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Spider Robinson And The State Of Science Fiction

Posted by simoniker on from the many-legs-and-many-opinions dept.

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?'"

10 of 854 comments (clear)

  1. Jack Vance! by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 4, Informative
    Do yourself a favor and read the Demon Princes books (5 in all) and the Planet of Adventure series (4 books in all).

    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! :)

  2. Three words: Lois McMaster Bujold by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    she publishes her Sci-fi at Baen.. books available eltectronically through http://www.webscription.net/ with no DRM!

    a sample available at.. http://www.baen.com/library/1011250002/1011250002. htm

    it's a short story without the space battle-cruisers.. but the rest of her stuff has 'em.. and so much more.

    --iamnotayam

    1. Re:Three words: Lois McMaster Bujold by Drakin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, I recomend most of the stuff that's published by Baen as good sci-fi. Though, I am biased, due to the love I have for military sci-fi, as well as the fact Baen treats customers as valued assets (IE, their bonus CD's)

      9FYI, Spider Robinson has had some stuff published by Baen)

    2. Re:Three words: Lois McMaster Bujold by penguinland · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is absolutely correct. With the possible exception to Douglas Adams (whose work is in a completely different genre anyway), McMaster-Bujold is one of the greatest SF writers of all time. She has won 2 Nebula awards and an unprecedented 4 Hugo awards (in contrast, Asimov only got 3, and he's dead now, so he won't be getting any more). As an introduction to her work, I would like to reccomend Cordelia's Honor. It has everything a good book needs - lots of futuristic SF stuff, well developed characters, a love story, fantastic battles (it takes place during an interplanetary war), political trickery... the list goes on and on.

      One of my favorite things about McMaster-Bujold is that she writes believable characters. Tolkien and Asimov have good worlds, but their individual characters are fairly flat and one-dimensional. Bujold, on the other hand, writes as though these people were real - they have fears, insecurities, hopes, dreams, and they change and mature as the characters are put into new situations.

      Bottom line - if you haven't checked out Lois McMaster-Bujold, you don't know what you're missing.

      --
      "Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
  3. Re:My favorites by slashBastard · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    -------------------------------------------------- ---
    No sig. today thank you.
  4. The problem with sci-fi today.... by MxTxL · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  5. Re:Magic Vs. Technology by ccp · · Score: 2, Informative

    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,

  6. The Opposite is True by Karl_D_Schroeder · · Score: 4, Informative
    There's two books coming out of Tor this year, The Hard SF Rennaissance and the Space Opera Rennaissance, which show just how wrong Spider is. In fact, there's a whole new crop of SF writers out there who are doing exciting things: Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Alaister Reynolds, Ken Macleod, Peter Watts, just for instance. My own novel *Permanence* has just won the 2003 Aurora Award, one of Canada's two top honors for SF; and *Permanence* is loaded with new ideas, including an entirely new take on interstellar civilization (around Brown dwarf stars) as well as a new system for interstellar travel, all hard SF based... people seemed to love it, hence the award. There's tons of new areas to explore; I'm using cognitive science, emergent systems (and emergent democracy), General Selection theory and distributed cognition in what I'm writing now. Most of these ideas weren't even on people's radar five years ago, and a lot of them are just gaining ground now. It's a perfect time to be writing SF, there's lots of exciting directions to go in.

    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.
  7. Re:The sky is falling, Spider by Spider+Robinson · · Score: 2, Informative

    "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.

  8. Re:Magic Vs. Technology by sd_jeff · · Score: 2, Informative


    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.