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Where did all the starships go?

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Re: Where did all the starships go?

#21

Post by flohofwoe »

thomasguide wrote: post #4

FYI, this is about the titles of these books, not the textual content of the books themselves. The implication of the article is that sci-fi is losing relative standing to fantasy, but another interpretation is that science fiction titles have become more abstract and less literal over time.

The sad state of the 'science fiction corner' in German book chains is completely real though. Over the last two decades or so you could literally see it shrink on each visit and what little remains is filled with mass produced trash (Star Wars novels etc). The fantasy section right next to it has been eating into the science-fiction shelf space but is filled with the same trash, just replace your laser-toting space troopers with vampires, werewolves and dragons.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#23

Post by pfdietz »

delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

Stated with a different spin, the detached-from-reality takes of Campbell-era SF finally became too strained to enjoy.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#24

Post by Ekaros »

rybosworld wrote: post #20
tialaramex wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think at most very literal titles would be a stylistic phase. Even "The Martian" is more a play on words than just a literal title for what it's about. Taking favourite novels which are within arm's reach: Sure "Rainbows End" is Science Fiction which doesn't involve space travel etc. but "Incandescence" is also SF but that's deeply about space travel. Banks' "Whit" and "Surface Detail" are both sat here. One…

A bit of an off-topic observation: Banks might not have focused on the hard sci-fi aspects but I have a difficult time imagining a more likely future for humanity than something like the culture civilization.

As cynic I would imagine eventual collapse to be more likely. Probably slow degradation back to some sort of semi-advanced agricultural society. Say kinda post-apocalyptic world(without proper apocalypse) with larger societal structures still existing. Slow degradation of industrial output until some balance level is reached.

Probably not best sci-fi universe one can come up to. Or most selling one.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#25

Post by flohofwoe »

pfdietz wrote: post #22

A great deal of science fiction is just fantasy with spaceships. It uses technological tropes to seem like it isn't fantasy, but that's just surface gloss.

Which is unfortunately true, but also just illustrates how far science-fiction has fallen - not sure when it started but I guess Star Wars played an important role to remove the 'science' from 'science-fiction'.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#26

Post by flohofwoe »

delichon wrote: post #7

The starships left with the optimism. In the 50s there was a greater demand for stories with an unconstrained vision of the future where growth and expansion amount to flourishing. Later generations that lived in the excesses of growth saw it as the source of an intensifying dystopia. They stood athwart history and demanded decelleration. Star Trek lost ground to Terminator, Foundation to Neuromancer. Escaping sidewa…

I don't know, to the East of the Iron Curtain science fiction wasn't mostly about future optimism (at least after the initial "we're building a better society" optimism had been brutally murdered during the 1950s and 60s), but often a critical mirror of then-current society transported into the future to escape state censorship.

Maybe it's as simple as free societies not having the evolutionary pressure to produce great literature that requires an interested and intelligent reader to decode the hidden messages written between the lines ;)

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#27

Post by pfdietz »

flohofwoe wrote: post #25
pfdietz wrote: post #22

A great deal of science fiction is just fantasy with spaceships. It uses technological tropes to seem like it isn't fantasy, but that's just surface gloss.

Which is unfortunately true, but also just illustrates how far science-fiction has fallen - not sure when it started but I guess Star Wars played an important role to remove the 'science' from 'science-fiction'.

It's been there since day one. What, you thought early era SF used accurate science? No, they used made-up rules based on whether they could tell a good story.

Science fiction usually doesn't conform to how the world actually works in the same way pornography usually doesn't conform to the way sexual relationships work. They are both there to tell titillating stories, not describe reality.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#28

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

thomasguide wrote: post #4

FYI, this is about the titles of these books, not the textual content of the books themselves. The implication of the article is that sci-fi is losing relative standing to fantasy, but another interpretation is that science fiction titles have become more abstract and less literal over time.

I wouldn’t expect only one fiction subgenre to have such a dramatic increase of proportion of abstract titles while other related subgenres did not. In other words, I would expect all of these graphs to have a negative correlation with time due to a general abstraction of titles across all fiction subgenres. I would be surprised if there was enough consumer differentiation to support abstraction in one subgenre but not the others.

Another interpretation might be that as fewer books are released in a subgenre, their titles also become more abstract, which would increase the effect seen in the data presented as well.

But I would hesitate to believe that the observed effect should be chalked up to only title abstraction, and not a decline in popularity. Occam’s razor.

Re: Where did all the starships go?

#29

Post by flohofwoe »

jmclnx wrote: post #17

I have been seeing the trend of Fantasy slowly taking over SF for a while, maybe as long as 30 years :( Real Science based SF seems to have disappeared completely, at least based upon the only Book Store left in my area, Barnes and Noble.

> Barnes and Noble

...this might be the main problem (same with Thalia in Germany), those large book store chains are aggressively optimized for monetization, and that kicks off a death spiral of filling the available space with cheap industrially produced trash.

The good stuff might still be there, but it's much harder to find, and you need to know where to look (same thing that happened to music basically).

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