Skim it for the descriptions of new books. I came away with half a dozen to look into.
Is science fiction dying?
41–50 of 56 posts
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#42Re: Is science fiction dying?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, didn't know that. Still, the show has been rather underwhelming, compared to SG1.
Only to SG1 fans. But it had attracted a number of new fans that didn't necessarily like SG1 (like me).
It would have been interesting if SG:U would have been more isolated from home (without the transporter stones and the Lucian Alliance story).
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#44I find any discussion of sci-fi has to start with terms. To me, sci-fi is fiction based in science that asks "what if" What if we had time travel? What if we could read minds? When you string together many such what-ifs, you end up in fantasy, which is what a lot of people today confuse with sci-fi. Early Star Trek to me was sci-fi because there were believable contemporary characters engaged in asking and exploring…
I could be taking your comments wrong, but they make Fantasy seem like bad SciFi. Well told fantasy stories explore the world in an introspective way. The "magic" systems provide drama, "color", and a vehicle representing power but typically the character development and introspection are the important aspects.
Taking Steven Erikson as an example of a top-of-the-craft Fantasy author, he explores moral ambiguity with a scientific approach. Quite often he turns my beliefs upside down and sideways so that I'm confused by them.
I can see Fantasy as a string of what-if's if it's in the sense of exploring people and society.
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree - the article kind of lost purpose midway in the first paragraph, so I skimmed it too and found it with an atrocious closing paragraph. My wife is generally averse to sci-fi, so what I always make sure to do is point out when an 'ordinary' movie is using sci-fi and it becomes disturbingly long. I like to point out movies like Inception (being a big one people don't see as sci-fi even though it is pure sci-fi)…
SF is a writing style, not a set of technologies. Hence why Neal Stephenon's Baroque Cycle is SF despite including no SFnal technologies (except maybe an allusion to just one), and why The Time Traveller's Wife is mainstream, despite being about time travel, the most outlandishly SFnal concept there ever was.
While I basically agree with you, the literary nazi in me must say that SF is a genre, not a writing style. The Baroque cycle crosses the historical fiction and SF genres into a lovely mutant child that could be called Historical Science Fiction. The Time Traveller's Wife also crosses genres, with a heavier focus on the Romance than the SF.
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#46SciFi in 1920:
|==now==|=======================future=====================|
SciFi today:
|=====================now===================|====future====|
See? The problem is that we are out of land! We have so much science now that would have been fiction before, that you can write a totally scifi novel that is just seen as contemporary fiction. Take a gander at the newer William Gibson books (Pattern Recognition for example). They are set a bit closer to present, but if they had been written in the 70s, they would have been totally scifi (laptop computers, cellular phones, realtime video editing, etc).
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#47I am a hardcore sci-fi fan. Although I basically grew up in a library, the most fascinating part of it were the two or three racks nobody frequented than me: the racks were full of hardcore sci-fi like heinlein, asimov, pkdick, silverberg, leguin, pohl, you name them. In that sense, Sci-Fi is actually dying, because in the last 10 years, I hardly found something that even remotely compares with the great work of thes…
If you like Banks you might consider checking out the other two members of the "Scottish Clique", Ken Macleod and Charles Stross. Both write some really good stuff. Other new good hard SF writers might be Cory Doctorow, Michael Chabon, Rachel Swirsky, Sara Genge, Geoffrey Landis, Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, Mary Robinette Kowal, Charlie Jane Anders, Felicity Shoulders, and Ian Tre…
Vernor Vinge
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you like Banks you might consider checking out the other two members of the "Scottish Clique", Ken Macleod and Charles Stross. Both write some really good stuff. Other new good hard SF writers might be Cory Doctorow, Michael Chabon, Rachel Swirsky, Sara Genge, Geoffrey Landis, Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Paolo Bacigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, Mary Robinette Kowal, Charlie Jane Anders, Felicity Shoulders, and Ian Tre…
Vernor Vinge
I love Vinge as much as the next guy, but he really hasn't done much in "the last 10 years." Well, except Rainbows End which was pretty good.
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#49I am a hardcore sci-fi fan. Although I basically grew up in a library, the most fascinating part of it were the two or three racks nobody frequented than me: the racks were full of hardcore sci-fi like heinlein, asimov, pkdick, silverberg, leguin, pohl, you name them. In that sense, Sci-Fi is actually dying, because in the last 10 years, I hardly found something that even remotely compares with the great work of thes…
How do you find Neal Stephenson? He's not exactly SF, but his stories do have a SF element to them.
It's not bad, but hardly hardcore sci-fi.
Re: Is science fiction dying?
#50I am a hardcore sci-fi fan. Although I basically grew up in a library, the most fascinating part of it were the two or three racks nobody frequented than me: the racks were full of hardcore sci-fi like heinlein, asimov, pkdick, silverberg, leguin, pohl, you name them. In that sense, Sci-Fi is actually dying, because in the last 10 years, I hardly found something that even remotely compares with the great work of thes…
And Neal Asher, or Charles Stross (although his great Laundry series is more geeky-thriller-and-urban-horror-with-some-scifi-elements). And honestly, compared to Reynolds, Asher, Stross and Banks I find the old 'hard-core' SciFi by Dick and Heinlein rather... dull. Not entirely sure what it is, but the classics are less gripping to me. But then: The gold age of SciFi is between 8 and 12 :)
"The gold age of SciFi is between 8 and 12"
Only someone who doesn't truly love Sci-fi can say that ... Also, if you are saying that Dick is dull (by the way, Dick is totally different from Heinlein), than you have no clue and your opinion does not count. :-)