Science Fiction is Obsolete?

POSTED BY: cljohnston108
UPDATED: Thursday, August 2, 2007 22:56
VIEWED: 7663
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HUGHFF

Saturday, July 28, 2007 7:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere:
Quote:
Originally posted by hughff:
Quote:
Originally posted by ImNotHere: (snipped a bit)
What? How can you say that, when SF authors have given us the communications satellite, the "star wars" Strategic Defense Initiative, the water bed and ready-mixed donuts

Because:
1) None of those things are important

Well, SciFi may not be dead, but irony is definitely looking a bit shakey... Mind you don't drop donut crumbs on your waterbed.

I can't make up your mind whether you're being obtuse to wind me up or you really are so stupid you don't get it.

Obviously, the last two are trivial and therefore ironic but everyone quotes the first two (and the atomic bomb spy scare at Astounding) as evidence of sf's predictive significance. Of course, as I pointed out above, the comms satellite wasn't sf but speculation based on known science - no fiction here; the SDI is also unimportant unless you were one of the weapons scientists/companies sticking your snout into the public trough and gorging yourself or one of the poor saps (read, US taxpayers) who funded said porcine orgy. I'm neither.

I explain in my post why none of those things are important in science fiction, but if you like sf because it gives you a banal glimpse of future tech and on rare but famous occassions is accurate, knock yourself out. In fact, that's my problem with Bruno whatsisface. He doesn't understand that science fiction is fiction, not science.

www.cpfc.org - my life
www.nbhs.school.nz - my work

IMNOTHERE

Saturday, July 28, 2007 12:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by hughff:

I can't make up your mind whether you're being obtuse to wind me up or you really are so stupid you don't get it.

(Interesting solipsist Freudian slip there).

That's good, because I can't make up my mind whether you're being obtuse to wind me up or just don't get it, either.

Hint: I WAS AGREEING WITH YOU! Please tell me you didn't take:

Quote:

I mean, OK, there's all sorts of stuff about electronics, quantum mechanics, flying Pan Am to the moon in 1999 and such that they got wrong, but who cares in the face of such glorious successes and an ample supply of reasonably priced deep-fried cakes!

...seriously!?

HUGHFF

Sunday, July 29, 2007 10:27 AM

I see. You're not very good at writing ironically and you get offended and mock people when they stumble across your incompetence. All is forgiven.

www.cpfc.org - my life
www.nbhs.school.nz - my work

IMNOTHERE

Sunday, July 29, 2007 12:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by hughff:
I see. You're not very good at writing ironically and you get offended and mock people when they stumble across your incompetence. All is forgiven.

Thank you for showing me the error of my ways.

In future I will restrict my efforts at humour to simple fart gags and humourous captions for cat photographs - safe in the knowledge that good people such as yourself will at least recognise them as attempts at humour, however inept and unfunny, and will not waste your valuable time attempting to refute them as if they were serious.

CLJOHNSTON108

Wednesday, August 1, 2007 12:54 PM

Here's another article on the subject...

The Death of Science Fiction
http://home.tiac.net/~cri/2001/sfdeath.html

...and John C. Wright's rebuttal...

johncwright: Reports of the death of SF are greatly exaggerated
http://johncwright.livejournal.com/107629.html

Michael L. Wentz's take...

Phantom Reflections: Does Literary SF Have A Self-Confidence Problem?
http://michaellwentz.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/does-literary-s.html

IMNOTHERE

Thursday, August 2, 2007 10:56 PM

Well, here's another theory for the perception that SF is dead - blame the Baby Boomers!

A disproportionatly large group of people had their formative years between 1950-1970 and witnessed the space race, the cold war, the birth of electronics and other big post-WWII scientific strides. They go to the library and what do they find? 50+ years worth of classic SF - HG Wells, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Stapleton, Doc Smith, that has been sitting on the shelves waiting for its audience to learn to read. Demand grows, classic books get re-printed so it seems as if they are new - and most of it is 20th century so its not really "alien" in the sense that old non-SF literature is (even HG Wells is pretty accessible).

Now, however the cupboard is starting to look bare, and some of the contents (though still pefectly good) passed their come-true-by date in 1984, 2001 or whatever. Has the supply really tailed off, or is it just that we're having to wait for new supplies, rather than living off the stockpile?

The other thing I've noticed is that the USA hasn't really followed through from that era - when I was a kid, at least half of the SF I read was from the USA. Even in the 80s the appeal of the big SF bookshops in London was that they had imports of all the new US stuff. In the last 20 years or so, the vast majority of SF I've bought seems to be from the UK or Australia.

Outside the US we now have the likes of Stephen Baxter, Richard Morgan, Neil Asher, Peter F. Hamilton, Alistair Reynolds, Michael Marshall Smith (England), Iain M Banks, Ken McLeod (Scotland), Greg Egan (Australia) and others writing SF (although Micheal Marshall seems to have gone straight) and that's only the ones I happen to rate - there are more where they came from. I'm also missing out "borderline SF" cases like Terry Pratchett (fantasy but with the occasional well-placed scientific joke & he's written SF novels in the past) and Philip Pullman ("His Dark Materials" is almost SF).

Anybody from the USA (with >3x the population of UK and Aus combined) care to match that list?

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