Quote:
Originally Posted by 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.)
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Agreed. Particularly about the hostility towards science which may be slightly rubbing off onto pure SF (e.g. SCIENCE Fiction not fantasy pseudo-sf etc.)