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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?'"
Robinson asks: 'Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?'
I was hoping that the article would bring up the obvious answer, but it didn't quite reach it. The essence of fiction is that it is not real, and "science fiction" is supposed to take the idea a step further -- beyond real, if you like. To the unreachable, beyond what we consider possible.
But in this century, what is beyond possible? Exploring the planets? Been there, done that, got pictures. Exploring other star systems? Totally possible, but the centuries-long timescale makes it simply boring. Time travel? Everybody knows that you'll just end up meeting the Borg before you should, or something.
In other words, perhaps science fiction is suffering from too much science!
On the other hand, fantasy worlds like Tolkien's are completely unreachable, unimaginable in reality. Even given billions of dollars, NASA could not create a race of half-orcs in a deep trench (strategically located below a large dam).
Science is possible... fantasy is impossible. Perhaps that's the problem.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Maybe because despite repeated claims to be ending a series, authors continue to go back to mine tired ideas when nothing else is making them money?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Funny, I rarely found the science part of science fiction interesting.
I find the ideas that the author has are the intriguing people.
Heinlein in "The moon is a Harsh Mistress" exposed me to many ideas I've never thought of before. It also provides a stark contrast to Lord of the Flies and the nature of man.
The Forever war was a blast, what is this world coming to?
Enders game, interesting solutions, and some of the hows. Starship troopers had some interesting political ideas.
Lifeline was yet another interesting expression of a though, and reflection on change.
FWIW Tolkein is just as much about politics and psychology and history of the day as much as any good sci-fi story.
If we go back in time say 500 years, things didn't really change all that much from one generation to the next and so there was no concept of "the future" as we have it today. Imaginary images often revolved around religous "places" such as heaven or hell.
In the golden age of science fiction writing, which for most people I think is the 50's and 60's, in the future amazing things seemed possible and there was am optimism that things like space travel, flying cars, robots etc. might actually happen for ordinary people, perhaps even within the lifetime of the young people that read the fiction.
I think we're a bit more cynical nowadays, and thus the future doesn't seem so exciting. We've learnt that things don't change as fast as we would like them to, and the actual changes are mostly quite dull.
Imagine if a 50's science fiction writer had thought of the web. A story about buying a book on Amazon from your cubicle at work (most peoples reality today) somehow doesn't seem as exciting as flying to another planet with a cheeky robot.
You can't write a space story without a friggin PhD today. It was easy 50 years ago to talk about visiting planets and alien races and genetic engineering, artificially intelligent robots, but now we have the science to actually do that stuff, or it's looming on the horizon. If you aren't up on your tech, you're novel will be picked apart and you labelled a hack.
It's much easier to write about a fantasy world that never has, or will, exist. Plus, people have always been fascinated by the concept of "magic".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"My genre has always had its ups and downs, but this is by far its worst, longest downswing. Sales are down, magazines are languishing, our stars are aging and not being replaced. And the reason is depressingly clear: Those few readers who haven't defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises."
There are two different points here; I'll address each separately.
1. Sales are down. BFD. Just because the slide is a bit longer than average is no reason to panic. Granted, it's a couple of years since I picked up fiction (Lois McMaster Bujold excepted), but Robinson is harping on like there hasn't been a good book in a decade. I'm not the only one who could name six or seven authors who are truly excellent and still writing. Just because sales are down doesn't mean the fiction is there; it just means people are diverting their attention elsewhere. Which brings me to point two...
There is, I suspect, no relation between the increase in media-driven novels and 'proper' ones. People who read Star Trek novels aren't interested in proper SF; I suspect the same holds true for other franchises. If there is a problem with these books, it's that they're included in SF totals, making the SF book industry look healthier than it is.
Robinson's point seems to be that there's a feedback loop between space exploration and SF; I personally have my doubts. I've not doubt whatsoever that SF does indeed foster an interest in space, but is the reverse true? I sort of doubt it.
SF isn't in decline. Quality SF as a percentage of teh total volume of merchandising masquerading as product may be, but so what? Just buy the good stuff, and leave the crap to the trekkies. Or buffyites. Or whatever.
I really want to see the data--has this trend he's upset about been going on long enough to actually be a trend? And has he picked up anything by Kim Stanley Robinson, Iain Banks, or David Brin lately? Society has taken a different turn than the Golden Age writers predicted, and our speculative fiction is mirroring this. SF isn't dying, Spider, it's just changing form.
(Flamebait: And I don't know why he's talking about "his" genre. The Callahan books aren't SF; they're Chicken Soup for the Geek's Soul.)
-Carolyn
Like Daddy always said: if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with bullshit.
Ah. Why does science-fiction have to happen in the future? I have no doubt that the Baroque cycle will be sci-fi esque, just like cryptonomicon. The best example of this, however, is Drake's Belisarius series. Set in Rome, it's a really fun look at what the Romans would have been like if they were accelerated technologically. (And AFAIK, at least the first two books are available from the Baen free library, which is just wonderful.)
::Shrug:: A genre is how you define it. If you ask a healthy and diverse sampling of people to pigeonhole a sum of books, I can almost guarentee that each persons' definition of a genre will differ to a greater or lesser degree with other people's.
Sci-fi, as others have stated, is a state of mind. Stephenson's Diamond age is a good example of this. Yes, it has nanotech, but the main focus of the book is on the culutral implications of technology -- which is why it is just a great read, if you want military sci-fi, Ringo's works are quite fun, as well as Weber's.
Aruging semantics makes for such fun.
I think the point is that those authors you list aren't selling very many books, which is a good estimate of the popularity of their writing (yes I know Cory's book is freely downloadable). What's selling is Star Trek and fantasy. Even the big 'space opera' books that are selling well now are arguably more influenced by Fantasy than science fiction. The Big Trends in sci-fi just aren't looking forward the way they used to. And of the ones that are looking forward, most of them are horribly bound up in jargin and technobabble and lose touch with what made science fiction good in the first place, a sense of humanity.
There may be several reasons that "hard" science-fiction is no longer in vogue, replaced with fantasy or space opera.
1) It is not as though "hard" science-fiction has always had mass appeal. It has always had a specialized genre feeling. What passes for science fiction movies today are generally no more than shoot-em-up's in space. More like futuristic action. This is what appeals to the movie-going audience. "Hard" science fiction is too "hard" (must think...hurts brain) and is probably not profitable.
2) Fantasy pops into the human need for myth. Mythology (not necessarily incorrect or unfactual) exists traditionally in historical and religious traditions, Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Christian, etc. creation myths and such, and with the modern push to explain everything scientifically, a major piece of how people function (i.e. mythology in life) disappears, thus a longing for mythos appears, which fantasy seems to fill better than analytical science fiction.
3) The idea of a "bright, happy, future" seems to be relegated to naivety and a cynical "dystopia" seems to have set in (thus apocalyptic movies, etc), and this view seems to be pushed by many media outlets (i.e. bad news sells). We apparantly will pollute ourselves to death in 50 years, the world will be completely controlled by corporations, etc.
4) Finally, the largest bastion of future hope for science, at least in the US, NASA, has gone from getting a man on the moon in 10 years, to losing orbiters in Mars, as one magazine article put it, on the 30th anniversary of Apollo (paraphrasing) "We want NASA to be a precursor to Starfleet, but they are more like a bad post office."
These several things go to explain the loss of interest in "Golden Age" science fiction
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
"From the tech driven SF genre into the character driven fantasy world."
Which fantasy world are you on?
Seriously. That horrific overgeneralization is just plain wrong. In both genres, you've got some stories that are character driven, and some that are there to explore how "X" would affect a society... whether "X" is the ability of a select few to conjure fire out of the air, or the technology to travel faster than the speed of light. Whatever.
And, in both genres, some stories have neither interesting characters, nor an interesting "X". Such stories tend to suck.
Fooz Meister
Here we are 50 years later, and nothing has changed...except that 50 years ago almost everyone knew how to spell "calculus". :-/
For most people today, even a toaster is way beyond their comprehension. That problem is getting worse, not better. There is an increasing lack of interest in or respect for learning in general, IMO.
That is all helped right along by our consumer/pop culture, which is far more interested in the travails of the current hot celebrity rather than the latest advances in science. Sad, really.
I think if things continue this way for an extended period, the U.S. will lose it's leadership position in technology. It doesn't help that scientists and technologists have been getting screwed economically for years...
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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I think that you are close...
... pessimism.
The real answer (possibly) is
To me, it would seem that most people reading this know a bit about science and technology. The way that we envision the future is a bunch of megacorporations overly worried about not getting enough money. Everybody has a camera strapped to their heads. When they go to the bank, if they stare at the painting on the wall for more than 5 seconds, some money gets deducted from their account and sent to the artist. In this future, the average person is just a sheep for the fleecing by governments and corporations.
In short, we have seen the future. And unless something changes, the future will suck.
Compared to this, a fantasy seems great! If you see a lawyer, cast a fireball spell. And then you go to defeat the great demon of SCO.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I think you have actually hit on something important here.
I am a collector and reader of old sci-fi. The ~vast majority~ of golden and silver age sci-fi are short stories (usually reprinted from magazines) and short novels. There are, of course, series and serials, but the majority of the works are stand alone stories.
When I walk into a Barnes and Noble, I see two kinds of sci-fi. One is the wall of spin-off series. You know, the hundereds of Star Trek, Star Wars, Battletech, etc. series, which are usually written by many different authors, using the same characters and ideas. There is nothing wrong with this: its fun, and occasionally good stuff comes from it. However, when it dominates the market, there is a lack of new ideas being expressed - which is what brought us to sci-fi in the first place.
On the other side of the aisle, I see the regular sci-fi authors. About a third of the books I see are series. Now, I love a good trilogy, but if you compare a 1000 page trilogy with a thousand pages of short stories, which do you think is going to have more ~ideas~?
At its core, sci-fi is about ideas. Yes, good characters, good plot, good scenery are all nice, but in the end I want to hear something NEW. And I don't care whether it takes you 1000 pages or 10 to tell me. But authors get paid by the page, and publishers get paid by the book.
I wonder if it's not that we have less sci-fi ideas, but that they are padded more these days. Is that the price of popularity?
(1) an Armageddon style battle. Not a Last battle, but a huge, all-out, good-vs-evil battle. I think people are just getting a feeling, though they're looking externally when they should be looking internally.
(2) Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally Catholic work (sorry if I sound to some like I'm not being humble. I'm quoting Tolkein when I say that.) That is, it goes back to orthodox Christianity.
(3) Lord of the Rings is about internal moral struggles.
(4) Lord of the Rings upholds that the right will be victorious.
(5) Lord of the Rings gave birth to whole genres of fiction, storytelling, games, and so on.
Now, #5 explains why it was ready as the work of choice to come into film. But those others all relate to something that is lacking in our society, today, and in our lives, today. And since that lack is destroying us both internally and externally in real life, we make up for it in fantasy.
Contrast that with the 50's, when our major lack was in technology, and our fantasies (for that's what sci-fi really is) played out in that field.
Of course, better than a fantasy that fulfills your feeling of lack, is a reality that makes it right. Which fact should make a lot of people think if maybe the Catholic Church has something after all...
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Because the populace has been trained to think (or emote?) as post-modernists, where everything is socially-constructed, or the will to power, and the modernist and pre-modernist belief in an objective reality and the right of Man to till the garden has been rejected.
While the difficulty in distinguishing magic and advanced technology is a good point, I don't think it is the right point. Consider, for example, that the typical SF enthusiast of the postwar period was MUCH MORE likely to understand some basic physics and chemistry than the average reader. Doc Smith went on and on about the presumed physical reasons for FTL travel, and made working through the implications a major part of his works.
What exactly is different between the FTL technologies which are presumed for much SF, and magic? For that matter things like teleportation and telepathy appear in both SF and fantasy. These phenomena are equally fantastical in either setting when compared to what we know is possible.
I think the difference is that there is a presumed sociological framework in which the effects are acheived in SF. We presume that FTL will be possible because of some kind of technological infrastructure and societal processes that will make the required discoveries possible.
In fantasy, it is psychology that makes the fantastic effect possible. Indeed, I think the big difference between SF and fantasy have to do with their model for how the human mind is enmeshed with the world. In SF, the human mind is effective in the world because of its senses and control of the body's phsyical faculties, combined with the contributions of everyone else. Telekinesis, telepathy etc in an SF world are merely extensions of the mundane senses and facluties. In fantasy, the mind can directly effect the world through the process of magic. It immediately follows that fantasy is about symbolism and SF is about mechanism.
It's a mistake to make value judgements between the types of literature; they both reflect different preoccupations that occur at different times, and no doubt the pendulum will swing the other way. I think the swing towards fantasy is a shift towards psychological rather than sociological preoccupations. We have adapted to and accept technological change as a given. We are less interested in the consequences of change and how we fit into a changed world. Instead, we are more interested in issues of meaning. Tolkien captured this, in a more judgemental way than I would, when he dismissed SF being about "improved means to diminished ends".
Looking at Tolkien's work, the reason for its appeal is crystal clear to me. It's not about escapism; it's about issues of death, hope, courage and responsibility to our brethren. Asimov's works are much more about how a world with robots of near human capabilities might work.
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It beat Star Trek to death. I know at least 20 sci-fi fans, and none admit to watching 'Enterprise' regularly. Star Wars has been turned into a merchandising machine. "Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the REAL money from the movie is made." - Yogurt.
My advice is just be patient. Pop culture takes obscure stuff, thows it into the mainstream, then dumps it for something new a year or two later. Now Tolkien is all the rage. Just wait, in time people will become tired of that too and eventually new and fresh ideas will come back to Sci-Fi. Or someone will do a "Foundation" movie series that will make LOTR look like a bedtime story.
Older works, however (e.g. Golden Age SF or Renisance portraiture) have had the advantage of seeing the worst of the garbage fall away (Heck, did *you* save the crappy poetry you wrote in 7th grade?). As a result, we tend to forget the garbage that came before it and treat the current crop more critically ("Back in *my* day the music was better..."). It's an ongoing process you can see it today if you turn to any oldies station - more Santana and less Partidge Family. The ratio is definately different than the actual play and sales ratios you saw when the songs were new.
Just something to think about...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
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.
Here in California, there was recently a law passed that will require the replacement of most of the elementary and high school textbooks in the state.
"Founding Fathers" was found to be too sexist - now it must be "Framers" (as in "framers" of the Constitution). Mount Rushmore is too sexist - every President pictured is a man, so it must be banned from all California textbooks. There is a preponderance of DWM (Dead White Men) in the current textbooks, so in the interests of race and gender equality we'll have a female poet replace the Wright Brothers in textbooks from now on. Thomas Edison is another one - no more mention for him, an ethnic example who made a much more minor contribution from society must be used. It is completely sickening.
Oh, also, all mention of fast food and other unhealthy items (such as soda) has been banned from textbooks.
All this textbook replacement is also happening during the worst budget crisis in state history. Nice.
So, aside from whatever lack of decent core curriculum we now have (my son was not taught a science class in fourth grade last year) we have to deal with the consequences of the ill-advised leading the ill-informed. What fun.
Fortunately, I'm headed for another state soon. ;-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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