From the Dept of Shameless Self Promotion: THE FLYING SORCERERS is back in print in a special edition from BenBella Books. You can order at Amazon. Thanks.
SF isn't dying. We've had some peaks in our history, we've had some valleys. We've seen the market change and evolve. But SF isn't dying. Change is not death, it's change.
One thing that is true - and it's a thing that many folks miss - is quite simply that SF is a minority literature, and always has been. Star Wars and Star Trek and all those others aren't SF at all; they're adventure stories that have coopted the SF vocabulary.
Real SF is about the impact zone between humanity and science, where collisions of spirit and rationality occur like subatomic particles creating the fusion of new elements. Only a very small part of humanity is interested in that particular domain of imagination - because it's hard work. But the proportion is stable. The evidence isn't just in the circulation numbers of Analog, it's in the circulation numbers of all the other magazines as well - Popular Science, Discovery, Omni, Wired, and Scientific American.
Sidebar: one of the things that has drawn away a large part of SF's key demographic is the computer game. The 13 year old boys who used to read Heinlein are now playing Doom and Half-Life, going for the vicarious visceral adventure in the sci-fi virtual reality instead of exercising their imaginations in books. One possible future of SF - a future that has not yet been invented - will be the computer game that lets you explore a new world without having to shoot everything you see. The goal will be discovery, not mayhem.
But even with the computer games as part of our brave new reality, SF will continue to exist as a prophylactic, prophetic, and prescriptive literature - because those who are interested in science are also interested in what it means. The "decline" in science fiction, if there is one, is not a decline in science fiction as much as it is a cultural neglect of science.
With all due respect, I first heard a programmer talking about a program called VIRUS in the summer of 1968, as well as another program called VACCINE. I immediately incorporated the idea into the novel I was writing at the time, WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE. (Published in 1972.)
Now, it's possible that the VIRUS story was apocryphal in 1968, but this programmer seemed to think it had actually happened; at least, that's the way he told it.
John Brunner created the term "worm" in his 1974 novel, THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER, and he did much more with the idea than anyone else had ever done, accurately predicting the way worms would prowl a network.
But even before widespread online connectivity, in the days when shareware was distributed on 5" floppies, we were all being warned about the danger of viruses in shareware distributions. Compuserve forums had software for download, and those files were all routinely scanned for viruses. Of course, in those days, viruses and Trojans were a lot simpler and a lot easier to block. (Except for the fact that we had to hike five minles barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways, every morning, just to get to the computer.)
So I wonder why folks are marking 1983 as the beginning of the viral era? If we're talking only about PC's, it's possible that the first viruses were distributed in 78 or 79. If we're talking about DEC-10s and PDP-11s, it's possible that the first viruses were ten years older.
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From the Dept of Shameless Self Promotion: THE FLYING SORCERERS is back in print in a special edition from BenBella Books. You can order at Amazon. Thanks.
SF isn't dying. We've had some peaks in our history, we've had some valleys. We've seen the market change and evolve. But SF isn't dying. Change is not death, it's change.
One thing that is true - and it's a thing that many folks miss - is quite simply that SF is a minority literature, and always has been. Star Wars and Star Trek and all those others aren't SF at all; they're adventure stories that have coopted the SF vocabulary.
Real SF is about the impact zone between humanity and science, where collisions of spirit and rationality occur like subatomic particles creating the fusion of new elements. Only a very small part of humanity is interested in that particular domain of imagination - because it's hard work. But the proportion is stable. The evidence isn't just in the circulation numbers of Analog, it's in the circulation numbers of all the other magazines as well - Popular Science, Discovery, Omni, Wired, and Scientific American.
Sidebar: one of the things that has drawn away a large part of SF's key demographic is the computer game. The 13 year old boys who used to read Heinlein are now playing Doom and Half-Life, going for the vicarious visceral adventure in the sci-fi virtual reality instead of exercising their imaginations in books. One possible future of SF - a future that has not yet been invented - will be the computer game that lets you explore a new world without having to shoot everything you see. The goal will be discovery, not mayhem.
But even with the computer games as part of our brave new reality, SF will continue to exist as a prophylactic, prophetic, and prescriptive literature - because those who are interested in science are also interested in what it means. The "decline" in science fiction, if there is one, is not a decline in science fiction as much as it is a cultural neglect of science.
In my not terribly humble opinion.
David Gerrold
With all due respect, I first heard a programmer talking about a program called VIRUS in the summer of 1968, as well as another program called VACCINE. I immediately incorporated the idea into the novel I was writing at the time, WHEN HARLIE WAS ONE. (Published in 1972.) Now, it's possible that the VIRUS story was apocryphal in 1968, but this programmer seemed to think it had actually happened; at least, that's the way he told it. John Brunner created the term "worm" in his 1974 novel, THE SHOCKWAVE RIDER, and he did much more with the idea than anyone else had ever done, accurately predicting the way worms would prowl a network. But even before widespread online connectivity, in the days when shareware was distributed on 5" floppies, we were all being warned about the danger of viruses in shareware distributions. Compuserve forums had software for download, and those files were all routinely scanned for viruses. Of course, in those days, viruses and Trojans were a lot simpler and a lot easier to block. (Except for the fact that we had to hike five minles barefoot through the snow, uphill both ways, every morning, just to get to the computer.) So I wonder why folks are marking 1983 as the beginning of the viral era? If we're talking only about PC's, it's possible that the first viruses were distributed in 78 or 79. If we're talking about DEC-10s and PDP-11s, it's possible that the first viruses were ten years older.
That joke originated with Bob Hope in the early fifties.