On the state of the genre, part N+1

[bondo_ba]

Finally finished reading Dozois' Year's Best Science Fiction 28th Annual Collection.  These are big books but, as I've mentioned elsewhere, they are critical reading if you want to know what's up in the SF field - or at least that part of it which collects the SFWA crowd

Comments

[msstacy13]

I'm more concerned with the morality of colonizing Mars,
but the heart and soul of science fiction has always been and always should be
a belief that the technological advancements necessitated
by an attempt to [FITB] will result in better tools with which to eradicate poverty,
while bolstering the economy and fostering a universal attitude of acheivement,
both of which will better enable both the impoverished and society to eradicate poverty.
Funding for the war on poverty was undercut by the war in Viet Nam; never by NASA.

[bondo_ba]

Precisely. But tell anyone that you want to spend billions on a Mars mission. They will tell you that there are more important things to do. They will also tell you to grow up.

It used to be that SF writers would all jump at the idea. Nowadays, however, they are all grown up.

And I think you just inspired my next blog post... One for which I'll get in trouble: "Science Fiction Has Grown Up".

Just wish I had a larger platform from which to get in trouble than this blog...

[msstacy13]

Always glad to inspire someone to write something.
While you're mulliing eit over,
fel free to revisit this
http://bondo-ba.livejournal.com/281427.html?thread=2909523#t2909523

[bondo_ba]

Yep, that one will help keep me from repeating myself yet again... Thanks!

[bondo_ba]

I'm evidently getting repetitive... Argh!

:P

I agree about the SF of the past being impossible to revive. Overdone, as you say, is overdone. But I do think there is more to life in 2013 than just doing another review of man's inhumanity to man, or how unconscionable it is that there is plenty of food but people still starve. I can get all of that on the nightly news.

What I want from SF is the sense of wonder, the feeling of "what if" aimed at the awesome, not the awful. That is what, in my mind, made the Golden Age golden. But today, it seems to be the exception as opposed to the rule.

[bondo_ba]

I will - actually roughed out some ideas already.

I guess I'm lucky - if you set a story in a large chunk of metal hurtling through space, you will immediately have my attention. Makes talking about SF much easier, LOL.

[peadarog]

I too will cast my vote for Sensawunda. I miss it, but that might just be because when I was younger *everything* was new to me. There are still plenty of cool stories coming out, just not necessarily in "best of the year" selections.

[bondo_ba]

Agreed. Nevertheless, I use the Dozois collection as a thermometer for what the genre represents to the traditional core of writers (although not necessarily readers).

[msstacy13]

Sensawunda?

I may be repeating myself again again,
but I do happen to know that in american radio drama
of the thirties, there was a sensawunda surrounding atomic energy,
but no such thing about it after August, 1945.
People had seen what atomic energy could do,
and it was not wonderful.

[bondo_ba]

Well, it is also wonderful in its way. It is still the cleanest realistic source of energy available despite the horror stories, and despite the huge advances made by solar power in the past decades.

[msstacy13]

Well, yes, it's wonderful,
but it had lost its sense of wonder.
Instead of stories where the secrets of atomic energy saved the world,
we had Godzilla.

For that matter,
the space program is still wonderful
half-a-century after the fact,
but not many of today's science fiction writers
remember tube testers, for instance.

Cell phones and microwave ovens sort of go without saying, I guess.