My social groups like sci-fi, they just say it's overly pozz and poorly written. Any time "After Generation X" means Baby Boomers will be long dead. Boomers are the main institutional gatekeepers choosing boring pozz writers to fill the offices of approved narrative fiction writers. Once they are no longer doing so the floodgates will open with scifi that will be smutty, undignified, violent, heretical, experimental and perhaps even good.
The reception of people like Elon Musk, whatever the truth may be, shows that people are still fascinated with space, cybernetics and electricity. It's that the current crop of 'approved narrative writers' won't allow anyone to dream of a better future.
Aside from returning to a sense of adventure by exploring the vast reaches of space, sci-fi could also live on by becoming science fiction/fantasy, where science and magic are intertwined. If you think about it, science has already reached the level of magic. We compelled rocks to think by carving runes onto them and striking them with lightning. If that's not magic, then I don't know what is.
It might sound odd but this gives me considerable satisfaction; fantasy when I was growing up was despised and treated as 'kids stuff' and as 'lesser' than the sophisticated 'literary genre' (whatever the hell that is) and sci-fi, yet it might be that Mythic fiction has its day at last once again as it did decades ago.
I always found Sci-fi kind of dull, and tedious. I liked some but for the most part it bores me to tears, whereas adventure, history and fantastical events fascinate. I still remember being in Uni and being told that Mystery, Sci-Fi and Romance were serious genres for true intellectuals while Horror & Fantasy are trash and best forgotten, so there's some katharsis here.
I think some of it is that it's actually become harder to write, at least realistic near-term SF without it becoming instantly dated. Technological, social, and historical change gets out ahead of a lot of what current SF writers try to do.
Gen Y here. Growing up, I rolled my eyes at a lot of sci-fi (Star Treks/Wars) but at some point I discovered Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman and really started liking that era of hard sci-fi. I suspect I may have been an outlier.
The only consistent sci-fi fandom from my generation seems to be Warhammer 40K, and it’s very heavy on fantasy elements.
Excellent stuff here, and much to ponder. The adventure roots of sci-fi will be important, as while there is a place for hard sci-fi, it still needs imagination. This is why I think Hyperion by Dan Simmons works so well: he displays tons of imagination—and mystery—within the sci-fi paradigm.
Genre needs to be embraced on the one hand, and stretched to its breaking point on the other, to keep it fresh.
You're right; about Hyperion in particular. And not only that, but each chapter of Hyperion is a different SF subgenre, including space opera, mil-SF, and cyberpunk.
I think part of the difference between SF when we were growing up and SF now is that SF has a lot of Set answers, and it can be hard for new people to catch up on all of the parts of the Milieu that are “Understood”. Early SF had to explore say one technology at a time, like say, Cold Sleep/Suspended animation and build a story about one possible answer. Somewhere along the way we reached consensus about how that worked, and everyone just uses the idea now off the shelf while telling another story.
You're on to something. I just got done re-watching Akira for the first time in years. It occurred to me that nothing of its kind could be made today, for reasons including the one you bring up.
If you get to the point where someone can say to a noob, "Sheesh, you can't teleport while in warp drive, everyone knows that," then SF has stopped innovating and is just diddling within established Lore. And a huge body of established lore makes it real easy for new readers to bounce off of it.
I'm not cued into the sci-fi scene of big publishing but, if what I do hear is anything to go by, choosing hacks like Chuck Wendig to be the standard bearer probably isn't helping much, either. Maybe he isn't as prominent as it seems to me, as an outsider looking in, it seems that way. To offer my own perspective as a Millennial and those of my Millennial friends who still read, I also find that a lot of hard to get into a lot of popular hard sci-fi. It's too dense for what I'm looking for, which is something I can pick up and put down at my leisure without having to think too much about it. Maybe that's a self-report, but I kind of just prefer the explanation of "It's magic, don't think too hard about it" to a ten page dissection on quantum physics. It's what kept me from getting invested in the Three Body Problem series despite a friend's persistent insistence I needed to read it. I think there's always going to be a place for sci-fi and it could have a resurgence but no one really being pushed by big publishing has the chops to make it happen. Also, I think there's something to be said about the fact that many of the biggest fantasy titles (again, that I'm aware of) have been romantically oriented and are easy sells to what seems to be the largest audience still buying big publishing titles, which is the BookTok crowd, but I'm already out of my lane as it is. That's just how I see it based on my interaction with those in my social circle who still read.
I'm Gen X, and my kids are Gen Z, but there was a generation in the middle. How do you think the Millennials relate to science fiction?
It seems like space opera, alternate history, and multiverse tales are somewhat insulated from the forces that have eroded cyberpunk's appeal. And, yes, optimistic speculation about future technological developments doesn't seem to fit very well with the contemporary zeitgeist.
There are 2 generations in between. Gen Y, which came right after X, had anlog childhoods and digitala adolescence. Millennials grew up with the internet and smartphones. As in all things, Ys represent a transitory step; they cling to "soft SF" and science fantasy like Star Wars. Millennials, in contrast, view anything that came before them as backwards and unenlitghtened. They're more concerned with destroying the old classics and remaking them in their image.
The worth of a model depends on its predictive value. Lumping people born before ubiquitous internet and cell phones with those raised in the digital world does not describe the differences in behvaior and outcomes we see in real life.
I'm a Millennial, and sci-fi has always been one of my favorite genres! I was very surprised recently when my next door neighbor (who was very drunk at the time) told me that he can't stand dystopian sci-fi because "it's too real".
That "too real" aspect is actually what draws me to it-- it makes me feel validated and less alone with whatever I'm going through. I wanted to keep watching "Brazil" a bunch of times during the lockdowns because it somehow made me feel like there was an actual meaning behind what I was going through.
In May 2021, I was cosplaying Cloud Strife from FF7 at Colossalcon, and during the "in-character cosplay" competition improv, I made a joke about "some weird stuff I found in Shinra's lab that might save you but also might kill you if I inject it" and then mimed injecting it into the other person on stage. The scene immediately ended and the audience reactions were dramatic not because that scenario was bizarre but because it was REALISTIC-- Colossalcon was one of a very few conventions that year that didn't have vaccine mandates, and my friend and I had lied about being vaccinated in order to get a spot in a room share. I have no idea how many people in the audience were experiencing anxiety about covid vaccine side effects when I did that scene. It kind of had the vibe of the play-within-a-play in "Hamlet". Because of the cyberpunk setting in FF7 and the way science is a neutral force, neither good nor evil, I could comment on the current issues while staying very much in character and in the setting of FF7.
I've always felt like "Futurama" had the absolute best political, social, and environmental commentary of absolutely any show that aired at the turn-of-the-millennium because it was *just* removed enough from reality to be completely uncensored. When I saw "Metropolis", I thought it was one of the most radical things I'd ever seen as far as early 20th century politics regarding the working man and the stratification of society. It said things that a film actually set in Weimar Germany couldn't.
Fantasy also has a deep truth to it, but it's more abstract and allegorical the way Sci-Fi can be brutally truthful beyond what contemporary fiction can be. I re-watched "The Dark Crystal" in a very small apartment in Midtown Manhattan in June of 2020, when the entire area was boarded up and it felt like the world was ending. It resonated with me in a way that it never had before, and it felt like I was really in that world facing the life-or-death situations. But it was more of a spiritual truth, while things like "Brazil" were more of a material truth.
I think there is way more avoiding things rather than leaning into them than there used to be, though. People don't want to feel uncomfortable and directly confront reality the same way I do usually. Like my neighbor, they'd rather have a few drinks and dissociate instead.
Isekai stories that fling people into alien worlds - what used to be called planetary adventures, with hopeful, non-woke characters have potential. Dragonsong, Telzey, and Andre Norton-style alternate timelines adventures could work. See JCW's Somewhither adventures, or quite a lot of popular Japanese stories.
The other untapped vein is surviving the apocalypse. Hunger games, and similar stories (Maze Runner, that Abnegation/ScFi Hogwarts seies) lost a lot of their popular appeal when the sequels lost the thread. The point is to *slay* the dragon, win the princess, and build a happily-ever-after.
My social groups like sci-fi, they just say it's overly pozz and poorly written. Any time "After Generation X" means Baby Boomers will be long dead. Boomers are the main institutional gatekeepers choosing boring pozz writers to fill the offices of approved narrative fiction writers. Once they are no longer doing so the floodgates will open with scifi that will be smutty, undignified, violent, heretical, experimental and perhaps even good.
The reception of people like Elon Musk, whatever the truth may be, shows that people are still fascinated with space, cybernetics and electricity. It's that the current crop of 'approved narrative writers' won't allow anyone to dream of a better future.
Aside from returning to a sense of adventure by exploring the vast reaches of space, sci-fi could also live on by becoming science fiction/fantasy, where science and magic are intertwined. If you think about it, science has already reached the level of magic. We compelled rocks to think by carving runes onto them and striking them with lightning. If that's not magic, then I don't know what is.
Yes! And any coding camp type environment kind of feels like Hogwarts in a weird way lol
It might sound odd but this gives me considerable satisfaction; fantasy when I was growing up was despised and treated as 'kids stuff' and as 'lesser' than the sophisticated 'literary genre' (whatever the hell that is) and sci-fi, yet it might be that Mythic fiction has its day at last once again as it did decades ago.
I always found Sci-fi kind of dull, and tedious. I liked some but for the most part it bores me to tears, whereas adventure, history and fantastical events fascinate. I still remember being in Uni and being told that Mystery, Sci-Fi and Romance were serious genres for true intellectuals while Horror & Fantasy are trash and best forgotten, so there's some katharsis here.
Makes sense to me.
Haha thanks, I’m pretty predictable I guess.
Or consistent ;)
Lol now you’re just flattering us ;)
I think some of it is that it's actually become harder to write, at least realistic near-term SF without it becoming instantly dated. Technological, social, and historical change gets out ahead of a lot of what current SF writers try to do.
Gen Y here. Growing up, I rolled my eyes at a lot of sci-fi (Star Treks/Wars) but at some point I discovered Larry Niven and Joe Haldeman and really started liking that era of hard sci-fi. I suspect I may have been an outlier.
The only consistent sci-fi fandom from my generation seems to be Warhammer 40K, and it’s very heavy on fantasy elements.
Excellent stuff here, and much to ponder. The adventure roots of sci-fi will be important, as while there is a place for hard sci-fi, it still needs imagination. This is why I think Hyperion by Dan Simmons works so well: he displays tons of imagination—and mystery—within the sci-fi paradigm.
Genre needs to be embraced on the one hand, and stretched to its breaking point on the other, to keep it fresh.
You're right; about Hyperion in particular. And not only that, but each chapter of Hyperion is a different SF subgenre, including space opera, mil-SF, and cyberpunk.
Exactly. And the series continues in much the same vein. It’s a masterwork, and it shows what sci-fi can be pretty off-the-wall and still be sci-fi.
I think part of the difference between SF when we were growing up and SF now is that SF has a lot of Set answers, and it can be hard for new people to catch up on all of the parts of the Milieu that are “Understood”. Early SF had to explore say one technology at a time, like say, Cold Sleep/Suspended animation and build a story about one possible answer. Somewhere along the way we reached consensus about how that worked, and everyone just uses the idea now off the shelf while telling another story.
You're on to something. I just got done re-watching Akira for the first time in years. It occurred to me that nothing of its kind could be made today, for reasons including the one you bring up.
If you get to the point where someone can say to a noob, "Sheesh, you can't teleport while in warp drive, everyone knows that," then SF has stopped innovating and is just diddling within established Lore. And a huge body of established lore makes it real easy for new readers to bounce off of it.
Hard science is out and light novels are in? I'm down.
I'm not cued into the sci-fi scene of big publishing but, if what I do hear is anything to go by, choosing hacks like Chuck Wendig to be the standard bearer probably isn't helping much, either. Maybe he isn't as prominent as it seems to me, as an outsider looking in, it seems that way. To offer my own perspective as a Millennial and those of my Millennial friends who still read, I also find that a lot of hard to get into a lot of popular hard sci-fi. It's too dense for what I'm looking for, which is something I can pick up and put down at my leisure without having to think too much about it. Maybe that's a self-report, but I kind of just prefer the explanation of "It's magic, don't think too hard about it" to a ten page dissection on quantum physics. It's what kept me from getting invested in the Three Body Problem series despite a friend's persistent insistence I needed to read it. I think there's always going to be a place for sci-fi and it could have a resurgence but no one really being pushed by big publishing has the chops to make it happen. Also, I think there's something to be said about the fact that many of the biggest fantasy titles (again, that I'm aware of) have been romantically oriented and are easy sells to what seems to be the largest audience still buying big publishing titles, which is the BookTok crowd, but I'm already out of my lane as it is. That's just how I see it based on my interaction with those in my social circle who still read.
I'm Gen X, and my kids are Gen Z, but there was a generation in the middle. How do you think the Millennials relate to science fiction?
It seems like space opera, alternate history, and multiverse tales are somewhat insulated from the forces that have eroded cyberpunk's appeal. And, yes, optimistic speculation about future technological developments doesn't seem to fit very well with the contemporary zeitgeist.
There are 2 generations in between. Gen Y, which came right after X, had anlog childhoods and digitala adolescence. Millennials grew up with the internet and smartphones. As in all things, Ys represent a transitory step; they cling to "soft SF" and science fantasy like Star Wars. Millennials, in contrast, view anything that came before them as backwards and unenlitghtened. They're more concerned with destroying the old classics and remaking them in their image.
I think Millennials and Generation Y are two names for the same generational cohort. Wikipedia agrees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Generation_timeline.svg
The worth of a model depends on its predictive value. Lumping people born before ubiquitous internet and cell phones with those raised in the digital world does not describe the differences in behvaior and outcomes we see in real life.
Besides, we know they were originally considered separate generations. Here's an article from all the way back in 2001 mentioning them as such: https://web.archive.org/web/20190426133611/https://adage.com/article/news/generation/55731
I'm a Millennial, and sci-fi has always been one of my favorite genres! I was very surprised recently when my next door neighbor (who was very drunk at the time) told me that he can't stand dystopian sci-fi because "it's too real".
That "too real" aspect is actually what draws me to it-- it makes me feel validated and less alone with whatever I'm going through. I wanted to keep watching "Brazil" a bunch of times during the lockdowns because it somehow made me feel like there was an actual meaning behind what I was going through.
In May 2021, I was cosplaying Cloud Strife from FF7 at Colossalcon, and during the "in-character cosplay" competition improv, I made a joke about "some weird stuff I found in Shinra's lab that might save you but also might kill you if I inject it" and then mimed injecting it into the other person on stage. The scene immediately ended and the audience reactions were dramatic not because that scenario was bizarre but because it was REALISTIC-- Colossalcon was one of a very few conventions that year that didn't have vaccine mandates, and my friend and I had lied about being vaccinated in order to get a spot in a room share. I have no idea how many people in the audience were experiencing anxiety about covid vaccine side effects when I did that scene. It kind of had the vibe of the play-within-a-play in "Hamlet". Because of the cyberpunk setting in FF7 and the way science is a neutral force, neither good nor evil, I could comment on the current issues while staying very much in character and in the setting of FF7.
I've always felt like "Futurama" had the absolute best political, social, and environmental commentary of absolutely any show that aired at the turn-of-the-millennium because it was *just* removed enough from reality to be completely uncensored. When I saw "Metropolis", I thought it was one of the most radical things I'd ever seen as far as early 20th century politics regarding the working man and the stratification of society. It said things that a film actually set in Weimar Germany couldn't.
Fantasy also has a deep truth to it, but it's more abstract and allegorical the way Sci-Fi can be brutally truthful beyond what contemporary fiction can be. I re-watched "The Dark Crystal" in a very small apartment in Midtown Manhattan in June of 2020, when the entire area was boarded up and it felt like the world was ending. It resonated with me in a way that it never had before, and it felt like I was really in that world facing the life-or-death situations. But it was more of a spiritual truth, while things like "Brazil" were more of a material truth.
I think there is way more avoiding things rather than leaning into them than there used to be, though. People don't want to feel uncomfortable and directly confront reality the same way I do usually. Like my neighbor, they'd rather have a few drinks and dissociate instead.
Isekai stories that fling people into alien worlds - what used to be called planetary adventures, with hopeful, non-woke characters have potential. Dragonsong, Telzey, and Andre Norton-style alternate timelines adventures could work. See JCW's Somewhither adventures, or quite a lot of popular Japanese stories.
The other untapped vein is surviving the apocalypse. Hunger games, and similar stories (Maze Runner, that Abnegation/ScFi Hogwarts seies) lost a lot of their popular appeal when the sequels lost the thread. The point is to *slay* the dragon, win the princess, and build a happily-ever-after.
Then there's bildungsroman...in Space!
Loads of untapped potential.
Perhaps the reason hard science fiction is falling out of favor is because too many require advanced degrees to understand.