Why are Our Imaginations Retreating from Science and Space, and into Fantasy?

The Globe and Mail (Canada) ^ | Monday, September 8, 2003 | SPIDER ROBINSON

[anymouse]

I've recently returned from Torcon 3, the 61st World Science Fiction Convention, held at the end of August in Toronto. I left it deeply concerned for the future -- not merely of my chosen genre or my chosen country, but my species.

I served this Worldcon as its toastmaster, and presiding over our annual Hugo Awards ceremony required me to make a speech. This being the 50th year that Hugos have been given for excellence in SF, I devoted my remarks to the present depressing state of the field. Three short steps into the New Millennium, written SF is paradoxically in sharp decline.

My genre has always had its ups and downs, but this is by far its worst, longest downswing. Sales are down, magazines are languishing, our stars are aging and not being replaced. And the reason is depressingly clear: Those few readers who haven't defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises.

Incredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting. They no longer find science admirable. They no longer instinctively lust to go to space.

Just as we've committed ourselves inextricably to a high-tech world (and thank God, for no other kind will feed five billion), we appear to have become nearly as terrified of technology, of science -- of change -- as the Arab world, or the Vatican. We are proud both of our VCRs, and our claimed inability to program them.

I'm not knocking fantasy, but if we look only backward instead of forward, too, one day we will find ourselves surrounded by an electorate that has never willingly thought a single thought their great-grandparents would not have recognized. That's simply not acceptable. That way lies inconceivable horror, a bin Laden future for our grandchildren.

SF's central metaphor and brightest vision, lovingly polished and presented as entertainingly as we knew how to make it, has been largely rejected by the world we meant to save. Because I was born in 1948, the phrase I'll probably always use to indicate something is futuristic is "space age."

There were doubtless grown adults at Torcon 3 who were born after the space age ended. The very existence of the new Robert A. Heinlein Awards, given for the first time at Torcon to honour works that inspire manned exploration of space, proves a need was perceived to foster such works.

About the only part of our shared vision of the future that actually came to pass was the part where America just naturally took over the world. But while it's prepared to police (parts of) a planet, the new Terran Federation is so far not interested enough to even glance at another one.

Inconceivable wealth and limitless energy lie right over our heads, within easy reach, and we're too dumb to go get them -- using perfectly good rockets to kill each other, instead.

The day Apollo 11 landed, I knew for certain men would walk on Mars in my lifetime. So did the late Robert Heinlein -- I just saw him say so to Walter Cronkite last weekend, on kinescope.

I'm no longer nearly so sure. The Red Planet is as close as it's been in 60,000 years -- and the last budget put forward in Canada contained not a penny for Mars. (Please, go to http://www.marssociety.com and sign the protest petition there.)

At Torcon 3, I caught up with Michael Lennick, co-producer of a superb Canadian documentary series about manned spaceflight, Rocket Science. His next project examines the growing phenomenon of people who refuse to believe we ever landed on the moon. Not because he sees them as amusing cranks . . . but because they're becoming as common as Elvis-nuts. And it's hard to argue with their logic: It beggars belief, they say, that we could possibly have achieved moon flight . . . and given it up.

On the other hand, I take heart that SF still exists, 50 years after the first Hugo was awarded. My wife's family are Portuguese fisherfolk from Provincetown, Mass., where every summer they've held a ceremony called the Blessing of the Fleet, in which the harbour fills with boats and the archbishop blesses their labours. The 50th-ever blessing was the last. There's no fishing fleet left. For the first time in living memory, there is not a single working fishing boat in P-town . . . because there are no cod or haddock left on the Grand Banks. For all its present problems, science fiction as a profession seems to have outlasted pulling up fish from the sea.

I believe with all my heart that the pendulum will return, that ignorance will become unfashionable again one day, that my junior colleagues are about to ignite a new renaissance in science fiction, and that our next 50 years will make the first 50 pale by comparison, taking us all the way to immortality and the stars themselves. If that does happen, some of the people who will make it so were in Toronto.

People still believe that men fished the Grand Banks, once. Some even dream of going back. SF readers have never stopped dreaming. We can't, you see. We simply don't know how.

B.C. writer Spider Robinson's latest novel is Callahan's Con.

[anymouse]

As a bonus you can FReep the Globe and Mail poll:

"Is U.S. President Bush just wandering deeper into an Iraqi quagmire or is he on the right track in committing more resources to the struggle?"

[anymouse]

Space ping. FReep this poll also.

[Paradox]

I noticed this a long time ago. "Hard" sci-fi has been supplanted by sci-fantasy (star trek etc) and outright fantasy (Dragon sh*t). In the meantime, cyberpunk has come along to sort of give a blending of the two (in that in the cyber world, you can seemingly disobey physical law).

Hard sci-fi is still out there though, and its better than ever.

[anymouse]

I noted this 10 years ago, when I attended the WorldCon in San Francisco (talk about "Stranger in a Strange Land" :). Although looking back, it is obvious that this trend has been happening since the 1970s.

[brbethke]

No, that's not what I meant to do.

[MEGoody]

"That way lies inconceivable horror, a bin Laden future for our grandchildren."

With a free market driving the need for constant technological/scientific breakthroughs just to make a buck? I doubt it.

[Paradox]

No, that's not what I meant to do.

Hey, great website and story! We have perhaps the original cyberpunk auther as a freeper, cool! I didnt mean to imply thats what you guys or the early cyberpunkers meant to do, but I see it being used that way more and more (cyber-fantasy would probably be a better name for it). I am in the process actually of re-reading Neuromancer again after almost 20 years. I sometimes find a rereading of a book having a different effect on me as an older man. (I recently re-read Enders Game, and was quite touched by it, perhaps because I have a small son of my own..).

[Tokhtamish]

Is it that in an increasing wired, cyber potato, couch potato society, people suspect that few will feel the need of heroic effort to tranform their "real" lives. If you can simply plug into cyber experiences the way people go online these days, who needs reality ? Reality only has disappointments and other agendas and risk. Twenty years from now porn will consist of plugging into your brain the memory and experience of f*cking Miss November. So who will need to bother with a less than perfect real woman ? Even now, how marriages are breaking up because of online porn and cyber affairs ?

Twenty years from now will advanced societies produce human beings capable of heroic effort ?

[brbethke]

Yes. It just won't be American society. Our nation will have hundreds of millions of men with really strong thumbs and really bad teeth.

[mhking]

Hard SF is still out there (I cut my teeth on it); and although there's tons of fantasy (traditional and "urban" - which I've fallen deeply into over the past eight to ten years) out there, there's a measure of hard SF outside the media franchises (Trek, SW, B5, Farscape) to be had.

[brbethke]

Thanks. I'm disappointed with what the c-word has come to mean, but I suppose it was the ineveitable result of cross-pollinating contemporary sci-fi with Japanese animation. As a writer it's so much easier to invoke magic than to actually figure out why something can (or can't) work the way you want it to.

[Centurion2000]

Those few readers who haven't defected to Tolkienesque fantasy cling only to Star Trek, Star Wars, and other Sci Fi franchises

The ultimate hard sci fi webpages / world contruction

Orion's Arm

[Old Professer]

Someone once asked, "Why is sex so popular?" A wag answered, "Because it is centrally-located."

[adx]

You got that right. Real hard stuff, with no sillytech.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Spider's right; we should be mining the asteroid belt at this point.
Just a heads-up:
If you have noticed that the programming on the Sci-Fi Channel has gone from "up-and-down" to "simply dreadful" you can blame the French company that purchased it a few months ago.
When I'm in the mood for some real science fiction I look for liberals running their mouths on C-SPAN.

[bigcheese]

IS THAT WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!?! Sheesh, I was wondering why the programming had gone straight into the pits. A double-header of Viva Rock Vegas and Casper ?!?!?!??! Freakin Frenchies!

[DoctorMichael]

Good article.

I gave up on Sci-Fi years go due to 1) the boring McCaffrey/feminist 'dragonriders' crap and all its incarnations, 2) the Oregonian, communist sentiments in the equally fetid scribblings of Ursula LeGuinn and, 3) the general entrapment of writers into penning formualic junk for the Star Trek/Star Wars franchises (I've NEVER read one of these novels and refuse to) so Lucas et al. can afford that new 10,000 sq.ft. addition onto their mansion.

What sealed the deal for me was the horrid 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'. What an unbelievable waste of time.

I read only Non-fiction now.

The only things that have kept me interested in this genre are Babylon5, Farscape and a few other video creations.

[Tokhtamish]

But that's just it.

Twenty years from now it will be possible to download any experience. So who will need to cough up the Apollo Program/Manhattan Project level big bucks to finance space projects ? The taxpayer does not wish to and the private sector sees no money to be made.

If people can live in an infinite pleasure fantasy world, will they wish to make sacrifices in the real one ? So isn't this move to fantasy in a way echoing reality ?

[RightWhale]

Tell Spider that when Arthur C Clarke turned his back on space science fiction, space was dead from that moment. Carl Sagan didn't help at all, but the real culprit is Einstein and his limiting speed; but the misuse and abuse of NASA is right now stopping our expansion into our own solar system. But, look at the sci-fi rack at the drugstore: it's mostly fantasy, there is little sci-fi there, and what little there is, is nuts and bolts boring. What is the sci-fi writer to do? Create Ellisonian worlds and populate them with creatures much like ourselves and call that sci-fi?

[brbethke]

If people can live in an infinite pleasure fantasy world, will they wish to make sacrifices in the real one?

Yes! Because, see -- WE'LL KILL THEM WHEN THEY TURN 30!

No, wait, that one's been done...

[RightWhale]

I've NEVER read one of these novels and refuse to

Aw, go on, read one. They're nothing like the screen plays.

[brbethke]

Buy magazines. All writers test market their new ideas in short stories for magazines. Don't expect any new ideas to appear in books. Books are put out by publishing houses, who are in turn owned by multinational entertainment conglomerates, who are concerned first, last, and everywhere in between with making a profit. And given a choice between publishing Yet More Dragondreck or some book that isn't easily packaged, labeled, and marketed, they will go with the dragons every time, simply because the dragon book is less of a risk.

It's almost impossible to get a publisher interested in a new idea unless you've already sold a few stories that explore it and generated a positive buzz among the fans and critics.

[DoctorMichael]

....French company that purchased it a few months ago. ......

Huh? I hadn't heard THAT!

No wonder!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[DoctorMichael]

Aw, go on..........

Sorry (LOL), but I can't tell if you're joking or not.

[lafroste]

As the author of a sci-fi novel that has yet to see the light of day, I offer another story:

I was looking for an agent, and introduced myself to a woman claiming to be an agent who was from Washington DC. She read my manuscript, then got back to me. She said that she thought the story was very good, but that she could not represent the work unless I made one teensy-weensy change: she wanted me to transform the story's hero into a lesbian female. (The story had absolutely nothing to do with sex - probably why it hasn't been published...).

I informed her that, unfortunately, the protagonist was a heterosexual male and there was precious little I could do about that.

Anyway, my story IS hard science fiction; no aliens, no other worlds, no mystic powers, just good old physics taken to the extreme. I think its an excellent story.

[Tokhtamish]

I never liked that one. Killing people at precisely the point when they are becoming really useful is dumb.

Another problem I had with space scenarios was the motivation for colonization. Either "Australia" (dumping ground for Earth's unwanted) or "Suburban White Flight" (the well off fleeing Earth's squalor). Well, "Australia" makes little sense because nobody is going to build spaceships to empty Earth's prisons, ghettos, and homeless shelters. And if technology has progressed to the point where every well to do person gets his own Darryl Hannah doll, why leave Earth at all ?

[brbethke]

Try another agent. There are plenty of them out there.

A bit of practical advice, though: I hope you're actually submitting the manuscript to actual publishers. It's a whole lot easier to get a good agent after you have some interest from a legit publisher.

[mrsmith]

Fantasy is Sci-fi for 'gurlz'.
NASA is research for 'gurlz'.

A society that treats testosterone as an indicator for Prozac treatment will die on the planet it was born.

[brbethke]

And here's a very useful link for you.

[brbethke]

Ever read "The Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth? I think you'd enjoy it.

[js1138]

If you can simply plug into cyber experiences the way people go online these days, who needs reality ?

One of my first SF reads was Heinlein's "Door Into Summer".

[brbethke]

why leave Earth at all?

Because Wyoming was no longer far enough away.

[Poohbah]

I was looking for an agent, and introduced myself to a woman claiming to be an agent who was from Washington DC. She read my manuscript, then got back to me. She said that she thought the story was very good, but that she could not represent the work unless I made one teensy-weensy change: she wanted me to transform the story's hero into a lesbian female. (The story had absolutely nothing to do with sex - probably why it hasn't been published...).

Agents live in New York, or Los Angeles. You didn't get an agent, you got a political hack/scam artist who is fronting for a vanity press. She probably has not made one sale to a legitimate press.

[Eala]

Although looking back, it is obvious that this trend has been happening since the 1970s.

My assessment also. First it was the dystopic visions of the late 60s to early 70s, where the future changed from something wonderful to something horrible. Then the junk that turned away altogether -- I was furious when I bought the latest award-winner, "Of Mist, and Sand and Grass" by Vonda McIntyre (this is straight from memory so I might have part of it wrong) and found out what junk it was.

These days I tend to buy the annual Year's Best anthologies, and otherwise read from the collection gathered over the past 40 years.

[RightWhale]

That's about right. I actually had one short story published long ago. I can't even remember exactly where, but it was definitely off-Broadway. It was strictly sci-fi, no aliens, etc., but I know at least one reader who said it creeped her out but good. You just don't find those on the drugstore dime-rack.

[Billthedrill]

What sealed the deal for me was the horrid 'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'.

You too? You know, I read every book in that relentlessly depressing series hoping for a happy ending of some sort. Ugh.

There are a couple of cultural factors working to push the pendulum away from "hard" SF - first, the notion, pushed by those on campus too stupid to understand engineering, that it is the social sciences and not the hard ones that will become predominant in solving the problems of society that constitute the backdrop to every hard SF novel. Second, the idea that it's harder to write - hard SF has rules that must be followed or it doesn't work; in the fantasy world anything (including the laws of physics) is negotiable. And third, it's kind of hard to get people involved with the explosion of incredible technologies in the real world - the Internet, GPS, computerized appliances, microtechnology, satellite communication, genetic engineering, to name but a few - to be impressed by anything more remarkable in fiction. Heck, it's hard to come up with a fictional idea more fantastic than today's reality, and that doesn't look to change for awhile.

But good writing will out, and it ages much more slowly than less-good writing. I saw a young relative of mine with a Heinlein novel in his hand not too long ago. It's kind of a tough standard.

[PogySailor]

May I suggest:

Revelation Space

[atomic conspiracy]

I think the reason for this is fairly simple. The real space program exceeded all expectations during the 1960s, creating a tremendous sense of excitement and potentiality around the subject. Since then, it hasn't gone anywhere. The Shuttle has gone round and round for 22 years, chained to LEO, reinventing the wheel, sucking down billions, and occasionally killing people.

More than 30 years have passed since the last Moon landing. Worse, the program was shut down before the enormous expenditure on research and development could be properly exploited, leading to the impression that we spent 40 billion dollars just to put 12 guys on a worthless rock for a few hours apiece.

The old idea of "our future in space" has worn pretty thin. It is the future now, and nothing has happened.

It could have been different, and this article explains why and how: 2001: No Space Odyssey

Check out this gang's homepage while you're at it: Nuclear Space. They are serious ogres and thought-criminals to the luddite eco-wacky mob, which makes their effort worthwhile all by itself.

[MalcolmS]

The reason for this is that it is simply impossible to develop new stories that have not already been told within the confines of the hard SF genre.

The whole point of a hard sf is to develop NOVEL takes on space exploration and science. Each book or series needs a new 'mcguffin'.

Since the 1930's, we have, in our literature explored the near planets, the galaxy to its boundaries and infinite uncounted dimensions. The genre is exhausted. The mother lode has been mined out, and it is virtually impossible to find a tiny nugget around which to base a new book, especially with the confines of hard SF.

In real life, manned exploration has gone no further that posited by Jules Verne in 1865. Since we have been unable to keep up, readers and writers are frustrated and have moved on.

One of the problems is one of physics, or chemistry. We simply cannot get affordable access to space given chemical based systems. There is simply not enough energy in a pound of fuel. The only hope is for someone to invent anti-gravity, or develop a new compact energy source safe for use in getting to orbit--that or a space elevator.

And no matter what, once it is cheap, the world becomes a far more dangerous place. Objects in space are inherently high energy. You don't wan't a future Osama dropping rocks on your cities from LEO. Quite frankly, cheap widespread access to space cannot be permitted without an effective defense system.

This is unfortunate. In the introduction to his early 1990's anthology, "Fire on Ice", Orson Scott Card rendered a passionate defence of SF Literature as one of the few forms of literature that allows us to examine the constructs of our societies. Because alternate worlds are imagined, and the results examined, SF allows us to look at our own world through new eyes. It is well worth seeking out and reading for these few pages.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[MalcolmS]

>>>I think its an excellent story. <<<

Since it's not doing anything, why not put it on the web and see if you can generate some interest? Maybe someone will option a screenplay ;).

[Publius6961]

I love softballs.
This one is a slam dunk.

Science requires intellectual effort and costs money.

Fantasy costs little or nothing, and it requires no intellectual effort whatsoever.

[Publius6961]

I love softballs.
This one is a slam dunk.

Science requires intellectual effort and costs money.

Fantasy costs little or nothing, and it requires no intellectual effort whatsoever.

[Question_Assumptions]

Hard science fiction is growing less popular than fantasy because (A) science stopped telling people what they wanted to hear, (B) science started being seen as the cause of problems rather than the solution, (C) as science advanced, it started to eliminate more possibilities than it created, and (D) science has advanced beyond the ability of most sincle people to comprehend or stay on top of. Science stopped being a friend and started being an enemy so people have retreated from it into the more friendly world of fantasy, where anything is still possible and, at the wave of an author's pen, things can work exactly the way we'd like them to.

Of course Spider Robinson should complain. From what I've seen, he's a social liberal and they currendly exceed just about any other group in their hostility towards science and spending on things like space travel. All those feminists reading fantasy novels about unicorns and warrior women are not Republicans.

[discostu]

Spider is a good writer and very entertaining but simply isn't in good shape to be judging reality. Hello, sci-fi channel anyone? Stargate ring a bell? Farscape? Battlestar Galactica remake? Even outside of there, Matrix, the comicbook movies. And in less speculative but still science based look at all the crime shows on CBS. Sci-fi is doing fine. Interest in science is doing fine. VCRPlus died so people must have finally learned to program their VCRs.

[DoctorMichael]

......'The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever'......

You too?

In all honesty, I got through 5 of the 6 books, started the last one, opened it..........and then never read it! THAT is the sum total of my enthusiasm for the thing.

My impression was that Donaldson got togeather with a bunch of friends and they all dropped LSD and went on a marathon session of Dungeons & Dragons; the 'catch' being that the weeklong trip/game was audio taped and afterward he transcribed the story from the tapes. It was incoherent; I hated the hero; I hated the plot; I hated the characters; I hated the premises; it meandered; the hero was an 'anti-hero', which I can no longer stand; and after awhile, I just DIDN'T care anymore.

This book is an abysmally bad piece of crap. I learned nothing from it and took nothing away, except for a bad taste in my mouth (mind). I kept waiting for the 'payoff' and finally gave up! I can't say enough bad things about this book since I was (as noted before) a BIG SciFi buff before reading this rotten aimless drek.

If SciFi wants to save itself, destroying ALL copies of this book would go a long way in redeeming itself.

[brbethke]

The reason for this is that it is simply impossible to develop new stories that have not already been told within the confines of the hard SF genre.

I beg to differ. I believe the reason for this decline is that most of the people who write fantastic fiction -- and all but one or two of the people in publishing houses who buy it -- are liberal arts majors who are very good at writing and editing stories about human characters and their relationships, and very, very bad at math, engineering, or having any understanding of how real science is done.

The few writers I know who have some real background in the sciences -- Michael Crichton, David Brin, Greg Bear, and Bob Metzger come to mind -- never seem to have trouble coming up with new ideas.

As for the rest of the dreck out there: blame Clarion.

[RightWhale]

Orson Scott Card rendered a passionate defence of SF Literature as one of the few forms of literature that allows us to examine the constructs of our societies.

Right. Sci-Fi has always been social fiction. Change the backdrop so the social issues stand out clearly.

[anymouse]

Of course it is - that's why I posted the article. Whereas I was never a big sci-fi fan, I do see this trend away from a hopeful future to a genre of nihlistic fantasy future in sci-fi as having a negative effect on kids' ability to dream up new solutions, rather than just mope in self-pity or frivolous escapism.

[SauronOfMordor]

Thanks. I thought I was the only one who thought "Thomas Covenant" was unreadable crap. My wife loved the series, though