Joshua Palmatier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jpskewedthrone) wrote2008-05-19 08:46 am
jpskewedthrone) wrote2008-05-19 08:46 am
A Thought. Comments? (SF and F Discussion)
So this was a random thought I had a week or so ago on my hour long drive to work and I thought I'd throw it out there to see what people thought. In the SF and F industry, there has recently been much discussion about the "decline" in SF being written and published, and that Fantasy has been taking over. Now, I'm NOT going to talk about the "different" between SF and F here, that's not the point of the discussion or the thought. Rather, I had a thought about WHY there seems to be this shift between the two.
I wonder if the shift has to do with society. Specifically, with how the society feels about where we are as a group. "Back then", when SF seemed a little more prevalent (I'm not sure when this "back then" would be, which is why I'm not being more specific here), I get the impression that perhaps we weren't as happy with ourselves and our society. I wasn't around then, or if I was, I was more concerned about my tree fort I'd built in the woods, called the Igloo. But from what I've heard about life then, there were . . . issues. Society itself was in turmoil. We didn't know where everything was headed, where WE were headed, and we looked to the future. Thus we produced more SF themed stories and novels. Our current lives weren't as good or as settled as we would have liked, so we looked forward to a time when things MIGHT be better, where the world might be more simple. MADE more simply by technology. So we were in a bad place and wanted to imagine a better place, but not just ANY better place (fantasy can always produce "better" places as easily as SF). A better place where we could imagine we may be headed. You can't do that with fantasy. SF gives you the hope, or leaves you with the hope, that the world and society may end up in that imaginary place. Perhaps this is why we were so interested in space and NASA and getting to the moon, and now most people could care less what NASA is doing. (Not the fandom of course; I read practically everything that NASA does . . . when it shows up in the news.)
Now, the world did become a "better" place, and by this I mean some of those issues that produced our disillusionment with the world were resolved or were settled in some way. At this point, we didn't need that elusive hope of a better future, because we were more or less content with the world we already had. So we weren't looking forward so much any more. Because of this, the effort to produce SF declined, and we saw an upsurge in the fantasy market instead. Why? Because if you're content with the world you have, you start looking at other worlds. And you aren't looking FORWARD any more for that world, you're content to look at the past (medieval-style worlds) or just something different. There's no need to look forward because everything around you is mostly OK.
Before anyone starts jumping on me about saying the world at the moment is OK and that's why we have a prevalence of fantasy, I'm not saying the current world is perfect by any means. But when we compare our situation now to some of the situations in the past . . . well, we're better off than we've been before. And besides, this is just a thought. It's certainly not a scientific study.
So what do you guys think? Do we produce more SF when we aren't happy with our current situation and want or NEED to see a better future for ourselves? Do we write more fantasy when we're generally settled or our problems don't seem as overwhelming and hopeless? Or am I just totally off my rocker?
I wonder if the shift has to do with society. Specifically, with how the society feels about where we are as a group. "Back then", when SF seemed a little more prevalent (I'm not sure when this "back then" would be, which is why I'm not being more specific here), I get the impression that perhaps we weren't as happy with ourselves and our society. I wasn't around then, or if I was, I was more concerned about my tree fort I'd built in the woods, called the Igloo. But from what I've heard about life then, there were . . . issues. Society itself was in turmoil. We didn't know where everything was headed, where WE were headed, and we looked to the future. Thus we produced more SF themed stories and novels. Our current lives weren't as good or as settled as we would have liked, so we looked forward to a time when things MIGHT be better, where the world might be more simple. MADE more simply by technology. So we were in a bad place and wanted to imagine a better place, but not just ANY better place (fantasy can always produce "better" places as easily as SF). A better place where we could imagine we may be headed. You can't do that with fantasy. SF gives you the hope, or leaves you with the hope, that the world and society may end up in that imaginary place. Perhaps this is why we were so interested in space and NASA and getting to the moon, and now most people could care less what NASA is doing. (Not the fandom of course; I read practically everything that NASA does . . . when it shows up in the news.)
Now, the world did become a "better" place, and by this I mean some of those issues that produced our disillusionment with the world were resolved or were settled in some way. At this point, we didn't need that elusive hope of a better future, because we were more or less content with the world we already had. So we weren't looking forward so much any more. Because of this, the effort to produce SF declined, and we saw an upsurge in the fantasy market instead. Why? Because if you're content with the world you have, you start looking at other worlds. And you aren't looking FORWARD any more for that world, you're content to look at the past (medieval-style worlds) or just something different. There's no need to look forward because everything around you is mostly OK.
Before anyone starts jumping on me about saying the world at the moment is OK and that's why we have a prevalence of fantasy, I'm not saying the current world is perfect by any means. But when we compare our situation now to some of the situations in the past . . . well, we're better off than we've been before. And besides, this is just a thought. It's certainly not a scientific study.
So what do you guys think? Do we produce more SF when we aren't happy with our current situation and want or NEED to see a better future for ourselves? Do we write more fantasy when we're generally settled or our problems don't seem as overwhelming and hopeless? Or am I just totally off my rocker?
no subject
I wish I had all my old SF magazines. I remember an Asimov's editorial by Robert Silverberg in which he discussed this and his own shift from SF to F. I remember him saying it was primarily a financial decision for him because SF was getting hard to sell. Unfortunately, other than that, about the only thing I remember is that he pointed out that a lot of hard SF of the time (50's-60's) was tech oriented, rather than plot or character oriented (not the exemplary SF, but a large volume of hard SF in general). Women were minor figures, mostly sex objects, if they existed at all. This created a negative perception of SF in general. Women were putting up with this attitude much less in real life and didn't want in in fiction either. And women were becoming more of a force as consumers. And more of them started writing in these genres.
Something that caught my attention as I read the comments above is that often references are made to movies (and TV). With Star Trek and Star Wars, the books came after and sell well because the market is already there. I think that the visual media has a major influence over the print media. A lot of people who aren't/weren't particularly readers would read something about or similar to something they saw and liked, which further influenced what was being accepted for publication. Plus we're bombarded with a lot more advertising for visual media than for print media. Outside of this visual media influence, I don't think SF was a very big genre, whereas fantasy has been around forever, but even fantasy wasn't as major as it seems now. Books like The Lord of the Rings were always popular among a select group, but it was the movies that made them commonly known to people. That Harry Potter quickly became a movie series wasn't only the movie industry's marketing. The publishers knew how it would help sales. Some people will become fans of a genre, but others are merely following the fad. The guys who crunch the numbers for the TV, movie and publishing industries want to ride a fad 'til it wears out.
Something else that is an interesting influence, and you gamers can verify or refute this, is rpg's. According to my son, several of his games are merely a new, interactive form of the novel (after print and movie forms). Most of these that I've seen are fantasy (the Final Fantasy series being the first to come to mind) or a fantasy SF. Are there games without "powers?"
Everything ebbs and flows. What is popular in one area influences another. And this isn't merely in forms of entertainment. Science and technology aren't regarded as highly right now as they were in the 60's. "New Age" seems to many of us the closest reality to a fantasy, taking in, as it does, the powers of the mind, a resurrection of Gaia, natural religions (or a resurgence in all religions, some would argue).
I don't suppose this actually answers "Why," but it is part of the answer. This ebb and flow is just the way things go. When we're sated with the current flow, it will ebb and another flow will come in. In general, the pendulum metaphor of opposites works, but in so specific an area, it could be something quite different.
I'll be thinking about this for a while.