Article on SyFy Channel

[Admiral Buzzkill]

All sci-fi (or fantasy) requires of the reader(or watcher) is a desire for the fantastic. To want something more than reality. Any sci-fi story that can't be told in some variation without the science isn't a good story anyways.

It's like having a taste for sushi. As Bruce Sterling once advised a group of writers, "follow your weird" - what sf is selling is at base an unusual POV, not a uniquely challenging intellectual exercise.

About eight years ago I was getting to know this guy who's now my best friend. He was a teacher in a private girls high school the name of which a lot of folks would recognize - in any event he got the idea that the kids in one of his honors English courses would get something out of my answering questions for an hour about my TV script. He did mention that there was next to no interest in Star Trek as such amongst the students.

Not long after that I introduced him to Buffy The Vampire Slayer on DVD. He was initially interested because, he told me, this was the most popular show among the very smartest kids at school.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't because of its scientific content.

 

[Australis]

^Which raises another point I forgot to include in my post, that SF&F does have an aptitude for firing up the imagination, and I don't know if that can be said for Faulkner or Hemingway. Maybe there's different types of smart?

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It'd be nice if there was some love for sci-fi at Syfy. Even if the real world meant having to make programming concessions it'd be easier to swallow if somewhere there was some fondness for the genre. As it stands, it is treated only as a necessary evil to abide until they can convert the programming to something else. They don't seem to reach out and try to embrace and build on the geek audience rather than try to work past them.

Still, flawed though they may have been, where else are you going to see something like Caprica and Stargate Universe these days? Until it's all Ghosthunters, Hollywood Treasure and Smackdown you have to take what you can get when they do show some decent stuff.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Still, flawed though they may have been, where else are you going to see something like Caprica and Stargate Universe these days?

Exactly.

 

[Kegg]

Nope, never said any such thing. I said that SF requires more of the reader, which it does. Sort of like how reading The Odyssey in the original Latin would require more of the reader-- namely, fluency in Latin.

Greek.

Look, I'm a sci-fi fan but my knowledge of science is so rudimentary as to be laughable, and yet I've never really had trouble understanding any of the sci-fi books I've read for that reason.

Simply put reading my volumes of Arthur C. Clarke takes far less out of me then even trying to read Homer in the Greek, where I can't get much further then transliterating words. They're not really comparable.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If someone had the guts to put a space opera on cable TV (AMC or TNT) that had the style, heart and characterization of The Walking Dead, people would watch it, and it wouldn't matter whether they ordinarily liked space opera or sci fi.

The problem is not in the audience - whether sci fi fans are smarter than the common herd, etc - but in the lack of sci fi that is accessible to "non-core" fans without being dumbed-down and compromised. Non-core fans can tell when something is inauthentic, and will avoid it on that basis.

BSG was getting pretty close to what I'm talking about, but the botched basic premise forced the writers into absurd convolutions to try to patch the premise up, that were guaranteed to drive away the non-sci-fi fans by trying their patience. A better structured space opera series of BSG's quality just might have the same break-out quality as The Walking Dead (which, at 6M viewers or so, is still a small audience compared with network shows).

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

nuBSG is the closest you're going to get to a mainstream accessible space opera, because the conceit they employed which so annoyed some fans was the key to any subtle character drama in a relatable way: they more or less set it in the present day with characters that everyone could identify as people just like us.

 

[sidious618]

Look, I'm a sci-fi fan but my knowledge of science is so rudimentary as to be laughable, and yet I've never really had trouble understanding any of the sci-fi books I've read for that reason.

Simply put reading my volumes of Arthur C. Clarke takes far less out of me then even trying to read Homer in the Greek, where I can't get much further then transliterating words. They're not really comparable.

I agree here. I've read a lot of sci-fi and it never required "more" of me.

 

[Gepard]

I hate to even bring this up but am I the only one who is not all that impressed by Asimov? The characters in his books tend to be flat and the prose rather emotionless. Cool story ideas but not much else, I found. Not a popular opinion, though.

I feel the same way; I like Asimov as a short story author - a form where he can get away with developing an idea but not much else - but find him to be absolutely dreadful in novel form. I have a similar, though less extreme, reaction to Niven, or any other author who can't write people well enough to sustain my interest for more than 20 pages.

 

[RJDiogenes]

All sci-fi (or fantasy) requires of the reader(or watcher) is a desire for the fantastic. To want something more than reality. Any sci-fi story that can't be told in some variation without the science isn't a good story anyways.

You're correct that the typical SF reader is a dreamer as well as an intellectual-- that's the synergy I was talking about. But an SF story that can be told without the science is not SF.

Now, that desire for 'more'- for the fantastic and the next horizon may lead those people to higher education and other intellectual pursuits, but in my experience just as many of them there sci-fi readers just like the the occasional escape to the unfamiliar and exciting and are happy to return to an ordinary, undereducated and perfectly fulfilling life.

This is also very true. But those latter people are who I was talking about when I said "educated laymen." They may not be scientists, but they are people you're more likely to find sitting in front an episode of Nova than Cops.

Especially intelligent and the highly educated may be more likely to enjoy sci-fi(and more likely to read in general), but that doesn't necessarily work in reverse.

Why would it need to?

Mmm, yeah, but I extrapolated a lot of science from my early SF (and indeed, much later, Neuromancer encouraged ne to get into IT). I'd be hard pressed to extrapolate deeper human understanding as an adolsecent, and especially from those books, that'd be "boring" and get in the way of 'splosions and stuff. The Lensman books, much as I love 'em, are classics for this. I picked up a hell of a lot about gravity and inertia from them, but sure didn't get how to pick up girls. The characterisations and social interactions were so much simpler in those books.

I guess we were different as kids. I never cared for the splosions and stuff-- they rather annoyed me on Trek and so forth because they took up valuable time. And my penchant for reading put me far ahead of not only the other kids in terms of understanding people, but also all the no-necks in my family.

Let's take a different approach, referencing a TV show, Big Bang Theory. It should be asserted that when the guys on BBT go on and on and on about SFTV and comics, they don't seem to be inclined to explore the ongoing story of the human condition, though as most of us know here, good SF has strong and interesting characters with some depth. For a slightly more fantasy version of this, look at some of the chartacters in the Discworld series, even their depths have depths. The only comment they have in that regards borders on K/S. And before toy say anything about clichés, they are nearly always rooted in a truth,

The guys on BBT, as amusing as they are, are caricatures based on negative stereotypes. The "common herd," as they've been called, believe in those stereotypes, and that's one thing that prevents a lot of them from broadening their horizons.

So what is it, chicken or egg? Read then smart, smart then read?

As is usually the case, both. Smarter people are attracted to smarter books, which in turn nurture them.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't because of its scientific content.

Why would it be? Buffy isn't Science Fiction.

^Which raises another point I forgot to include in my post, that SF&F does have an aptitude for firing up the imagination, and I don't know if that can be said for Faulkner or Hemingway. Maybe there's different types of smart?

There you go. Intelligence and imagination, and the synergy thereof. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Greek.

Just testing. You pass.

Look, I'm a sci-fi fan but my knowledge of science is so rudimentary as to be laughable, and yet I've never really had trouble understanding any of the sci-fi books I've read for that reason.

Then you are either underestimating yourself, or not getting everything out of those books that you could be.

Simply put reading my volumes of Arthur C. Clarke takes far less out of me then even trying to read Homer in the Greek, where I can't get much further then transliterating words. They're not really comparable.

But what about reading Homer in English?

The problem is not in the audience - whether sci fi fans are smarter than the common herd, etc - but in the lack of sci fi that is accessible to "non-core" fans without being dumbed-down and compromised.

Okay, now you've disagreed with me and agreed with me all in the same sentence.

 

[sidious618]

I wish you made that argument in the first place because then I'd have had something of substance to respond to instead of you repeating that sci-fi is better. However, the argument that because sci-fi has both science and emotion in it makes it better falls flat. By this logic books about athletic people are just as good because it accesses emotion and knowledge on how to keep yourself fit. Or how about philosophical fiction? It includes philosophy and emotion.

Not to mention that the science in science fiction often doesn't hold up all that well.

 

[Snaploud]

I hate to even bring this up but am I the only one who is not all that impressed by Asimov? The characters in his books tend to be flat and the prose rather emotionless. Cool story ideas but not much else, I found. Not a popular opinion, though.

I've always thought he was a better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Asimov was great at explaining everything from the stars to Shakespeare.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I wish you made that argument in the first place because then I'd have had something of substance to respond to instead of you repeating that sci-fi is better. However, the argument that because sci-fi has both science and emotion in it makes it better falls flat. By this logic books about athletic people are just as good because it accesses emotion and knowledge on how to keep yourself fit. Or how about philosophical fiction? It includes philosophy and emotion.

Not to mention that the science in science fiction often doesn't hold up all that well.

I thought I did say that from the beginning; I've been saying it for years. As for your other examples: A novel about an athlete can have useful knowledge, of course, but that doesn't intrinsically increase it's value; all novels, hopefully, have some information. Philosophical fiction could certainly be of a higher order, in that it requires more of the reader. But in the case of Science Fiction, we have the synergy of the Arts & Sciences-- the defining characteristics of Humanity-- which is what puts it at the top of the heap.

As for whether the science holds up that well, that depends on factors such as when the book was written, the purpose of the extrapolation, the quality of the writing et cetera. It has nothing to do with the essential definition.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I've always thought he was a better non-fiction writer than fiction writer. Asimov was great at explaining everything from the stars to Shakespeare.

He may also have been more successful, in the long run, as a popularizer of science. His fiction output declined quite a bit over the years while he steadily produced books on every kind of subject.

He once remarked that he was taken for an expert on any number of subjects about which his knowledge was that of an informed layman, because he was good at reading/researching and explaining what he'd learned. He mentioned that after he wrote a book about the human brain he was contacted and asked to give a series of professional presentations on neurology for some medical organization. When the caller pointed to his book as the basis for assuming his expertise, he told him "You don't understand - every single thing I know about the brain is in that book!"