You raise an excellent point, geektourist, and I have taken heart from your encouraging words. Thank you. I hope the publishers will, as they have in the past, pay heed as the readers tell them what they want to buy. Therein lies the Golden Power of the Hugos: of all the arts awards I know save the Nova Scotia Fiddle Championship, they are the ONLY one awarded, NOT by an elite body of self-appointed, mutual-back-scratching experts...but by the cash customers: by anyone on earth who cares to bother voting. That makes them worth ten times their weight in Oscars or Booker Prizes.
Were you listening this year, publishers? Please say yes...
I'm certainly not about to argue with ME, HiThere. But how then do you account for fantasy, in which nearly all creative activity CEASED over a century ago? Nothing really new is POSSIBLE in that field, since excluding the modern world seems to be the whole point.
I cannot comment on the future of computers. And nuclear power was burned at the stake by a pack of savages, so there's no telling how much progress COULD have been made. There's more incentive today to become a tobacco exec than there was to study nuclear power in the last 30 years. But with regard to the last 30 years of air travel and space travel you're just wrong. Check average cost-per-passenger-mile and cost-per-pound-of-payload in both fields, over that span--and stress "average," as in, "including lands outside America." In 30 years air travel has become dirt cheap and common, and since 1973 space travel has gone from a stunt possible only to 2 superpowers to routine industry in numerous countries.
There are bright spots all over; you're just not looking. Or if you are, you're letting the tailfins distract you. Ever hear of the X Prize, for instance? Or nanotechnology? Try reading some modern science fiction. Bright spots is what we do best. When we're allowed to....
You say CALLAHAN'S CON is not sf? It's just a fantasy novel whose plot involves time travel considered as a means of space travel? And whose solution depends on accurately measuring the intrinsic motion of the universe? Perhaps you'd care to name some other fantasy novels that have explored ANY of those concepts?
In addition to the points addressed in my NEXT response: No, you DIDN'T used to read my stuff in Analog about ten years back. My last appearance in Analog was just under twenty years ago. I'm wouldn't want anyone to have the impression you said a single thing in your post that was accurate.
I'm honored to be called a putz by such a COMPLETE asshole.
Actually, I'm quite a cheerful guy. YOU two sound pretty miserable, to me.
I have NEVER written a story in which a dog has sex with a human. Nor did I EVER blame the Vietnam War on Richard Nixon, although I did suggest that he became involved in it. McGurk may well deny even that much, if he reads news and history with the same diligent attention he brought to my work. (I may be maligning his intellect: he could simply be a liar.)
While I have not worn a hat in well over five years--GOOD morning, welcome to the 21st!--I have to say few things are more ridiculous than a man who believes his opinions of haberdashery are of importance.
Callahan's? Nine of my thirty books, was that what you meant by "2,387th entry"?
And which was it that convinced you of my lack of talent? My three Hugos, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award? (ALL awarded for NON-Callahan material, by the way, Einstein.) My thirty years of survival and even acclaim in a tough marketplace? Or your own superior publications--what were they, again?
Glad to learn it's true: chimps CAN be taught to type. May reasoning follow soon....very soon.
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.
How do you get off this world that's heading down the toilet? One and only one way: THINK ABOUT IT. And YOU CANNOT DO THIS IF YOU BELIEVE THOUGHT IS USELESS. Good sf encourages thought, shows that it can make the future NOT seem hopeless. Heroic fantasy says one has given up thinking about the future OR the present. Forgive me, linuxisit, but you seem absolutely determined to believe everything is hopeless. That is the PERFECT cop-out. And if enough people agree with you, and find it an attractive excuse for disclaiming responsibility, it will become the literal truth.
The future will hold MORE rights, MORE privacy, FEWER commercials....and a hundred years more lifespan in which to complain about all these things than your grandpa got. Read science fiction: we're trying, HARD, to tell you all about a better world, so you can help us build it.
You can't have what you're too scared and bitter to dream. You can't win if you don't play.
Try Ted Chiang. Or Patrick O'Leary. Or Allen Steele. Or Peter Watts. Or Nalo Hopkinson. Or James Alan Gardner. Or Michael Swanwick. Or Corson Hirschfield. Or Lois McMaster Bujold Or Michael Swanwick. Or Michael Flynn. Or Donna McMahon. Newbies all--and all intensely character driven writers. Or try anything at all by still-working old timers like John Varley, David Gerrold, Ben Bova, Greg Bear, Joe Haldeman, Fred Pohl, or me: we all care FAR more about the people in our stories than about the technology that happens to them, and always have. Again, and again: the problem is not a lack of good stuff, or of writers competent and eager to write it. The real problem is, you readers are buying so much CRAP you've given publishers the impression that the LAST THING YOU WANT is thoughtful character-driven science fiction. They're responding as accurately as their computer measurements allow them to what they think you want. The ONLY solution is for you to buy LOTS MORE of the good science fiction, and tell your colleagues at work about it, and mention it to your relatives, and give copies to all your friends at Christmas. And post lists of good writers to slashdot.org.....
"Flame-bait"? How? You're absolutely right. I GLORY in the slander. All my 9 Callahan's Place books are fantasy....carefully phrased so as not to offend a science fiction fan. There's a long and honorable tradition of this in the field. My Lifehouse trilogy, on the other hand (MINDKILLER, TIME PRESSURE and LIFEHOUSE), is pure-quill science fiction, as is the Stardance Trilogy I co-wrote with my wife Jeanne (STARDANCE, STARSEED and STARMIND), and my stand-alone novels TELEMPATH, THE FREE LUNCH, and NIGHT OF POWER. So I assay out to exactly 50 % hardcore sf, as a novelist, anyway...and 50% fantasy, of a kind that acknowledges the existence of other worlds and even stars, and respects science, and doesn't believe problems can be solved by wishing real hard or knowing the right wizard. I said in the article that started all this: "I am not knocking fantasy--the brand of sf I write is closer to fantasy than most." The GLOBE AND MAIL edited that last clause out for space, is all.
Where to begin? 1) The slide is now about fifteen years long. It has literally killed at least six promising careers I personally know of. 2) At no time did I say anything which could even reasonably be miscontrued as implying "there hasn't been a good book in a decade." What I said was, the authors of those good books are being starved out of the business. "Just because sales are down," publishers stop buying books from us. Thus, many good ones fail to be written. And many that are written perforce pander to trends and mass taste. 3) There is a simple self-evident zero-sum relation between media novels and real ones. It is called the book rack. The more pockets occupied by Star Wars/Trek tie-ins, the fewer for real ones. As a result, the real ones sell poorer than they desrve to...and the cycle goes on. It is already PAST the point of catastrophe; the only question is whether or not the field can survive this catastrophe. 4) I don't understand rde's point about a "feedback loop," and it certainly was not my own. I BELIEVE he's wrong, that anyone who has been to space, and is not brain dead, will thereby become more interested in reading SF--but what does it matter, either way? My point is, we would never ever have landed on the Moon if it were not for Robert A Heinlein--not opinion: provable fact--and we will never get to read tomorrow's Robert Heinlein if there is no viable market to present his work to his audience. Heinlein began writing only because it was the best and only hope he saw of paying off his mortgage. To feel that way today one would have to live in an overturned rowboat on the shore. 6) as to "...but so what? Just buy the good stuff, and leave the crap to the Trekkies..." I can only say I wish you luck FINDING the good stuff. I personally know of many superb sf novels that never even got written because of present market conditions. It DOES TOO MATTER...to ALL of us. If you think it's not your problem....write your OWN science fiction. You may find it harder than it seems.....
NEW and/or young science fiction writers I heartily recommend as worth your time include Hugo- and Nebula-winner Ted Chiang, Hugo-winner Rob Sawyer, Patrick O'Leary, Allen Steele, Peter Watts, Don DeBrandt, and Donna McMahon. There are others I'm forgetting, but those will get you through a long month. And remember, the "old-timers" listed, and several of their contemporaries NOT mentioned on that list, like David Gerrold -- and ME -- are turning out some of their best work ever today--NOT coasting on their laurels. The problem is not a shortage of good science fiction: the problem is that not enough of you are BUYING it to keep us alive and working. There would be a LOT more new young writers, if the gig hadn't recently become such an obvious way to die broke. Who wants to bet his life on the intelligence and education of the reading public? Presuming there is such a thing, in any but vestigial terms. "People who read books -- next on GERALDO!"
...and we'll have about forty to fifty years longer than my grandfather did, in which to COMPLAIN of our empty lives filled with useless junk INSTEAD OF unceasing warfare, routine childbirth mortality, universal absence of liberty, and everpresent starvation, the way God intended.
How can people NOT get that it is high technology that ENDED the decimation of the forests in Eisengard and cut in half the smoke emanating from Mordor? Burning trees or pieces of black rock, as Tolkien happily did in his day, is LOW technology.
Social unrest is the blessed privilege of those who are not broken slaves. If we have more today it is because we don't get beheaded for complaining. And since we ARE free, most social unrest reduces to the grumbling of people with no real problems.
Empty lives filled with useless junk are INFINITELY preferable to short ones filled to the brim with agony and helplessness, without even amusing junk for comfort. And that IS the choice.
The Good Old Days are bullshit. They never existed. Today is infinitely better than 1948, when I was born, and 2060 will be so much better than this, superlatives become ineffective.
The sky is NOT the limit--EXCEPT in fantasy stories, where nothing larger than this planet exists. It never was. Only the gloomy mind is a limit.
Slashdot Mirror
You raise an excellent point, geektourist, and I have taken heart from your encouraging words. Thank you. I hope the publishers will, as they have in the past, pay heed as the readers tell them what they want to buy. Therein lies the Golden Power of the Hugos: of all the arts awards I know save the Nova Scotia Fiddle Championship, they are the ONLY one awarded, NOT by an elite body of self-appointed, mutual-back-scratching experts...but by the cash customers: by anyone on earth who cares to bother voting. That makes them worth ten times their weight in Oscars or Booker Prizes. Were you listening this year, publishers? Please say yes...
I'm certainly not about to argue with ME, HiThere. But how then do you account for fantasy, in which nearly all creative activity CEASED over a century ago? Nothing really new is POSSIBLE in that field, since excluding the modern world seems to be the whole point.
I cannot comment on the future of computers. And nuclear power was burned at the stake by a pack of savages, so there's no telling how much progress COULD have been made. There's more incentive today to become a tobacco exec than there was to study nuclear power in the last 30 years. But with regard to the last 30 years of air travel and space travel you're just wrong. Check average cost-per-passenger-mile and cost-per-pound-of-payload in both fields, over that span--and stress "average," as in, "including lands outside America." In 30 years air travel has become dirt cheap and common, and since 1973 space travel has gone from a stunt possible only to 2 superpowers to routine industry in numerous countries. There are bright spots all over; you're just not looking. Or if you are, you're letting the tailfins distract you. Ever hear of the X Prize, for instance? Or nanotechnology? Try reading some modern science fiction. Bright spots is what we do best. When we're allowed to....
You say CALLAHAN'S CON is not sf? It's just a fantasy novel whose plot involves time travel considered as a means of space travel? And whose solution depends on accurately measuring the intrinsic motion of the universe? Perhaps you'd care to name some other fantasy novels that have explored ANY of those concepts?
In addition to the points addressed in my NEXT response: No, you DIDN'T used to read my stuff in Analog about ten years back. My last appearance in Analog was just under twenty years ago. I'm wouldn't want anyone to have the impression you said a single thing in your post that was accurate. I'm honored to be called a putz by such a COMPLETE asshole.
Actually, I'm quite a cheerful guy. YOU two sound pretty miserable, to me. I have NEVER written a story in which a dog has sex with a human. Nor did I EVER blame the Vietnam War on Richard Nixon, although I did suggest that he became involved in it. McGurk may well deny even that much, if he reads news and history with the same diligent attention he brought to my work. (I may be maligning his intellect: he could simply be a liar.) While I have not worn a hat in well over five years--GOOD morning, welcome to the 21st!--I have to say few things are more ridiculous than a man who believes his opinions of haberdashery are of importance.
Callahan's? Nine of my thirty books, was that what you meant by "2,387th entry"? And which was it that convinced you of my lack of talent? My three Hugos, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award? (ALL awarded for NON-Callahan material, by the way, Einstein.) My thirty years of survival and even acclaim in a tough marketplace? Or your own superior publications--what were they, again? Glad to learn it's true: chimps CAN be taught to type. May reasoning follow soon....very soon.
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.
How do you get off this world that's heading down the toilet? One and only one way: THINK ABOUT IT. And YOU CANNOT DO THIS IF YOU BELIEVE THOUGHT IS USELESS. Good sf encourages thought, shows that it can make the future NOT seem hopeless. Heroic fantasy says one has given up thinking about the future OR the present. Forgive me, linuxisit, but you seem absolutely determined to believe everything is hopeless. That is the PERFECT cop-out. And if enough people agree with you, and find it an attractive excuse for disclaiming responsibility, it will become the literal truth. The future will hold MORE rights, MORE privacy, FEWER commercials....and a hundred years more lifespan in which to complain about all these things than your grandpa got. Read science fiction: we're trying, HARD, to tell you all about a better world, so you can help us build it. You can't have what you're too scared and bitter to dream. You can't win if you don't play.
Try Ted Chiang. Or Patrick O'Leary. Or Allen Steele. Or Peter Watts. Or Nalo Hopkinson. Or James Alan Gardner. Or Michael Swanwick. Or Corson Hirschfield. Or Lois McMaster Bujold Or Michael Swanwick. Or Michael Flynn. Or Donna McMahon. Newbies all--and all intensely character driven writers. Or try anything at all by still-working old timers like John Varley, David Gerrold, Ben Bova, Greg Bear, Joe Haldeman, Fred Pohl, or me: we all care FAR more about the people in our stories than about the technology that happens to them, and always have. Again, and again: the problem is not a lack of good stuff, or of writers competent and eager to write it. The real problem is, you readers are buying so much CRAP you've given publishers the impression that the LAST THING YOU WANT is thoughtful character-driven science fiction. They're responding as accurately as their computer measurements allow them to what they think you want. The ONLY solution is for you to buy LOTS MORE of the good science fiction, and tell your colleagues at work about it, and mention it to your relatives, and give copies to all your friends at Christmas. And post lists of good writers to slashdot.org.....
"Flame-bait"? How? You're absolutely right. I GLORY in the slander. All my 9 Callahan's Place books are fantasy....carefully phrased so as not to offend a science fiction fan. There's a long and honorable tradition of this in the field. My Lifehouse trilogy, on the other hand (MINDKILLER, TIME PRESSURE and LIFEHOUSE), is pure-quill science fiction, as is the Stardance Trilogy I co-wrote with my wife Jeanne (STARDANCE, STARSEED and STARMIND), and my stand-alone novels TELEMPATH, THE FREE LUNCH, and NIGHT OF POWER. So I assay out to exactly 50 % hardcore sf, as a novelist, anyway...and 50% fantasy, of a kind that acknowledges the existence of other worlds and even stars, and respects science, and doesn't believe problems can be solved by wishing real hard or knowing the right wizard. I said in the article that started all this: "I am not knocking fantasy--the brand of sf I write is closer to fantasy than most." The GLOBE AND MAIL edited that last clause out for space, is all.
Where to begin? 1) The slide is now about fifteen years long. It has literally killed at least six promising careers I personally know of. 2) At no time did I say anything which could even reasonably be miscontrued as implying "there hasn't been a good book in a decade." What I said was, the authors of those good books are being starved out of the business. "Just because sales are down," publishers stop buying books from us. Thus, many good ones fail to be written. And many that are written perforce pander to trends and mass taste. 3) There is a simple self-evident zero-sum relation between media novels and real ones. It is called the book rack. The more pockets occupied by Star Wars/Trek tie-ins, the fewer for real ones. As a result, the real ones sell poorer than they desrve to...and the cycle goes on. It is already PAST the point of catastrophe; the only question is whether or not the field can survive this catastrophe. 4) I don't understand rde's point about a "feedback loop," and it certainly was not my own. I BELIEVE he's wrong, that anyone who has been to space, and is not brain dead, will thereby become more interested in reading SF--but what does it matter, either way? My point is, we would never ever have landed on the Moon if it were not for Robert A Heinlein--not opinion: provable fact--and we will never get to read tomorrow's Robert Heinlein if there is no viable market to present his work to his audience. Heinlein began writing only because it was the best and only hope he saw of paying off his mortgage. To feel that way today one would have to live in an overturned rowboat on the shore. 6) as to "...but so what? Just buy the good stuff, and leave the crap to the Trekkies..." I can only say I wish you luck FINDING the good stuff. I personally know of many superb sf novels that never even got written because of present market conditions. It DOES TOO MATTER...to ALL of us. If you think it's not your problem....write your OWN science fiction. You may find it harder than it seems.....
NEW and/or young science fiction writers I heartily recommend as worth your time include Hugo- and Nebula-winner Ted Chiang, Hugo-winner Rob Sawyer, Patrick O'Leary, Allen Steele, Peter Watts, Don DeBrandt, and Donna McMahon. There are others I'm forgetting, but those will get you through a long month. And remember, the "old-timers" listed, and several of their contemporaries NOT mentioned on that list, like David Gerrold -- and ME -- are turning out some of their best work ever today--NOT coasting on their laurels. The problem is not a shortage of good science fiction: the problem is that not enough of you are BUYING it to keep us alive and working. There would be a LOT more new young writers, if the gig hadn't recently become such an obvious way to die broke. Who wants to bet his life on the intelligence and education of the reading public? Presuming there is such a thing, in any but vestigial terms. "People who read books -- next on GERALDO!"
...and we'll have about forty to fifty years longer than my grandfather did, in which to COMPLAIN of our empty lives filled with useless junk INSTEAD OF unceasing warfare, routine childbirth mortality, universal absence of liberty, and everpresent starvation, the way God intended. How can people NOT get that it is high technology that ENDED the decimation of the forests in Eisengard and cut in half the smoke emanating from Mordor? Burning trees or pieces of black rock, as Tolkien happily did in his day, is LOW technology. Social unrest is the blessed privilege of those who are not broken slaves. If we have more today it is because we don't get beheaded for complaining. And since we ARE free, most social unrest reduces to the grumbling of people with no real problems. Empty lives filled with useless junk are INFINITELY preferable to short ones filled to the brim with agony and helplessness, without even amusing junk for comfort. And that IS the choice. The Good Old Days are bullshit. They never existed. Today is infinitely better than 1948, when I was born, and 2060 will be so much better than this, superlatives become ineffective. The sky is NOT the limit--EXCEPT in fantasy stories, where nothing larger than this planet exists. It never was. Only the gloomy mind is a limit.