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Has modern Science Fiction lost its way?
Glyph
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Registered User regular
Seems like a moot complaint but I rarely see any positive or genuinely thought-provoking science fiction stories anymore.
I'm of course talking about mainstream media more than anything but has anyone else noticed this?
It's always some sort of dystopian setting with humanity never being able to transcend its base nature, regardless of any strides made in society or technology.
Say what you want about Star Trek, but at least it TRIED to be something different by making exploration and progress the main focus instead of just shooting lasers and fighting space battles. But then everyone praises series like DS9 for shitting all over that and moving the genre away from the wonderment of its roots and back into space opera territory. And they always say the same thing, that it's "gritty" and not roses and rainbows, because apparently hoping for a better future is too strange for fiction.
Well that's fine and I love sci-fantasy/military sci-fi as much as the next guy but where does that leave the actual exploration of new phenomena and opening the audience to different possibilities of existence? What happens to considering new physics and reinterpreting how we understand the universe?
I thought that was the whole point, before sci-fi became just another change of venue for stories that could just as easily be told in a contemporary context.
I'm of course talking about mainstream media more than anything but has anyone else noticed this?
It's always some sort of dystopian setting with humanity never being able to transcend its base nature, regardless of any strides made in society or technology.
Say what you want about Star Trek, but at least it TRIED to be something different by making exploration and progress the main focus instead of just shooting lasers and fighting space battles. But then everyone praises series like DS9 for shitting all over that and moving the genre away from the wonderment of its roots and back into space opera territory. And they always say the same thing, that it's "gritty" and not roses and rainbows, because apparently hoping for a better future is too strange for fiction.
Well that's fine and I love sci-fantasy/military sci-fi as much as the next guy but where does that leave the actual exploration of new phenomena and opening the audience to different possibilities of existence? What happens to considering new physics and reinterpreting how we understand the universe?
I thought that was the whole point, before sci-fi became just another change of venue for stories that could just as easily be told in a contemporary context.
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i think its definitelys till out there but maybe a little less naive
I love sci-fi as a genre, but what I really mean when I say that is I love space and future stuff. I don't give a crap about the science.
Perhaps you could give some examples of stuff you like, stuff you don't like, and reasons why.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/03/22/neal_stephenson_s_hieroglyph_and_the_dystopian_sci_fi_rut_.html
Now we're kind of gloomy. There are so many problems without solutions anywhere in sight. Our technology basically is the future that earlier generations envisioned, but it hasn't actually made life as awesome as Star Trek made it look. Space exploration keeps trying to die. A lot of our scientific advances are telling us about things that we can't do, or that things we'd like to do will be really hard, rather than opening up brave new vistas.
Sci-Fi has always been a mirror of society. And it's not just sci-fi. All of our speculative fiction nowadays has a kind of gloomy tone to it. Tons of apocalypse stories and doomsday scenarios in all genres. If you want utopian visions you either have to go back to a time when people believed that was possible, or stick to modern transhumanist stuff.
Edit: And as for thought-provoking... movies have never really done that terribly well. If anything I'd say that there are more thought-provoking sci-fi movies nowadays than there used to be. They're more somber in tone than 60's and 70's sci-fi were, but stuff like District 9, Primer, and Moon still provoke some thought. Most of the thought-provoking stuff is just lower budget. And if you get out of the theaters, there's a ton of modern written-word sci-fi that's asking big, interesting questions.
What? Whoever said that doesn't know much about space exploration. It's still like 95% hardship. You just have to shit in a hose now instead of shitting into a ziplock bag.
The problem with space and our fiction is that we, as a species, have turned our eyes away from space. People stopped giving a shit after we got to the moon and that attitude infests our fiction. Who wants to publish a novel about space exploration when NASA's budget is getting cut on a monthly basis?
I don't think it's just that. It's also that we now have math that shows why there isn't a populated planet next door. Why there isn't a habitable solar system we can hope to reach in the next 200 years. The part of Star Trek that is missing from our Sci-Fi now is actually the Fantastical, unrealistic part. We're pretty sure there isn't a wide host of intergalactic species that look like us and communicate with us just out there, waiting for us to join the federation and go on adventures. We're not even sure there's multi-celled anything anywhere out there (though plenty of people think it's pretty likely).
Space was Narnia when Star Trek was made. It was mostly unknown and just about anything could be out there, all kinds of magic and candy and rainbows. That doesn't fit well into our suspension of disbelief anymore, so we turn our eyes back to here. Here on this planet are where the speculative, futuristic questions we wonder about are. Now it's not, "Are there cool aliens that we can share technology with in the sky?" It's "Can we overcome our propensity for destroying ourselves wholesale long enough to think about feeding and employing everyone without enslaving almost everyone."
Anyway, scifi as a concept is wider thana American tv. There are plenty of good new scifi authors out there that are easily accessible if one cares do do a cursory search.
Sub to Asimov on your Kindle if you want to sample contemporary works, not the Syfy channel
Some of my favorite episodes of TNG were ones that explored unusual anomalies or non-humanoid life forms. Like when the Traveler took the Enterprise crew beyond their galaxy and into an extra-dimensional plane that utilized the power of thought processes.
I always felt that Trek was at its strongest when it focused more on those themes rather than war or politics.
I know people have mentioned Banks and the Culture books, which is why I specifically tried to refer to more mainstream outlets like film and television, where I think some of most thought-provoking sci-fi is least accessible to the vast majority of the general public.
It would've been be nice for instance to have seen I, Robot on the big-screen as Asimov had envisioned it. Rather than something that couldn't have been more removed from the original work.
Big-budget movies aren't going to give you thought-provoking and insightful. At best you're going to get stuff like The Matrix and Inception where you can, if you try, tack some philosophical import onto what is, fundamentally, an action movie. The reasons why the biggest budgets and highest ticket sales are coupled to the lowest philosophical import are legion, but that is the way it is and always has been. At least some of the lower-budget stuff that does actually grapple with bigger questions is getting some public visibility. The commercial success of things like District 9 at least seems to indicate that there's a chance we'll see more movies that don't just use sci-fi as set dressing for action. And like I said above, I don't think there's ever been a period where big-budget sci-fi was any more thought-provoking than it is now. It was more optimistic, maybe, but just as vapid.
Neal Stephenson was going to be my counterpoint to the OP's presumption.
Still is, I suppose, unrelated to this new project. Diamond Age has a dystopian setting of sorts (though this is partially a matter of narrative perspective), but it's ultimately about new technology fundamentally transforming society for the better.
Anathem is just a really thought provoking read, but I can't offer much of a synopsis without dreaded thpoilerth. Seriously though, read it. That shit would right your alley, OP.
Er, did I misread the article? I thought it said that Stephenson was backing a project to generate a short-story collection of optimistic near-future sci-fi rather than the glut of dystopian/apocalypse stuff we've had.
Snow Crash is pretty solidly dystopian. At least as much as any cyber-punk is, anyway. I don't think I'd call any of his other stuff dystopian. But he's the one pushing back against dystopianism, per the article, isn't he?
I disagree, there's no way that the public's imagination regarding space would be impacted by political ongoings. People were UPSET about the NASA budget cuts, as in they were upset about space exploration getting axed. Exploring space and understanding the universe is something people want.
People like you and I are upset about NASA budget cuts. Most people that aren't within the geek-set who I've talked to about the topic are either happy that NASA got their budget cut ("Because there are starving children! And cancer!") or just don't care one way or another. Back in the days right after the end of the cold war, space program budget cuts were a bigger deal..nowadays it's just something that happens. I'd challenge you to find me 5 people who aren't as geeky as the inhabitants of this board and who both know that the Webb telescope project exists and that recent budget cuts keep threatening its future, much less how it's different from the Hubble or why it's important that it not get cut. Hell, find me 5 non-geeky people who can name 3 technologies that came directly out of the space program. And I'll even throw in Tang as a freebie.
Most people don't care about space. Most people don't know about space. There are public poll studies showing that the majority of American adults can't tell you how many planets are in the solar system (even discounting the business with Pluto), much less what their names are or what order they come in. There was a time when people cared deeply about space, because we were trying to beat those dirty Commies to the moon and because our leaders told us that Space Was Important, but that time is over.
People don't care about science in general, which is another attitude informing our fiction. It's hard to paint a future of hyper-intellectual utopianism when we have people fighting to get evolution taken out of schools and legitimate, international debate over whether or not we maybe should do something about the environment.
Totally, if we got a Sci Fi show that was hopefully and cheery that had DS9's character development and arch range it'd be amazing. I think we could do with some hope in Sci Fi, though. But I think we can blame Alien, Star Wars, and the world in general for how dour space adventure has become.
Basically what I want to see is Parks and Recreation In Space.
Grim Dark is also kind of the thing in hollywood even for non-sci-fi. Have you seen the new Spiderman trailer? Though I love them, the Nolan Batman movies? It to will pass.
You read it correctly, or at least as well as I did. I meant that I thought he was a good example of "counter-dystopian" science fiction even before reading that he was consciously taking a stand against it.
I think this is very much a case of rose tinted glasses here, plus dystopian scifi isn't at all about shooting lasers and space battles but more about how current trends are going to effect people living in the future. It's a lot easier to write bleaker scifi (as you've got a starting point in the real world) and it's a lot easier to write something good as it's going to be generally a lot more character focused. "Distopian", though really it's just not optimisitic, scifi is generally going to be about the people and the situation rather than exploratory stuff is going to be largely focused on the thing being explored. Also the latter is going to be a lot more likely to be episodic rather than lean towards a longer overarching plot, since if the theme is exploration you're probably going to be looking for new stuff.
Did Star trek ever actually do this in a way that wasn't just magic? Outside of Q's and energy beings we're now talking post/transhumanism and the story is going to largely about the value of a person and the idea that the sort of person we'd recognise as a modern human today is now horribly disadvantaged. Not something that generally lends itself to optimism and high adventure.
But then - does Mass Effect count? There's also Defying Gravity and Outcasts as two recent TV series that were perhaps closer to what you're after.
What? Do you get your science fiction from tv?
This sounds interesting. I'll have to check it out once I finish reading the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons. I'm nearing the end of Fall of Hyperion and it's been a great science-fiction story thus far.
I loved the Hugo and Nebula winning Beggars in Spain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain
I also love Second Person, Present Tense, which you can read for free here: http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0702/Secondperson.shtml and author's notes are here: http://www.darylgregory.com/stories/SecondPersonPresentTense.aspx
I think that Sci-Fi is still going strong. I think video games have given Sci-Fi, especially military Sci-Fi and cosmic horror a big boost. Halo, Gears of War, and Mass Effect are all Science Fiction games that tell pretty kick-ass stories.
Shitty Tumblr:lighthouse1138.tumblr.com
The thing about Snow Crash is that its really only 2-3 more notches up on the Dystopia dial from where we are RIGHT NOW. Diamond Age is sort of the same way. They could both be much more depressing books if it weren't for the way they were written. The first has a kind of breezy, tongue in cheek sort of fun that keeps you from dwelling on how rather depressing some parts of the world Stephenson has built for it. The second is kind of depressing sometimes, but shares a bit of that quality, though a bit muted and more subtle.
I guess I don't understand the OP complaint. SF should be interesting and well written. If you think modern SF is bad, then fair enough. If you think it isn't happy or optimistic enough then I dunno.
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Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Interesting stories need conflict. How many opportunities for conflict are there in a utopia?
I think this is one reason people love DS9 so much. It explored those who would cross any line to protect a utopia and those who held to their principles to fight for it.
It is depressing to begin with, but narrative arc of Diamond Age is primarily about fixing the societal ills that the Feed exacerbated. There is a definite optimistic message there vis a vis new technology helping mankind move forward.
Anathem is more about... fuck, I don't even know, awesome shit? The function of fear as a limiting factor for discovery, and the cyclical relationship between the two? Quantum physics, geometry, and the axioms that bind everything together?
It also introduced the idea that the Federation wasn't as utopian as previously suggested. The not-entirely-happy Federation relationship with the apparently peaceful and cool Bajorans, the introduction of hard currency and the idea that everyone isn't living in a happy, communist, post-scarcity world...
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Then people realized that civilized societies suck too and got burned that way and now we're overreacting with admirals giving idiotic evil orders that must be defied at all times by underpromoted star fleet captains
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.