag of Purples for your efforts! :)
she publishes her Sci-fi at Baen.. books available eltectronically through http://www.webscription.net/ with no DRM!
. htm
a sample available at.. http://www.baen.com/library/1011250002/1011250002
it's a short story without the space battle-cruisers.. but the rest of her stuff has 'em.. and so much more.
--iamnotayam
Lot's of those books by Ian M Banks are very good new sci-fi. The whole universe he creates is new and well worth a read....'Consider Phlebas', 'Player of Games' and 'Look to Windward' to name but three.
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No sig. today thank you.
The problem with sci-fi today is that nothing is fresh. Well, ok, very little is fresh. The space fantasy has been done to death. Star Wars, Star Trek, Asimov, AC Clarke... hell, even Buck Rogers and the like. Also, the dragon-slaying, wizards and warriors D&D fantasy genre has been done to death (but has aged well). Sticking your work in either of these genres pretty much guarantees that you will be overlooked in the MILLIONS of other books in the genre.
The freshest stuff in sci-fi in the last 20 years is the cyberpunk genre. This is, IMHO, the cutting edge of sci-fi. Set in the near-future, incorporating a lot of today's tech, the stories are not out of touch with today's reality and the genre hasn't been over-exploited (yet). They make for fresh sci-fi worlds but can easily touch on themes and stories that we can relate to.
If you haven't looked into cyberpunk, pick up some books by Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, or William Gibson. Esp. Neuromancer, Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Definately worth your time.
You're so wrong!
If anything, people's understanding of technology has diminished in the last 50 years, and the belief in magic and the occult has increased.
I don't know where did you get your idea of the fifties, but believe me, you got it all wrong.
I'm old enough to remember.
Cheers,
Let me hasten to add that fantasy isn't sitting still either. Just try anything by Jasper Fforde or China Mieville if you want to be jolted totally out of your usually tracks.
This lament about the death of SF gets repeated every few years. It's less true now than it ever was.
Author of Permanence and Ventus, co-author of The Claus Effect and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing SF.
"Flame-bait"? How? You're absolutely right. I GLORY in the slander. All my 9 Callahan's Place books are fantasy....carefully phrased so as not to offend a science fiction fan. There's a long and honorable tradition of this in the field. My Lifehouse trilogy, on the other hand (MINDKILLER, TIME PRESSURE and LIFEHOUSE), is pure-quill science fiction, as is the Stardance Trilogy I co-wrote with my wife Jeanne (STARDANCE, STARSEED and STARMIND), and my stand-alone novels TELEMPATH, THE FREE LUNCH, and NIGHT OF POWER. So I assay out to exactly 50 % hardcore sf, as a novelist, anyway...and 50% fantasy, of a kind that acknowledges the existence of other worlds and even stars, and respects science, and doesn't believe problems can be solved by wishing real hard or knowing the right wizard. I said in the article that started all this: "I am not knocking fantasy--the brand of sf I write is closer to fantasy than most." The GLOBE AND MAIL edited that last clause out for space, is all.
It's even worse than that...we're in the middle of a politically-correct rewriting of history that will have untold effects. Also, there is an Orwellian twisting of our textbooks that no one seems to recognize as such.
I definitely agree that this is a problem. California and Texas are such a large markets that their state education laws impact textbooks across the nation b/c it's more cost-effective for publishers to have a national edition. Textbook bowdlerization is a nationwide phenomenon, and it's not just limited to the hypersensitivities of the left. Rightwing groups have also pressured textbook publishers based on their own hot button issues.
Have you read "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" by Diane Ravitch? I haven't but I've read some very interesting excerpts and reviews. You can find it here.
One thing i dreamed about when I was a student lugging around all those heavy textbooks was dynamic innstructional material that could be downloaded to low-cost high-quality media. (Still not there with electonic paper, etc.) But another benefit would be giving teachers some more control over what to use in their classes.
Admittedly, the evidence is empirical, because our illustrious educational bureaucrats have thoroughly muddied up the waters to protect the names of the guilty. Which is totally unfair to excellent school districts like mine, (in effect, the attitude is, "Solidarity! If we're going down, we're taking all of you with us.")
The American schoolchild that I've observed can't even compose a half-way decent sentence with out gross misspellings and grammatical errors, (my grammar isn't perfect, but at least I can identify my mistakes.)
Educated (privileged) children of 200 years ago were translating texts from Latin and Greek, and I don't mean the Bible. What great works are studied in high school today? Perhaps four short novels from contemporary authors, and an "analysis" amounting to nothing more than memorization, (probably why the wildly popular Cliff's Notes remain so.) Only two years of math are required in my state. I don't even know what the science requirement is now. The local choices are earth science and environmental science. What broad horizons. I would think that electronics and physics would be required from the eighth grade onward.
Other than that, there's been a downward trend on scoring with standardized tests. Although, admittedly, that's hard to track since the scores are kept level by simply lowering the standard, and acceptable test scores are not required for graduation in most states. Also, testing during the first 10 grades is at the discretion of local and state government, and testing is generally fought tooth and nail. It's basically an inter-district competition, with no easy way to compare between states. So, in short, it's damn hard to provide the numerical proof.
Dumping money into Taylorized educational methods isn't going to instill the desire to learn in children. Why fight it? Fund public education from first to eighth grade, concentrate on the most practical subjects. A surprising amount of younger folk I talk to haven't the faintest idea how to manage their finances, or how common household items function and can be repaired. Which leads to a whole host of problems later in life, that I pay with tax dollars and high interest rates to correct, (if only temporarily.)
For the most part, the privileged remain better educated, and the chances that a hard working pupil in a crappy public school system is going to attend a good college are slim to none. I've attended two colleges in my state. Both were glorified high schools, except for the core technical classes that made up my major. The schools are this way because of the low expectations of students enrolled from other surrounding towns. So I basically had to sit there and nap while college professors covered material that I mastered in my freshman year of high school. I paid for this. The pace of the other courses was excruciatingly slow, and lectures repetitive. All this because of the lowest common denominator. The irony was that the district from which I graduated has the *lowest* cost per pupil in the state!
So, if your school system is so broadly improved over this that you can claim public education's failures on a vast right-wing conspiracy, please provide proof that there is a trend of public school students improving their scores on core subjects, outside a DNC press release, and also tell me where I can move so I can send my children somewhere decent!
-Frd