Should popular SciFi universes be limited to narrow time periods?

[Gotham Central]

One of the things that I've noticed about several popular science fiction universes is the fact that, though they may span centuries of time, the technology and societies in which they exist barely change.

For instance, the Star Wars' extended universe spans 25,000 years. However the need of the creators to make the stories feel relatable to a modern audience, and incorporate elements that make them "feel like Star Wars" (i.e. including things like droids, light sabers, Jedi/Sith etc) means that they have been limited in how much change ever actually gets included in the stories. The result is that the stories and time periods all sort of blend together and the Expanded Universe starts to feel stagnant.

Star Trek started to have this problem as well. The production staff felt so compelled to include familiar tech elements in Enterprise, that the show really did not feel all that different than what came before it. Conversely, if you watch Voyager, the 29th century Starfleet, with the exception of time travel, does not seem all that different technologically and culturally from that of the 24th century.

Doctor Who is probably the worst at this. The Doctor will travel MILLIONS of years in the future, yet human culture and society...and in fact technology barely changes.

The two major comic book universes are slightly better at this, but even they feel a bit limited (especially when compared to what turns up in novels).

Some of this is due to budgetary constraints. Other times its due to the need to keep everything familiar to the audience. However, I also think that some of it is due to limited thinking on the part of creators or an unwillingness to stretch beyond the familiar. Then of course there is the limits of what we as 21st century humans could ever really conceive about the future. I tend to think that there is something of a barrier beyond which it becomes futile to even speculate what the future might look like. Our ability to imagine a viable future probably only extends a few centuries ahead. Beyond that and the possibilities start to stretch beyond our ability to fully appreciate how different the future could look. I feel like writers ought to limit themselves to a fairly small window near the 21st century for speculating about the future. I highly doubt that the 29th century will look and feel much like the 21st...let alone the 853rd century. Projecting distant futures that look and feel like our own time just makes the world feel stagnant...which is not usually intentional.

 

[Christopher]

Star Trek started to have this problem as well. The production staff felt so compelled to include familiar tech elements in Enterprise, that the show really did not feel all that different than what came before it.

Actually I think ENT did a pretty good job of feeling like an earlier era. Sure, maybe the same devices existed, but that's hardly the most important aspect. The show did a good job, at least in the early episodes, of conveying a sense of newness and wonder, of characters who were experiencing something new every step of the way and having to learn as they went, as opposed to the later series' characters who took it all in stride. Even if the familiar tech was mostly there, we at least got a sense of its newness.

And in terms of production design it looked very much like a different era. People talk about ENT's technology looking "more advanced" than TOS's, but I don't agree. Yes, the real-life production technology used to create the sets and effects was more advanced, but that should be taken merely as an aspect of interpretation, like the difference between two actors playing the same character. The tech (including the costumes) in ENT looked more familiar, closer to modern technology, more functional and utilitarian, while the tech in TOS looked more exotic, more minimalist and streamlined.

Some of this is due to budgetary constraints. Other times its due to the need to keep everything familiar to the audience. However, I also think that some of it is due to limited thinking on the part of creators or an unwillingness to stretch beyond the familiar.

If you're limiting the discussion to the narrow sliver of science fiction that exists in film and TV, then yes, the level of imagination there tends to be fairly limited. But most science fiction is in books and stories, and there's a great deal of it these days that deals with hyper-advanced, post-Singularity and posthuman civilizations with technology almost indistinguishable from magic. Check out some Greg Egan or Iain M. Banks or Vernor Vinge.

Then of course there is the limits of what we as 21st century humans could ever really conceive about the future. I tend to think that there is something of a barrier beyond which it becomes futile to even speculate what the future might look like. Our ability to imagine a viable future probably only extends a few centuries ahead. Beyond that and the possibilities start to stretch beyond our ability to fully appreciate how different the future could look. I feel like writers ought to limit themselves to a fairly small window near the 21st century for speculating about the future. I highly doubt that the 29th century will look and feel much like the 21st...let alone the 853rd century. Projecting distant futures that look and feel like our own time just makes the world feel stagnant...which is not usually intentional.

But that's missing the point of science fiction. The goal is not to make accurate predictions of what the future will actually be like. That's a foolish goal because it's impossible to achieve. The goal is to imagine possible futures, to speculate about directions the future might take, and to examine what those speculations can tell audiences today about human nature, about their own society, about the choices they have to make when it comes to creating the actual future. Getting people to think about the possibilities the future offers, and the dangers it may hold, can help them make better choices as they move forward in life and confront whatever real technological and social changes arise. Whether the stories exactly match the reality isn't important; what's important is getting practice at thinking about future possibilities and the risks and opportunities of progress.

And, of course, what's most important is telling an entertaining and satisfying story. Accurate predictions aren't essential for that. Of course what you create in fiction isn't going to match what happens in reality; it is fiction, after all. The goal is simply to make it feel believable and engaging for the duration of the story. It's not about prediction, it's about speculation, about exploring possible futures. Futures, plural. There's only going to be one real future (or if the Many Worlds Interpretation is right, only one we get to perceive), but there can be countless different science-fiction futures, each worthwhile in its own way for its entertainment value and for the philosophical or ethical or personal insights it may inspire in its readers. None of those many fictional futures will match the real one, and at most only one ever could. So that can't be the goal of writing science fiction.

So to say that writers "should" be "limited" in what their imaginations are allowed to do is just ridiculous. It's misunderstanding the whole purpose of science fiction and the whole nature of creativity on a profound level. If a writer has a story to tell, if its world and ideas and characters and message are fresh and intriguing or at least fun and well-executed, then absolutely, hell yes, that writer should be free to tell that story even if it has steampunk technology a million years in the future. If that's what the story requires, then all that's necessary is to set up the rules of that particular fictional universe in a way that justifies it. We SF writers aren't competing to predict the future. There's no betting pool for when First Contact or the Singularity happens (not that I know of, anyway). We're just exploring the endless range of possible futures that our imaginations can devise. If we should get close to what actually turns out to happen, that's a bonus and a thrill (I for one am delighted at this week's asteroid-mining announcement because the timing fits nicely into the historical background for Only Superhuman, my upcoming novel). But it's not the sole purpose of the exercise.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Christopher, I respect your opinion, and often agree with it.

But in thisa case...

Enterprise, for me, was indeed too derivitive of "old trek", especially tech wise. The phasers should have been more like the "laser soldier" from the First Wave of GI Joe in the 80's...having backpack-enegerzied laser, that is actually heavy. . tricorders having a similar bulkiness. Absolutely NO transporters. They have the budget to show shuttles (or if not so much, have repeat shuttle launching scenes, like Filmations repeat scenes in Flash Gordon TV show).

And its a good point about 29th century tech...make it look DIFFERENT than what we know. The only thing that i saw in the Temporal Cold War that seeme dto me "innovative" was that they found the body of being with more than 2 kinds of species in them! (For Trek, that's innovative).


And a good point too about Star Wars...thousands of years, and no one changes the technology at all?

At leats without explanation? Battlestar Galactica had a creative reason -- the Cylons were exploiting the computer networking, so "downgrading" actually helped preserve the civilization. Star Wars -- it could be that the drawn ot wars were dragging on funds that stopped innovation. But i would only buy that between 2 generations -- not thousands of years. And don't get me started on Stargate...

Human history has many examples...the Islamic world was invaded by the Mongols, and that transformed them from an academically dynamic civilization to the one many ridicule today. Koreans had invented the printing press before Europeans, but due to infighting and bad leadership a couple generations later, lost all the innovation they acheieved. The collapse of the Roman Empire and the desire for power among the few educated created the Dark ages. While those things lasted hundreds of years, the tide eventually turned.



Now, i don't expect a super detailed fanboy-worthy explanation...just a throwaway vague line that makes a bit of sense. Or even a "we don't know why it happened, but it did" type of thing...like how Zombie movies & shows handle it. The Walking Dead doesn't explain WHY there are zombies, justthat it happened suddenly. that's good enough for a good story to be told.

Lastly, i think Gotham Central was referring more to "popular" sci-fi, i.e. TV & movies...while you cited several literary examples, we really don't see this in the visual media, and in today's technological age, that just shows the UNcreativity that seems to be out there.

 

[MacLeod]

Well in the defense of DW

It's a show which involves time travel, so things can change.
The Doctor has said Humans have changed, changed back, changed and so over the eons ("Utopia")

But going outside of the universe, it's almost 50 years old. Peoples idea of what the future will look like will changes over the time. We no doubt have a different ideas of what it will be like to people in the 1960'

 

[Christopher]

Enterprise, for me, was indeed too derivitive of "old trek", especially tech wise. The phasers should have been more like the "laser soldier" from the First Wave of GI Joe in the 80's...having backpack-enegerzied laser, that is actually heavy. . tricorders having a similar bulkiness. Absolutely NO transporters.

Sure, in a perfect world, it could've been done differently, but the creators of a show have to answer to the executives who employ them, and sometimes they have to make do within the limits that are imposed on them. For instance, the ENT design team wanted NX-01 to look more like the Daedalus class, but the producers insisted on something similar to the Akira. And we know the network (or the studio?) was uneasy with the whole idea of a prequel series and made demands like including the Temporal Cold War so that some aspect of it would be moving forward rather than backward. They may have similarly insisted on the inclusion of familiar tech like the transporter.

And this is exactly why I object so vigorously to the notion that storytellers should be "limited" as some kind of general rule. There can be a lot of creativity inspired by working within limits, but too many limits imposed from without are not a good thing.

What matters is what they were able to pull off within the limits imposed on them, and I'm coming to believe they did a fairly good job as far as they could. The shape of the ship may be too Akira, but the details really feel like a forerunner to the Constitution class, and like an intermediate stage between our tech and TOS tech.

Now, had it been up to me, and if I'd been granted the freedom by the execs, I would've done without the transporter too. But super-bulky weapons and tricorders? I don't think so. Look how quickly technology is progressing today, how much it's become miniaturized. Look how much smaller and more powerful a present-day smart phone is than a 1980s cellular phone. A ray gun requiring a backpack, or a bulky multifunction sensor device, would make sense for something set 20 years in the future, maybe, but not 150. Every work of fiction is a product of its era; it's more important to project forward from our time than to try to backtrack from how the 1960s imagined the future.


As for Doctor Who, it's kind of missing the point to expect any realism or logic from it. It's a fantasy about a wizard with a magic box. The implausibility is part of its charm.

And a good point too about Star Wars...thousands of years, and no one changes the technology at all?

I've said before on this BBS, it's a myth that steady technological progress is a universal law. Over the grand sweep of human history, let alone prehistory, the norm has been stability and very gradual progress, with periods of rapid innovation only coming along with the right combination of need, resources, mindset, and social structure converging at the same time and place. We only think progress is inevitable because we happen to occupy one of those brief periods of history that's dominated by change rather than stability, and it's a common mistake to assume one's local circumstances are a universal norm, at least if one has never experienced otherwise.

Human history has many examples...the Islamic world was invaded by the Mongols, and that transformed them from an academically dynamic civilization to the one many ridicule today.

That's hardly true. Mongol rule actually promoted the greatest flourishing of Islamic science in history. To quote Bulliett & Crossley, The Earth and its Peoples: A Global History (Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 384:

Thanks partly to the wide-ranging cultural exchange fostered by the Mongols, the Il-khans and Timurids presided over a brilliant period in Islamic civilization.

The Mongols may have been ruthless to those who resisted them, but benevolent to those who offered fealty, and at the height of the Mongol Empire, a traveller could traverse the entire Silk Road in guaranteed safety. Which did a lot to promote the advance of civilization, science, and technology. Mongol rulers also patronized a number of great artists and scientists and helped promote advances in astronomy and mathematics -- including Nasir al-Din's astronomical calculations which inspired Copernicus's epiphany about the heliocentric solar system. (Al-Din also formulated a theory of evolution, though it didn't catch on.) Which is just one example of the ways in which the flourishing of Islamic science after Mongol conquest helped inspire the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution in Europe.

At most, Islamic science went into decline a few centuries later as the society became more conservative and ossified, as societies are wont to do over time. But some would argue that it never went into decline; it just didn't grow past a certain level, and was eventually eclipsed by the rapid progress in the West. As I said, the norm through most of history is stability and slow progress, with rapid progress happening occasionally when the right circumstances come together. So one civilization can be chugging along just fine at a pace that works well for it, but then another can enter a burst of progress and simpy pull ahead of it, with any perception of the first civilization's "decline" being relative. The Islamic world didn't fall backward, it simply got outraced and outcompeted, leading to its economic decline -- and centuries of invasion, domination, and meddling by the West created instabilities and societal breakdowns that led to the problems the region has today.

Lastly, i think Gotham Central was referring more to "popular" sci-fi, i.e. TV & movies...while you cited several literary examples, we really don't see this in the visual media, and in today's technological age, that just shows the UNcreativity that seems to be out there.

Then if people are only talking about mass-media SF, they should say so. It bugs me when people talk about film and TV science fiction as simply "science fiction," because it's really just a narrow and not very representative fraction of the science fiction that's out there. It's like talking about an island and calling it the world.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Whether we're talking about books or films or TV shows is very important.

Books are highly flexible in their content so there's no sense in them being limited.

Films are rigid in what'e expected of them and limited to a mere two hours in most cases. There's no much complexity you can shoehorn into that format, especially if it's a summer popcorn movie that needs X% of screentime showing things explode, which sci fi movies do tend to be.

TV shows can be expansive and flexible but unless HBO or Showtime start doing sci fi, that potential is rarely realized, and TV ends up being stuck in a box almost as badly as movies.

No fiction should be limited to anything but what the author/director wants. But realistically, some formats tend to be more limited than others, because of economic realities.

 

[Gotham Central]

Christopher...for the record, my first sentence states "popular science fiction universes." and then go one to discuss Film, TV and comic good universes.

I'm fully aware that novels can be very good at out of the box thinking when it comes to the future.

 

[Christopher]

Given that we are talking about mass/popular entertainment, it's important to keep in mind what the audience is actually interested in seeing in a multigenerational narrative. The core science fiction audience who's interested in science and the like may want to see how a civilization's knowledge and technology changes over the generations, but most of the TV/film/gaming audience is probably more interested in the social and political aspects -- the origin of traditions and cultural icons, the history of families and nations, sagas spanning the generations. The Star Trek audience was probably more interested in seeing the history behind the founding of the Federation than in the technicalities behind the invention of the transporter. The Star Wars audience is more interested in learning about the Old Republic and the origins of the Jedi heritage than in the saga of how hyperdrive was developed. Some fans, tech-oriented fans, are very interested in those subjects, but they're not the primary target audience for a TV or movie series.

So when such franchises span generations, the technology is often kept fairly standard, or with only superficial variations, because it's only there to serve as a backdrop for more human-oriented stories, stories that could be overshadowed if there were too great a change in the technology level. (How can you tell a story about an ancient star war if nobody has hyperdrive and it takes generations to cross the interstellar void? How can you tell stories about intrepid explorers risking death if it's in a posthuman future where everyone's immortal?)

 

[Caliburn24]

The reason major scifi franchises remain mostly stagnant is because they are franchises. The old line about sequels and by extension franchises still applies, "A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself."

Audiences come to a franchise wanting to see the familiar stuff they liked in a recognizable if slightly altered form. The reason such franchises are mostly modern day analogues with the same values and general ideals of the world's present population is of course to gain the largest audience possible and rake in the most dollars.

But it is more than just crass commercialism, it is also an expositional story-telling trick. A narrative shortcut of sorts. It allows you to jump right into the story without wasting a lot of time on setting things up. Which considering the short attention span of the TV and film audience is more or less a necessity.

Books allow for more world/culture building. Peter Hamilton's space opera stuff for example works hard setting up a culture that is very different than present day Earth. But it is confusing, even after hundreds of pages of heavy exposition the world is still not fully understood by the reader. Worse, if not done with skill, it can set up a barrier between the reader and the protagonist where you never really care about what is going on in the story because you can't relate and empathize with the hero(s).

But how many of us want to sit through a movie where the first hour or two is just heavy exposition? How many of us are going to stick around for a 20 episode first season of a TV show that is just setting the groundwork for later on?(I've tried to get my friends to watch Babylon 5, but that first season kills their desire every time.)

 

[RJDiogenes]

One of the greatest SF epics of all time, the Foundation series, takes place over centuries and actually involves a decline in technology and civilization. Also, one of the best current SF writers in the current market is Jack McDevitt, whose stories are set many thousands of years in the future, yet the culture is almost indistinguishable from today-- and this is part of the appeal.

As for TV and movies, it's a different market and the people with the money are always going to insist that things be dumbed down as much as possible. Unless we get independent filmmakers who want to make real SF or a small cable channel willing to settle for an elite market, nothing you see in TV or movies will come anywhere near the literature.

 

[Enterprise is Great]

Berman and Braga originally had no transporters in Enterprise but UPN demanded that they be included. I think that's one of the reasons why they rarely used the transporter early on in the series. It was a mild form of protest.

 

[MacLeod]

The reason major scifi franchises remain mostly stagnant is because they are franchises. The old line about sequels and by extension franchises still applies, "A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself."

Audiences come to a franchise wanting to see the familiar stuff they liked in a recognizable if slightly altered form. The reason such franchises are mostly modern day analogues with the same values and general ideals of the world's present population is of course to gain the largest audience possible and rake in the most dollars.

But it is more than just crass commercialism, it is also an expositional story-telling trick. A narrative shortcut of sorts. It allows you to jump right into the story without wasting a lot of time on setting things up. Which considering the short attention span of the TV and film audience is more or less a necessity.

Books allow for more world/culture building. Peter Hamilton's space opera stuff for example works hard setting up a culture that is very different than present day Earth. But it is confusing, even after hundreds of pages of heavy exposition the world is still not fully understood by the reader. Worse, if not done with skill, it can set up a barrier between the reader and the protagonist where you never really care about what is going on in the story because you can't relate and empathize with the hero(s).

But how many of us want to sit through a movie where the first hour or two is just heavy exposition? How many of us are going to stick around for a 20 episode first season of a TV show that is just setting the groundwork for later on?(I've tried to get my friends to watch Babylon 5, but that first season kills their desire every time.)

With regards to sequels not all sequels are the same as the original.

Alien and Aliens are very different and are generally considered the best of that franchise. Alien 3 which is closer in style to Alien is not as held in wide regard for a number of reasons, one of which will be it is too similiar to the first

TWOK is different from TMP. Which is one of those cases where the sequel is said to be superior to the original. They are totally different in style.

So you don't have to imitate yourself to be succesful. And you are quite correct when you say people want to see something similiar o what has gone before, with some slight variation. Going back to Trek one of the critisims levelled at VOY was that it was too similiar to TNG as VOY did get the nick name of TNG-lite. Some parts of the audiance liked that, whilst others were in the mindset of you've done this already lets have something new.

People will sit through a season of world building after all B5 did last 5 years, but audiance wants change over the years. In 1993 when B5 aired the audiance might have been more willing to wait for a pay-off whilst in 2012 the audiance might be we want it now.

As for B5, I think the first season can be distilled down to a handful of episodes that are absolutly essential to later.

The Gathering
And the Sky Full of Stars
Signs & Portents
A Voice in The Wilderness
Babylon Squared
Chrysalis

And possibly

Mindwar
The Parliament of Dreams

 

[JoeD80]

Babylon 5 season one is a good season IMO. If people don't want to watch it maybe it's not their type of show. Most of the episodes tie into the arc in at least subtle ways. Sure the other seasons get better but that's true with most shows of their first season.

 

[the G-man]

I agree with Christopher that imposing an arbitrary rule is counterproductive but I agree with Morpheus that "Enterprise" failed because it was too much like "ToS" and "TNG" for a show supposedly set way in the past. Yes, I understand the 'suits' may have been responsible for that but assigning blame for a failure doesn't mean it wasn't a failure.

 

[Christopher]

...I agree with Morpheus that "Enterprise" failed because it was too much like "ToS" and "TNG" for a show supposedly set way in the past. Yes, I understand the 'suits' may have been responsible for that but assigning blame for a failure doesn't mean it wasn't a failure.

I really, really doubt that was the reason for its ratings failure, because the percentage of the TV audience that would even care about things like that would've been fairly low. Probably most viewers and casual fans wanted something that was similar to the Star Trek they were used to, which is the whole reason the network would've pushed for that in the first place -- because, naturally, the priority of network execs is to appeal to the largest possible audience.

Anyway, the point is that if it did fail because of the limits imposed on it by the network, that makes it contradictory to use that failure to argue in favor of imposing arbitrary limits on SFTV creators.

 

[the G-man]

I meant it was a creative failure.

 

[CaptJimboJones]

I meant it was a creative failure.

Actually I'd argue that Enterprise was neither a commercial nor a creative failure. Commercially, it had four full seasons - yes, fewer than expected and fewer than TNG/DS9/VOY, but by modern standards four seasons for an hourlong show is certainly not a failure. A failure is being cancelled on the second or third episode, and that's a pretty common occurrence these days.

And creatively, while the first two seasons were uneven, the third and fourth seasons had some of the strongest storytelling and creative drama I'd seen in Trek in many years.

 

[RJDiogenes]

While I consider Enterprise commercially disappointing, I do not consider it a creative failure at all.

 

[Morpheus 02]

...I agree with Morpheus that "Enterprise" failed because it was too much like "ToS" and "TNG" for a show supposedly set way in the past. Yes, I understand the 'suits' may have been responsible for that but assigning blame for a failure doesn't mean it wasn't a failure.

I really, really doubt that was the reason for its ratings failure, because the percentage of the TV audience that would even care about things like that would've been fairly low. Probably most viewers and casual fans wanted something that was similar to the Star Trek they were used to, which is the whole reason the network would've pushed for that in the first place -- because, naturally, the priority of network execs is to appeal to the largest possible audience.

Anyway, the point is that if it did fail because of the limits imposed on it by the network, that makes it contradictory to use that failure to argue in favor of imposing arbitrary limits on SFTV creators.

i think there's a difference between "logical" limits, and "formulas" that people will think will manufacture success.

Manny Coto seemed to work within "logical" limits, and to me it felt like a prequel. The only reason (in my opinion) why it wasnt enough was that people over the past 3 years bailed, and the audience that was left just wasn't enough.

The execs might have thought that the Trasnporter was a "needed" connection for the general public to accept this as Trek...i would argue Capt. Kirk is far more iconic, and yet Trek survived without him.

While many might not like Akiraprise, for me, it seemed a logical step between today and the 1701.

Some rules NNED to be followed. Like having a character react in a generally consistent way. But inconsistencies (or seemingly so) CAN happen.

Like i said (or tried to), we don't need a drawn explanation of things, just a throwaway line to explain the situation can work.

 

[Christopher]

Manny Coto seemed to work within "logical" limits, and to me it felt like a prequel. The only reason (in my opinion) why it wasnt enough was that people over the past 3 years bailed, and the audience that was left just wasn't enough.

Again, different viewers have different priorities, and I don't think that the casual fans who made up most of the audience really cared that much whether it "felt like a prequel." They weren't watching for a history lesson, they were watching for the stories and the characters and the adventures.

I think that ENT did a good job of feeling like a prequel from the start. It had a good sense that this was all something new to the characters, something they were feeling their way through for the first time. It established an effective arc about the development of human-Vulcan relations from tension to trust, and showed us the rise of humanity from an obscure, backward starfaring civilization toward the important power it became. I think it got sidetracked by the Temporal Cold War stuff and the whole Xindi thing, but otherwise I think it was a more effective prequel than a lot of people think. When I first saw it, I had trouble getting past its differences from how I would've approached the period or what I would've expected, but once I revisited it and accepted that this was the way it was, I was able to appreciate it a lot more.