Comments on: The End of Science Fiction

By: JJ

JJ — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 08:37:20 +0000

The problem might be exactly the opposite: too many new things being created around us, and limited brainpower to understand them. A well educated person might have a chance to understand all scientific progress maybe a couple of hundred years ago. Let’s say that at the beginning of the century you needed a PhD. But right now it’s impossible to follow progress in your own field, much less put it in a narratively attractive way and project it to the future. It’s just too much. And if you can, very few people will understand it. So why bother?

By: The Fix | “The End of Science Fiction”: A View of the Debate (Part One)

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 16:31:22 +0000

[...] is often made magisterially, as if no sane person could take issue with it. Indeed, some, like David Louis Edelman, Bret Funk, and Bruno Maddox, go so far as to say that the astonishing rate of technological change [...]

By: The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: July 3, 2008

The Great Geek Manual » Geek Media Round-Up: July 3, 2008 — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 20:05:15 +0000

[...] Will there ever be an end to science fiction? Will human science ever advance to the point where we’re only left with things that are impossible to write about? [...]

By: The future is a given? « Weedy

The future is a given? « Weedy — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 05:48:19 +0000

[...] The future is a given? David Louis Edelman [...]

By: M.T.

M.T. — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:42:00 +0000

Er, my bad. I mean ’similar to this’, not ‘like this’. Though the people in the anime still use paper as their primary method of storing documents. *nervous laugh* I wonder if that counts?

By: M.T.

M.T. — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:38:09 +0000

I seem to be posting way too many comments, but I just realized that no-one has mentioned the Mundane SF movement. Basically to be counted as â€˜Mundane SFâ€™ a story must hew closely to known science, avoid magic technology (like warp drives), and have a somewhat sociological bent in that the story revolves around the human condition rather than the technology.

So, basically, it is Hard SF on steroids, but devoid of the usual nuts and bolts.

There’s a somewhat dated anime like this called Legend of Galactic Heroes, based on Japanese novels of the same name. It’s about two powers in the Milky Way at war with eachother: the Free Planets Alliance and the Galactic Empire.

It feels more like watching some historical movie, despite the fact that it does have FTL. Localization would be expensive, though, since it has a huge voice cast and the characters talk. A lot. Not to mention that it has over 100+ episodes.

Hearing classical music while watching huge fleets battle it out in space, FTW. (Though admittedly it was the historical-like aspect that drew me more than the battles.)

Well… */end shameless and ultimately pointless plug*

By: tqft

tqft — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 05:01:54 +0000

Science-fiction in science fiction

Star Trek Deep Space Nine – Benjamin Sisko’s 1930’s alter ego [name???] was a sci-fi writer.

I believe I read about 20 years ago that sci-fi was dead because all the ideas that could be used had been used and all that was left were character stories around them and they would not sell to geeks who liked tech – I think it was a newspaper article and no I don’t have it anymore.

The “Golden Age” came and went and all those writers would cry if they knew how much money could be made today. It doesn’t matter if it is a niche market if the niche is vastly bigger than the whole industry was when there were fewer writers.

So what if a good run of sci-fi books takes 10 or 20 years off – has happened before and will happen again.

PS: when Hollywood works out how to depict a supernova explosion properly (can’t be far away) watch for some mind blowing (and ear splitting – it is Hollywood after all) movies. You think they are going to give up that gravy train?

By: Stacy

Stacy — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:08:00 +0000

Discover Magazine’s current issue (August 2007) has a commentary on the SFWA meeting in NY which basically says “science fiction is dead because fiction is dead, but, aw, I still like it.” It uses Michael Crichton as an example, which even the author admits isn’t a good one, of the degradation of science fiction, and rambles on about hard and soft sci-fi without once mentioning any of the contemporary authors putting out good stuff in either catagory. See http://discovermagazine.com/2007/aug/blinded-by-science to opin for yourself.

By: Lou Anders

Lou Anders — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:11:03 +0000

You left out Jack Ryan. This isn’t a coincidence. Mainstream Hollywood film-making is about the broadest possible definition of the everyman, creating an idealized version of “America of the imagination”. Quite a few screen writing courses teach you to pick John and Jack for your protagonist – they are the deliberately-chosen norm. Note how Joss Whedon deliberately goes against this in his tv shows (”Malcolm Reynolds,” etc…) Just as the Wackowski’s got away from a future of wasps in their depiction of Zion. But these are bold exceptions. A controversial but interesting book is “An Empire of Their Own” by Neal Gabler that argues that a Jewish immigrant population created an idealized version of America as portrayed in Hollywood that America then bought into as a myth of itself. A similar phenomena is documented by Mad Magazine’s Ari Kaplan in his “How Jews Created the Comic Book Industry.” There is a reason Bruce Wayne is old North Eastern money and Superman is from Kansas. (Bob Kane was born Robert Kahn; both Seigel and Shuster were the sons of Jewish immigrants.) Hopefully we are finally getting away from this. Certainly prose is (always) ahead of the game. Always been interesting to me that prose writing seems to go in the opposite direction with names, striving for the most original and interesting name for its protagonists, while Hollywood goes for the most generic. Though you can google the recent YouTube conversation between Ian McDonald and Richard Morgan discussing the US publishers’ decision to change Morgan’s “Black Man” to “Thirteen” and whether US readers are inherently conservative.

By: A.R.Yngve

A.R.Yngve — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 09:09:56 +0000

“Can you spot the pattern?”

Yeah — they’re all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.