Whither SF?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

And a network that lets people trade messages in text or video across the globe in realtime.

Madness! Madness!

[QuantumIguana]

Science fiction often has monsters, and we know there are no monsters in real life. Or sure there are sharks that might make a meal out of you. And tigers. And wild boars that could open up your innards. And hippos. And crocodiles. But other than that, no monsters, nope, none at all.

Seriously though, there are creatures like parasitic wasps that lay their eggs inside a catepillar. The catepillar just lays there, unable to move as wasps consume it from the inside. That's as horrifying a thought as any monster from science fiction.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

Seriously though, there are creatures like parasitic wasps that lay their eggs inside a catepillar. The catepillar just lays there, unable to move as wasps consume it from the inside. That's as horrifying a thought as any monster from science fiction.

(Face-hugger, anyone?)

Nature has all kinds of frightening aspects, and sheer luck (it seems) keeps us insulated from the worst of its effects. Some of those protective effects--the Van Allen Belts, the ozone layer, Earth's magnetic field, the asteroid-sucking gravitational fields of Saturn and Jupiter--sound on the face like science fiction, when they are, in fact, cold reality.

In that light, science fiction doesn't sound so far-fetched.

But as (I think) Carl Sagan said, "We live in a world dominated by science, in which most of the population knows nothing about science." (The quote is an approximation.) And that predominate attitude seems to be wholly intentional. So why not just remove the word "science" from SF, and stop scaring people off?

SF needs marketers to create a consumer-friendly re-invention of the concept. We already have examples, to wit: Alien, Event Horizon = Horror; Star Wars, Star Trek = Adventure; Hunger Games = Young Adult; etc.

The only thing about SF that's withering is the old label.

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

The only thing about SF that's withering is the old label.

+ Karma

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

+1

And The Learning Channel has become Momzilla, bikerzilla and cakezilla central.



I do have to admit a certain train-wreck facination with the Ancient Aliens show. I keep watching to see if Giorgio A. Tsoukalos' hair will crawl off his head and return to the mothership...

I'm getting Babylon 5 flashbacks from him...

[sabredog]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

I'm getting Babylon 5 flashbacks from him...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

....
We're entering a golden age of availability for the serious student reader of SF&F.

FTFY


.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by elcreative

Whilst I take your point about what's happening with real tech, your comment about "gee-whiz spaceships and aliens..." is just as insulting and ill-informed as Margaret Atwood's comments that "she didn't write SF as there were no spaceships and squids..." Star Wars, B-movies, the pulps from the 1920s-40s and other similar material are only a part of SF... and not the major part...

There is much quality material using SF tropes to explore the human condition and look at alternatives to where we are now not to forget the classic "if this goes on..." theme amongst others...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Most of the claims (or complaints) that SF is dying are from people who have a problem seeing where it's going, or imagining how they can continue to be a part of it. Some of those writers just can't figure out what they're going to continue writing about, so they decide that there's nothing left worth writing.

But SF, like life, evolves. The earliest SF was about modern cities and incredible inventions. Later it featured spacecraft, alien worlds and Earth-analogues. Then we started to explore the health and finite lifespan of our own planet. Today we often see explorations of the limits of human life. And throughout these periods, we've had throwback SF to older, more "romantic" eras.

Those themes haven't dried up; they are still relevant. And in a few years, there will be new themes to explore. What themes? I don't know... we'll find out when they get here. And I'll write about some of them, and maybe come up with a few new ones of my own.

And in the meantime, I've got a half-dozen stories sketched out right now.

Exactly. If anything it's a failure of vision on the part of some writers. There is always SF to write about right up til the bloody end.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by kennyc

FTFY


.

Thanks, but no.
I *meant* student, not reader.

If we're to seriously discuss the fate of SF we should have a deeper understanding of the genre than "merely" reading a couple thousand volumes of it.

That requires an understanding of the history and disciplines of its best practitioners; what works, what doesn't, and why. Where it comes from, how it got here, where it fits in our world.

A serious "student" of the genre ought to be familiar with the field and its works from its pre-Gernsback origins through the pulp era, the Astounding years, to the first books, the New Wave and all that has followed. Likewise familiarity with the core of the field as well as the fringes and the hybrids.

Reading lots of SF for enjoyment and understanding is great unto itself; reading it to appreciate *how* it works is a wee bit different. It is the difference between discussing the best stories of a given decade and discussing what makes great SF stories great. (Or deconstructing the genre as a whole like we did in the other thread.) The avid reader will devour as much of the field as he/she can get, the student will systematically hunt and study as many samples of the breed as possible, trying to understand as much of the field as possible. The student will not only be interested in the story, but also the context it fits into; not just what the author is saying/doing, but the why.

SF is fun entertainment, but for a lot of people it is a dead serious "business"; it is their life's work. They have collectively built up a field that is more than just an accumulation of fun stories.

Which is where the ebook re-publishing of the "lost" (hard-to-find) works of the past comes in. Because of its history, a fair amount of great SF from the early and mid-20th is and will be hitting the PD shortly. Add in the re-publishing of the still-copyrighted backlist and the opportunity to really understand SF will be open to a lot more of us at more reasonable terms.

And the more people *understand* SF, the less we'll see of the whole "too good to be SF" or "transcends the genre" talk. Or "SF is dying".

Fair 'nough?

[taosaur]

I'm going all 'meta' for a second, so bear with me (or not, as you prefer).

We long ago reached a critical mass in terms of both variety and sheer numbers of SF novels that there's no longer any sensible way to speak definitively about "the genre." No one can gain substantial knowledge of the field without also acquiring a unique (to the individual or their subset of fellow-readers) set of biases, insights, and blind spots. I know Post-Modernism isn't popular 'round these parts, but it should be clear as day to anyone discussing books on an internet forum that every reading is an act of translation and interpretation. There's no point discussing what a book is "really about" or what's "really going on" with the genre, because there is no "really about," and no "really going on." In a very real sense, everyone is reading a different genre, but all calling it by the same name (or names, noting the SF/Sci-Fi/SyFy digression).

Which is all to say, even going through the process of forming some narrative about how SF is {dying, thriving, declining, resurging, gamboling widdershins} is absurd. It's a narrative you're imposing on the set of information you have about the genre, in the context in which you came by that information, and as such it is neither true nor false. We live in an increasingly speculative present, and my favorite SF is the stuff that addresses the shifting ground on which we stand, whether far removed in time/space (Anathem, A Fire Upon the Deep) or within my likely lifetime (Ready Player One).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

The subject of the thread is less about understanding SF, and more about understanding SF's place in society. It cannot be denied that there has been a downward shift in public interest in the SF genre, just as there has been a decreasing interest in (or outright hostility towards) science in general.

However, SF has been a part of other genres for most of its lifetime, especially adventure, drama, horror and comedy. With most other genres, the sub-genre is not included with the overriding genre--for instance, City Slickers is considered a comedy, not a western, or a western comedy--and I think we've reached the point where SF can be the unstated subgenre (or, if a sub-genre descriptor is a must, to use more accurate labels to modify the main genre, ie, future drama, tech adventure, space horror, etc).

In that sense, SF is not dying; it's becoming more fully integrated into the sub-genres of modern storytelling, to the extent that in many cases it doesn't need to be highlighted or singled out as an element.

(FYI: It may be clear to some that I'm viewing this as a possible source of re-labeling my own existing and future works.)

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

In that sense, SF is not dying; it's becoming more fully integrated into the sub-genres of modern storytelling, to the extent that in many cases it doesn't need to be highlighted or singled out as an element.

Well said.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

However, SF has been a part of other genres for most of its lifetime, especially adventure, drama, horror and comedy.

I would think those aren't so much genres as themes; while they are used for book labeling & marketing, they don't say anything about the tropes or expected plots. (Bear with me; I'm having a moment.)

SF maybe at some point had expected tropes or plots, and those expectations strongly color the mainstream reactions to it; they think it's "spaceships and squids." To those who read SF, it has several subgenres--we recognize Space Opera, First Contact, Future Dystopia, Time Travel AU, Steampunk, and so on. Each subgenre carries its own set of tropes and expectations... we expect space opera to fit within the adventure or drama theme, which is part of why Hitchhiker's Guide was so innovative--space opera comedy is rare.

Mystery has its own set of sub-genres (about which I know pretty much nothing; I just know that "crime procedural" is only one type).

Romance, ditto. While romance *can* be a theme instead of a genre, there's also a genre with a specific expectation of plot and tropes. SF can have romantic elements but almost never fits in the romance genre--until we get to the new M/M book explosion, which crosses genres all over the place. (There's het romance/erotica in SF too, but it's always been around on the fringes so hasn't had the popularity burst that ebooks brought to M/M books.)

"Comedy" is not a genre. There are no classic comedy character archetypes, no common plot events, no way to say "this is a comedy book" and have the reader know what they'll expect or be surprised by.

(A lot of fanfic involves grabbing the characters & settings from one genre and reinterpreting the story into another genre.)

SF as genre (or rather, collection of subgenres, because they really are too diverse for just one) has expected character types & plot points. SF as <em>theme</em>, wherein the reason it's labeled SF is "this involves some aspect of speculative science which is crucially important to the story," doesn't have those, and could be skipped in the labeling/marketing of the book.

Which is how Atwood gets away with not labeling her books "science fiction;" nothing makes them *not* SF, but they aren't strictly within the Space Opera or Alien Contact subgenres.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

"Comedy" is not a genre. There are no classic comedy character archetypes, no common plot events, no way to say "this is a comedy book" and have the reader know what they'll expect or be surprised by.

Of course there are! The idiot, the bumbler, the straight-man, the distraction, the mistaken identity, the mistaken meaning, the replacement, the mix-up, the out-of-context reaction, and let's not forget the over-the-top physical violence (slapstick)... all of these, and more, are classic comedy tropes. So, yes, comedy can be a "genre."