Posted on 03/25/2021 8:57:11 PM PDT by tbw2
So why are there so few mothers, so few fathers, so few families of any size in modern science fiction stories? As I said above, the answer is that, in the so-called modern mindset, families (especially large ones) are considered pathologies. They are considered an abnormal “deviation giving rise to social ills.” When families are portrayed at all, they are made individually and collectively the butt of tasteless jokes; this provides the social reinforcement for the ideological notion that having a family is irresponsible. These insulting stereotypes encourage the absurd notion in our collective ultra-modern hubris that children, families, and parents are passé. This ideology is propagated as the “scientific” gospel and thereby that of science fiction as well. If that does not frighten you, readers and future writers, it should.
This is why there are so few mothers in science fiction, readers and future writers. This is also why the families, large and small, from the original Star Wars expanded universe were discarded when the new timeline was formed. It is, deliberately or not, a commonly stated reinforcement of the Malthusian Nihilism so currently in vogue today, which has been proven false in every case, every time.
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And where are the Amish? The horses? The Presbyterians?
I mean, what kind of world are we living in?
Star Trek TNG had probably one of the best examples in “Inner Light” - Picard gets to experience what he missed. Bonus message: they figure out climate change is due to the big fusion fireball in the sky!
Suggestion: Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.
Like you, I grew up reading the classic sci-fi. I am not a fan of most of the newer stuff.
Sad Puppies ping
It is the rare exception that highlights the rule.
Karl Marx was opposed to the family, so his progs are too.
It’s not just science fiction — in any form of entertainment families and especially marriage is either non-existent, failed, or so horribly dysfunctional that almost any other state looks preferable.
In the show “The Expanse” the primary characters included two broken Herero families and then an intact lesbian couple who are depicted just short of French kissing the view screens they chat on, and they have a child.
I read a lot of sci fi that has family in it.
Family doesn’t always mean consanguinal relationships, but a family bond exists.
A lot of the sci fi written by women has family in it.
Gene Wolf, who until his recent passing, was the best living writer of English.
Book of the Long Sun - comprised of 4 books
Book of the New Sun - comprised of 4 books
Book of the Short Sun - comprised of 3 books
Urth of the New Sun
You actually have to either have an eidetic memory or read the series twice to actually understand the characters and how they interact through time.
Steven Baxter’s “Xeelee” series
Iain M Banks “Culture” series
“So inconclusion, they don’t have families because they were all either made in a lab or their families were killed, or as in the case of Star Lord’s dad, you just don’t want to know, because it leads to “Luke I am your father” moments.”
You’ve produced a brilliant post. Having written 14 novels, several of which are on Amazon.com, I can add a few thoughts. In science fiction you need to create a mood and an atmosphere that is appropriate to the genre. What is appropriate to “Little House on The Prairie” is not appropriate for “Star Lord Meets Xxcelax.” When you are writing, unless you’re doing it as a Russian author in the nineteenth century, you only mention things related to the story or to build character. Everybody I talked to loved Tom Clancy’s books. But at least in my sampling, they loved the story and skipped over the three pages on items like the total history of the Sikorsky CH-53E Super Stallion heavy-lift helicopter and why this particular one had skipped its planned maintenance and a critical bolt was about to fail. (I had worked on some of the equipment he regaled us with and even I skipped a few pages here and there.)
So, your main character either lost his beloved “Little House on the Prairie” family due to a Microsoft blue-screen-of-death software failure in their pleasure implants, or he was born in a lab and raised by a robot. (Take your pick.) People are reading science fiction because it IS different from “Little House on the Prairie.”
While I agree to a degree that science fiction downplays the traditional family, and many of the writers, on, say, the latest woke “Star Trek” are blue-haired family hating trans people, but it’s not entirely because they hate family. Even in the first “Star Trek,” if the family was mentioned or shown as a character building tool, the setting was austere with none of the scattered toys and spilled milk you’d expect in a normal house.
“Sometimes it’s just a cigar.” (Sigmund Freud)
“1632” by Eric Flint has more than a few as this summary from TV Tropes explains:
“Jeff and Gretchen Higgins. Boy Meets Girl, boy protects girl from army, boy helps girl kill her rapist, boy asks girl to marry him using a bilingual dictionary, marriage is a roaring success.”
John Sheridan, Delenn, and their son David, play an important role in “Babylon 5”
Luke Skywalker has a fairly normal life being raised by his aunt and uncle, until the Empire shows up...
Widower Benjamin Sisko and his son Jake on ST DS9
However, happy intact families, while good for society, rarely make for good story telling.
“Rick and Morty” is all about a family.
But Will Robinson changed, a lot...
It takes a universe to raise a child.
And typically in Disney movies the kids rebel against their parents and make the parents look out of touch.
This is a problem I’ve always had with Disney.
I believe all of those are Baen authors. Probably should toss in John Ringo as well, who has an intact family during a zombie apocalypse.
If you'd just like to try some of their authors out, they have a section of their website called the 'free library', where you can download DRM-free ebooks in just about any format gratis. It's a great way to check out an author. Most of them are the first (and sometimes second as well) novel of a long series. Like any good drug dealer, the idea is that the first one is always free.
Great post. This is absolutely true, and is drilled into writers of all genres and types constantly these days. This is why, if you're watching a movie, or tv show, or reading a book and a character straps on a firearm, (concealed or not), you can be absolutely positive that it will be used in some way during the story/episode. Of course, there is also anti-gun bias, but the real heart of it is that most writers are told that you don't mention anything that doesn't affect the story.
LOL! He sure did!
Danger Will Robinson!
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