Ah, the good old days.
Science fiction appears to have two big problems in the marketplace. One is that fantasy is outselling it by about 3:1. The other is that at least half (possibly more, depending on your classification criteria) of what is being sold as sci-fi is actually fantasy with some sci-fi elements – meaning the sci-fi market is actually much smaller than the stats suggest. Of course, I’m only talking about books here. In the world of films and video games, science fiction is doing very well indeed.
To many of us who love the genre, it looks horribly like sci-fi is withering on the vine and it is very hard to see why that might be. For a start, the sci-fi books that are published seem to be pretty good. All the sci-fi writers whose names start with B (Benford, Bova, Brin, Baxter, etc., etc.) are still writing excellent novels, as are several authors with different initials (the end of the alphabet is well represented with Robinson, Reynolds, Simmons, Scalzi, and co.). However, nothing much seems to have happened in the genre since cyberpunk, except that the ideas of the singularity and transhumanity are still being worked through at the leading edge. Much of the current output of the genre involves a major space opera revival and the ever-popular military SF. None of which is a bad thing. I’m just saying, we’re not really seeing a fall-off in quality but we are seeing a lack of new ideas coming through and a major rehashing (sorry, development) of old tropes.
Thinking about this – as I often do, because I write sci-fi and I worry that my market is disappearing – it occurred to me to wonder if the fortunes of science fiction and of science itself are not linked. In fact, it may be possible to make a case that they are in lockstep. Of course science itself is still doing extremely well, there are more scientist at work in the world than there ever have been and it continues to attract gigaheaps of money. What is strikingly different between now and, say, the Fifties – the Golden Age of science and sci-fi – is that science is treated with suspicion and hostility now while back then it was treated with respect and reverence. Looking back at science in the first half of the 20th Century it’s astonishing just how much respect it did get. You might say the whole world was in the grip of scientism - and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
The thing is, to many, science looked like it might just be a viable alternative to religion. It might provide The Answer. And, in the spirit of that age, science fiction might be seen as a collection of parables for the new religion, a vision of Heaven recast as the World of the Future, an exegesis of the works of Einstein and Schroedinger and Freud. The three laws of robotics were moral laws, the Overlords of Clarke’s Childhood’s End were just a bible page thickness short of being benign deities, and Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and Do Androids Dream…? were morality plays.
These days scientism is a minority religion, science is seen as a golden calf to be cast down, and the scientists we once placed on pedestals are fallen idols. We’re disappointed and disillusioned. We didn’t get answers. We didn’t get squat except Windows 7, genetically modified corn, and electronic trading. Our gods failed us and so we turn our back on them and reach out to new saviours for the New Age.
That’s why I think science fiction is in decline. It no longer serves the purpose it once did – to provide the everyday acolyte’s access to the mysteries of scientism. Readers find it hard now to see the message, writers don’t believe with the fervour they once did. We’ve moved beyond the Age of Enlightenment into a more spiritual and superstitious age. And the vague spirituality that now pervades the zeitgeist is revealed to us in new Texts – stories of heroes and magic, sensitive vampires, angels who have lost their way, other realms, better in so many ways than this one.
That’s why Fantasy is so popular, that’s why science fiction is confused and diminished. That’s why I, a devout believer in the True Path that only science can reveal, worry about my market share.
This is among the lines of what William Gibson said, the lines between scifi and reality is increasingly getting blurred. But i still think there’s enough to be written:)
Well, Upcoming4me (a pseudonym if ever I’ve heard one), if I didn’t think there was more – much more! – to be written, I’d have to give it all up and find some other way to sink into genteel poverty.
I – well almost totally – disagree.
Fantasy has been on the rise, I believe, because more people are embracing and/or desperately clinging to make believe as science continues to pull back the curtains on reality. The world has become e so science oriented – so much depends on the everyday functioning of concepts that were once only found in SF works – in order to escape from the increasingly technical world, one must delve further and further into fantasy.
The T-shirt is absolutely accurate these days: reality is for those who can’t handle science fiction.
There is something to be said for the negative influences of the loss of a manned space program in the states and things like the stifling concepts of the singularity and the mundane SF movement, but go back and take a look at Lester del reys’ discussions about boom and bust in the field. We’re in bust time right now and for certain reasons, I believe we’re about to start a new boom.
Love the T-shirt slogan. I must have one!
The boom and bust idea is interesting and I wish I could believe a new boom was coming, but I started thinking about this because someone asked, “What will science fiction be like in a hundred years?” and I thought, “Why should we assume it will still be there at all?” It wasn’t all that long ago that there was no sci-fi. So why did it arise in the first place and is that reason still operating?
While I agree that SF published through traditional means (i.e., paper) is frequently less than innovative, I think the avenues for alternative SF are developing. Self publishing and epublishing are only now being wrestled with, and they require a good deal of work and management to yet yield fruitful SF progress. But! I am confident that those methods will develop, bringing a more anarchic sense to publishing, and with that freedom will come innovation. Views like yours give alternative publishing extra weight because it suggests their value.
You’re right, Sam. We shouldn’t mourn the demise of SF until we’ve seen what a kick in the creative pants self-publishing can give it. The traditional gatekeepers are under a lot of financial pressure right now and they are being forced to look for best-sellers *only* and to discard anything they are not sure about. This obviously will tend to make commercially published work in all genres more safe and formulaic. Self-publishing may light a fire under this whole morbid process.
Hello Graham and friends,
You all make some very good points. The science cycle is actually linked to the engineering cycle, which in turn is linked to the economic cycle. With science fiction relying on science for some (not all) new input, it is not surprising we have a boom and bust in science fiction.
Now here’s the thing. New ideas in science fiction novels mean that publishers have to take a bigger risk than with the more tried and tested worlds / ideas. So when we have a recession, as we do now, we will see less innovative SF coming into the bookstores. Once things start moving economically again, then innovative science fiction will pick up.
I happen to agree with Steve – science fiction is about to rise like a phoenix – only this time, it’s going to be spectacular!
Hi Rosie. The more I hear about this cycle, the less I believe in it. Most people these days are complaining that science is fast accelerating beyond their ability to grasp even the basics and technology is developing (and being adopted) at a rate never before seen – despite the recession in some countries (China’s booming don’t forget, Australia is still growing at 3% of GDP per annum, etc., etc.)
There’s a distinct possibility that new ideas don’t get into sci-fi these days because most publishers are so completely ignorant of science and technology they can’t tell a new idea from an old, worn out one, or a good idea from an idiotic one. Publishers are mostly arts grads, remember, and think magical realism is really neat (when properly deconstructed)
Anyway, it would be nice if you and Steve were right. The thing I find though is that, no matter how pessimistic the world makes you feel, it’s never quite enough…
Great question, Graham, and a fascinating discussion. I agree that people’s tastes could well be cyclical, and the love of sci-fi waxes and wanes. There is probably no single reason. I like your explanation that it is due to the decline of people’s interest in science. Fantasy is in vogue currently largely because of some major movie series that have attracted the mainstream, whereas there have been few good sci fi movies in recent years.
I believe one reason is the lack of a need for escapism into sci fi. As a species we are largely bored with space travel, and we have enough gizmos and gadgets that we are living in the scifi world of 20 yeas ago. Star trek and star wars, and all the spin offs like battle star galactica, firefly, etc., have perhaps burned us out on space opera. Time travel is always a good staple, but never achieved enormous readership. As you said, we’ve gone through cyberpunk and moved onto other sub genres like steam punk and bio punk. We had a flock of movies about robots. Transhumanism and the singularity are one of the few fascinating topics remaining, and few authors seem to have wrapped their heads around such a concept of “superpowers”.
I’d love to see stats, but I’m not sure scifi HAS waned, perhaps more that other genres Are temporarily more popular. There are still plenty of fans out there, I’m sure, so I doubt you’ll be out of a job, Graham.
Graeme, you raise a very interesting notion. I think you’re right that many people feel that they are already living in the future. (I remember feeling shocked when my daughter said that to me when she was a teenager.) But I think that doesn’t bore them, it scares them. If they’re in the future now, ahead is just a blank. They can’t imagine it and the sci-fi writers (offering them Galactic empires, space battles, distopias and singularities) are not helping because they’re either offering the same old promises that were broken 40 years ago (see below), or “the end of history”, which they don’t want to hear about. God knows, things are bad enough as it is.
I think that a lot of people are not so much bored with space travel but feel that the future they expected has somehow been stolen from them. The spaceships, the space colonies, the robots, “the leisure society”, the freedom from disease (hey, they gave you Viagra instead, quit complaining), even the flying cars and jetpacks. And it has been stolen, in a way, and no part of that future more disappointingly than our future in space. (Don’t get me started on how capitalism is only interested in exploration when there’s Inca gold and South Sea spices to be plundered! Go Planetary Resources!) Maybe this collective sulk is adding to sci-fi’s popularity problems.
Hello Graham,
The cycle applies to all industrialised countries, regardless of which part of the cycle they are in and by my previous argument interacts with science fiction. It hasn’t been broken yet and I don’t see why it should stop now.
As for the forthcoming renaissance of science fiction, I’m detecting interest by literary agents that have hitherto ignored interest in the genre. Not sure why this should be the case, but they must be acting on some sort of instinct or knowledge… and agents are busy people who don’t want to waste their time…
Hmmm. Rosie, maybe you’re talking about absolute sales levels, which, of course, would go up and down with the economy, rather than sci-fi’s relative share of the overall book market. Do you have a link to the data?
As for the increased interest from agents, maybe your writing is getting better
Or maybe it’s your query letter that’s improving. Or maybe it’s just that I live in Australia, where sci-fi is almost dead (I could count on the fingers of one hand the agents here who are interested in the genre – despite the healthy, growing economy) and you live somewhere where publishers still appreciate “the literature of ideas”.
Hello Graham,
The population of Australia is roughly a third of the UK, so ideally you would expect about three times as many SF literary agents in the UK as in Australia. I did say ideally… What I did find was that the internet websites listing SF literary agents are out of date, which shouldn’t come as a surprise… but it was the extent to which they actually were behind the curve that got me. As I’m not sure where you’re getting your info about SF agents in Australia, it may actually be worthwhile looking through the big commercial agencies to see if they have specialists for SF. Even then I found one agency website saying that they weren’t taking SF and Fantasy, and yet I’ve been asked to send in a submission package!
Detecting sales of books patterns is difficult at the moment because we are not really sure what impact of e-books is having on the overall market. All I know is that in one local bookshop the sales of SF was up, while the sales overall was down. To me that means SF paperback sales are holding up and increasing their share of the market.
Hope this helps…
Rosie, Australian publishing is such a small industry (far less than a third of the UK’s!) that it’s really quite easy to know who’s who in the agencies and publishing houses after you’ve kicked around the business for a few years. But you’re right, it’s fiendishly hard to get any solid information about trends.
Even in the UK though, where sci-fi has indeed been having something of a revival with the New Space Opera writers (although, maybe that’s over too by now) you must have noticed things like Hachette’s ‘Orbit’ imprint and others like Allen & Unwin moving right out of the sci-fi field and into fantasy. For a long time now, Orbit in Australia has published *only* fantasy and its wider list might be about 5% sci-fi at best. Yet I remember when Orbit was one of the biggest names in sci-fi.
Hi Graham,
I think the general decline of people interested in science fiction is based on a lot of things. For example escapism.
We are more connected then we’ve been ever before: we cannot escape advertising, our smartphone is always on and the speed in which things are developing is increasing. That’s stressing. People want to break out. They don’t want to be reminded of what is now. Instead they like to escape into other, perhaps more easily to comprehend and not so much technical, worlds. In other words: fantasy.
If I compare the works of Peter F. Hamilton with, let’s say, Stan Nicholls in regards to acessability, Stan Nicholls is by far the one I can more easily “tune in”. But I still prefer Hamilton. Because it’s scifi. And I love scifi. I want to be challenged
One other main reason I see everyday is the general decline in people reading books. A lot of younger people simply don’t like reading. And the ones who do don’t read science fiction. Makes me a bit sad.
But instead of being sad, I’m going back to write my own scifi-story. Hopefully someone will publish it some day. If not I’m going to publish it myself somehow. And you know why? Because there will alway be someone interested in a good scifi read.
Have a nice day.
Hi John. Good luck with the story. Interestingly, there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of sci-fi writers at the moment – just sci-fi readers! Maybe it really has all become too hard for most people. I’ve just finished reading Alastair Reynolds’ “Blue Remembered Earth” and it did occur to me while reading it to wonder whether someone who was not already familiar with the concept of augmented reality would find parts of the book a struggle.
I guess we all like to be stretched a bit by what we’re reading but not so much that a book becomes hard work. And perhaps, with sci-fi, the science, technologies and applications people are writing about have moved so far beyond most people’s comfort zones that people do indeed turn to simpler, less challenging genres – even if that’s just sci-fi films and shoot-em-up games (although I have heard people complaining that “Inception” was difficult to make sense of!)
SF is dying because, at its heart, SF was about the future. And it’s increasingly obvious that there isn’t one…
Don’t count on it, David. It may not be a future we want, but it’s definitely coming – for us and our descendants. Even an apocalypse is liable to leave survivors. We’re a very persistent life-form.
At its heart, I’ve always thought sci-fi was about considering the possibilities and giving ourselves a space in which to think about them before it’s too late.
I’m going to take a tangent here, because it hasn’t been mentioned yet. A significant bit of influence on what defines the idea and attitude surrounding the basic idea of science fiction in the marketplace isn’t in the print media. It’s in video media: television. Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen a telescoped form of this same pattern, with the early near-worship of scientists and all things scientific, starting out with the earliest TV offerings. Star Trek, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Lost in Space, the original Battlestar Galactica, were strong in promise, science over the frontier of space, Mankind triumphing over the unknown.
As time went on, the shows got a bit more cynical. And now, we have a Sci Fi Channel — excuse me, “SyFy” Channel. That’s strike one. They got rid of the Sci Fi in SyFy, supposedly because it couldn’t be branded, but I think, like many others, because so long as they called it “Sci Fi” they had to GIVE sci fi. Now that they’re calling it “SyFy”, they can put on anything. The name isn’t a promise, it’s just a brand.
So the shows that actually presented real science fiction were cancelled one by one, even if they had the best ratings, because they were “expensive to make”, to be replaced with cheaper shows that weren’t necessarily science fiction, but fit this new idea of “SyFy”.* Wrestling. Cooking shows, albeit ones with some sciency twists, like making ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Ghost hunting. An endless parade of horror movies based on, and named for, some animal…”Anaconda”, “Barracuda”, “Chupacabra”, “Dinosaurs”…and three that are on the current lineup: “Pirhanaconda”, “Arachnoquake”, and “Mega Python vs. Gatoroid”. (Ok, I’m not sure about “Chupacabra”, but I think I remember it going by.) They’re on the 3rd “Lake Placid” movie, and they’re presenting us with “Jersey Shore Shark Attack”.
I put it to you that this is part of the reason that science fiction is dying — the media is teaching our market that “SyFy” is this kind of stuff, instead of stories of the amazing and the speculative, the incredible and the awe-inspiring, the heroic and the terrible. Instead, we get the disgusting and the cheap, the easy and the lowest common denominator.
Science fiction is supposed to inspire us to imagine. Instead, we’re being taught that imagination is hard…so don’t bother. Do the couch potato alternative to the difficult sort of science fiction, the easy, lazy “syfy” kind.
—Gwen
*SyFy is a trademark of NBC Universal, and is used illustratively for the purposes of criticism under fair use.
Hi Gwen, all tangents are welcome – even when they turn into a rant about the SyFy Channel
I don’t actually watch the SyFy Channel – because, as a sci-fi fan, there isn’t much on it I’d ever want to see – but your point about how TV sci-fi grew more cynical over time is definitely in line with my notion that sci-fi declined with the decline of scientism.
I remember well the huge success of the film “Close Encounters”. I believe it captured the popular feeling that the only way out of the hole we were digging for ourselves was for god-like, peaceful aliens to come from space and save us all from ourselves. That was the 70s. In the mid-90s came “Independence Day” and finally “District 9″ in 2009. (Of course, you could make an alternative first contact timeline that goes the other way – starting with “Forbidden Planet”, say, and ending with “Avatar”.)
[...] like to expand a bit on a comment I made on a reddit discussion about Graham Storrs’ column “Why is Science Fiction Dying?”. I think Storrs’ theory about the decline of scientism affecting science fiction might very [...]
A bigger issue is that people have narrowed their definition of science fiction to hard SF only. It’s crowded out all other SF and the sense of wonder that was the hallmark of SF from the start gets crowded out. SF readers are far more interested in scientific accuracy than a good story (they want both, but a good story that isn’t accurate is scorned).
Right now, fantasy is giving readers what they used to get from science fiction. Science fiction has cut off all but one of its limbs, and thus reduces its own appeal. Social SF is practically dead (except for Kit Reed), humorous SF doesn’t exist any more, SF horror has been replaced by supernatural horror, and alien cultures are limited by what we know to be true.
Hi Chuck. I was waiting for a “What’s the definition of Sci-Fi?” comment to turn up. I expect all future comments to be on this issue now. (Or for everyone to leave the thread, groaning.)
Actually, I believe this is an excellent point and, if true, could single-handedly explain why sci-fi is on its knees. However, I don’t think what you say is true. Firstly, because only a tiny percentage of readers have a clue as to what the many sub-genres are about and have little or no exposure to them in the course of book buying. Secondly, because publishers are definitely not ‘hardening’ their definition of sci-fi. It seems that the exact opposite is happening and they’ll categorise even the most blatant fantasy as sci-fi these days (or anything else for that matter) so that it will hit as many Amazon categories as possible for maximum exposure. Thirdly, I think your own definition of ‘hard sci-fi’ is overly restrictive. Ursula le Guin has written some of the best hard SF I know (however ‘social’ it may also be).
In fact, I can see no reason at all that any SF sub-genre cannot also be hard, because all I understand ‘hard’ to mean in this context is that the ‘world’ of the story is consistent with what science reveals as true about the universe or what might still be true about the universe in those vast grey areas where we don’t know the truth. That’s an awful lot of wriggle room and, anyway, leaves the author free to be as social, funny, or horrific as they please.
That Alastair Reynolds’ novel I mentioned earlier (“Blue Remembered Earth”) is solidly within my notion of hard SF yet is basically a family saga that any Catherine Cookson or Colleen McCulloch could be proud of. And it definitely does not stint when it comes to sensawunda – it’s got that in spades.
Hello Graham and Friends,
I’m sorry to hear that Australian SF is not as healthy as I would have hoped, and am not surprised it is ‘small enough’ so that everyone knows everyone else in the business.
Yes, I have noticed some publishers moving away from SF and more to fantasy – the last open door for Angry Robot for instance was for fantasy only, and high fantasy at that. I have also noticed some big name authors sign deals for TV tie-ins. This is all what I call further down the line from where I am – the agents in this country are looking for science fiction. I don’t know why or what specifically they are looking for. So what do they know that I don’t?
The other thing I think you ought to be aware of is that a friend who’s been in the publishing business far longer than I have thinks that the business is ready for a change in direction and it’s looking for that change. It won’t be a little step change, it’ll be big, but nobody can tell what that’s going to be.
So to put it bluntly, the big authors who we are seeing in the bookstores at the moment are likely to continue selling because they have a following, but there will be some new authors with new themes muscling in. It’s only a matter of time…
New themes would be nice. Without that, I can’t see anything really big happening. I can’t recall the last time that a sci-fi novel took my breath away with the sheer novelty of its idea. (Actually, I can, I just remembered reading “Eon” by Greg Bear.)
Wow! Eon, published in 1985. That’s going back some. Wasn’t William Gibson’s Neuromancer also published about then?
As for the new themes… as I said it’s only a matter of time…
Hello, Graham Storrs et al. I was steered here by Ysabetwordsmith from LiveJournal. Would you like another link from Blogspot?
I’m fascinated by the notion that science fiction has lost its “escapism” appeal thanks to the glut of technology we’re experiencing and the fact that said technology is invading every corner of our lives. Maybe this is why apocalyptic stories seem to be increasingly more popular. Heck, in the last several years there have been books about zombies. Books! No special effects, just words written about the dead rising up in hordes, some kind of Romero prose.
I think you’re right that some new themes in sci-fi would be nice. However, I can see this path running into a barrier in the traditional publishing world. Either you fit a sci-fi mold that’s easy to market, or you’re exploring new themes and marketers don’t want to label you as sci-fi because the label itself has gone stale. It’s a bit of a Catch-22 as sci-fi dies a slow death, I’m afraid. Unless people realize that sci-fi is not just Star Trek and the like, that the idea behind science fiction encompasses so much more. It’s all rock and roll!
That said, I think there’s another reason fantasy is outpacing sci-fi these days: characters. When you take away the fancy futuristic themes, what you have left is characters. Fantasy doesn’t need new themes; the genre will continue to rehash the standards (good versus evil, political or religious strife, etc), but draws success from deep, interesting characters. On the sci-fi side, if I have to read another story about a gritty, brooding, cybernetically-enhanced anti-hero I’m going to throw the goddamned book through the window. The best science fiction gives you characters you can relate to – on some level – so that you can experience the future you couldn’t dream of in the shoes of someone you can understand. If you want to stand out from the pack as a sci-fi author, I personally think that strongly character-based fiction is your best bet.
Hello, Jason. Sadly, for so many people, sci-fi is synonymous with pulp action stories set in space. It’s why writers such as Margaret Atwood are so reluctant to admit what they’re writing is sci-fi – they don’t want to be tarred with that brush. Those of us who love the genre know how far from true the popular perception is, but nothing we do is going to change that (even writing great character-driven books).
It’s also true that so many people believe characterisation is sci-fi’s biggest weakness. It’s probably all part of the same misperception that sci-fi in print is like sci-fi in the movies and games. So much so that, if someone were to write a book about infidelity set in 2150, or about coming of age in an asteroid mine, it would probably have real trouble finding a publisher (or they’d call it ‘literary fiction’ since it’s obviously too character-driven to be real sci-fi).
As for your “gritty, brooding, cybernetically-enhanced anti-hero” he or she is front and centre of every damned genre you come across. You only need to switch out the “cybernetically-enhanced” attribute for “cursed” or “inheritor of great powers” to get fantasy, “emotionally disturbed” or “eccentric” to get crime fiction, “grieving for their lost child” or “in a failing relationship” to get literary fiction, etc., etc.. It drives you mad.
I LOVE this article! It nails some of the most important ideas (and ideals) with straight on honesty and simplicity as well as some much needed perspective! Even if you do use words like “exegesis”, LOL! Thanks, I needed this!
Glad to be of assistance, P.I.. As for the four-syllable words, it’s all very well being simple and honest but I like to think I’m pretentious too.
Ah, a man after my own heart! I’m pretentious enough to know what “exegesis” means, LOL!
Patti
Nope …sorry…thats not it at all the “lockstep” of science fiction and science fact make me dream all that much more…write about whats trendy…take the impending “Zombie apocalypse”…and add creative pleasure’s…the ones that the reader can identify with…the common man that does extrodinary things…i’ve got a good idea…but the “nuts and Bolts” of writing elude me
SF writing is dying because is has no character(s).
I hope I’m not condensing this down so much that people miss my point, but here goes. Good, memorable novels/stories get that way not because of their ideas, but because of their characters. I don’t care what an author’s genre, idea, setting, tone, or plot is, if it doesn’t have at least one memorable, reader-identifiable character for the reader to experience all the list above through, then the novel/story will be forgotten, if it ever gets read. Audiences identify with characters, and TV and movies get this. SF writing (for now) does not. Avengers, Batman, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Homeland, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, even effing Twilight are successful, not b/c of their ideas, but because of at least one, or more, CHARACTERS! SF writing, like the “literature” genre, has gotten too full of itself (too much “hard-SF”), and it’s lost readers because its audience can’t identify with it. I read about twenty SF novels a year, and barely two of them ever have memorable, identifiable characters to enjoy the story through. The rest are quickly forgotten. SF writing isn’t going to make a resurgence until it learns it’s about lead characters that an audience will (ultimately) like and not the ideas behind the story.
Regardless of media, idea, or anything else, successful stories are about the characters involved. SF writing has forgotten this, and is (deservedly so) suffering because of it.
What can I tell you, ChrisCV, except refer back to my reply of 24th May above.
Good sci-fi has good characters *and* good ideas – there is tons of it out there – the two are not incompatible as has been demonstrated over and over again. Good sci-fi writers know this and practice it.
Of course, there is plenty of bad sci-fi with very little characterisation in it, but probably no more than in any other genre (and I include the ‘character driven’ genres like literary fiction). Given this, I can’t see how it explains the decline in sci-fi in particular.
As for all those films and TV shows you mentioned I have watched some and some I have not. It’s arguable that some are only popular because of the special effects – despite the poor characterisation – some are deliberately shallow because they’re essentially children’s shows, most have grossly exaggerated, quite incredible characters, others seem to make use exclusively of stereotypes, some are only watchable at all because they have moderately intelligent, sometimes even witty dialogue.
Well, like I said, I probably wasn’t explaining myself as I would’ve hoped. Also, while I generally agree with you (and your May 24 post), audiences aren’t paying money for SF that they are for other popular genres. Again I would say (and this is not intended to come across as a quick-fix or easy solution) to expand the paying SF genre audience, character connection (emotional and action-oriented) is going to be more helpful *up-front* rather than an idea connection.
Americans loved, at least for time, the astronauts and sense of adventure (even in ignorance) of NASA’s manned space program – an up-front emotional connection. Most of them had barely a clue of the science (ideas) being attempted/explored, and they still don’t. SF works best for a broader audience when the science/idea is worked into the story unobtrusively. The more up front it is, the more likely a non-core SF audience is to be turned off by it.
I’m sure that idea would irritate a lot of SF authors (and scientists), but it’s true. People don’t read romance to figure out how to fall in love, they don’t read crime/mystery to train to be police or detectives, and they won’t read SF with the initial intent to be scientists, engineers, futurists, astronauts, etc. They’re looking for an emotionally moving (as shallow as that might be) and entertaining (action-oriented) experience/escapism.
If that sets in their mind to also learn something or become more interested in science/tech fields then wonderful. But you’ve got to capture their emotional mind before their intellectual mind if you want to expand SF readership. I’m of the view that SF has become too much of a science, and lost too much of the ‘popular’ art to appeal to a wider audience.
Yes, oft times, audiences notice special effects and witty dialogue over well-formed characters, or deep ideas, but at least they take notice. Avengers was likely seen by far more unique viewers than the highest selling SF novel of 2012. SF writers and hard-core SF fans may not like it, but yes, you have to dumb your product down (at least in appearance/marketing) to grow your customer base. One may turn their nose up at that and dismiss it, but they’ll go out of business if they do … sorta like the SF genre these days.
It’s only later that the ideas and themes of what a broad audience has seen begin to take old (if at all). Reading isn’t that much different. The audience needs to be prepped with entertainment before they’re dosed with a science lecture. While that may be happening in SF, it’s clearly not enough, at least not in America.
Also, in a different direction, it would be nice to find SF novels that don’t do double-duty as a door stop. People’s attention spans seem to be getting shorter, or at least have a growing list of activities, yet SF novels especially, seem to be getting longer. Five-hundred plus pages used to be unique, now it’s average.
Maybe publishers prefer to print longer books, or maybe writers don’t know how to shorten their stories, or maybe they don’t have good editors, but I believe something needs to be done. I have various interests and hobbies beyond reading, and in recent years I find myself putting long books back on the bookstore shelf because I have neither the time, money, or inclination to risk it on 500+ pages of something that’s likely to be one in a series anyway. This is also something I tend to check before buying a book for my e-reader and wasting the money there.
Hmmm, as is often the case, the more we argue, the more we seem to be in agreement. Certainly, readers these days have little tolerance for the “info dumps” that used to be so common in sci-fi and I couldn’t agree more that sci-fi novels that drool over a technology (or, far less commonly, a scientific principle) at length are as irritating as thrillers that drool over the make, model and calibre of every weapon that is mentioned, or lit fic that launches into an overblown extended metaphor every time a new object or person is encountered.
Having said that, sci-fi readers do love the science and technology, just as thriller readers like the gun catalogues and lit fic readers like those overstretched metaphors. But, I agree, in all genres, these things should be done subtly and with discretion.
As for the 500+ page slabs of dead tree, there has certainly been a lot of bloat since the Golden Age. The whole of Asimov’s Foundation trilogy would probably fit inside a single volume of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
However, I wonder how much of this is due to the marketing problem posed by putting SF and Fantasy on the same shelves in the book shops. A longish, 300-page novel would be almost invisible among all those supersized Fantasy novels (have you seen the thickness of Perdido Street Station?)