Refind it's purpose???? The purpose of sci-fi is to entertain! So the hyperdrive acts via some unexplained engine. So, teleportation happens via some unexplained machine. It is still science fiction to the reader. Go back to 1980 and imagine flying from the middle of the USA to Italy and then trying to phone home from the airport in Italy. You can do it but first you have to find a phone. I read a book back around that time that had a young American joining the "Space fleet" and going to the military shuttle port in Italy (Rome, I think) to get there. Before he could lift off, his mother in USA rings him and he fishes his phone out of his pocket to talk to her whereupon the military person marshalling new inductees snatches it from him and tells him he wont be needing that anymore. I remember thinking how science fiction that was, using a handheld phone to receive a call from one country to another. Nowadays it isnt science fiction anymore! I found that whole idea entertaining. Science fiction has never lost its purpose but it HAS attracted a whole new lot of people who may not have been interested via flashy movies etc. Science Fiction isnt JUST Doc Smith's epic sagas or riding a time machine to the distant future or even grossly altered bodies now sporting tech hanging off them. It can be as simple as a story told set in 2030 to be science fiction. After all, didnt the Jupiter 2 take off and get "Lost in Space", according to the TV series back in the 60s, in 1996? Story set in the future. It qualifies as science fiction. For me, I like twists like the idea of a small portal opened by unexplainable machines about man height and the portal goes to who knows where because the machines sent through never come back and all contact is lost the instant they go through. So, choices are "good garbage disposal system" or "stick your hand in it and see what happens". As I remember from either original Twilight Zone or Outer Limits (not sure which it was on), option 2 was taken and the guy who invented it stuck his right hand in, felt nothing and pulled it back out. When he pulled it out, it came back as a left hand! THAT is ALSO science fiction - though with a twist! ;-}
I assume you're speaking to me since I'm the one who mentioned the need to refined purpose, but you've mixed my sentiment with those of Drwhozit, which are sentiments I do not share. I don't care that a hyperdrive or a warp drive or any other technology go unexplained. That's fine with me. What I do care about, or rather what I dislike, in so much modern science fiction (not all of it, not by a long shot), is that the stories have nothing to say about the human condition. They are little more than techno-porn, and more than a little masturbatory.
Clearly, hence my lamentation. But, I have to say that your remark sounds a bit defensive. I've as much right to lament the dumbification of science fiction as someone else has to herald the literary age of neocortex redundancy. All I'm saying is there was a time when science fiction stories were the stuff of philosophical conversation. That day is, for the most part, in the past and it saddens me.
Haha I didn't mean to sound defensive, I enjoy all types of science fiction- and my favourite SciFi stories have strong philosophical views and questions. However, your "They are little more than techno-porn, and more than a little masturbatory." sounds like making out all the non-philosophical stories to be crap that just like to show off its "cool" technology ideas.
I'm in large part in agreement with Wreybies. It's my belief that if a story doesn't provoke conversation beyond "did you read the part about the whip?" then it's throwaway. Some writers are in it for the $$$ and fame, if that should happen, which it rarely does. But some, like myself, are in it for the legacy, to produce something thought provoking and lasting. To each their own. Writers' motivations vary as much as the readers'.
I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say no, no, no, but actually, yes, yes, yes. That is how I feel. I've read too much at this point in my life to be happy with something that's no deeper than the paper it's printed on. Like I mentioned earlier (and very much earlier in this thread as a whole), I don't need the science to be perfect or even plausible for me to enjoy the magnifying lens the science in the fiction creates to focus on facets of the human condition. But when that lens isn't capitalized upon, then I'm disappointed. Example from cinema: I just saw the latest installment of the Riddick franchise. What a piece of dreck. Not even my glamazon crush Katee Sakhoff was able to save it. Why? Because the character of Riddick is an intriguing one. So much room to talk about so many things, but the storyline gets caught up in groin consumerism and what could be a real thought provoker is little more than a steroid cartoon. It says nothing and in the end is utterly and completely disposable.
But why does everything need to be a thought provoker? I'd agree that there isnt really anything thought provoking in the cinema right now, and not ever it seems - but to condemn stories( I'm saying stories as in, movies, books, etc) that are for there just for killing a few braincells and having fun just doesn't seem right. I don't want to ponder on questions days after I watched a movie or read a book everytime I watch a movie or read a book. I don't think my head would ever find peace!
I believe a distinction should be made between movie and TV SF and SF written to be read, although there is overlap. A writer of screenplays has a different job than a writer of SF novels or short stories. Within those subcategories there are even more divisions. Some writers are into 'action,' others concentrate on hard science and some are more interested in social or political themes. Most mix a little of each into their work no matter what their main interest is. As a 'fan' for over 50 years, and most of that a prisoner of whatever my local library chose to buy, I read a lot of SF that I found only marginally interesting, but due to the limited selection I ended up reading, or trying to read things that I didn't particularly enjoy. But somebody else must have, because some of the authors had a giant catalog of published works. As writers, if we wish to write SF, I would say that we should write what we would enjoy, and if it doesn't generate any interest among others, consider compromise, abandon the genre, or keep doing it your way and see if perseverance finally wins the day. My currently most complete project is low on science and focused more on light entertainment. I am not convinced it will sell but I do know I would fail utterly trying to write hard science fiction.
Yeah, mine is sociopolitical, with a touch of love story and action. The tech is the catalyst, but it's not the focus.
I think most stories talk about the human condition. The conflicts in the stories show us how people would react in a situation that seems impossible or believable. And it makes us think how we would react if we are in that conflict. Hunger Games, for example, focus on a girl who choose to take her sister's place in a death match and figure out how to survive it as she face issues. That is a human condition element. So if you think modern science fiction stories are no longer about the human condition, then you are not reading enough books.
I believe he means human condition in relation to the technology of the age, how we cope with colonizing other worlds, FTL, advertisements fed straight to our consciousness, etc.
As a new member, I hope that I don't get chided for not knowing the community and all. Yet, my intentions in writing lay very heavily in the realm of Science Fiction. I suppose there is a stagnation in the genre put forth by the main stream media. Hell, I say to people that I wish to write Sci-Fi... Immediately they think of Star Wars/Star Trek. "You like all them space ships and laser beams?" They ask . . . I actually think more akin to, Robert A. Heinlein. A Stranger in a Strange Land, is still one of my favorites!
Star Wars is actually a fantasy with a Sci-Fi setting, and Star Trek is hard science with impossible technology. Perhaps readers are more interested in Sci-Fi adventure stories with character development. And they got tire of how perfect the future might become.
Wreybies, I quoted this in a review of a sci-fi script from zoetrope that deals with the human race's relationship toward tech and how it affects them, socially, psychologically and physically. I thought you said it so well and it stuck with me. EDIT: corrected I to it.
I don't consider ST anymore hard science than is SW. While we have made communicators (cell phones) possible; matter transportation, universal translators, holodecks and space battles at or above light speed are very much fantasy. SW also has it's own wireless communication tech. Both ST and SW feature mind control via some psionic capability.
Unfortunately, the script sucks, but the positive side is that it steps away from the merge of sci-fi/action and focuses on the psycho/social issue of tech and the discovery of new medicine.
Surrogates is another good example about how technology affects people. The movie sucks, but the two graphic novels are the best. The moral to me suggest that we should all throw away our tech and start living outside in the real world. We relay upon machines too much. And we might end up becoming tools ourselves.
Sure lets go back to when most of the population had to do hard labour for hours everyday with little pay, with tiny life expectancy, being hungry all of the time. I know you probably didn't mean that far back in our "tech" but honestly anyone who suggests to "live in the real world" by I don't know, not using mobile phones or something, really don't realise how much the world is better just because of that. EDIT: Okay, I just realised you were saying the possible moral messages of the movie surrogates.
Just to re-enter the conversation, this idea of the human condition as it relates to technology isn't what I meant at all, though it has provoked an interesting conversation. This over-sell of the tech part of sci-fi is where sci-fi has gone wrong in my opinion. There is very little tech in Herbert's Dune series - in fact the lack of tech is a major plot-driver - but what a masterful story is told regarding many paradigms that are present in the very real world of today. Religion, political hierarchies, and most important, resource allocation. The haves and the havenots and the sucky situation it is to live somewhere that has something everyone wants and they couldn't be arsed about the fact that you actually live there. Some of the very best science fiction of the golden age has very little focus on the actual technology at all.
To me, a large part of the value of science fiction is that it allows us to see ourselves in a different context. Fiction that takes place in the here-and-now does not give us any new context; we're stuck seeing ourselves the same way we always have. But if we put ourselves on a different planet, possibly interacting with extraterrestrial races or strange, non-Earthly phenomena, if we have to confront problems and situations that cannot happen in the here-and-now, we challenge ourselves in ways we otherwise cannot, and we are sometimes forced to reconsider the ways we live our lives, and even our value systems.
The handwavium technology of ST and SW don't bother me. What does bother me is the way their societies and cultures are basically 20th and 21st century USA in fancy clothes. Imagine if Yoda came from a race that considered it normal to eat its first born child and found humans repulsive because of a feature or characteristic that he could not even describe or translate into English. Or if the Jedi were required to impregnate females (of any race or species) they met because the force told them she was "right". Imagine if the Enterprise came across an alien culture of equal power to the Federation who were telepaths, but only amongst themselves and who were totally incapable if communicating with Kirk and his people, while also being fiercely territorial based on a spacial configuration determined by the visions of their psychic priesthood. The original Battlestar Galactica at least had Cylons who were a race with a truly non-human culture and could not be relied upon to react to situations in a human fashion. The remake made the Cylons human products and our enemies because of some "original sin" perpetrated by the humans, while still trying to be as human as possible. Boring. Instead, what about Cylons who could not distinguish between the organic crew and the mechanical components of the Battlestars and treated both with equal indifference or courtesy depending upon some Cylon rule of etiquette that humans did not understand.
