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

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

[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...