Whither SF?

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

It does suggest that what we think of as SF may be in store for a sea-change, away from neuron-snapping quantum physics exposition and toward simply accepting and using the tech at hand.

I think this is one reason why Bester's stories don't seem outdated. Asimov and Niven - among others - were also pretty good at presenting us with the tech - the positronic brain or general products hulls - and basically leaving them at that.

It seems like so much of the sf I used to read couldn't avoid explaining too much, and anachronistically at that: "The starship's vortilizer - similar to the carburetor on a mid-20th century automobile...". And star trek (especially TNG and beyond) was notorious for this.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

It seems like so much of the sf I used to read couldn't avoid explaining too much, and anachronistically at that: "The starship's vortilizer - similar to the carburetor on a mid-20th century automobile...". And star trek (especially TNG and beyond) was notorious for this.

Many of us Trek fans are comforted by that techno-babble.

But it's always secondary to the characters and story theme.

Even so, I really get ticked off at the way some of the creators don't think the tech deserves respect:

"A tricorder is a device that...well...it moves the plot forward, that's what it does."
-- Brannon Braga
Star Trek writer/producer

(or, as I call him, 'The man who killed Star Trek.')

[BeccaPrice]

Now reading this thread has me (re)listening to the Skylark books by E. E. Smith. Not very well read, I don't think, the narration style almost sounds 1940s-ish, but enjoyable anyway. And they don't have the political baggage (for me) that the Lensman books have.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ApK

Funny you should mention the new Battlestar Galactica as an example.
BG is about as hard sci-fi as it gets in my book. "Hard sci-fi" doesn't equate to "bogged down in technical minutia," nor does it need to be purely extrapolative, based only on real-world physics.

The new BG was great, with some of the best writing in television, but, except for the decided effort to push it toward recognizable military fiction with the use of bullet-firing weapons, mid-twentieth-century-like naval gear, BG DID get a lot of it story and drama from hard sci-fi details:
The idea of humanity originating on another planet, the Frankenstein notion of our technology causing our doom, the nature of artificial intelligence, and the difference between 'human' and 'human-like manufactured beings', the space assaults on space-based techno-centers.
Heck, they even made an effective dramatic moments out of "jumping way past the red-line."

ApK

BSG was to often just another drama television episode. And the ending made the rest of the series retroactively worse. I felt totally cheated by the ending and wanted the time I had spent watching the other episodes back.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by tompe

BSG was to often just another drama television episode. And the ending made the rest of the series retroactively worse. I felt totally cheated by the ending and wanted the time I had spent watching the other episodes back.

I pretty much bought the ending. With some of the directions they went in the series, I really couldn't imagine an ending that would satisfy, yet I thought they pulled it off better than I expected.
Still not sure how the Hendrix tune fit in....

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by ApK

I pretty much bought the ending. With some of the directions they went in the series, I really couldn't imagine an ending that would satisfy, yet I thought they pulled it off better than I expected.
Still not sure how the Hendrix tune fit in....

I thought the ending was a nice nod to the original series.
Larson made it clear from the begining that the intent was for the 12 Colonies to be a human pre-historic civilization. (Never mind the mess that was Galactica 80).
The rest, about the cylons and the plan...?
(shrug)

It was a fun ride.
That alone justifies its existence.

(It also redeemed the original Galactica for me; I found it a most infuriating series. Each episode opened with a great, promising premise...that they proceeded to run into the ground with generic 70's Hollywood writing. )

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Now reading this thread has me (re)listening to the Skylark books by E. E. Smith. Not very well read, I don't think, the narration style almost sounds 1940s-ish, but enjoyable anyway. And they don't have the political baggage (for me) that the Lensman books have.

Political baggage? The "militaristic sf" stuff or something else?

I always found Skylark to be a bit more atavistic than Lensmen. (Which it was, being two decades older.) Although I really enjoyed the latter renditions of Blackie DuQuesne.
Maybe its that I found Clarissa more interesting than Dottie.

[BeccaPrice]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Political baggage? The "militaristic sf" stuff or something else?

I always found Skylark to be a bit more atavistic than Lensmen. (Which it was, being two decades older.) Although I really enjoyed the latter renditions of Blackie DuQuesne.
Maybe its that I found Clarissa more interesting than Dottie.

Oh, Clarissa is much more interesting than Dotty. Dottie and the other one (I forget her name) are still portrayed as being pretty competent in their own right.

The political baggage for me in the Lensman books is the unthinking genocide - whole planets and civilizations are destroyed with out thinking of the poor grunts who aren't involved in the zwilnik trade, but just happened to be living on one of those planets. And things are just done with no oversight, because they "need doing" and Our Side is of course the Good Guys. It's been years since I last read them (and so I'm probably due for a re-read) but there were just a bunch of things that stuck in my craw. The casual genocide is probably foremost though.

I've got 'em all (except Triplanetary) from Audible, so I've got some fun listening to do for the next however long it takes me to get sick of the narrator's THRILLING voice.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by BeccaPrice

Oh, Clarissa is much more interesting than Dotty. Dottie and the other one (I forget her name) are still portrayed as being pretty competent in their own right.

Competent, yes. Especially in the latter volumes.
But both Dot and Peg are a wee bit too... passive? awed?
Clarissa would probably grab'em by the collar and scream at them.

Might be time to revisit LENSMEN...

[hidari]

Babylon 5 and the new Battle Star were both well done, brilliant and had that wonderful story arc that was missing in the 60's, 70's an 80's...

[hidari]

I love Literature.....but people like Pynchon make people run away from good writers like ... Doctorow, Dostoyesvski...etc...
some people try to hard to write for Lit Critics and want to get a Nobel prize....

Originally Posted by kennyc

Don't want to go too far off-base, but I particularly dislike books that are (apparently) intentionally "hard" -- I put Neil Stephenson's books (other than some of his first) into this category. As well as many that were mentioned in the article like Thomas Pynchon but the article then goes on to say we may be seeing a revival of "readable" novels. I certainly hope so. And not there are not any coming out...E.L. Doctorow, John Irving...

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ApK

I pretty much bought the ending. With some of the directions they went in the series, I really couldn't imagine an ending that would satisfy, yet I thought they pulled it off better than I expected.
Still not sure how the Hendrix tune fit in....

I would have been happy if it had ended with the explosion on the spaceship and everybody had died...

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by ApK

I pretty much bought the ending. With some of the directions they went in the series, I really couldn't imagine an ending that would satisfy, yet I thought they pulled it off better than I expected.
Still not sure how the Hendrix tune fit in....

It was Bob Dylan

[ApK]

Originally Posted by kennyc

It was Bob Dylan

Yeah, but the BSG version seemed more electro-psychedelic

[nathanm]

I've been an avid scifi reader since the age of 14, that was a helluva long time ago. I'd go through a couple of books every week with regular visits to the library and Foyles in Tottenham Court Road.
The rapid advances in science, and the convergences between say nanotechlonogy, genetics, biotechnology, neurosciences quantum computing and communications, offer spectacular new fields of scifi literature.
As as result, as writers of science fiction, we must be even more disciplined and meticulous in our attention to technical detail so as not the stretch credibiltiy beyond the current ken of tech savvy followers - which most, if not all, scifi readers are.
I took Kim Stanley Robinson as my role model because his Mars Trilogy books are a testament to a real professional approach to all the sciences that impact upon the story and characters in the three books.
I term what I write 'nanopunk' and I hope that new genres of science fiction emerge to explore and expand the current work being undertaken in labs and universities across the globe - along with the emerging political, climate and economici trends.
What with the turbulence in the climate, politics and economies of the world, it's no coincidence that dystopian scifi is flavour of the month at the moment.