How stigmatized was sci fi in the 80s and 90s?

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CmdrShepN7

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I heard people who loved dragons and swords were shoved into lockers in the 80s and 90s. Was this true? Were the only people who were willing to get into stuff like DnD, fantasy, and sci fi people who spent most of their time in basements?

Why was 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s American society focused on accumulating wealth and worshiping athletes?

Were there any people in those type periods who enjoyed geek stuff but were athletic and intelligent who ended up becoming military officers?
 
It wasn't in the UK. Or at least not near me. I won't say that being into DnD made anyone a high school hero but we were only as despised and demeaned as much as any other group and we did our share back.
We spent a fair amount of our time in basements or garages. If you are planning an EPIC Warhammer battle you need a lot of space...
I don't know much about American Culture except what I know of from film and TV etc. but high school stateside seems to be far more dominated by the Jock culture. In the UK most sport is and was done outside the school system.
 
Science Fiction and Fantasy in the 1970's and 80 was viewed with a certain level of disdain and derision by many older and younger people. .
 
I imagine it depended on the context. I never felt the stigma, and never got bullied, whether I read SFF or comics or what have you. But then, I've never much cared what other people think of my tastes. I suppose people more sensitive to peer pressure, or in schools where jock-dominated social hierarchy was more prevalent, may have had different experiences.

But I also think this notion of a stigma is played up now by corporate-appropriated (or created?) "fan culture" to create a consumer identity they can exploit. ( "You are special because you're a true fan of the films/TV series/games/etc we peddle, and as proof of how much of a true fan you are, you -- OK, maybe not you-you, you're probably too young, but people like you -- faced adversity back in the bad old days, which, uh, since we're trying to sell you this stuff based on nostalgia, were also the good old days -- it gets complicated, doesn't it? Oof -- and stayed true to your worship of our corporate product. Now buy this limited edition collectible already. You don't want to lose your true fan status, do you?" )
 
In England in the 1990s, there was no real internet, so there was very little of what we'd call "geek culture". There was a real sense of information being scarce: things like Warhammer catalogues were passed around my friends so that everyone could make a single postal order instead of buying online. The idea of someone becoming a celebrity for basically being a nerd, like Felicia Day, was alien: the concept of a woman being interested in such stuff - at least to us at a boys' school - would just have been inconceivable.

Interestingly, roleplaying, wargaming and heavy metal were closer then than they would be now. No doubt this dates back to prog rock songs about wizards and things like Michael Moorcock being linked to Hawkwind. In the 90s, Games Workshop had its own record label, most famously featuring a surprisingly heavy band called Bolt Thrower.

Schools probably varied a lot, but I never felt that I might be beaten up for being a nerd. To an extent, it was just a thing you did at a certain age (12-15 would have been normal). Older kids who had discovered girls and beer would often try to sell us their old Warhammer figures and the like. As CupofJoe says, we were ridiculed, but then everyone ridiculed everyone else almost constantly.

And I agree with the previous post that the fan-identity thing is played up for laughs/nostalgia/selling these days.
 
Personally I never noticed even a Jock culture in 1980's school in Edinburgh. That was just something we saw in US movies/TV. Thus school wasn't as polarised - just kids being mean to each other.

But I suspect everyone had different experiences. Thrash west coast US metal was big around me (mid 80's) , but not connected at all to roleplaying or wargamming (did not know anyone at all into that).
 
My observation is that being "nerdy" wasn't seen cool until into the new millennium. By that time the rise of the internet meant that being "techie" came with a real value proposition that people could relate to. Additionally, the development of internet culture was driven by nerd culture, which meant that mainstream people coming to the net were inevitably exposed to it. Along with the rise of Harry Potter, the LOTR films, and perhaps the Matrix, interests that were previously regarded as niche became much more mainstream.
 
Can't speak to American culture but playing D&D, reading fantasy and science fiction, and similar pursuits while not mainstream, were not enough to get someone bullied. At least not at my school. Sure girls wouldn't want to know you, but then I had other problems that made that point moot. :)
 
CmdrShepN7 said:
I heard people who loved dragons and swords were shoved into lockers in the 80s and 90s. Was this true? Were the only people who were willing to get into stuff like DnD, fantasy, and sci fi people who spent most of their time in basements?

Why was 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s American society focused on accumulating wealth and worshiping athletes?

Were there any people in those type periods who enjoyed geek stuff but were athletic and intelligent who ended up becoming military officers?
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No, it wasn't true. Most of your post supposes a society that didn't exist.

"Nerds" are not people that play DnD. Nerds are people (men) with barriers to "normal" socialization that substitute obsessive in-group social behavior for more common activities. Everyone else just didn't want to spend the time it takes to "build" a character and wage a campaign when they could be doing things that are interactive and in the real world. Role playing isn't a bad thing, but it is a replacement for having a role in the world.

I say that as a kid who read comic books, SF and bought toys during high school and college in the '80s. Those personal interests in no way impacted dating, acting, sports activities, etc that filled the rest of my time. That's why I was never viewed as a nerd. (And 'yes', plenty of people like me ended up as military officers.)

Was SFF in the basement in the '80s? Star Trek Next Generation, Star Wars, E.T., Batman, Superman, Close Encounters, Dragonslayer, Aliens, Terminator, Bladerunner, Legend, Wrath of Khan. No. The '80s and late '70s was a boom time for SF, comic and fantasy in popular culture.


What people seem to misunderstand about the '80s is that the end of OPEC embargoes, large wars and many government business regulations made it a boom time after a long period of economic decline. The '60s counter-culture did not create a sustainable alternative economy, and most of those people settled down to normal economic activities - including consumerism.

What was revolutionary in the '80s was the rise of "alternative" pop culture. This appeared to start with music and expanded from there. Nowadays, it is easy to convince ourselves that the internet created the huge number of subcultures we have today, but really it started in the '80s because of the technology of that time - re-recordable cassette tapes, cable television, VCRs, personal Walkman stereos and the toll free phone numbers of mail order businesses. (That alternative culture was a gateway for acceptance of LGBTQ people in the mainstream.)


The frat boys of today bullying each other online about Avengers movies aren't "nerds". They are social people arguing about something as thoroughly mainstream as football, not "being nerds".

Today we have so many subcultures co-existing that actual nerds don't really stand out against the Goths, queer folk, etc that no one blinks an eye at anymore. That process started back then.
 
I don't remember anything like that. In fact, people outside of fandom and groups that overlapped— like the SCA, the larger Renaissance festivals, etc.— seemed mostly unaware and/or confused about just what science fiction and fantasy were about. I can remember telling people who asked what I did for a living that I wrote fantasy novels and seeing, sometimes, a shocked look come over their faces, at which point I realized they thought I was writing erotica (yes, that kind of fantasy) so I hastily explained, "You know: swords and heroes and quests." Which only some of the time brought a vague look of understanding, and the rest of the time blank looks.
 
Toby Frost said:
In England in the 1990s, there was no real internet, so there was very little of what we'd call "geek culture". There was a real sense of information being scarce: things like Warhammer catalogues were passed around my friends so that everyone could make a single postal order instead of buying online.
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Just had a wonderful flashback of getting together with a few friends to get to the minimum spend for Games Workshop. And then the unboxing [as it would now be called] when the figures/games arrived.
 
Vince W said:
Can't speak to American culture but playing D&D
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D&D was mainly demonized by the hysterical Christian families during the 1970s and 1980s. There still some of that in other parts of the country, but, with shows like Critical Role and Stranger Things, more and more people are embracing the game.
 
Wyrmlord said:
D&D was mainly demonized by the hysterical Christian families during the 1970s and 1980s. There still some of that in other parts of the country, but, with shows like Critical Role and Stranger Things, more and more people are embracing the game.
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I remember seeing some of it on tv and it only made me laugh at the ridiculousness of it.
 
Wyrmlord said:
D&D was mainly demonized by the hysterical Christian families during the 1970s and 1980s. There still some of that in other parts of the country, but, with shows like Critical Role and Stranger Things, more and more people are embracing the game.
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It may have been demonized by the fundamentalists, but it was also a bit of a joke to many people who simply viewed it as silly.
 
It all depends on perspective.

For some films like Planet of the Apes, 2001 A space Odyssey, and Star Wars heralded in a wider cultural awareness of SF.

As for nerd/geek culture, I was pretty oblivious to it. There again I was a child whose parents moved twice during my upbringing, and I was as a result always pretty much an outsider, so being an SF&F fan was only a small part of any problems I faced.
 
Stephen Palmer said:
I used to write for Games Workshop in the early days. My first published work was for White Dwarf. Tbh though, I can't remember a thing about it, except I ripped Gene Wolfe off to create something called The Vivimancer. :/
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White Dwarf was like treasure in the early 1980s. The hobby store in town used to get a couple of copies per month, and once they had gone that was it.

Different world pre-internet, pre CGI, not just for sf/fantasy, but for all culture. I think, however, that the op has set up a bit of a straw man: his premise is imaginary, not historical.
 
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