The Death of Science Fiction (Yet Again).

[Daisy-Boo]

That's right. Only us old chicks read Dick.

*snort*

 

[Toby Frost]

I think the "should SF die?" article shot its own foot off early on when it seriously asked whether the majority of SF is racist. What? Since Wells wrote Dr Moreau SF has been grappling with serious and difficult issues - sometimes in troubling ways, and sometimes by troubling people, but to accuse the genre of being anything-ist seems a weak and trendy argument to me. I don't care who writes SF, I care how good it is and whether they get a fair chance to sell it. But this gets us into accusations of quotas, tokenism etc, and this probably isn't the place for that.

I think what we should be wary of is not the disappearance of SF but its dumbing-down into little more than a "look". Although SF backgrounds (or should I say cliches?) are very common in films, games and so on, they are often crudely done. There is a world of difference between Gears of War and The Forever War, although they look very similar in my mind (granted, they have different functions, but you see the point).

It is probably no longer possible to make war films like Where Eagles Dare any more, where the enemy are just automata to destroy. This job seems to have fallen to SF. Fine: I don't mind this, but I would be saddened if SF ended up as nothing more than a stupider version of Starship Troopers. SF needs to exist for something more than just fulfulling adolescent fantasies of being Teh Best Space Soldier Evah. But does anything else sell especially well? I hope so but I really don't know.

We are always going to need stories that can talk about ideas without being bound to reality. While I really like some modern fantasy I would like to see more people grappling with new worlds and ideas the way China Mieville does (although I'm not a rabid fan).

 

[Interference]

There's a place for guilt-free shoot-em-ups in literature and film and really there isn't another medium (other than fantasy) where otherwise stable human beings can revel in the complete destruction of an enemy. I suspect this is why such sci-fi tales are getting made (I've made mypoint before, several times, about westerns in this context).

I suspect sci-fi is now so mainstream that its demise is a misinterpretation of its assimilation. There will always be stories of the Human Condition, set in unfamiliar environments with short-hand analogies of human frailty explained through the use of technology or alien ways of thinking (alien, diverse, extreme or odd). The spirit of sci-fi is therefore and thereby immortal.

And even though I'm an old guy, I haven't wrestled with Dick in a long time

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree.

I should add (I meant this as an edit but since you've posted I'll reply) that I think we should and will see more SF from India and China over the next few decades. I would like to see it, out of pure curiosity. But I don't think a lack of curiosity or wild enthusiasm here indicates that SF is bigoted or anything like that.

 

[Connavar]

Shoot them up SF that look hollywood films annoy me alot. I see them dominate the shelfs. Nothing against them but the fact there are so many.
Thats why i dont care about SF dominating in film medium. Its not our vision of SF.

SF bigoted is such a lie, i was recently reading a 50s SF that had black character,comparing martian,human relations with the race issues of that times. You read other genres of that time and those issues dont exist.

 

[J-WO]

Perhaps the SF death-urge says more about society than the state of SF itself. The space race floundered, we're still a racist/ tribalistic world and we'd rather stare at our own navels than truly sort out the environment. Thus, we turn on science fiction for giving us a vision we never had the guts to live up to. The dream didn't fail us so much as we failed the dream.

You read a lot of modern criticism these days that snorts derision at old SF's self-importance, the whole 'genre that lights the path to the future' talk. Well I for one like that talk. I miss it; that insanely hopeful mission statement, the arrogant sense of purpose. Maybe Chinese and Indian SF will bring it back again. Hope so, because all this post-postmodernist, deconstructionalist thought in the west only ever seems to detract, never add.

 

[j d worthington]

Perhaps the SF death-urge says more about society than the state of SF itself. The space race floundered, we're still a racist/ tribalistic world and we'd rather stare at our own navels than truly sort out the environment. Thus, we turn on science fiction for giving us a vision we never had the guts to live up to. The dream didn't fail us so much as we failed the dream.

You read a lot of modern criticism these days that snorts derision at old SF's self-importance, the whole 'genre that lights the path to the future' talk. Well I for one like that talk. I miss it; that insanely hopeful mission statement, the arrogant sense of purpose. Maybe Chinese and Indian SF will bring it back again. Hope so, because all this post-postmodernist, deconstructionalist thought in the west only ever seems to detract, never add.

While I agree with the majority of the above (not necessarily philosophically, but emotionally), I have to stand up for those things mentioned at the end. I will agree that, unfortunately, a great deal of the various approaches to these do seem to be picking nits in our navels, but done well, this sort of thing actually adds to the richness and possibilities of both literature (or any of the arts) and literature rather than detract from the same. A fair number of things I've read over the years in the vein of the post-modernist or deconstructionist criticism has enhanced my enjoyment of the works in question -- and, for that matter, literature in general -- to an enormous degree. However poorly some have handled these ideas at base they are as often about recognizing and expanding possibilities as they are anything....

 

[GrownUp]

Perhaps the SF death-urge says more about society than the state of SF itself. The space race floundered, we're still a racist/ tribalistic world and we'd rather stare at our own navels than truly sort out the environment. Thus, we turn on science fiction for giving us a vision we never had the guts to live up to. The dream didn't fail us so much as we failed the dream.

You read a lot of modern criticism these days that snorts derision at old SF's self-importance, the whole 'genre that lights the path to the future' talk. Well I for one like that talk. I miss it; that insanely hopeful mission statement, the arrogant sense of purpose. Maybe Chinese and Indian SF will bring it back again. Hope so, because all this post-postmodernist, deconstructionalist thought in the west only ever seems to detract, never add.

I wish I'd written that. That's good.

 

[J-WO]

While I agree with the majority of the above (not necessarily philosophically, but emotionally), I have to stand up for those things mentioned at the end. I will agree that, unfortunately, a great deal of the various approaches to these do seem to be picking nits in our navels, but done well, this sort of thing actually adds to the richness and possibilities of both literature (or any of the arts) and literature rather than detract from the same. A fair number of things I've read over the years in the vein of the post-modernist or deconstructionist criticism has enhanced my enjoyment of the works in question -- and, for that matter, literature in general -- to an enormous degree. However poorly some have handled these ideas at base they are as often about recognizing and expanding possibilities as they are anything....

Sorry if I come across a bit venomous about post-modernism et al. My experiences of it have all been negative. I took a joint English degree just after PM had bullyboyed its way into European Universities and was dancing on the ashes of its vanquished foes. If you didn't say its shibboleths you got marked down and if your opinion differed that meant you were part of the old order and to be despised. Since leaving academia I have never encountered such closed-mindedness. Crazy.

Maybe there's quality P-mod critique going on out there, but to me the whole thing seems to be in direct flight from Enlightenment values (and, by extension, Science Fiction) in its belief that everything is of equal worth to the next thing because its all opinion anyhow and that nothing can ever really be ascertained. I could well be oversimplifying here, but thats part of my problem with it- Post Modernism is unassailable not because its walls are strong but because they are slippy. In that respect its more like mysticism than academic thought.

One of its proponents offered that the theory of relativity was inherently patriarchal because it favoured the 'more masculine' light over matter, as if the biological duality of one obscure planet had the slightest relevance to the universe at large. SF should avoid this kind of thing like the Venusian plague.

 

[Rackon]

Star Wars and Star Trek were both for different generations and they appealed to different generations. However, Lucas, being the smart guy that he is, did more Star Wars flicks and purposefully made them appeal to the younger generations, with princesses and jesters and knights, which is why it is still going and Star Trek is not. That and Lucas is an awesome marketer. There will always be people who look to the future and the stars and ask what if......

Science fiction is most assuredly not dead. It is however changing its traditional media. Pre-multimedia days, Sci Fi was mainly in comics, books, and mags, then more into radio (thanks Buck Rogers and HG Wells) and then into the tele. Now, Sci Fi isn't so much on the tele and radio as it is in interactive gaming. I play a LOT of sci fi games because there are a LOT of sci fi games and movies that are most definitely NOT dead. Well except in Doom and Dead Space. I also watch a lot of sci fi movies, which are also not dead, and in mainstream there are a LOT LOT LOT more science fiction movies than fantasy movies. There are a lot more fantasy novel series in literature in mainstream than there are science fiction books.

I don't know why this is. Perhaps because it is a lot more romantic to write about the fantastical world of dragons than to draw up images of dragons (which always look kind of hokey on the tele) and its a lot easier to draw up images of complex machinery and space faring cultures than to write it out for the mainstream audience (who aren't all that bright).

In my house right now I could easily think of ten to fifteen original sci fi game or movie titles, but not books--and if I took out the Star Wars books and manuals, then its really probably none. I could easily think of ten to fifteen fantasy fiction book titles, but not games or movies (well not any good ones, and certainly not any that weren't books in the first place, hence not original).

Except that Star Trek is still going strong - the 2009 movie was a hit and reignited interest in the franchise. Even in its heydey - with multiple series on TV, books and games et al - Trek was never the blockbuster SWs was in terms of $$$s. But culturally, it is everywhere, and the new film has brought new fans to Trek. New books, new games, mags, comics...and a movie sequel.

Even Iain Banks makes Trek references in his latest book, Transition (which is being marketed as SF and by Iain *M* Banks in the US).

Meanwhile, the death of science fiction is premature. It is changing and evolving, as the delivery methods of reading and entertainment are changing and evolving. SF is currently a bigger part of our culture than ever before, especially if one includes TV, gaming and film. Perhaps the people who would have written a book 40 years ago would rather create a film? Like perhaps young Mr. Jones and his movie "Moon"...

It's harder for all quality fiction to get published, not just sf. Authors will continue to be sparked by ideas..."what if"...and their imaginations will run free and give us new works of sf and speculative fiction...the golden age is gone but a new one will arise, if we can recognize it.

 

[j d worthington]

Sorry if I come across a bit venomous about post-modernism et al. My experiences of it have all been negative. I took a joint English degree just after PM had bullyboyed its way into European Universities and was dancing on the ashes of its vanquished foes. If you didn't say its shibboleths you got marked down and if your opinion differed that meant you were part of the old order and to be despised. Since leaving academia I have never encountered such closed-mindedness. Crazy.

Maybe there's quality P-mod critique going on out there, but to me the whole thing seems to be in direct flight from Enlightenment values (and, by extension, Science Fiction) in its belief that everything is of equal worth to the next thing because its all opinion anyhow and that nothing can ever really be ascertained. I could well be oversimplifying here, but thats part of my problem with it- Post Modernism is unassailable not because its walls are strong but because they are slippy. In that respect its more like mysticism than academic thought.

One of its proponents offered that the theory of relativity was inherently patriarchal because it favoured the 'more masculine' light over matter, as if the biological duality of one obscure planet had the slightest relevance to the universe at large. SF should avoid this kind of thing like the Venusian plague.

*sigh* Looking over my paragraph to which you responded, I realize just how bloody tired I was at the time... yeesh! the redundancies and solecisms!!!! Oi!

At any rate... yes, I'm not surprised that you had such an experience from academia where this is concerned. Unfortunately, most people who have encountered it have done so through these channels, where post-modernism was held almost in the same regard as a matter of faith in religion... wait, what am I saying? It was held in the same regard... which is not healthy for this mode of critical thought or any other. Derrida's approach to deconstructing language, for example, was taken to the farthest extremes, with ludicrous results. And, of course, there are always those who do take such a tact with any new theory or idea....

But, as I said, there is a substantial residue of writers using these approaches who show what can be done with them in terms of value and genuinely expanding the enjoyment and appreciation of any art form (literature perhaps in particular), and some writers have absorbed and assimilated these ideas as well into their own approach to fiction... not infrequently with brilliant results -- vide a rather fair selection of the New Wave writers, as one set of examples. And some of the critics who use these approaches for the more "literary" aspects of fantastic fiction (as with Donald R. Burleson's deconstructionist essays on Lovecraft) bring to light some fascinating insights which chime in very well with the richness and complexity of the work and the writers' thought as seen by correspondence and the varied types of writing a particular author has produced.

So I can understand your point of view... I'm just glad my brush with the stuff through "official" channels was brief and rather unfocused (the result, I think, of the lecturers themselves not quite understanding the philosophy or thought behind some or all of these critical methods), leaving me largely to discover it on my own... with the result that I at first had a violent reaction of "this is nonsense! utterly nuts!" to a reexamination to a wary acceptance to, eventually, the realization that what I was gaining from my encounters with it actually enhanced my experience of what I was reading many times over. Hence my tendency to "come to the defense" on such matters, as I feel it has been at least as badly represented as history was in education in most cases I've encountered....

Which leads me back to the thread topic, and your final comment. No, I can't agree with that, either. Part of what science fiction has always done is explore the ramifications of different philosophies and worldviews, whether mystical or rationalistic (think of, for example, the underpinnings of Gordy Dickson's Childe cycle, James Blish's A Case of Conscience, Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Leibowitz, Mark Clifton and Frank Riley's They'd Rather Be Right/The Immortality Machine, Frank Herbert's Dune, the anthologies The Day the Sun Stood Still or Other Worlds, Other Gods, several of the tales of Kuttner and Moore, the vast bulk of word by J. G. Ballard, etc., etc., etc.), and certainly this is as valid a philosophy to explore as any other -- and offers an enormous wealth of possible story ideas and contrasting ideologies for alien cultures... or, as with stories featuring a human diaspora, human-descended cultures.

In other words, when used with intelligence and insight, such an approach offers a great deal to, if anything, renew and refresh science fiction (not to mention fantasy)....

Again, it isn't necessarily the theory (or at least many of its major tenets) that is at fault so much as the practice as undertaken by too many mediocre minds and dogmatic devotees.... Ummm... remember "Sturgeon's Revelation"....?

 

[Scifi fan]

So long as humanity is around, SF will be around - it's been as old as Shaekespeare's The Tempest, which was the basis for Forbidden Planet.

 

[J Riff]

Not so much dead or dying as dumbed down.
And we can blame Star Trek and Star Wars. !
Star Trek is a soap opera. Star Wars resembles 30s pulp fiction, boys adventure stories.
I investigated writing for Star Trek. It's not much different than writing romances.
Having said that, the original StarTrek used well-established SciFi authors as often as possible. Problem is, after every episode, Kirk and Co. will be warping happily away as the music plays. Not much suspense there.
Everyone reads SciFi now so it's dumbed down, same as horror writing was after everybody started reading King.

 

[Urien]

Dumbed down SF exists, so does the more esoteric SF; the best appeals to both a mass and minority audience.

I don't think there is anything wrong with an art form that reaches out to the mass of the population. If we suppose the opposite that SF should only be for afficionados of the deep intellectual questions, then I fear we are just talking to ourselves in an ineffectual clubhouse that touches not the lives of others.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

The only problem with reaching out to the masses is that, almost inevitably, commercial pressures come into play... which is bad news for literature.

 

[Urien]

Stephen,

Not sure it is bad news for literature. Dickens was popular in his day, as were many other writers who might fall into the "literature" category. Of course the question begged is what is literature, (debate until the stars go out).

The law of large numbers might also come into play; yes a lot of what some might consider dross will be produced, but within that will be gems which owing to the viral nature of modern communications are likely to spread.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Stephen,

Not sure it is bad news for literature. Dickens was popular in his day, as were many other writers who might fall into the "literature" category. Of course the question begged is what is literature, (debate until the stars go out).

Er... Tiny Tim?

 

[thepaladin]

Bottom line, science fiction (and fantasy) has to have at least a modicum of financial success or it will vanish. There would be die-hard writers who kept writing their stories, but they wouldn't get published. most writers need to be commercially successful to some extent or they couldn't continue to write.

Science fiction is popular right now (even though the majority is possibly "dumbed down") but that makes it possible for the "other" more hard science fiction to exist. It's true most consider Star Wars science fiction (actually more of a fantasy) and measure everything by it. But so long as this makes money, the other can still get published.