Is Science Fiction About to Go Blind?
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“Wandering through the exhibition room at a science-fiction convention in Boston a few months ago, I saw plenty of reprints of golden-age SF classics for sale. But I also encountered paintings of half-naked people battling dragons, vendors hawking crystals and a folk musician warming up for a recital. Where is the science in science fiction? I wondered. Whatever happened to envisioning the future? Anthropologist Judith Berman, who recently surveyed a crop of science fiction published in 1999, has a grim answer: Many modern stories are nostalgic, wary of new technologies rather than enthusiastic about them.”
2 Comments
Peter Teiman
September 20th, 2007
at 7:31pm
Peter Teiman here.
It’s sad that the golden age of science fiction has lost it’s way.
Peter Teiman
http://www.freewebs.com/peterteiman/
Mike Gorham
September 24th, 2007
at 1:39pm
Good Science Fiction is really hard to write - Fantasy is less so. The acknowledged masters of the genre - Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke - have all pointed out that when you write scifi stories you must get the science right to get a believable story. Most scifi readers in my experience either are, or border on, being science geeks. And most are well to very well informed in multiple fields. That makes for a tough readership (read scientifically astute) to attract. And we must thank Gene Roddenberry and his Star Trek and related works that have also raised the bar so high in the video arena. Contrast all that to a Fantasy Fiction work where just about anything goes and it is easy for me to understand the lack of scifi books available. Doesn’t mean that I like it though.
BTW - your link to Judith Bermans article isn’t working. I would like to read it but keep ending up at the PopSci site.