# Why doesn't sci fi have the mass appeal that fantasy has?



## CmdrShepN7 (Jan 1, 2021)

I've only come across one Babylon 5 fan irl and they fit the basement dweller image to a t. It would be nice if more normal people got into sci fi and space.

Remember when the Discovery Channel had stuff like this?





And the Science Fiction channel!

Epic space adventure!





replaced by wrestling, ghosts, and shark tornadoes!

Why did TV become so vapid and stupid in the early 2010s? Why did we stop dreaming of a better future for humanity?


----------



## Jo Zebedee (Jan 1, 2021)

Not sure where you’re hanging around but I can’t move for some kind of Sci fi (and fantasy, normally both) geek around me.
Some ideas: 

get involved in your local convention. There will be one and they will desperately need volunteers.
Find out if there is a local sff club - if not start one. 
look at the online forums - here is great with a lot of sci fi peeps on it. If you’re on Facebook Scott McGlasson’s Space Opera group is great fun but there are loads of others.

takk to your local bookstore and see if they’d support you setting a sf reading club or if they’d do an event.

seriously, reach out and you’ll find lots of like minded people. But sometimes you need to do some hunting


----------



## Robert Zwilling (Jan 1, 2021)

I don't know about 2010 as any kind of marker. These answers might depend on when a person was born. If you are old enough, the first Star Trek still means a lot to some people, while newer science fiction fans thought Babylon 5 fans was the absolute benchmark for how expansive and creative TV could do science fiction. It's one of those things where you had to be there when it first came out. TV has always been on the rocks, some years better than others. The anti violence kick in the late 60s didn't make programs more creative in the US. 

I think the fantasy audience has always been bigger than the straight science fiction audience, encompassing a wider audience, so some part of the fantasy audience always gets to see something, while science fiction programming is narrower, and is either being shown or isn't. I am wondering how will the current, and up and coming generations who cut their teeth on everything digital change story content? Will the needle swing to fantasy as an alternative escape mode or will they want technology presented as the ultimate conversation stopper. Or maybe neither one, some other fields of interest, like romance stories, something completely different. 

Personally I think the shark movies are grade B comedy with a slight touch of gore. A case of going to the wild animal well once too many times. Although if they made a shark movie where the sharks joined up in packs, picked straws somehow, maybe flip an empty shell to see how it lands, to see who gets to sink the boats of the people slashing their fins off, that would probably be okay.


----------



## AE35Unit (Jan 1, 2021)

Probably because its seen as difficult to read, geeky/nerdy.


----------



## BAYLOR (Jan 1, 2021)

CmdrShepN7 said:


> I've only come across one Babylon 5 fan irl and they fit the basement dweller image to a t. It would be nice if more normal people got into sci fi and space.
> 
> Remember when the Discovery Channel had stuff like this?
> 
> ...



Because for many people , critical thinking  is hard. So,  they don't engage in it  and, avoid anything that requires them to them to think . The problem is , that people who stop thinking  also stop dreaming and believing in better futures .


----------



## Montero (Jan 1, 2021)

Well I'm a Babylon 5 fan and I don't even own a basement. I've also done 17th century re-enactment - crashing around fields with weapons.


----------



## Vladd67 (Jan 1, 2021)

Montero said:


> Well I'm a Babylon 5 fan and I don't even own a basement. I've also done 17th century re-enactment - crashing around fields with weapons.


That could be me. I miss running around a field with gunpowder and a musket.


----------



## Parson (Jan 2, 2021)

This depends on your definition of S.F. and if you are including movies and anime and graphic novels in it. If you allow superhero movies and anime are S.F. than they are way bigger than Fantasy. If you include graphic novels as S.F. than the book differential might not by that great or negative at all.


----------



## Ilikebooksaswell (Jan 2, 2021)

CmdrShepN7 said:


> I've only come across one Babylon 5 fan irl and they fit the basement dweller image to a t. It would be nice if more normal people got into sci fi and space.
> 
> Remember when the Discovery Channel had stuff like this?
> 
> ...



I think that there is some promising sci-fi being put out on different streaming services. For all mankind on apple+ is developed by Ron Moore ( the guy behind the newer battlestar). It’s a speculative sci-fi about if the Russians beat the US to the moon and a more developed space race. Netflix has Another Life and the lost in space remake. Amazon has the expanse, which is excellent! I think because of how tv became so vapid it let in the room for the streaming to become a better destination for quality. But now of course there are becoming too many individual streams, so it will probably become like cable tv in another decade or so.


----------



## AE35Unit (Jan 2, 2021)

I think fantasy is seen as freer. A fantasy world can be whatever the author wants. There are no rules to stick to. Which is probably the reason there is so much of it, and so much dross


----------



## The Scribbling Man (Jan 2, 2021)

When science fiction is popular, it normally falls into the camp of space fantasy (or space opera). The focus is on adventure, spectacle and aesthetic more than the ideas. *Star Wars* and *MCU* are key examples that. 

Fantasy will always be more appealing and more accessible than science fiction, but I don't think science fiction has dropped off the face of the earth necessarily. Villinueve I think has been part of a small resurgence, with films like *Arrival* and the *Blade runner* sequel. But the fact is that "true" science fiction is ideas based, and therefore more cerebral and perhaps less inviting. I'm not sure it's designed for mass appeal in the same way fantasy is.


----------



## Luiglin (Jan 2, 2021)

I see it as the opposite.

The plus side of Star Wars, Alien(s), Back to the Future, Star Trek et al is that they brought more mainstream folks into Sci-fi and other media forms of it than say Conan, Beastmaster, Krull et al.

Sci-fi is more acceptable to mainstream audiences as it isn't bogged down with their stereotypical ideas of loin cloth wearing, sword wielding, goblin slaying main characters who hang around either in dingly dell or yet another desert.

It's like another facet of unconscious bias (if you ever get a chance, go an a course for this). People are more accepting of folks who like sci-fi because, to them, sci-fi needs brains to understand it and therefore they must be grown up. Whereas, fantasy is considered something for kids only (despite it being often more violent).

The amount of condescending looks I've had when I've tired to explain to folks that I write fantasy has been so much that I now don't tell anybody outside of other sci-fi or fantasy authors. It just is not worth the hassle (part of the reason why I don't promote stuff I've done).

To me, any genre of entertainment media needs imagination. You need imagination to believe that the spy can extract the code, that the romance can succeed in the face of all those odds, that the cops can find the serial killer before it's too late.  It's just a shame that mainstream struggles to to accept that these could also be classed as fantasy.

It is getting better, which is a bonus 

*Edit:* now I'm off to play a session of D&D online via a virtual table top service with some mates with that I've known for 30 years. Here's hoping we don't succumb to the swarms of rats like some RPG noobs. I'm still a big kid at heart


----------



## Guttersnipe (Jan 3, 2021)

I think it might be because fantasy tends to provide more of an escape than science fiction does. Science fiction often makes stories more rational and familiar.


----------



## BAYLOR (Jan 4, 2021)

AE35Unit said:


> I think fantasy is seen as freer. A fantasy world can be whatever the author wants. There are no rules to stick to. Which is probably the reason there is so much of it, and so much dross



*The City Of The Singing Flame   *by Clark Ashton Smith .  The prose of the writer  and the visuals  of the story ,  gave  me a sense of awe, wonder and a wish that such place as this city and its flame and it inhabitants existed.

The interesting thing about this story is , that it blurs the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction .  It can be read as one or the other.


----------



## Robert Zwilling (Jan 4, 2021)

What if the intersection of pure science fiction and pure fantasy (whatever they are), is much larger than either of the two. This would make discussions about pure science fiction and fantasy only a small part of the big picture. This makes it far easier to discuss the implications (lack of a better word) of pure science fiction and fantasy as they would be better defined, having fewer elements and far less volume than the area of intersection between the two. 

Saying that science fiction and fantasy are equal, this could be pictured as an ellipsoid, with one end science, the other end fantasy, and the middle is fiction, where most people live. It is not static, as some science is shown to be fiction, and some fantasy is shown to be science. If it was felt that fantasy was a bigger field than science fiction, instead of an ellipsoid, a cone could be used, the vertex is science, the open end is fantasy. Writing goes from science to fiction to fantasy. This scenario could explain why fiction and fantasy are so much more popular than science in terms of overall volume of material. It just is.

Discussions about different subjects in the intersection can be hard to reconcile because the subjects in the intersection are from such a vast volume of ideas that they easily can have no easy connections between them. This is similar to the way distinctions are made between science fiction and fantasy, because they are separated by their nonoverlapping features.


----------



## Stephen Palmer (Jan 4, 2021)

As older Chronners will know, there used to be a genre called Science Fantasy...


----------



## Wayne Mack (Jan 5, 2021)

I would second @Luiglin and say that I see more mass acceptance of science fiction than fantasy. The Mandalorian helped launch Disney's subscription network and gave rise to baby Yoda as a meme. Avatar the sci-fi movie got far more recognition than Avatar from the Nickelodeon cartoon series. The Martian was a surprise hit, while on TV, The Orville drew debates against the latest Star Trek spin off. We are also only a couple of years removed from a slew of YA dystopian future novels and movies. Yes, there have been many fantasy novels and movies that gained popular recognition, but science fiction has at least held its own.


----------



## The Scribbling Man (Jan 5, 2021)

I've always seen Star Wars as fantasy/space opera. The science-fiction elements are soft/minimal.


----------



## Robert Zwilling (Jan 5, 2021)

Star Trek, Star Wars, Babylon Five, could be called science fantasy, a category name I wasn't aware of until posting a message in another section. The name has been around for awhile but it just doesn't get picked up. Maybe it includes too much dissimilar territory. Because it is a big tent, this might explain the popularity of these programs compared to other science fiction programs. Programs like The Expanse might have a hard time getting traction because even though it has fantasy elements, it's too close to home, too gritty, too realistic.


----------



## The Scribbling Man (Jan 5, 2021)

*Star Trek* and *Star Wars* are often associated but are very different genres really. Star Trek is far more on the side of science fiction than Star Wars is. I won't pretend to be an authority on science fantasy, because I'm definitely not, but in my mind that conjures something more like Gene Wolfe's *Book of The New Sun*, which could equally be justified as either a fantasy or a science fiction novel, and does a very good job of blending elements of both.


----------



## Parson (Jan 6, 2021)

As with most genre definitions, the line between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy is very, very blurry. On the whole, if you were to ask me I'd draw the line at how much science is the center or the story. So almost all popular Science Fiction  would probably fall in the Fantasy camp in the end. Even something like *The Martian *which is about the best modern true Science Fiction around, still has that very fantasy wind storm.


----------



## Stephen Palmer (Jan 6, 2021)

The Scribbling Man said:


> I won't pretend to be an authority on science fantasy, because I'm definitely not, but in my mind that conjures something more like Gene Wolfe's *Book of The New Sun*, which could equally be justified as either a fantasy or a science fiction novel, and does a very good job of blending elements of both.


I think he viewed it as SF. Even the most lyrical and fantasy-like descriptions of TBOTNS were, it turned out when the complexity of the work was recognised, based on science - for instance his description of space "bending" according to relativistic phenomena (I forget which volume that's in). He was an exception author. I do agree wholeheartedly that the blend of elements is very skillful.


----------



## Foxbat (Jan 6, 2021)

I think science fantasy is maybe a name that should be resurrected. As a Babylon 5 fan (currently going through my annual re-watch), it’s blindingly obvious the relationship between fantasy and the B5 universe. Take the return of the Great Enemy and the space elves that call themselves Minbari. And of course, we have rangers and a perilous journey by the main protagonist, right into the heart of the Enemy.  We even have a Gandalf grey/white moment in Sheridan’s resurrection.

A more pertinent question for me would be, why didn’t Babylon 5 have the mass appeal it deserved?


----------



## Vince W (Jan 6, 2021)

Foxbat said:


> A more pertinent question for me would be, why didn’t Babylon 5 have the mass appeal it deserved?


Deep Space Nine overshadowed B5 and it shouldn't have.

A lot of New Wave science fiction should more rightly called science fantasy, especially when you consider the number of stories involving telepathy, ESP, and other such magics.


----------



## Robert Zwilling (Jan 7, 2021)

Probably it was just a matter of timing and circumstance that Babylon 5 never made it to the big screen. It had TV movies but that apparently wasn't enough to keep it going. I have seen a lot of Star War and Star Trek memorabilia but I don't recall any Babylon 5 memorabilia, but I must have seen it, having gone to a lot of shows. Without the big screen movie exposure, Babylon 5 was globally distributed on VHS, which was circling the drain. It would still be a few years before DVDs became cheap, and the internet was just beginning to make things immortal. Maybe because Star Trek was born on TV, it had to fight its way to achieve eternal existence, while Stars Wars, born on the big screen, never had to look back.

When a name doesn't stick in the public's mind, it doesn't work. Any number of popular works can be attached to the name, but if the public doesn't endorse it, the name doesn't get used. Some eco science fiction stories and movies were big in the 1970s, but they were only seen as science fiction, and even now, trying to call them eco science fiction is a futile exercise. Maybe the words science and fantasy can't be seen together. Maybe it encompasses too much territory so it is hard to imagine or it arrived on the scene too late. For writers it is easy to understand, but for readers it might be like saying lets replace science fiction with a new word, science fantasy. From my understanding, science fantasy is bigger than science fiction. I know people who call Star Trek fantasy because they don't read science fiction.


----------



## Parson (Jan 7, 2021)

I bit my tongue at first I didn't want to derail this thread, but since we're going down that path. I think one reason Babylon 5 didn't make as great a splash as Star Trek at the time was it's distribution. It was distributed on cable TV (and on different networks IRC). So not as many people were aware of it. And at least as important it was not nearly as accessible a story. You had to be a bit of SF Wonk to pick right up on it. And this might be my own problem, but I didn't think the sets etc. were nearly as good on Babylon 5 than the Star Trek franchise ones were.


----------



## J Riff (Jan 7, 2021)

it does?


----------



## Justin_B (Jan 14, 2021)

I think the crux of it may be that consumers of fantasy accept a complete suspension of reality (magic, mystical creatures etc) whereas Scifi in many respects is a hyper-extension of our current reality, and many aspects of evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Often the consumer is caught out comparing (consciously or not) the technology, society etc to the current, or near future of our reality (or realities). The suspension of belief/dis-belief is easier to achieve with Fantasy. Its the whole, my sword can cut through stone, thing. One hand "it's magic" and on the other "it's physics"


----------



## paranoid marvin (Jan 25, 2021)

I think mainstream media has a lot to do with it. People will often go with what is seen as popular rather than what is presented as niche.

Recently there was a tv programme in Britain based on the 100 most popular books. Much of the screen time was spent on the 'classics' whilst little was spent on sci-fi  and fantasy, even when those novels were higher in the charts.


----------

