Response to Spider Robinson on the State of Sci-Fi

Garund writes "A day or so ago Slashdot posted a story on Spider Robinson and his lament for Science Fiction. Well, other people, including Mark Oakley, publisher of one of my favorite independant comics, posted a response to Spider on his Thieves & Kings website (scroll about a third of the way down the page). Interesting take on it, I thought."

Comments

Spider Robinson on SF? Huh?

[topham]

What makes Spider Robinson a commentator on SF, Sci-Fi or anything else other than pablum?

He doesn't write science fiction, he writes fantasy staged in the non-existant future.

And as for the 'Speculative Fiction', well, he isn't a writer of that either.

hand him back his toke and send him on his way.

he's done.

Re:Spider Robinson on SF? Huh?

[srmalloy]

What makes Spider Robinson a commentator on SF, Sci-Fi or anything else other than pablum?

You mean besides winning a Locus award for Best Critic? Besides being book reviewer for Galaxy, Analog and New Destinies magazines for nearly a decade, and continuing to write occasional book reviews and a regular Op-Ed column, "Future Tense," for The Globe and Mail, Canada's national newspaper.? Nothing, I guess...

And as for the 'Speculative Fiction', well, he isn't a writer of that either.

The people who voted to award him three Hugo awards (science fiction's top honor), a Nebula award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the E.E. "Doc" Smith Memorial Award (Skylark), the Pat Terry Memorial Award for Humorous Science Fiction, and a second Locus award for Best Novella would appear to disagree with you. But you can always define 'speculative fiction' to be whatever you want, and set up your definition to exclude what he writes.

Get off his ass

[Klinky]

Any community is going to experience points of stagnation and critics who bitch about it. I think people need to face the facts that community as a whole loses that shiny interesting effect on them. Everything is no longer "WOW!", it's "Oh I've seen that before". This has happened with Anime. Miyazaki said the state of anime was critical and that less and less worthy series are being made. Well the same can be said for movies. The same can be said for Sci-Fi. The same could be said for alot of things. The thing is instead of bitching about it, he needs to get off is ass and go right some create some new great genre defining novel, or whatever.

Re:Get off his ass

[Sparks23]

Not only that, but many genres suffer from dilution. When there's a dozen people writing in a genre or producing for it, it's far easier to separate the wheat from the chaff. I think today, there's more wheat, but there's also more chaff.

Today when I go to the bookstore and look at the science-fiction section, I see all these new books, half of which are by authors I've never heard of before. Brand-new, first-time writer, or someone who's just not gotten coverage, or whatever. And every book has testimonials on the cover, someone saying the author is 'The most promising new writer to enter the genre since...' or whatever. So really, the only way to know what's good is to read it yourself... and since there's so much out there these days, there's much more chaff to sort through to find the wheat.

I think it's true with anime, too -- the growing popularity over the past few years has made a number of anime pop up which, honestly, aren't all that worthy, to reference the Miyazaki quote. It's true of almost any medium of fiction and expression when the field becomes crowded; it's not necessarily that the number of worthy things has decreased, but that the number of things /overall/ has increased.

That said, it's nice to see M'Oak get some linkage. Maybe it'll spur a few more T&K fans. :)

Brilliant

[Autistic_Treat]

I guess you have to be smart to write science fiction, but attributing lower sales to the fact that people like other sci-fi/fantasy titles better is sheer genius.

It was not really a disagreement

[Henry V .009]

A rather amazing reply. In essence he says: "You're right. We don't care about the future anymore. But that is because this is the future now, and there is nothing much down the road."

Reminds me of Francis Fukuyama in a way. The important decisions of history have been made, and things will not got significantly better or worse than they are right now. Democracy and capitalism have conquered the world.

I completely agree with Robinson...

[CrayHill]

...that the genre of SF (as many other artistic endeavors) is having creative difficulty. Walk into a bookstore these days, pick up an interesting-looking book, and see that it is 12th in a series of 18. Come on, if the authors cannot deal with new character development, like they did 40 years ago for virtually every novel, something is wrong!

But...why?

[Otter]

Both the original and this completely beg the basic question -- in much of the 20th century people had a very vivid picture of The Future, accurate or inaccurate. Today, that sense has completely disappeared. Why?

Just saying over and over that it's so, as this response does and most of the comments here last time did don't explain WHY it's so.

Re:But...why?

[Daniel_Staal]

Here's an answer for you: because they are having enough trouble imagining the now. We work, day to day, to just keep up with the pace of change; we don't have time or energy to spare to try to push that change beyond the immediate necessity. It is not that the sense has disappeared, so much as it is already in use.

For a good exploration of this idea, I would suggest the book 'Future Shock'. A very good read.

He mistakes science fiction

[ishmaelflood]

Nice response, and far more sensible than the whine that sparked it off.

However, he is describing hard science fiction, ie technology extrapolation and the use and abuse of physical laws, SF is much bigger than that. There are also all the other parts of the science fiction field- for instance PKD is still completely out there. A Scanner Darkly is a technology proof novel.

I like his point that we are living in the future. I've always extended it to "We are living in the future and it is slightly crap". My cell phone is often out of range. My whizzy looking car has a 30 year old chassis. Passenger aircraft got bigger, and less comfortable, not faster. 'We' fly to the moon. But not often. (Damn these anti-curmudgeon pills are wearing off).

I like spiders stuff but

[Crashmarik]

I have never considered him a science fiction writer. His work is much more on the order of screwball comedies. He usually starts off with with some urban legend type material a bunch of crazy characters, and he finishes up with see how good things are when we get along ? In the callahans stuff he generally winds up with in the future people will be alot nicer and regularly violate the laws of physics because of the fact.

Its not science fiction, its very good, I enjoy it a heck of alot and have bought just about everything he has written.

His rant about science fiction dieing was annoying the first time it had been done back in the 60's when hard scince fiction writers griped about the new wave kids.

Theres alot of great science fiction being written today more than I have ever seen before It just doesn't look like what it did 50 years ago. Theres a reaon The future isn't what it used to be. Look at the recent works out there by Greg bear, Greg egan,Ian macleod, Rosemary Kirsten, Vernor Vinge, Charles Stross, Dan Simmons, The list goes on. Its very high quality stuff and shows a greater understanding of underlying science than 90% of the golden age authors could manage.

What Mr. Spinrad misses is that there are things that just won't fly in the genre anymore. It's no longer possible to take a crap story toss in a few bug eyed aliens a spaceship and a girl in a brass bikini and expect people to read the story. Its also not enough to do a techno gimmick story anymore. As much as I loved George O Smiths stories, they don't read well anymore.

Elves and mythical pasts don't compete with science fiction. Theres always going to be a future and theres always going to be people speculating about it. How well the genre does will depend how well the authors bring the future to life.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything in the arts has been pronounced dead: theatre, the poem, the novel, the symphony, photography, paintings etc. You name it, at some point someone has worried about stagnation. And then embarrassed by their comments in retrospect. This is a non-story and a non-issue. In any case, it would be a mistake to uncritically equate the health of an artistic form with sales.

BSD on the other hand is a actually dead of course... a hundred thousand troll posts can't be wrong!

5...4...3...2...

[dswensen]

Any day now Bruce Sterling should be along to write a snarky editorial on how he predicted all this stuff years ago, and no one listened to his infinite wisdom...

It's actually quite simple, and logical, too...

[BadElf]

Sci-fi was (and is) a method for exploring the possibilities of existing and theoretical technologies. We are a much more techno-savvy populace now. Even my Grandmother knows what a laser is (it'll fix her eyes).

Society today, however, though tech-savvy, wants -- no, *needs* -- to find some reason or purpose to life other than just "moving forward" (whether toward the stars, the moon, etc.). Whenever society reaches a critical mass of "understanding" of the "known and accepted potentialities" of technology, it reverts to the "spiritual".

This is why the fantasy stories are obliterating sci-fi. People already *know* what will most likely happen tech-wise within their lifetime. What they *don't* know is whether there is a "god", or "gods", or whatever else you can dream up in the "spiritual" realm. IMHO, the fantasy genre is more important to the average reader today than sci-fi because fantasy texts address the questions and concerns that today's readers are really interested in.

Sci-fi is very extro-spective -- focusing on what might happen based on current scientific knowledge and theory. Sci-fi generally ignores or poo-poo's the spiritual/human concerns of us carbon-based entities, instead pushing either techno-utopian agendas, or techno-hell agendas.

Fantasy, on the other hand, is very intro-spective -- focusing on the (usually) historic, spiritual planes of thought and existence. Fantasy doesn't care about the future, as long as it can describe a believable past.

In a nutshell, I think what's happening is that people know enough (and have been let down enough) by technology to not have faith in the hypothetical futures described in sci-fi. Instead, these same people want an altruistic world like Tolkein offers (all is black or white, very little grey) that has the semblance of "history" or "religion", and doesn't require buying in to a specific school of futurism.

Of course, I'm probably full of shit and don't know my own ass from a hole in the ground, but that's what I think about this.

Peace, my fellow /.'ers