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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
Tolkien had very anti-technology undertones. He constantly refered to the dark clouds of Mordor, the decimation of the forests in Eisengard. That strikes a note with the post-hippie kids of the 70's and 80's.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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! :)
A Fire Upon The Deep
A Deepness in the Sky
That's all that needs saying.
There are only so many ways you can fly around in a starship going back and forward in time and mating with green aliens. Technology is no where near as fun as magic and elf chicks
'Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?'
Did you watch "the matrix"?
New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
Compared to the earlier-mid parts of the 20th century, we see science all around us. Medical breakthroughs, technological innovations, etc.
We used to have to wait decades for great discoveries. Now they theorize and prove within short years. Fantasy brings people into a world that can't exist. Sci-Fi stories may one day be true and aren't as escapist.
Trolling is a art,
I love sci-fi fantasy, where you have a completely different universe with some sci-fi and some fantasy aspects (i.e. magic).
Dune fits into this, as does Star Wars..
There are other great books as well, although I can't really remember their names.
Any tips?
Will code a sig generator for food
The traditional Sci-Fi of rocket ships, blaster guns, and aliens may be on decline, but there many new sci-fi (not fantasy) books coming out all the time.
The focus of much of the Sci-Fi these days is on the relationship of the technology to society and the long term effects of the technology on the path of humanity.
Take a look at Vernor Vinge, John Varley, John Wright, Cory Doctorow, John Barnes, Bruce Sterling, Ken MacLeod, and Dan Simmons if you are interested in some recent sci-fi. No elves or magic swords there.
Just because it's not 60s style, libertarian - free love stuff of the past doesn't mean it's not sci-fi.
nuclear iraq bioweapon encryption cocaine korea terrorist
Well that's not hard to figure out, people want to dream of better happier times.
To a greater degree, that is a fantasy past when times were simple and there was wonder in the universe.
Today the future is gloomy, assuming you will even have a job in the future, and space is empty and far away - no you can't go faster then light, so no space for you!. Noone has to wonder about anything at all, the answers to life the universe and everything are a google search away.
The easter bunny, santa clause, and the american dream are all R.I.P.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
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
>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.
Actually, today's author doesn't want to bother to research what science already understands as background for the story. By going with fantasy (swords and sorcery) they avoid all that work, and still get paid the same.
And you get to write the same plot over and over again. "Rescue the Prince(ss) from the GREAT EVIL".
It's a reflection of taste that we are moving from the tech driven SF genre into the character driven fantasy world. At least in fantasy, they aren't trying to explain HOW the magic works. They simply use it to get around a peculiar problem, or to leverage the abilities of the protagonist against an otherwise overwhelming foe.
Damn it. I'm starting to sound like Campbell.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
They were wrong about flying cars by the year 2000. Once bitten, twice shy.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You know, this reminds me of why I always preferred space Legos to the other series; we KNOW that in the current day, cars and trucks and houses and what not weren't covered with little dots, same with castles and pirates and all of that; but the future...the FUTURE...those little dots might be what keeps it all together!
Actually, that kind of applies to why I liked scifi over fantasy in general.
Steampunk is an interesting crossover genre, I jsut discovere Steam Trek, a mapping of Star Trek onto the "what if the Victorians got space travel" theme.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
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.
I went to a presentation/speaking appointment by Terry Goodkind a few weeks ago, and he mentioned something on the subject. I won't get into his whole philosophical thing here, but he thought that the reason that sci-fi had taken a rear seat to fantasy was "moral clarity". 99% of fantasy out there deals with good vs evil, on a very basic level, whereas sci-fi tends not to as much. It may make social commentary, or pose interesting problems, but very rarely in sci-fi is there an archetypal hero, and that this is something that people really crave in today's society... a person (even if they're fictional) that a reader can admire, and be inspired by.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
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.
The old space operas posited FTL travel. It was assumed that you could get around your own solar system, but needed some FTL to get to the next one. Well, even the assumption of easy access to local space is proving wrong. It's difficult, expensive and risky to move mass from the surface of the Earth into near orbit and prohibitively expensive to move it further than that. A Mars expedition looks more and more infeasable and the old space themes of colonizing the moon or Mars or mining the asteriods are proving to be just so much wishful thinking.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
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.
Think about it a little. We have laws such as the DMCA that basically divide our current tech into little fiefdoms. Innovators are sued, hacking existing tech is quickly becoming a crime, and the existing players encourage passive use of their tech --not understanding.
Many of the ideals that make SF what it is are being marginalized today. Sort of depressing really.
Combine this with our present science and we know enough that reaching another star system will not happen in our lifetimes. Though Mars should --if it doesn't its political, not technical.
Almost smells like a plot to put all the smart ones back underground where they belong so the real business of making money today --right now, can get done...
Maybe I am just being a little too alarmist this morning. I personally enjoy SF and share the view of the author. Maybe nobody is really exploring SF because fantasy is easier or something...
BTW, what is the genre of "The Reality Disfunction" by Peter F. Hamilton? Seems to be SF, but does have some other elements. Any ideas?
Blogging because I can...
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
Perhaps the direction technology is taking us scares
the hell out of us. The future apparently holds
fewer rights, less privacy, more commercials, etc.
Who wants to fantasize about that???? Not me!!!
Tell me how do we get off this world thats heading
down the toilet?
At least fantasy still provides hope that good can
still prevail against evil. With techonology the
question is which evil state of afairs wins over
some other evil state of afairs. Mind you the
heros may be good vs evil but the world in which
they live still sucks!
Thats my point....
If you try and look back over your old SF collection, as I've tried to, you'll find things weren't much better in the "good old" days. The characeristaion was non-existent (try and characterise a single Asimov hero- they were all as bland as STNG characters) - the writing was often childlike and way too simple, or became bogged down in its own cleverness (who has managed to read ther whole Rama series without trying to skip some pages) and the often quoted great classics of SF were often closer to fantasy than hard science - Dune being a good example. There were very few good hard-science SF books, and the problem is not taht there are fewer now, but that they are swamped by the increase in all the other types of books which, let's face it, for a non-scientist as most writers are, aer much easier to churn out!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Computer control systems were almost unheard of, and used only on system of fantastic proportions like Nuclear reactors and weapon targeting systems.
Don't forget that technology was largely credited at the time for winning the war. It also brought an end to many plagues affecting americans: smallpox and polio. 50 years ago was a much different time.
50 years ago technology WAS magic. Few who used it understood it. Those that made it happen were wizards in labcoats.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
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.
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.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
is the projection of a fantasy. In the case of science fiction it is the projection of the present into what we percieve as an alternate, and hopefully better, tomorrow.
For those of us that grew up reading SF in the 50's and 60's that meant a bright future of computing, robots, philosophy, colonies on Mars and all with the ever present possiblility of actually coming into contact with an alien race.
Now we're living in that future and it didn't work out quite the way we imagined it. Not only is Mars virtually dead but so is the Moon. We've had to come to grips with the fact that universe is so vast we aren't actually likely to meet anyone else, possibly ever. Superstition is on the ascendent among the proles and the visions of the future expressed in 1984 and Brave New World turns out to be the most accurate of the predictions. Robots took our jobs, but we aren't allowed to become philosphers unless we wish to starve. The TV watches us.
The projection of the current state into a happy future seems to realistically revolve around clone wars that are likely to be resolved by turning us all into computer controled worker bees earning our "living" by tossing rocks over walls just so we can walk to the other side and toss them back.
Is it any wonder that people would prefer their fantasies to revolve around Liv Tyler's little elf tits?
In the medieval fantasy a the single strong man with a sword we all imagine ourselves to be can change the world.
In the future fantasy the same man is declared to be suffering from a pathological syndrome and is locked away with milk, cookies and bottle of Prozac.
KFG
Soon, computing will stall out too. We're nearing the end of optical lithography on flat silicon and the limits of power dissipation. The SIA roadmap says the end comes before 2013. There's no new technology in the pipe likely to replace these technologies. There's no clamor for it, either - the next things expected in computing are the Pentium N+1, Windows N+1, Palm N+1, and cellphone generation N+1. Yawn. It's like waiting for the 1957 Chevy to come out with bigger tailfins.
Outside of biotech, it's hard to find any bright spots.
Robinson asks: 'Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?'"
I think we're a little more cynical than we used to be. Corporate and government abuses are wider-published, the gap between the rich and poor is steadily increasing, and although we've made amazing progress in computing power, the promised future of days past never arrived (e.g. "Dude, where's my flying car?") Why should we not be depressed about the future?
This isn't about the cynicism in my generation. It's about the driving ideas behind the sci-fi genre which now seem cliched and cheesy:
* Cheap, available space travel?
* Space trade/space pirates?
* Sexy aliens?
* Apocalyptic mad-max futures with cybernetic implants and laser weapons?
* Terraforming planets?
* Cyborgs?
* Space mining?
It's all rubbish.
I used to read a lot of Sci-Fi (e.g., Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia E. Butler, Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, etc.), but frankly, I'd be embarassed to buy any of those novels today. These days I'm into Tom Robbins' novels and the Illuminatus Trilogy. At least they have fresh ideas, believable characters, and good writing.
Great SciFi!
Excession, Consider Phlebas, Look to windward, Player of the games,...
I especially like the names of the space ships ("Poke it with a stick", "Just Read The Instructions", "No More Mr Nice Guy", "Kiss My Ass", "Not Invented Here").
Fun and a lot of ideas...
People have less understanding of the commonly used technology in their lives than they did 50 years ago.
50 years ago Americans were justly proud of the ability of most undereducated American farmboys to fix damn near anything - including crystal radio sets, foreign-made tanks, you name it.
Now, science is religion for most, and magic for some. But people don't expect to be able to understand it.
Which is why they fail to do so.
Spider Robinson complaining about the state of SF is nothing new. When he (or Norman Spinrad, or any other struggling once-popular writer) say "no-one buys good SF anymore", what they are really saying is "no-one buys my stuff anymore." And people don't. In Robinson's case because he hasn't written anything but for tired retreads in quite a few years.
Science Fiction is alive and well. More people buy more books (even setting aside media tie-ins) than ever before. It's true that most individual titles sell fewer total copies but that happens for two reasons, neither of which has anything to do with quality:
First, there are far, far more SF&F novels (both good and bad) being published. So even though the total number of sales has increased, the average title sells fewer copies. Secondly, the old distribution channels have collapsed. SF paperbacks used to be sold in drug stores, supermarket racks, and so on. Now only the very, very best sellers are often sold in this fasion. So paperback sales for the midlist have fallen, indeed, to maybe a third of what they once were.
But, on the other hand, far greater numbers of SF novels are being published in the more "prestigious" hardcover and trade paperback formats, and sales of those formats are much higher than they used to be. That's good for both author and publisher. Authors are paid more per copy for those formats, and publishers don't have to sell as many copies in as short a timeframe to break even.
As to the health of SF versus fantasy, I direct Spider Robinson to any of the following names: Iain Banks, Ken MacLeod, Jon Courteney Grimwood, Lois Bujold, Bruce Sterling, Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, Michael Swanwick, Charlie Stross, Ted Chiang, Gene Wolfe, John C. Wright, Jon Meaney, John Barnes, Alastair Reynolds... I could go on.
My advice to Spider Robinson: STOP WRITING CRAP. Then perhaps the SF market won't look so awful to 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?
I can only speak of the United States here, even though what I say may apply elsewhere. The short answer is: because society has changed.
Good science fiction fired the imagination with what could be based on what we currently know or think. Back then, people were encouraged to explore the world by their parents, teachers, and others. Back then, you could get a real chemistry set, an electronics set, etc., which you could use to perform experiments limited only by your imagination.
Today the only kinds of things you can get are prepackaged junk, where the "experiments" have essentially already been done for you and all that's left for you to do is to combine the (pre-allocated) ingredients. The exploration angle is gone, replaced with protection from oneself. And all in the name of "liability concerns".
We've become a society of frightened children, afraid to go out into the world and learn about it because to do so requires taking risks. If you try to build and sell something that requires some intelligence (or at least common sense) to use and will hurt you if you don't exhibit even a rudimentary amount of care, society will deem that you must pay, and the only exceptions to this are those things that have always been sold to the public, like automobiles, that are too useful to eliminate.
Science fiction doesn't sell because people are no longer interested in learning about the world, but are rather much more interested in being sheltered from it -- and in sheltering their children from it, as well. Part of being sheltered from the world is ignorance of the world, because to learn about the world requires taking risks. Science fiction isn't terribly interesting if one doesn't even understand the basics of the science behind it.
I can't help but think that perhaps some of this is intentional: an ignorant, frightened population is more easily controlled, after all.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
One of the problems we face today in writing 'real' Science Fiction is our understanding of science itself. In the golden age of SF you could write about rockets to Mars built in their back yards and piloted by guys with slide rules and you weren't far off from what was known to be possible. Nowdays we have the capability to actually do it and we know you can't build it in your backyard. In fact we know that the cost is far more than a jaded populace is willing to support right now.
Sure fantasy stories dressed up in science fiction clothing still hold peoples attention, but they aren't really the Science Fiction. But they are what die-hard hard-SF fans like myself derisivly refer to 'Sci Fi' (or 'skiffy' in the SF fan parlence). Moreover what was once Science Fiction in every sense of the phrase is now 'Sci Fi'.
The kind of stories that once filled us with wonder (partly because we could imagine ourselves in them) are now out of reach in reality; whether due to cost or due to the actual science being wrong. Once again, relying on SF Fannish phrasing, the sensawunda is no longer there, so we end up with stories based on implausible or impossible technology where plot points are based around plasma fires in the transporter. No sensawunda, but the special effects are cool.
The other problem with modern SF was first articulated by Vernor Vinge in his paper The Singularity: "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended."
Whether Vinge's Singularity comes to pass as envisioned or not, the core point is certainly valid; at the very least the future, even the near future, is probably going to be unimaginable by anyone living today. Why? Because sometime soon, perhaps not within thirty years but certainly within a century, we are going to have the ability to create intelligences orders of magnitude smarter than we are. It doesn't matter if we enhance human intelligence or create machine intelligence, either way the result is the same. Either way something that is to us as we are to mice is going to be calling the shots.
This scenario is pretty damming to SF; after all most of the familiar tropes of SF go out the window. Rocket ships? Well, they might exist, but we have no idea what they would look like or who would be on them. Alien contact? Hell, the aliens would be right here. Humans colonizing other star systems? Even if humanity survives into this post-human future it will change so as to be unrecognizable to us now anyway. How can you write stories about beings who don't share your basic motivations? (Not that this is impossible, but it certainly demands more from the reader, therefore making the book harder to sell.)
As of now no-one has successfully answered Vinge's question, other than several attempts to dismiss it out of hand. Vinge himself, because he wanted to write space operas, ended up thrusting the problem of ultra-intelligence aside by creating a magic 'slow zone' in the galaxy that limits intelligence to a maximum inside the zone.
However a few writers have tried to honestly deal with the problem of the Singularity by writing a new kind of fiction I refer to as 'Transhuman' SF. Cyberpunk was the progenitor of this SF form with stories set right on the edge of the Singularity. Writers like Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Kathleen Goonan, John Varley, Ian M. Bainks, Ken MacCleod, Greg Egan, Cory Doctorow and others have written SF set either just over that edge, or millions of years past it. Although the level to which they are honest in their presentation of transhumanism varies greatly, probably because the more you extrapolate the harder it is to make the story coherent and interesting.
Transhuman SF does require much from the reader. Unless the writer constantly stops the action for 'As you know Bob.' sequences to explicate things the reader must have a wide ranging knowledge of genetics,
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
Claiming the Iliad isn't SF is about the same as claiming that Hyperion wasn't because it was based on Keat's poetry.
Pick up a copy. Best book I've read in at least a year.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
IMHO, Scientists today are missing that little bit of fantasty that makes the impossible come true.
Stop telling people it can't be done, all you're doing is discouraging the young from even trying to do what you think (or have been told?) is not possible.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
I find it surprising that Robinson says, "They no longer instinctively lust to go to space." He is rather limiting the scope of Science Fiction, and not suprisingly, his pessamistic view eliminates some good material. Jurassic Park anyone? Definitely SF, but with an emphasis on biology, instead of space travel. Who states that SF is only to be Space Fiction? Nonetheless, I found JP the book rather entertaining, even though I found the movie of the stuff that results from the use of infra-sonic weapons on humans.
/. ground.
Perhaps the sub-genre of space fiction is dwindling because it's been beaten into the ground. After all, it's been popular (among SF writers) since the 1930s.
Also, social trends seem to be making the current crop of young SF writers a conduit to pump out politically-correct, socialist dogma. Outside of the institutions of the far-left academia, it isn't that appealing, (okay, so SF never was appealing to a broad range of readers.) But from ST:TNG onward, I've been hearing the same ideals about the future, or how we will live. I find no variety in the major SF picture or published franchises, (with the exception of that Canadian show with the flying bug -- which was more fantasy than science.) I picked up a book by the highly-recommended Orson Scott Card, only to put it down after the tedium of reading through his carefully constructed descriptions fitting tightly with the current politically-correct views. It was hideous. It made me want to puke. Likewise, the current crop of SF shows are all remarkably similar. I won't go into further detail, since I will be treading on holy
Maybe another factor is that it is difficult to keep up with the science, in order to take it a step further into the realm of fiction. Authors who don't understand the science behind it are universally ridiculed by those in the know, (e.g. William Gibson.) General goofiness and gelatinous aliens aren't accepted as serious elements of a story. If you have a chance, read some of the stuff published in the old Galaxy serials. Most of it was goofy, but it lacked the rigid PC worldview present in today's SF literature, so it was fun.
The migration to fantasy is probably a reaction to the fact that creativity in SF has been traded for continuity with academic future ideals. Fantasy, still having a little wiggle-room left (although a lot of it rips off Tolkein), lets the writer and reader wander a little, without need for scientific validity.
I mean, honestly, look at how the SW franchise deteriorated. It was once a fun mix of fantasy, where the majority of it was contrived during production. Now it is as interesting as a 10,000 page report from some government agency. It seems as though fans of the franchise care more about the details of the various "mecha," and social order, than they do story telling. Nearly every SW fan is an accountant of the minor details of the Star Wars universe. It's like the most important part of the SW experience was collecting and organizing the action figures and playsets.
(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
One of the panels at TorCon3 was "Has Science Fiction Failed as a Fiction of Science?" The various panellists decided that SF hasn't so failed, and then proceeded to give explanation after explanation of why, in fact, it has. Lets face it, to any sophisticated reader, most SF written today is not written about a possible future, but about what we once thought might be a possible future. Scientific and technological progress has passed by most of today's authors and left them in the dust. Reading even well-written 'SF' like that of Czerneda or Bujold IS reading fantasy and has much the same feel as reading 1930's SF where everything is done with massive vacuum tubes. The story may be well told and the characterization is great, but the setting makes no sense. Where are the AIs? Where are the hugely extended lifetimes? Where is the nanotechnology? Where are the body modifications? Whaere are the ubiquitous microscopic computers? Where is the brain uploading? Where are any number of technologies we are working towards today that don't show up in most contemporary SF? Spider laments that readers prefer Fantasy to SF. Maybe they just prefer that their fantasy be overt.
Now, all is not lost, some authors such as Walter Jon Williams, Charlie Stross, Linda Nagata, Ian M Banks, Greg Egan and others have embraced the new future that is appearing in front of us, but they are the exceptions. Until most SF authors are actually writing about possible futures again, SF will be in an inevitable decline.
I find it rather ironic that Spider Robinson wrote this rant. I, for the most part, have found his work to be more fantasy than science.
While I agree that the state of Science Fiction is rather dim as of late, i don't think I agree with the why, which he doesn't actually explore. If one considers Golden Age Science Fiction, it is to some extent very fantasy. I can't even begin to count hown many authors just evented some new law of physics to help the plot device. Even the greats like Heinlein resorted to this tactic (5th Column). I would attest that most Golden Age Science Fiction is Fantasy in a Futuristic setting.
Today's Authors cannot get away with that to the most extent. While there are many good authors writing today, they do not seem to sell as well as Fantasy. I have been bemoaning for over a decade that I can find more "Fantasy" in the Science Fiction section of most bookstores than actual SF. While I am a huge Tolkien fan and have read the first two Eddings series as well as Feist, for the most part, I avoid Fantasy. Okay, I'll also admit to Pratchett and a couple others. What upsets me about this, is that if this trend continues, it will become a disencentive for new writers. Why write good hardcore Science Fiction, when the money is in Fantasy? How much has Robert Jordan raked in with his Wheel of Time? (which I haven't read)
As for good SF. I think that Robert Charles Wilson is greatly underappreciated. If you haven't read him, do so. However, I think many of his earlier works are out of print. Also of note is Neal Stephenson. His psedononymous novel written as Stephen Bury, Interface, is classic. I am of course waiting anxiously for the sequel to Cryptonomicon.
There are a whole slew of other authors writing of course, though I have noticed most new SF is military oriented. The question however, is how well they sell. Robert Charles Wilson's works seem to disappear from stock within a year. If these works don't sell, they won't be stocked, if they aren't stocked they can't sell, and eventually we are left with a Sceince Fiction section of the bookstore which is actually all fantasy.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
How many sci-fi stories predicted a return to ignorance and fear? The politically approach to technology being taught today, coupled with media sensationalism, is merely helping lead us in that direction.
So, once again, science fiction may have successfully predicted the future. We are well on the way to beooming a planet of anti-technology (and hence anti-science) masses with a small, "elite" group trying to forge ahead. (Those in each group aren't always the nice little stereotypes some folks want them to be, either.)
I hope I'm wrong. But I'm not holding my breath.
[I'm a techno-geek who loves sci-fi *and* fantasy!]
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.
Suppose that it was possible to deduct money and pay the artist for whatever you were looking at.
Would art get better or worse?
Given the lowest common denominator, would we see a lot more porn being presented as "art". It would generate the most payments for the "artist".
What about advertising? If they could measure how long your looked at an ad, what changes would take place on those ads?
Would the market eventually slide into porn? If not, why not? What effect would there be on people if every billboard had 20' tall graphic depictions of sex acts? What about commercials on TV? If the billboards
That is what Science Fiction is about (no, not the porn). Taking a simple idea and expanding that into how it affects society and the individual.
I've noticed that a lot of friends of mine that have never read a SF book in their lives are big fans of things like Star Trek NG and Star Wars.
If you look at the SF section of any bookshop, you can see this reflected in what is being stocked, about 25% SF by popular SF authors like Dick and Asimov, 25% fantasy (I think because it's not popular enough to justify it's own section), and 50% SF 'lite' (tv and film tie-ins).
The good news is the SF section is now bigger, and I suspect a lot more popular than it's ever been.
The bad news is that most of the books stocked are not for readers actualy interested in SF.
I post, therefore I am!
Anyone who doesn't realize this clearly hasn't been following the news.
We have seen the future, and it sucks. The future is big corporations staking claims on every facet of your life (with the full support of the political parties funded by these corporations), and you become a mere consumer unit.
Is it any wonder that people would rather escape into a world in which you could hop on a horse and ride for a day or two to escape from oppressive laws, and where being a corporate drone isn't a viable career option?
That's "Mr. Soulless Automaton" to you, Bub.
Because the hard-science-fiction works of great writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, George O. Smith, Robert A. Heinlein and others of their generation can really be best appreciated by someone that actually understands the math and science that they worked so hard to present accurately, or who at least has an intuitive understanding of it. If Arthur C. Clarke said that a spacecraft would spend two weeks in a Hohmann orbit to reach planetfall, you would find that if you worked through the orbital machanics that, gee, it would take two weeks. People that do understand and enjoy the details involved appreciate and require that level of detail to find the imaginary worlds created by these great men believable. This is true whether the author is writing about spacecraft, self-aware computers, advanced medicine, weather control or any other topic. Even if the story is about technologies or sciences that don't yet exist, as long as the foundation is solid the stories will have believability.
... well. The truth is that, if you find basic math difficult and simply don't care or know whether the author's work is well grounded, you will probably find fantasy just as acceptable as true science-fiction. You probably won't be able to tell the difference. Certainly the people that run my local bookstores can't ... I have to search through rows and rows of fantasy novels to find a single good sci-fi. Of course, it's not entirely their fault: most publishers don't seem to bother properly labeling their products either.
On the other hand, when you look at the sorry state of modern education (here in the United States), at the number of truly innumerate people that don't have a clue what a decimal point means or even understand scientific notation
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
50 years ago technology was seen as a way that an individual could gain power, and make the world be more as he thought it should be. Today very few see the world that way.
Technology is used by governments and corporations against individuals, and they have no recourse. Why then should they hope for more of it?
I still have dreams of escape, but I know them to be dreams. I have dreams of creating something new and powerful in the way of software, and I think it possible, if unlikely. But how many can even say that much?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I've noticed that our entire society leans more toward fantasy, mysticism, and mythology, lately. Reality, or possible future realities, is becoming rare in any form of mass media. Even 'Reality TV' is horribly far from reality.
It has been suggested that we are entering a new 'Dark Ages', of sorts. This is perhaps in response to the fear, rational or not, of what near-future technology may bring - human cloning and a list of other 'scaries'.
What I find very interesting is this: In ages past, man feared nature, because of what he did not know. In this age, man is beginning to fear science, because of what he can know.
On a side note, a question that I'd like to ask, which is somewhat related:
How would you classify works such as OSC's Ender series? Obviously set in the future, but after Ender's Game (and a few pieces here and there in the next 3 books), they are mainly focused on personal, moral, and geopolitical issues, with little or no mention of any technologies or lifestyle changes. Even the 'nets' are simply categorized hub-style Internet groupings. It seems to me that the Ender books set in the near future (as opposed to the 3000-years-ahead future) read more like modern fantasy... almost like what you would get if you took the politics and war-making in the Lord of the Rings, and set them in modern times, while ignoring the rest of the story.
"The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants." --Thomas Jefferson
The most interesting scifi In run into these days is more inward looking than outward looking. I think we're closer to altering ourt own nature (through genetic engineering and stuff) than we are to exploring the stars. Ted Chiang has done some great short stories about the interesting possibilities of enhancing yourself. What would it really be like to be superintelligent, or be able to have direct control of your brain?
Of course, fantasy isn't what it used to be either. My personal favorite author right now is Jonathan Lethem, who wrote in the sci-fi/fantasy domain for a while, but has moved towards more inward examinations of freakishness. Instead of the freakish world, the freakish self. Motherless Brooklyn is a great example.
Though pure escapism doesn't interest me as much as good writing, and good questions explored through storytelling. So maybe it's just me.
'In knowledge is power, in wisdom humility.'
At Torcon 3, I caught up with Michael Lennick, co-producer of a superb Canadian documentary series about manned spaceflight, Rocket Science. His next project examines the growing phenomenon of people who refuse to believe we ever landed on the moon. Not because he sees them as amusing cranks . . . but because they're becoming as common as Elvis-nuts. And it's hard to argue with their logic: It beggars belief, they say, that we could possibly have achieved moon flight . . . and given it up.
... and frightening. It puts into stark relief what kind of a society we have become. There are no big dreams that aren't tied to wealth and its acquisition. We are navel gazing away the new millenium on our tiny planet in an unfashionable part of the galaxy.
I had never heard that argument but it rings true
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Spider Robinson has himself provided one reason for the decline in the older forms. It's the title piece in his collection "Melancholy Elephants". And a bitter diatribe against the indefinite extension of copyrights. And, to my mind, quite moving.
The short form is:
1) There are only so many ways of telling a story that people find enjoyable.
2) Copyright extension causes it to be impossible to rework an older form, and, even more corrosively, it becomes difficult to avoid accidental plagerism. (Just consider the effect that SCO is trying to achieve.)
3) So people progressively move to uncluttered fields. But there are only so many forms that are enjoyable.
4) Creative activity slows...and slows...and slows
I don't do the story justice. Find it and read it. It's a sufficient explanation for this, and many other problems.
(I have given other explanations for this problem, and they are also true.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Sturgeon
)
Science fiction poses 'what if'
Fantastic literature bends your mind (leguin on genres: http://www.ursulakleguin.com/AlternateTitles.html
Fantasy is escapism.
Huxley - real progress is progress in charity, all other advances being secondary thereto.
We've exhausted much of the 'what if' story lines. robots, genes, nanotech, AI, space opera, drugs, alien sex, bug eyed monsters, apocolypse, distopia, utopia, gender, time travel. For someone to come up with new what if idea *and to write well about it* is few and far between. Kage Baker's Corporation series was the last series I read with anything novel (heh) in it, and she first published that series 6+ years ago.
We in technology business have taken ideas in SF and made them reality. However, society at large has not taken the rest of the ideas in SF and made them reality. We've done the easy part. The hard part is in pushing people to utopia. Why do we need money? When we can feed everyone on the planet with advances in tech, why do people starve? When we have so many advances in productivity and efficiency, why are people on the street?
Because society has not kept up with tech, and tech has only served to further stratify the differences between the haves and have nots.
It is incumbant upon us in tech to push for the great society, where everyone has food and robots and a place to live and the kitchen of tomorrow. And yeah, some people will be lazy, but some will be the kind who will push the human race forward, but were unable to because they were exhausted from working 3 jobs to barely feed their families.
Unfortunately most of the engineers in tech (I am generalizing) suscribe to the ayn rand libertarian I'm smarter than you therefore I should have more and screw you anyway cuz you beat me up in grade school mentality.
When technology has mostly served to screw people over, why should they want more of it? When an technologically based meritocracy asks more of you than a despotically arranged society ala lord of the riungs, why should you want it, unless the people suggesting the technologically based meritocracy make it more seductive than someone telling you what to do with your life.
Or, if you've spent all day trying to make a technologically based meritocracy, perhaps it's nice to escape sometimes into a romantic ideal. Or, if you've consumed all the mind bending fantastic literature, perhaps it's nice to escape into something where the rules make sense. Or, if you spend all day listening to reports of the pf'ers in DC dismantling previous generation's attempts at building a technologically based meritocracy, perhaps all you want to do is escape.
Being a doozer is hard.
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.
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.
I think most of our planet has stopped dreaming. I the 60s and 70s most of the population was thrilled with the possibility of space exploration and "going where no-one has gone before". Nowdays it is getting more money than anyone has got before. To most people: technology = Bill Gates = big bucks.
Look just at the way investors think -- if it doesn't pay off in 2 years they are not going to invest. Space exploration takes decades. Let us not kid ourselves -- with the pace of space exploration in the 60s, we could put the man on Mars in a decade and probably start colonizing the Moon in the 2 decades.
The productivity and the wealth of the world are
enought to both solve the world hunger, education and space exploration.
The system encourages people who are best at accumulating capital not to spend it on long term goals. Look just at John Carmack vs. Bill Gates.
John Carmack is a dreamer, hence the X-Prize project involvement -- Bill Gates is not.
The unregulated free market system unfortunately prefers the later.
Most of the very creative people in the world cannot even pursue their creativity because of the economic system.
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."
1: The genre is swamped with juvenile series books!
Sorry, the genre has always been swamped with juvenile series books. The name Captain Future mean anything to you? The problem is not the volume of low end material that's being published, the problem is that there doesn't seem to be much of a high end. The question is why.
2: Authors are too interested in setting at the expense of character! ... they were ok, but they weren't in even remotely the same league as Proust or Dickens).
If anything, I'd say it was the opposite. Characters in SF, even the good stuff, have rarely been well developed. This is perfectly appropriate: SF writers have to spend a much higer percentage of words sketching in the background landscape than do mainstream writers. Consequently they tend to rely more on character "types" than do their mainstream counterparts. The problem is that SF writers are expected to present more well-rounded characters than they were in the past, with the result that we get a lot of tacked on sentimentality that really adds nothing to the stories. (And don't try to tell me that classic sf writers like Asimov, Heinlein & Clarke had great characters
3. Science has caught up with SF! ... ... which is to say that science has tended to kill off genre conventions faster than it replaced them.
There's probably some truth to this, in the sense that science has made it harder for us to project our fantasies on to the future in ways that make dramatic sense.
4. It's all been done!
Not strictly true, but it's probably safe to say that most of the low hanging fruit has been picked. It's a lot harder to come up with anything original now than it was back when nothing had been written yet.
5. People are a lot more pessimistic about technology now. SF is all about optimism! ... until those commies got there first with Sputnik. DDT was great for getting rid of those pesky insects ... and birds too, as Rachel Carson pointed out in Silent Spring (early 60s). None of which stopped a whole lot of great sf from being written during those decades, much of it far from the rah-rah gung ho optimism one might find in, say, the collected works of E.E. "Doc" Smith.
People have always had a love/hate relationship with technology. Yeah, the atom bomb hastened the end of WWII, but it also led to an arms race that a whole lot of people figured would probably result in the end of the world. Space travel was a pleasant fantasy
Here's my suggestion as to why good written sf has been in decline lately.
Economics: The Thor Power Tools decision essentially killed the careers of many mid-list authors. Most of the interesting sf writers were mid-list authors. Follow the money ...
1) dead right....but I'm afraid that with a VERY few exceptions, science fiction movies have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with written science fiction, which is what I was discussing. Two different things. It's like the difference between reality TV and James Joyce's ULYSSES. They both claim the same subject...but one is lying. 2) ...but science fiction IS fantasy. It is simply the kind of fantasy that does not believe history ended with the Industrial Revolution, which does not convulsively repudiate science and technology, which acknowledges other, perhaps life-bearing worlds. It is that fantasy which is not afraid of knowledge, not suspicious of intellect. In most heroic fantasy, the hero (as Larry Niven astutely pointed out) is the swordsman: an ignoramus. In sf, the hero is more likely to be the wizard, who at least went to school. Myth should reflect truth. If our myths have no connection with reality, they become harmful, psychotic dreams.
Ignorance really is death. Time for myth to realize that.
3) Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had that bullshit in my day, too. We called it Nuclear Winter. The Russian Threat. Before that it was the Axis Menace. There are ALWAYS morons screaming that it's all hopeless and we're doomed...because if true, it's OKAY to be lazy and irresponsible. Bo-ring....
4) Voting NASA a fifty-cent budget (and you did, you did, you all DID) and then criticizing its cheap two-dollar performance is as fair as cutting off a man's feet and then calling him Shorty. It's as fair as stacking the deck against black people and then criticizing their behavior--or legally forbidding gays to form stable families and then blasting their promiscuity.
You will GET a "precursor to Starfleet"...the very SECOND you tell your elected representatives that you're willing to kick their asses out of office if you DON'T get it, and damned quick! You got the moon by dumb luck: if you want the rest, then PAY FOR IT.
As Robert Heinlein said, TANSTAAFL. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
IMHO the best science fiction of the past was always of the one-step-beyond variety. It took what we know, and looked one step farther out. It guessed about the new situations that people would face in that world, and wrote stories that showed what it would be like to live in that world.
The problem with doing that now, is that one step beyond is beyond what people *can believe*.
We are faced with the real possibility of physical immortality. People do not believe that.
We are faced with the complete restructuring of the economy and redefinition of the value of the individual due to the development of robots. This problem was first described and dicussed in R.U.R, the book in which the word "robot" was first used as we use it today. But, now it is just one step beyond. Very few people are even aware that the change is coming or how fast it will happen when it does.
We are faced with nanotechnology. The first discussion of the topic happened (AFAIK) in the second half of the 20th century and wasn't seriously dicussed until the late '80s. But, nanotech is already showing up. The majority of people have not yet even heard of nanotechnology.
I could go on and on.
One step beyond is now so far out that most people, even SF fans, can no longer accept it.
About 15 years ago I wrote to complain to the editor of my favorite science fiction magazine because one of the stories was not science fiction. It was about everyday things like a guy using email to interact with other people to solve a problem with a robotic assembly cell.
15 years ago the editor thought my letter was astounding. To him, everything in the story was pure science fiction. Stuff he didn't ecpect to every see.
Stonewolf
Terrible events in my life, listed in descending order of their personal importance, abridged:
1. Death of my father.
2. Hit by taxicab in Philadelphia.
3. Dumped by first girlfriend in junior high school.
4. Held up at gunpoint.
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57. Bicycle stolen.
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1,294. Embarrassing facial blemish on night of big date.
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7,837,129. Recipient of pathetically obvious "so how many books have you published, huh?" flame on slashdot by the author of "Lady Slings the Booze" or, as likely, a fanboy using his name.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
I have a huge collection of Golden Age and slightly later SF, acquired when I was in my teens and 20s. A couple decades later I tried rereading some of it... and was surprised to realise that most of it sucks, including that by Big Names Of The Era. It's not well-written by any standard, and it tends to rehash the same small clutch of ideas endlessly. After I started writing and editing myself, it looked even worse.
... dull. I've seen it 100 times before, and I just don't want to see it again. Obviously, if a lot of other fen feel the same way (and I doubt I'm alone), this does nothing to encourage the market.
:)
That said... in its day it seemed fresh and new, and we were so hungry for anything that wasn't Here And Now, that if it more or less smelled like SF, we read it, and *liked* it, and hungered for more. Now -- the space program is old hat and no longer exciting, and hardware SF (and the "new worlds to explore" ideas that go along with it) seems equally old hat and unexciting. Worse, the newly-written hard SF that's come along has struck me as
Over the past few years I've found it's the same with TV as well. Frex, I've already seen every cop show I ever want to, and no matter how "good" a new cop show is, I just can't work up any interest in it. It feels old, tired, and boring, because I've already seen decades worth of it.
Fantasy is getting well into its own rut, as the proliferation of stuff like the Wheel of Time brickset illustrates. I used to read a LOT of fantasy, yet now, if I never see another witch or elf or dragon, it will be too soon.
So what do I read, anyway? about all that's left is character driven stuff, which means mainly Bujold- or Cherryh-style space opera, and George R.R. Martin- or Melanie Rawn-style fantasy.
What's really happened is that I've outgrown event-driven stories, regardless of their venue.
I know I had a point when I started writing this, but I think I left it in the 1930s.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?