This means to me that, as he has much to say, he has much to back up his opinions with.
In his article that looked at “works at the online European Media Arts Festival, he wonders in print, “Has science fiction become too serious?”, adding, “Sci-fi has become the only way to talk about today's problems, and that means it has lost its ability to help us imagine better futures…”
Architect and attendee at the festival Liam Young, said, “Sci-fi used to be full of such possibilities, but he argues that these days it has become our favourite way of explaining to ourselves, over and over, the disasters engulfing us and our planet. The once hopeful genre ceded ground to dystopia, leaving us “stranded in the long now… waiting for the end of the end of the world”.
“If this all sounds rather grim, even hopeless, I don’t think the selection or even the [media] works individually are to blame…the problem lies in science fiction: it has ceased to be a playground and has become instead a deadly serious way of explaining our world…[what we] have yet to find is some other way – less technocratic, perhaps, and more political and spiritual – of imagining a better future.”
What’s scary is that I think that this is true of written SF as well.
Currently up for the “Emmy award of science fiction”, the Hugo, are several novels and short stories that depict bleak, hopeless futures.
I can’t speak for all of science fiction, but I CAN speak about my favorite hard science fiction magazine, ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.
I just finished reading the May/June 2021 issue. I’ve been reading ANALOG since I was a teenager, discovering it on the magazine racks of my local library, I started reading shortly after I finished devouring my junior high school’s SF collection. What began with John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN trilogy in 7th grade, had morphed into the PERN books of Anne McCaffery, Robert A Heinlein’s juveniles, as well as Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, JG Ballard’s short story collection, VERMILLION SANDS; and not Ursula K. LeGuin’s EARTHSEA books, but THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (among others).
ANALOG was always been filled with writing that pointed to positive futures. Even when I read John Brunner’s “Who Steals my Purse?” in 1973, a full two years before Vietnam ended in a bust for the US, he offered a positive possible outcome of the conflict – an opportunity not only for healing, but also for building a better world on the ashes of disaster. It wasn’t a rosy picture, but he allowed for hope in a hopeless mire of an undeclared war.
The May/June issue of ANALOG isn’t bereft of hope, but it feels decidedly grim. The darkness opens with the guest editorial, which concludes with “Is it even possible to create a voluntary, world-wide pause on a regular basis?” reflecting the author’s suggestion that that is the best way to save the planet…
A few stories later, we have an incredibly wealthy man able to take an incredibly expensive treatment so that he will effectively live forever. Cool biotech, but sucky for the rest of the poor planet. In another, a man working on the surface of an alien world looking for ways for the corporation to make money, finds alien life – then buries it so that the evil corporation (implying that all corporations are, by definition, evil?) won’t find it and exploit it. Another depicts the inevitable birth of piracy on the high metallic asteroids. Another, the futility of deceptive religion. A time traveler whose fondest wish is to travel through time, figures out how to do it – and materializes in the future to find that he absolutely DID IT!…but NOT in space.
By NO MEANS are “ALL!” of the stories negative; but there are more than there seemed to be when I started reading the magazine, and I don’t think that the darker view of the future started when Donald Trump came into power. I think we started sliding into grimmer futures in September of 2001. Since then, the future seems to be doomed to be subsumed by a present in which wealth, evil capitalism, evil religion, stupid people (not scientists, regular people who don’t want to understand science (personally, the T-shirt that reads “I Believe In Science” gives me the willies. Science isn’t something you do or don’t’ “believe in”. It’s about proposing a way to solve a problem, gather data on the solution, then see if the data support the effectiveness of the solution.
“I Believe the Science” would be better, but that’s just me as a science teacher of almost forty years of experience…). Liam Young may have already hit the nail on the head, “Sci-fi used to be full of such possibilities, but…these days it has become our favourite way of explaining to ourselves…the disasters engulfing us and our planet.
As well, commoners haven’t fallen in line to get COVID19 vaccinations (I got mine as soon as I could get the appointments!), either, remaining skeptical of recombinant DNA, and the frantic push to get everyone vaccinated. I myself, and my science teacher colleagues bear some responsibility for that opacity! We just never really address vaccinations in ANY standard biology curriculum I ever used.
Commoners and the poor also appear unprepared to sacrifice modern civilization in order for the wealthy and scientists to deflect Anthropogenic Warming (which we don’t write any more, but which is STILL what it’s all about) and create a world for them to live safely in.
Of course, this spate of dark futures could certainly be read as cautionary tales. I can’t argue the “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, or Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEARCH, or Stephen King’s THE STAND are anything but grim…
But…But…
I think Simon Ings has made an astute – and possibly true -- observation when he writes, “…science fiction…has ceased to be a playground and has become instead a deadly serious way of explaining our world…”
Now what can I do to change that trajectory?
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033351-900-has-science-fiction-become-too-serious/#ixzz6xt0rR6JI
Image: https://www.gotquestions.org/img/OG/apocalypse.jpg
Currently up for the “Emmy award of science fiction”, the Hugo, are several novels and short stories that depict bleak, hopeless futures.
I can’t speak for all of science fiction, but I CAN speak about my favorite hard science fiction magazine, ANALOG Science Fiction and Fact.
I just finished reading the May/June 2021 issue. I’ve been reading ANALOG since I was a teenager, discovering it on the magazine racks of my local library, I started reading shortly after I finished devouring my junior high school’s SF collection. What began with John Christopher’s WHITE MOUNTAIN trilogy in 7th grade, had morphed into the PERN books of Anne McCaffery, Robert A Heinlein’s juveniles, as well as Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD, JG Ballard’s short story collection, VERMILLION SANDS; and not Ursula K. LeGuin’s EARTHSEA books, but THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE LATHE OF HEAVEN (among others).
ANALOG was always been filled with writing that pointed to positive futures. Even when I read John Brunner’s “Who Steals my Purse?” in 1973, a full two years before Vietnam ended in a bust for the US, he offered a positive possible outcome of the conflict – an opportunity not only for healing, but also for building a better world on the ashes of disaster. It wasn’t a rosy picture, but he allowed for hope in a hopeless mire of an undeclared war.
The May/June issue of ANALOG isn’t bereft of hope, but it feels decidedly grim. The darkness opens with the guest editorial, which concludes with “Is it even possible to create a voluntary, world-wide pause on a regular basis?” reflecting the author’s suggestion that that is the best way to save the planet…
A few stories later, we have an incredibly wealthy man able to take an incredibly expensive treatment so that he will effectively live forever. Cool biotech, but sucky for the rest of the poor planet. In another, a man working on the surface of an alien world looking for ways for the corporation to make money, finds alien life – then buries it so that the evil corporation (implying that all corporations are, by definition, evil?) won’t find it and exploit it. Another depicts the inevitable birth of piracy on the high metallic asteroids. Another, the futility of deceptive religion. A time traveler whose fondest wish is to travel through time, figures out how to do it – and materializes in the future to find that he absolutely DID IT!…but NOT in space.
By NO MEANS are “ALL!” of the stories negative; but there are more than there seemed to be when I started reading the magazine, and I don’t think that the darker view of the future started when Donald Trump came into power. I think we started sliding into grimmer futures in September of 2001. Since then, the future seems to be doomed to be subsumed by a present in which wealth, evil capitalism, evil religion, stupid people (not scientists, regular people who don’t want to understand science (personally, the T-shirt that reads “I Believe In Science” gives me the willies. Science isn’t something you do or don’t’ “believe in”. It’s about proposing a way to solve a problem, gather data on the solution, then see if the data support the effectiveness of the solution.
“I Believe the Science” would be better, but that’s just me as a science teacher of almost forty years of experience…). Liam Young may have already hit the nail on the head, “Sci-fi used to be full of such possibilities, but…these days it has become our favourite way of explaining to ourselves…the disasters engulfing us and our planet.
As well, commoners haven’t fallen in line to get COVID19 vaccinations (I got mine as soon as I could get the appointments!), either, remaining skeptical of recombinant DNA, and the frantic push to get everyone vaccinated. I myself, and my science teacher colleagues bear some responsibility for that opacity! We just never really address vaccinations in ANY standard biology curriculum I ever used.
Commoners and the poor also appear unprepared to sacrifice modern civilization in order for the wealthy and scientists to deflect Anthropogenic Warming (which we don’t write any more, but which is STILL what it’s all about) and create a world for them to live safely in.
Of course, this spate of dark futures could certainly be read as cautionary tales. I can’t argue the “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, or Nevil Shute’s ON THE BEARCH, or Stephen King’s THE STAND are anything but grim…
But…But…
I think Simon Ings has made an astute – and possibly true -- observation when he writes, “…science fiction…has ceased to be a playground and has become instead a deadly serious way of explaining our world…”
Now what can I do to change that trajectory?
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25033351-900-has-science-fiction-become-too-serious/#ixzz6xt0rR6JI
Image: https://www.gotquestions.org/img/OG/apocalypse.jpg
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