A lot of the things that were sci-fi back in it's infancy is now science fact, what can we expect for our own future if killing stuff is what's hip for those that actually read?
Posted Jan 19, 2011, 5:29 PM UTC
It would if Greg Egan would just hurry up and write more books.
Read some Ted Chiang, if you haven't already. Very similar, but not quite as hard as Egan.
Like Inception?
No, like Contact. Or 2001. Or the first half of District 9.
You say the first half of District 9. But to me District 9 knew how to do smart scifi for modern audiences. The first half explores the characters and the social situation. The second half explores the characters more, completes the story arc, blows up some assholes head, and throws a pig at some guy. To me many people think that if scifi starts going into action it devolves the plot, but scifi is perfectly fine if it delves into action. Scifi isn't better or worse for action.
I have no problem with people who like the whole of District 9, and I get where they're coming from, but to me it exploded into Rambo for no good reason.
I disagree. To me to many smart scifi films choose the "moral high ground" approach. If this wanted to stick with typical American scifi they would have narrowly escaped from an evil crime boss and blood-thirsty mercenaries through some hamfisted plot device. Rather they fucking murdered everything like a real human would do. I loved how they fucking murdered every asshole in that film, it is 30x more satisfying and isn't filled with plot holes like the average Star Trek plot.
Why can't we have the best of both worlds? I love intelligent, thought provoking scifi. I also love blood and gore.
Agreed, but where is it? I haven't been able to get my hands on a recent sci-fi book that doesn't involve killing on a large scale.
Good luck with that. Geeks and Nerds these days arn't what they used to be.
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Which remains a great book, and was actually a very decent, intelligent SF movie...and then they had to go and remake the fucking thing, give us a gay Rick Schroeder, and it just all fell apart. I wanted to vomit watching that horrific debacle.
I think the problem is larger than intelligent sci-fi. The issue is rational thinking and intelligence in general are viewed with the slant that they are merely a choice amongst other options. Instead of a way of understanding our universe in a pragmatic and rational way.
Get past that hurdle and intelligent sci-fi will likely be viewed as it should be. A social commentary on "what-if" and the road it could lead us down. Its not like Twilight is very intelligent either, but its popular, and isn't sci-fi.
Dude, I hear you. It seems a lot of the newer SF that has become popular is just a nerd's mental circlejerk, the watering down of what people now call "Space Opera," and the like.
I've gone back and started picking through authors who were really thinking towards the future of society and the problems they would face. Like everything John Brunner ever wrote. I just picked up Greenhouse Summer by Norman Spinrad, and this is the kind of shit I like to read, it is challenging and pushes you to think, not sit back and dream of Al Capone possessing bodies, raping people and taking over planets.
Thanks for posting those books, I'll definitely check them out.
Just added Greenhouse Summer to my wish-list, now I just need 5 bucks!
Have you read John Brunner's flagship books? You have to, really. Stand on Zanzibar (favorite), Shockwave Rider, The Sheep Look Up, and A Jagged Orbit.
These books are really unbelievable. A very wise and amazing teacher gave me these to read in high school and I'm forever grateful for it.
Also, Norman Spinrad wrote a book called "The Void Captain's Tale" which is one of the most intense delving into the human pysche I've ever read. Spinrad is a slept-on master of SF.
I've never read any of them, I'm adding all of them to the wish-list. I'll definitely get Stand on Zanzibar on my next purchase, I'll keep you updated after I read it.
I just purchased Illium and Olympos by Dan Simmons a few days ago, I hope they were worth the 8 dollars I spent, although it seems like they're more of the same...
I loved those books very much. I'd read all the Hyperion stuff on a whim and snagged those, they are def. different but I love Simmon's use of classic literary references, (a chunk of Shakespeare amongst other things in this one.)
Good snag, I'd be interested to know what you think. If you like greek myth/history you are in for a ride.
Intelligent sci-fi was never cool.
Nope, wouldn't see me reading Clarke, Asimov or those high brow authors. /s
I love their books, too. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we might not be "cool"...
Good. I'm glad. And that's what makes me cool—not caring, right?
Well, I liked their intelligence, it was their characters I wasn't too enamored with. Let's break down "cool" with the usual hipster trait; that the obscure is "cool", then you may reach another conclusion. For an example I like John Brunner, K. W. Jeter, George Alec Effinger or other obscure writers because they weren't as popular - not because they were popular (Brunner was, for his time, but try to find his books on the shelves today). As nimoto says, it's a market-driven thing, even with literature.
He's not saying they weren't amazing, but that the cool kids didn't read Stanislaw Lem or Olaf Stapleton or Isaac Asimov or Ray Bradbury. The cool kids, when they read, read, I don't know, the fucking Hardy Boys. What was amazing about interesting, hard sci-fi was that it extrapolated rather realistic scenarios from our current situation. The really prescient stuff--the stuff that we're still reading--presented brilliant new ideas, which served as the protagonists while the characters usually had all the dimensionality of the casuists in a Platonic Dialogue. Asimov was especially guilty of this, but he didn't care.
What OP is talking about sounds to me more of a harsh indictment of the sci-fi film genre than the literature itself. But his complaints reflect realities that have always been the case with sci-fi cinema; there have always been a certain percentage of pulp-level pop fare and a certain percentage of high-brow fare. What might look like a narrowing trend would, I contend, hold up to be nothing more than a sampling bias as we forget all the shit sci-fi from years past and remember/laud/celebrate the good stuff.
Came here to say that.
Sci-fi is one window into people's expectations and hopes for/fears about the future.
On one hand, the "action" and violence in current sci-fi is just a way to dramatize these expectations. Some people are going to find it easier to break down/understand a conflict when it's a visual, violent thing, in addition to something deep and relevant. Violence is a sign that there is an actual conflict, anyways, and when it's a conflict of ideas (as they so often are in sci-fi and fantasy), it's a obvious choice to make it a large conflict rather than a small one.
For example, imagine 'District 9' if the only thing that'd happened was prawns picketing - no violence/bloodshed at all in the story. Public support might grow, and the government might change its policies. Is there conflict? Of course. But is it as good a story? I don't think so.
I think the problem you have is with stories that sacrifice conceptual depth to make room for more lasers. When you've got movies that have a maximum length, they'll go with whatever will be most popular. But as I think 'Moon' and others go to show, it's getting easier to gain popularity if you've got a solid concept.
Who's 'We'? Do you have a turd in your pocket?
If you disagree, please explain why, just don't down-vote; what's the point of a message board then?
I think you have to expand a little more with your question; as pertaining to what: author, specific book(s), anything?
Nothing specific, I've just seen a shift towards more epic battles than lets say rampant A.I.'s.
Don't get me wrong, I like the epic battle stuff I just haven't seen a lot of the more cerebral writing recently.
Er, ok. But does it have to be new? Pick up John Brunner's Shockwave Rider or someone else from the past and see what other writers speculated on. I don't know why everything has to be "new" since Asimov and Clarke are both from the same time. It's not that difficult, you can probably find them digitally on torrents or pick up a cheap used paperback from an Amazon seller. Not everything is on the bookshelf at Borders.
Rampant A.I.s engaging in epic battles? That's more like it!
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Makes sense, although I find it quite sad and find the current market lacking.
Can you recommend some good and current intelligent sci-fi?
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We're really kind of in the middle of a renaissance of smart SF in theaters: The Road, Splice, Moon, District 9, Children of Men, The Fountain, Primer, plus there's a lot of stuff in the pipeline like Looper from Rian Johnson and Blomkamp's Elysium and Cuaron's Gravity.