Is science fiction better today?

[Temis the Vorta]

The fall season looks like a tsunami of crap, with one or two possibilities in the muck. But that's better than getting nothing at all.

Holy shit, I said this a year ago and I could say it again today. In fact it's worse than last year.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

No. The primary source of scifi is the written word-and the sections devoted to it in commercial bookstores are an intellectual wasteland. Hack authors like Kevin j Anderson and R A Salvatore take up a huge percentage of the available space, derivative series based on video games and tv/movie franchises eat up more and what little is left is overwhelmed by knock-off stories about vampires and magic written by fools who wouldn't know the difference between delta vee and a ballistic trajectory. I mourn that Harry Turtledove is considered the foremost author in alternative history-yet his recent work quotes lines from earlier bodies due to a lack of imagination. Everytime one of the great older authors dies I weep-as much because no replacement looms on the horizon as for the passing of an established talent. Scifi on tv/film may finally be growing up-but the source material grows feeble from a lack of talent.

Oy, I'm so with you on Turtledove. I tried to read the WWII series and gave up 3/4s of the way through the first book because it was so painfully repetitive in its story points. After the sixth scene that had no point but to reiterate that the aliens were bewildered by how quickly the humans had evolved technologically I decided he was an awful writer who I would never broach again.

Movies are not the be-all and end-all of scifi. In fact, they are a poor representation of the genre. In the written word you will find the truth. Written science fiction was and is so far beyond films that what was being published in 1959(at its best) was decades beyond 1977's Star Wars. (as an example) Go read The Ballad of Lost C'Mell and then tell me anything in film rivals the complexity, depth and sheer artistry of that story. E.T.? In 1962 Piper published Little Fuzzy-E.T. was just derivative of that novel. Film will need years to catch up. With a few notable exceptions like 12 Monkeys or Children of Men there isn't a scifi movie out there that holds a candle to written scifi-and the Golden Era of the written form was the heyday of the late 50s and early 60s. An argument could be made for the Humanist shift of the late 60s and early 70s as well, but we're still talking about the written form. As for today, well, with all of the derivative, video game and movie-based books out there, combined with the overwhelming number of fantasy novels and vampire tales on the shelves of your local bookstore I think I'm safe in reiterating that modern written scifi faces bleak times.

I'm just curious and have a tremendous opinion of your knowledge of written SF - why would you dub those particular eras the Golden Ages? Was it quality of writing? Quality of ideas? Innovation and/ or originality of ideas or style? Well-considered hard SF? I mean, what is it exactly that's lacking in today's written SF, or what could authors (or publishers rather as I'm sure there are authors writing good stuff that simply isn't seeing the light of day) be doing?

As for the woeful state of bookstore SF shelves - I certainly agree that they have been eaten up by tie-in novels and dominated by a few sub-genres. But really thought-provoking SF has always had a narrow appeal, hasn't it? Weren't the general SF retail offerings of the past more likely to be Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serial comics and pulp novels of alien invasion with scantily clad women on their covers?

 

[Mistral]

No. The primary source of scifi is the written word-and the sections devoted to it in commercial bookstores are an intellectual wasteland. Hack authors like Kevin j Anderson and R A Salvatore take up a huge percentage of the available space, derivative series based on video games and tv/movie franchises eat up more and what little is left is overwhelmed by knock-off stories about vampires and magic written by fools who wouldn't know the difference between delta vee and a ballistic trajectory. I mourn that Harry Turtledove is considered the foremost author in alternative history-yet his recent work quotes lines from earlier bodies due to a lack of imagination. Everytime one of the great older authors dies I weep-as much because no replacement looms on the horizon as for the passing of an established talent. Scifi on tv/film may finally be growing up-but the source material grows feeble from a lack of talent.

Oy, I'm so with you on Turtledove. I tried to read the WWII series and gave up 3/4s of the way through the first book because it was so painfully repetitive in its story points. After the sixth scene that had no point but to reiterate that the aliens were bewildered by how quickly the humans had evolved technologically I decided he was an awful writer who I would never broach again.

Movies are not the be-all and end-all of scifi. In fact, they are a poor representation of the genre. In the written word you will find the truth. Written science fiction was and is so far beyond films that what was being published in 1959(at its best) was decades beyond 1977's Star Wars. (as an example) Go read The Ballad of Lost C'Mell and then tell me anything in film rivals the complexity, depth and sheer artistry of that story. E.T.? In 1962 Piper published Little Fuzzy-E.T. was just derivative of that novel. Film will need years to catch up. With a few notable exceptions like 12 Monkeys or Children of Men there isn't a scifi movie out there that holds a candle to written scifi-and the Golden Era of the written form was the heyday of the late 50s and early 60s. An argument could be made for the Humanist shift of the late 60s and early 70s as well, but we're still talking about the written form. As for today, well, with all of the derivative, video game and movie-based books out there, combined with the overwhelming number of fantasy novels and vampire tales on the shelves of your local bookstore I think I'm safe in reiterating that modern written scifi faces bleak times.

I'm just curious and have a tremendous opinion of your knowledge of written SF - why would you dub those particular eras the Golden Ages? Was it quality of writing? Quality of ideas? Innovation and/ or originality of ideas or style? Well-considered hard SF? I mean, what is it exactly that's lacking in today's written SF, or what could authors (or publishers rather as I'm sure there are authors writing good stuff that simply isn't seeing the light of day) be doing?

As for the woeful state of bookstore SF shelves - I certainly agree that they have been eaten up by tie-in novels and dominated by a few sub-genres. But really thought-provoking SF has always had a narrow appeal, hasn't it? Weren't the general SF retail offerings of the past more likely to be Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serial comics and pulp novels of alien invasion with scantily clad women on their covers?

One argument for the 50s-60s is Editor Control. Love or hate Campbell, he enforced his vision on many up and comers, challenging them to improve upon their ideas. He was also the source of many kernels that became "classic" stories and novels. He would literally toss off a sentence like "Well, if atomic power is the wave of the future, what happens when something goes wrong?" Then Lester DelRey would go out and write Nerves, a sort of precursor to The China Syndrome and a book that makes a lot of Best of lists.
Another is the under-the-radar factor. Because scifi of that era was "Rayguns and half-naked girls" in the general public's eyes, authors got away with startlingly adult concepts and ideas because no one noticed, cared or kept a baleful eye on the bottom line. Today, with scifi being more "public", authors pander more to the LCD so we get a Terminator novel or the fifteenth sequel to Dune. It makes $ and has broad appeal so it gets published. You know, the really funny part about those covers from the old books is this. The stories they often represented bore no resemblance to the picture-but since the target audience was young males 13-20 it helped sell the books. In between the covers were gems like "A Logic Named Joe" or "Foundation". Very few repeat authors sold "pulp novels of alien invasion" at all. Heck, Heinlein alone was busy inventing ATMs, waterbeds and practical ecosystems for interplanetary vessels in his stories during that era. The authors tended to consult with scientists to back up their science on a regular basis in many cases and the foundation of science fact in the stories was usually altered only to fit the needs of the story. Today-I'm thinking many authors don't have a clue based on what I've read. They use handy catch phrases(hyperspace or warp drive, anybody?) gleaned from 50+ years of scifi without knowing how those things were thought up in the first place or what practical theories they might be based on.

Also, in that era there was essentially 2 media available-books and magazines. Today-well, look around. With scifi out in so many venues its hard to point at a moment and say "There, there's a cluster of great work." You have to search too hard to find the good stuff and many people aren't willing to make the effort.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

Leonard Nimoy Explains How Science Fiction Has Improved Since The 1950s

http://io9.com/5540899/leonard-nimoy-explains-how-science-fiction-has-improved-since-the-1950s

one man's opinion.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

As far as television is concerned I'd say that science fiction had reached its peak during the 90s with TNG, DS9, Babylon 5, The X-Files, Quantum Leap, the new Outer Limits, and so on.

So is current SF better than during the 60s, 70s, and 80s? Most of the time, yes.

Is it better than during the 90s? Nope.

 

[Nathan_Heller]

I think the written medium is still strong, but the visual medium is mediocre to weak.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

scifi better today?

A new article I just found:
Why science fiction matters for people who don’t read science fiction
disclaimer about the May 13th article:

Note: I’m focusing here on people who have read science fiction in book form. Not people who like Star Trek films.

the comments at the blogpost are also interesting.
such as:

you single out book readers as being exemplars of what you consider the most retrograde element of science fiction — generally the literary wing of science fiction is the most experimental and progressive, with ideas playing out there years before they surface in movies or TV shows

 

[RandyS]

I think it's a mixed bag. In terms of story content, there's some good, some bad, and some mediocore. And that applies to both movies, TV, and books.

In the case of TV and movies, yes, things have improved as far as the FX, but the writing is middle of the road.

 

[jefferiestubes8]

In the case of TV and movies, yes, things have improved as far as the FX, but the writing is middle of the road.

Yet everyone complains that the older stories being remade are no good films/TV too.

I think hard(er) scifi stories in the future will not be done by Hollywood but by independent filmmakers like
Primer (2004) and Los cronocrímenes (2007) aka "Timecrimes".

 

[Hermiod]

Babylon 5 had ropey effects, sets that wobbled and looked like they were made out of cardboard and Minbari make-up that looked like it wasn't glued down properly yet I would take being able to see that for the first time over again over anything being produced today. And there's no show on TV that even attempts to tell honest Sci-Fi stories the way Star Trek: The Next Generation did.

Today's shows have better budgets and take advantage of the fact that CG is cheap, that's all.

The new Battlestar Galactica was a revelation but hid from the fact that it was a Sci-Fi show. Lost had to pretend it wasn't Sci-Fi to get on the air in the first place too.

 

[Admiral2]

Not a chance in hell.

The forties, fifties and early sixties were the decades of science fiction gods and the works they wrought. Even the best sci-fi of today can't hold a candle.

You mean the era of utterly ridiculous B-Movie monster flicks? I think not. I say the 1970s through the 1990s.

Movies are not the be-all and end-all of scifi. In fact, they are a poor representation of the genre. In the written word you will find the truth. Written science fiction was and is so far beyond films that what was being published in 1959(at its best) was decades beyond 1977's Star Wars. (as an example) Go read The Ballad of Lost C'Mell and then tell me anything in film rivals the complexity, depth and sheer artistry of that story. E.T.? In 1962 Piper published Little Fuzzy-E.T. was just derivative of that novel. Film will need years to catch up. With a few notable exceptions like 12 Monkeys or Children of Men there isn't a scifi movie out there that holds a candle to written scifi-and the Golden Era of the written form was the heyday of the late 50s and early 60s. An argument could be made for the Humanist shift of the late 60s and early 70s as well, but we're still talking about the written form. As for today, well, with all of the derivative, video game and movie-based books out there, combined with the overwhelming number of fantasy novels and vampire tales on the shelves of your local bookstore I think I'm safe in reiterating that modern written scifi faces bleak times.

Mistral understood what I was talking about, Trubinator, because the gods I meant were Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Campbell and Bradbury, but if you really want to talk about movies, fine.

Let's talk about Forbidden Planet where the alien monster came from deep in the intellectual's psyche, candy that sci-fi writers and movie makers have been sucking on for ages and still haven't improved upon. Let's talk about the original The Day The Earth Stood Still, a movie where the alien and his pet robot came down and told Humanity "Get it together or you go nowhere", probably one of the most powerful statements in sci-fi movie history. (And again, candy that imitators keep sucking on without improvement.) Let's talk about Destination Moon, a movie as scientifically accurate as could be made given the special effects technology and knowledge of spaceflight at the time. Same goes for 2001: A Space Oddysey, which apparently was made scientifically sound by freaking accident. (The director was going for a metaphor, but asked Clarke to help him write it.)

And just for fun, I'd take THEM! over that crap "Cloverfield" any day of the week.

I like some of them, but forced to choose you can keep your damn modern movies.

 

[3D Master]

On screen SF is definitely lots worse than even 10 years ago. Hell, is there even SF left? Whenever things get designated SF on the screen I usually find it's fantasy when I go see what it is.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, I think the quality of writing has gone up, but I feel the concept and ideas aren't as well executed, or even as innovative as they were in early SF.