[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.

[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.

[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.

[Old Professer]

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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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

[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.

[JenB]

Oh, but this is a silly argument! Spider Robinson should know better.

SF and fantasy are two aspects of the same thing. They're concerned with ideas bigger than life. Whether it's the asteroid belt, Luna City, Middle-Earth or Westeros, the point of the story is (or should be) some aspect of humanity, or of one man, that simply cannot be illustrated with a "conventional" story.

And as for good science fiction written in the last decade or so: try Tad Williams (Otherland), Connie Willis (Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog), John Ringo (A Hymn Before Battle and sequels). The "Dune" prequels. Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" novels. It's out there. There may not be as much of it as we wish but want to know a secret? There never was! I haunt used bookstores and I can tell you, there was some dreck published twenty, thirty, forty years ago. The thing is we only remember the good stuff because it's stood the test of time.

And as a side note, everyone who says "Thomas Covenant" was a waste of ink and trees is horribly right. I don't know why I bothered to finish reading the first trilogy. Perhaps I simply thought it couldn't get worse.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Our arts reflect our “societal soul”. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were caught up in a world being changed by the Industrial Revolution where science promised a shining future. World War I saw a surge in the fantasy and adventure genres (Doyle, Burroughs, Howard, Lovecraft). The Great Depression generated the vigilante heroes of pulp and comics who reflected qualities most people of the time could only hope to aspire to. Science fiction in movie serials suffered from inadequate budgets and cheap tinfoil. WWII brought the beginnings of all that was portrayed before into the realm of possible reality (radar, rockets, jets, madmen playing with eugenics).
Our generations have seen the glory of the Apollo program reduced to this planets most expensive truck service. Today the promises of science are brought down as a matter of course and the sciences have to dance for corporate (and the ever-popular military) sponsorship. How many potential careers have gone unanswered by a generation of youth who glory in ignorance and tribalistic behavior? They are proud to read nothing at all and are confused by the simplest Lucas-style concepts. Bring up dark matter and most seem to think you’re discussing race relations!
Optimism springs eternal for me and I hope I’m just living through a down cycle of science fiction and the real thing’s potential.
Now excuse me while I compose a phat beat: “Yo yo yo, the parabola exceeds the inertia...”
Thank you all for a great read.

[handk]