Is today's SF too pessimistic?

[dadioflex]

People no longer trust science. An upbeat SF tale containing actual science would be met with extreme scepticism. Even in the super-hero/vampire/witches stories the industrialist/scientist (with one obvious exception - and even in Iron Man a WORSE scientist is usually the villain) is usually the bad guy.

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

But honestly... good writing is just good writing to me. Regardless if it's fuzzy-bunny, bleak, or somewhere in between.

I'm in agreement, if it's well written, it's worth a read.

There is definitely a large portion of dark Sci-Fi stories out there, but you can find some good lighter material.

I'm currently focussing on the more darker side as have got a bit hooked on Warhammer 40k. Now thats a galaxy thats gone down the pan!

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

But if you then told them there is increasing evidence that whole nations will be swallowed up by rising ocean waters, a man with a suitcase or a test tube could kill thousands and make vast cities uninhabitable, or that our entire civilization is relying on a cheap energy supply that will run out in the next few decades with cataclysmic consequences, they might not wanna swap.

I think that if you tried to explain to them today's bureaucracy they would think that we are living in hell.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

This.

But honestly... good writing is just good writing to me. Regardless if it's fuzzy-bunny, bleak, or somewhere in between.

Agreed.

I just wish there was a better mix of the two. Sometimes you are in the mood for gritty. Sometimes bunnies and rainbows. The problem that I'm starting to encounter is that I get plenty of dark & gritty but when I want fuzzy bunnies & rainbows...I get dark and gritty. I've wasted a lot of money that way. And learned not to trust a lot of people's recommendations.

But I've learned that a lot of the current crop of sff really isn't for me. I think I'm regulated to the older works (of which there is a slew I haven't read yet) for the time being. And NO GRRM for me. *shudder*

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

It's threads like this that make me feel completely and utterly invisible. After all the years I've spent hanging around here (not to mention other SF authors on this site), no one stopped to mention the optimistic SF works by those in your very midst.

Like so many other things, SF is not "all pessimistic," and many of the more prominent items singled out by the media were chosen by media executives specifically in order to give audiences a thrill. Movie audiences pay big bucks to be scared by monsters and conflict. We're being exposed to mostly pessimistic SF in popular media. That doesn't mean that's all there is.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

But if you then told them there is increasing evidence that whole nations will be swallowed up by rising ocean waters, a man with a suitcase or a test tube could kill thousands and make vast cities uninhabitable, or that our entire civilization is relying on a cheap energy supply that will run out in the next few decades with cataclysmic consequences, they might not wanna swap.

I think they would swap in a heartbeat. They would crawl across broken glass to swap. Today, people can reasonably expect to live to an old age. They can expect that their children will survive to adulthood. They wouldn't expect that in the past. One look in a grocery store in winter would be enough to get them to switch.

Sure, there's the man with a test tube who might kill them, but that man is a whole lot dangerous than smallpox, the black death, diphtheria or any number of epidemics.

There is a cemetary in North Dakota with seven tombstones, for seven children from one family killed in a diphtheria epidemic. We don't reaize how good we have it. What average people have today, kings would have envied. If Henry the VIII had had access to modern medicine, he would have lived a long, healthy life surrounded by his sons.

And if that the energy resources we had were limited, but that we had plenty of other energy sources, such as wind and solar, we just needed to be willing to take advantage of them, they would probably say "What's the problem?"

Sure, the present has its own problems, I'm not saying that there is no place for dystopia, I just think that there should be some balance.

[VaporPunk]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

I think they would swap in a heartbeat. They would crawl across broken glass to swap. Today, people can reasonably expect to live to an old age. They can expect that their children will survive to adulthood. They wouldn't expect that in the past. One look in a grocery store in winter would be enough to get them to switch.

Sure, there's the man with a test tube who might kill them, but that man is a whole lot dangerous than smallpox, the black death, diphtheria or any number of epidemics.

There is a cemetary in North Dakota with seven tombstones, for seven children from one family killed in a diphtheria epidemic. We don't reaize how good we have it. What average people have today, kings would have envied. If Henry the VIII had had access to modern medicine, he would have lived a long, healthy life surrounded by his sons.

And if that the energy resources we had were limited, but that we had plenty of other energy sources, such as wind and solar, we just needed to be willing to take advantage of them, they would probably say "What's the problem?"

Sure, the present has its own problems, I'm not saying that there is no place for dystopia, I just think that there should be some balance.

You are spot on, of course. There is no way in hell I would swap my life for anybody else's 500 years ago, even Henry VIII's. Tho I hear he did quite well with the ladies, at least from his point of view.

I think the point I was more or less driving at, tho it wasn't well said on my part, was basically "What a waste". With all the techy advances we have, we have squandered so much potential to do the right thing. Life has improved vastly for the average person but human nature is just as crappy as ever. And will probably never change so much of the future has the potential to be truly disastrous. I think one of the reasons that much of SF is pessimistic is partly because of this.

And Sil_lis, as bad as bureaucracy can be, it just doesn't scare me as much as the black plague or an manufactured Super Ebola virus.

If anyone could recommend a good SF work that is optimistic and well grounded in sciences (Both Social and Scientific) I would love to give it a try.

SL Jordan, I will dl your free novel and check it out, I just don't know when. Good luck with your writing career, I'm envious.

[DiapDealer]

If anyone could recommend a good SF work that is optimistic and well grounded in sciences (Both Social and Scientific) I would love to give it a try.

Optimistic and happy all the way through? Or basically culminating in an optimistic/happy conclusion? There's scads of the latter IMO.

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by VaporPunk

And Sil_lis, as bad as bureaucracy can be, it just doesn't scare me as much as the black plague or an manufactured Super Ebola virus.

These are trade offs, you trade one virus for another, one war for another, we gain years to out life expectancy that are wasted doing paperwork of some type or another.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

These are trade offs, you trade one virus for another, one war for another, we gain years to out life expectancy that are wasted doing paperwork of some type or another.

But that's a personal decision. There are plenty of people who chose lifestyles and jobs that do not include paperwork, desks or offices.

Life - in our day and time - is what we make it. If you would prefer a life in which you have no paperwork...then make it happen!

[QuantumIguana]

It's not an even trade. Perhaps we worry about diseases that we wouldn't have worried about in the past, but trading something that will probably kill you before you are 5 years old for something that might give you trouble in your old age is a no-brainer. And paperwork is hardly filling up our lives. One of our problems of today is what to do with all the leisure time we have.

[xg4bx]

i still take an optimistic view of 'true' science (as opposed to politically motivated science). i'm always on the lookout for science and astronomy news. people like neil degrasse tyson and michio kaku open up neural pathways i didn't even know i had. i think they take a fundamentally optimistic view of the universe. if only they had fiction writing skills.

i don't see what would be so 'pollyanna' about stories involving string theory or bubble universes. you just need an author who is able to make the science understandable, entertaining and fit in a fictional narrative.

i still enjoy my gritty stories but there's just so much negativity in everything that it's a wonder we're all not wondering what gun oil tastes like. you can't even find comics anymore that aren't filled with angst. if i had superpowers i'd be the happiest guy on earth.

i just think it's poisonous and unhealthy that the only happiness we have in our culture is 10 second kitten videos on youtube, then it's back to doom and gloom. not all 'realism' has to be gritty. i'm a pretty laid back, happy-go-lucky character and often in a good humor. i'm just not identifying with all the angst and weeping/gnashing of teeth anymore.

[DiapDealer]

i'm just not identifying with all the angst and weeping/gnashing of teeth anymore.

I guess I'm just not running into as much of that as everybody else seems to be in my reading. I look for a balance of everything that real life has to offer in my fiction (science- or otherwise): sadness, happiness, humor, horror, atrocity, tenderness redemption, conflict, epiphany, resolution, losing and winning. I want all of that. I don't want any of those elements filtered or artificially augmented. All optimism makes just as awful a story as complete pessimism does. Ups/downs, highs/lows—aren't these things all needed to tell a good story? Don't the good guys have to lose sometimes in order for good-guy/bad-guy to have any meaning at all?

So my question is; where is all this total bleakness and pessimism that everybody is telling me has taken over the genre? Cause I'm just not seeing it. I'm seeing an entire gamut from humor to horror. I'm seeing more variety/choices in the genre than we've ever had at anytime in the past, to tell you the truth.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I guess I'm just not running into as much of that as everybody else seems to be in my reading. I look for a balance of everything that real life has to offer in my fiction (science- or otherwise): sadness, happiness, humor, horror, atrocity, tenderness redemption, conflict, epiphany, resolution, losing and winning. I want all of that. I don't want any of those elements filtered or artificially augmented. All optimism makes just as awful a story as complete pessimism does. Ups/downs, highs/lows—aren't these things all needed to tell a good story? Don't the good guys have to lose sometimes in order for good-guy/bad-guy to have any meaning at all?

So my question is; where is all this total bleakness and pessimism that everybody is telling me has taken over the genre? Cause I'm just not seeing it. I'm seeing an entire gamut from humor to horror. I'm seeing more variety/choices in the genre than we've ever had at anytime in the past, to tell you the truth.

Well, I've gotten pretty adroit in avoiding most of it, but my (very) short list:

GRRM's entire body of work
Malazan Series
The Prince of Thorns
The Demon Cycle -(starting with The Painted/Warded Man)

Spoiler:

well, this maybe a personal thing for me but a main character ends up

Spoiler:

losing her virginity (which the author made a big huge deal of the entire book) by gang rape right at the end of the 1st book so I was DONE.

The Troll Hunter
The First Law Series (Starting with The Blade Itself)
The Gentleman Bastards series

Of course, I've gotten in the habit of not reading the books my friends rec me because they are all gritty and depressing, so my list is shorter than most.

[DiapDealer]

That all looks like Fantasy to me (and there's a lot there I like, too )—not that I worry overly about the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy—but surely you're not saying you've had to stop reading SFF because you can't find anything that satisfies your needs? That small list can't be causing you that much grief compared to what you can enjoy, can it?

I just think we need to be careful about what we're actually saying. Are we saying; "I wish there was more upbeat and positive scifi"? Or are we saying; "I wish gritty, seedy, morally-ambiguous scifi wasn't as popular as it seems to be right now"? I'm OK with the first (although I still believe there's more than enough variety in the genre to satisfy everyone's needs), but the second seems a little petty to me. I mean, the only time you should need to worry about stuff you don't like is if you've run out of stuff that you do like... right? Plus it's never a good idea to ponder too heavily on why something you don't particularly care for seems to be so popular. I try my very best not to give a damn what other people like to read and focus on what I like to read.

I'm not looking to read science-fiction that inspires real scientists to invent the marvelous stuff they're reading about (I'm not sure today's scientists are even science-fiction fans, to tell the truth), but I'm sure if enough people do want to read books like that... someone's going to write them. They might never make the top of the best-seller list, but who cares? Read what you like and don't read what you don't like—and I'm betting you never run out of reading material you enjoy.

Note: the yous in my tl;dr post are not directed toward anyone in particular (except for the first few).