Is today's SF too pessimistic?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Sure, there is lots of room for adventure SF and even (usually neglected) Space Opera...

"Usually neglected"? I think we get more space opera than serious SF, by a long shot. Or hadn't you noticed all those Star Trek/Star Wars books filling the SF coffers? And as I'd say those series are predominantly optimistic, they therefore offer a significant challenge to the question of the OP.

Unless, of course, you consider them to be overly-promoted by their publishers, and not representative of the variety of the genre... which pretty much zeroes out the OP in the first place.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

"Usually neglected"? I think we get more space opera than serious SF, by a long shot. Or hadn't you noticed all those Star Trek/Star Wars books filling the SF coffers? And as I'd say those series are predominantly optimistic, they therefore offer a significant challenge to the question of the OP.

Unless, of course, you consider them to be overly-promoted by their publishers, and not representative of the variety of the genre... which pretty much zeroes out the OP in the first place.

Star Wars doesn't have enough Science to be SF. It aspires to be Space Opera but it is too muddled. To be kind, I'd say Space Fantasy would be a good fit given all the handwaving and mysticism.
Star Trek is mostly adventure SF and, at best, morality plays. The one time they had a chance to go Space Opera--the Dominion War--they downplayed the action and went for character drama. Great TV. Worth watching. Not Space Opera. (The rebooted movie shows promise, though. I'm waiting to see where the trilogy goes.)

Not every rocket ship adventure is Space Opera.
And not every attempt at space opera gets there.

Space Opera is large scale; LENSMEN, DAHAK TRILOGY, LEGION OF SPACE, etc.
Worlds Live, worlds die, entire civilizations at risk; larger than life heroes doing larger than life things. And it is done for *fun*.

That is rare, especially done well. Entire decades have gone by without a single memorable Space Opera. (The 60's, for one.)

Adventure SF is smaller scale. Usually more serious.
And more common.
Lots of fun, too.
But very little of it lives up to Smith, Williamson, or Hamilton. Recently, the best practitioner (on occasion) is David Weber. (The first two Dahak Novels, yes; the third, no. Too pedestrian.)

YMMV, of course.

Edit: As I see it (which is all I can bring up now, without digging for some quotes from Aldiss and others) is that there is a big difference between bad, sloppy adventure SF and good Space Opera.
SF is about ideas and even fun adventure SF should still explore a serious idea at its core. (Harry Harrison's ETHICAL ENGINEER, aka Deathworld 2, comes to mind.)
Good Space Opera should have ideas by the dozen but they needn't be deeply explored, they just need to be coherent.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Space Opera is large scale; LENSMEN, DAHAK TRILOGY, LEGION OF SPACE, etc.
Worlds Live, worlds die, entire civilizations at risk; larger than life heroes doing larger than life things. And it is done for *fun*.

Sorry, but to my mind, you just described Star Trek and Star Wars to a "T".

[fjtorres]

Different mileage.
Or I'm not clear enough.
That quote is a necessary but not sufficient condition; otherwise most sword and scorcery novels would be space opera. (Conan is definitely a larger than life Barbarian doing larger than life things. Ditto Fafhrd and the Gray mouser.) Even within SF, most action heroes are at least somewhat larger than life.

Let me try again:
SF is the genre. Literature of ideas. (No problem there, right?)
Adventure SF is a type of SF where the narrative focuses on action adventure ("somebody having a bad day").
Space Opera is a sub-genre of SF where everything is amped to eleven but it stays coherent.

Differences?
A good adventure SF novel can have the hero making his way across an alien planet, fighting off monstruous creatures, slavers, pirates, and religious fanatics. (Farmer's GREEN ODYSSEY, Harrison's Deathworld 2.)
A space opera novel will have the hero systematically making his way through an entire galaxy of slavers, drug dealers, and pirate fleets. Each challenge will be overcome in a different fashion, each challenge will be an order of magnitude harder. What the hero does, few can even aspire to do. And he'll do it in style. (LENSMEN)

Scale makes a difference. (STAR TREK doesn't usually go big. SFX get too expensive. )
Intent makes a difference; Space Opera is for fun, but it still follows the rules of SF. (Which Star Wars doesn't.)

To my mind, a lot of what people think of as Space Opera (including Wilson Tucker back in 1941 when he coined the term) is actually just bad adventure SF rather than the real thing, which requires *discipline* and consistency.

But as you suggested, real Space Opera is a hard fit in this topic since pessimistic space opera is practically an oxymoron. On the other hand, pessimistic (even nihilistic) adventure SF is common.

So, to get back on track, I'll offer up this:
The ultimate pessimist believes each problem solution only spawns bigger problems and at the end, the sun goes nova.
The ultimate optimist believes all problems have a satisfactory, happy solution and, if you wait long enough, somebody else will solve it for you.

Everybody else fits somewhere between those two extremes.

[jgaiser]

I posted this over on Goodreads but I personally like this definition of Space Opera (from Wikipedia)

Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by jgaiser

I posted this over on Goodreads but I personally like this definition of Space Opera (from Wikipedia)

Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."

As Wikipedia notes, everyone's definition seems to be different. And unless we go by the original "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn", our definitions are wrong. :P In my day, it was basically synonymous with "space western" - spaceships instead of horses, aliens instead of Indians, and almost inevitably a war setting...

[flipreads]

Genre labels are guidelines, not borders one person's space opera is another reader's space fantasy.

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by flipreads

Genre labels are guidelines, not borders one person's space opera is another reader's space fantasy.

Wisdom.

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

As Wikipedia notes, everyone's definition seems to be different. And unless we go by the original "hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn", our definitions are wrong. :P In my day, it was basically synonymous with "space western" - spaceships instead of horses, aliens instead of Indians, and almost inevitably a war setting...

Again, at the risk of going a bit ...

"Space western" makes me think of Firefly. This makes me sad... Even after all these years, I cannot forgive the cancellation of this show.

Would it be fair to say that Firefly was pessimistic? Scattered outer planets, mostly poor and remote. Central planets, wealthier but under strict government control. A small crew of misfits, standing up to the Alliance and evading Reavers, just trying to make a living...

And then Serenity was a bit more Space Opera?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

"Space western" makes me think of Firefly. This makes me sad... Even after all these years, I cannot forgive the cancellation of this show.

Firefly is evidence that Tucker had it all wrong, precisely because it is *exacty* a space western wthout being space opera. It is a character-based piece, after all.
Firefly was great because the narrative was built around the characters and the characters were recognizably human and with one exception far from super-human. Or even particularly noble or heroic. (By any definition of "hero".)

And a pretty good political commentary on the perils of statism and entrenched bureaucracy; the central worlds ended up with a tyranny by inattention and political correctness.

Whedon summarized it best in the one line: "We don't want to tell them what to think, just *how* to think."

One would hope that whoever made the decision to cancel FIREFLY just as the show had found itself was properly chastised after UNIVERSAL bought the rights and made SERENITY.

I'm pretty sure there are an infinity of parallel unverses where FIREFLY is still running to robust ratings.
(Of course, it also means those universes didn't get Dr Horrible, Castle, or Dollhouse.)

And speaking of pesimistic SF, you can hardly beat Dollhouse for its unflinching exploration of humans' ability to exploit each other and themselves. Dark themes darkly explored to great effect.

So, of course, it got cancelled.
The same as SGU, Space Above and Beyond, Caprica, and pretty much every example of intelligent SF on TV.

Which should be no surprise, of course since SF is not a mass market genre by any stretch.

Yup, we live in dark times without question.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

"Space western" makes me think of Firefly. This makes me sad... Even after all these years, I cannot forgive the cancellation of this show.

Insofar as "western" is usually synonymous with "living on the untamed frontier," Firefly was undoubtedly a Space Western. (Other shows have been set on the "untamed frontier," but Firefly intentionally went the obvious route with "American West" trappings. I guess Whedon's original idea was that the western trappings would make even the most obtuse allegories easy for Fox executives to understand. Lesson learned: Never underestimate the obtuseness of a TV executive.)

Living on the frontier isn't necessarily considered a pessimistic theme; the main characters are working to avoid the life they don't want to live (under the Alliance, in Firefly's case). Labeling it optimistic or pessimistic pretty much depends on their success in doing so. I'd say Firefly was optimistic, considering they always managed to keep on flying.

[BeccaPrice]

I love the Lensman series - as long as I don't think about it too much. Great sweeping adventure in space, whole civilizations (well, Civilization itself, to use a Smith-ism) at risk... but the massive "one part is evil, all is evil" aspects, where entire worlds (probably full of innocent bystanders) are destroyed is, if you think about it too much, pretty horrible. And yet, I still re-read them periodically, just for the fun of it.

[DiapDealer]

I'd say Firefly's optimism or pessimism was completely irrelevant to those that it resonated so strongly with... of which I'm one.

[DiapDealer]

So what do you think the keywords were in this thread that drew the attention of the jaki spam-bot?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Never underestimate the obtuseness of a spam-bot.

[Penforhire]

I remain amazed that Whedon got away with an actual train robbery. I found that universe to be quite dark yet the episodes ended up with nothing but optimism. At least right up to a big wooden stake in Serenity, which struck me as a big F-U to us browncoats...