The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion
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Dan
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Jul 24, 2013 05:12PM
As the title suggests, this folder is for the discussion of any science fiction book written since 1971.
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I found these year separations rather odd. I think from about 1960 through 1976 should have its own designation because Modern Sci Fi didn't start until Star Wars, as far as I'm concerned. Adventure Sci Fi of a less serious nature and the trilogy knocked out the New Wave and serious stand alone novels at that point.
This time period is not Modern but Postmodern or at least Contemporary.
This how I would group the genre:American science fiction has gone through a series of periods. In the beginning was the Gernsbackian Era dominated by an almost mythic and gadget-and-space-monster-based scientifiction. Next came the Golden Age dominated by the Astounding's editor, Joseph Campbell from 1938-46 and represent the first steps in professionalization of and the movement towards human-focused pulp fiction. Robert Silverberg has argued forcibly for inclusion of the 50s in this grouping but in actual fact it should be described as the Classical Age due to the widespread proliferation of hard sci-fi in quality and quantity of writing and audience. Next in the 60s and 70s comes the New Wave revolution of Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" and Philip K. Dick's work, and its focus on experimental literary techniques, philosophical issues, psychological drama, and the rejection of the Modernist narrative. The development of William Gibson's cyberpunk of the 80s brings the genre into a full blown Postmodernist fiction completely rejecting the positivism of Gernback and Campbell, and America in general. In the 90s we see a split occurring between the lure of literary success and its "speculative fiction" hauteur with writers like Margaret Atwood, and the return of hard science fiction writers like Kim Stanley Robinson. With his "Mars Trilogy", Robinson creates a Neo-Classical Period for the ghetto genre, one unrepentant of tech and unafraid of mature subject matter of the mind, soul, and the body.
I'm terrible at genres, but I'd push the Gernsbeck & Campbell years up a decade or so each. There's a lot of overlap & their influences kept going for years. 1950s SF reeks of Campbell.Breaking things up by decades makes sense since there are so many opinions on the subject & there are no hard dates. Breaking out the 1960s & 70s on their own seems like a good idea. There was a huge shift from the 50s to those decades. Heinlein's 'Stranger' seems mild today, but it made quite the splash then. Zelazny, Delany, Herbert, & many others contributed to the New Wave.
Cyberpunk was definitely an explosion in the 80s, but I don't think Atwood & Robinson were all that influential nor different. I don't care for their writing though, so I could be wrong. IMO, there hasn't been any radical change or new thing in SF overall since the 80s. A lot more is available all over the board though, thankfully.
I don't think you can dismiss that Atwood and their ilk have established SF as acceptable forms for high literature and such monumental moments like a special "New Yorker" edition, Pulitzers, etc.
KSR and his fellows represent a break from the Cyberpunk style and a return to realistic hard SF but tempered by a new maturity among both authors and readers.
Gregg wrote: "I don't think you can dismiss that Atwood and their ilk have established SF as acceptable forms for high literature and such monumental moments like a special "New Yorker" edition, Pulitzers, etc."I think that was more the times, not particular authors. I don't consider attention from general prize commissions or the New Yorker much save that it showed SF finally got some mainstream recognition.
Early SF was often scoffed at, B movie stuff. In the 60s, it became apparent that SF was here & the New Wave authors were using it as a vehicle for expounding on social issues & as an art form. As you mentioned, they used some pretty wild techniques. In the 70s, SF started to get recognized by institutions as not just garbage, but literature in its own right. I went to a conservative prep school & it was quite a big deal when my class got the first course in it.
Cyberpunk meshed well with the surge in computing. It flared bright for a while, but got old. Still, there weren't all that many writing in that subgenre. Many SF authors kept turning out solid SF. Much of it mature literature, but more adventure & quite a bit of schlock - no different than any other genre in any other age of writing.
IMO, from the little I've read about their work, neither Atwood nor Robinson did anything new, just happened to write well & got recognized for it. Part of that was just the luck of their timing. Their sort of writing has been around for decades or maybe I'm misunderstanding what's supposed to be so revolutionary about their writing. Winning an award isn't it, though.
Margaret Atwood is soft SF, mostly dealing with people & writes what I guess is termed literary SF, right? I read Oryx and Crake a decade or so ago. It was OK, but didn't seem particularly special. Her style kind of reminded me of Stephen R. Donaldson or even Stephen King. Long on description & mood. Not my favorite.
SF writers have been doing apocalyptic & dystopian SF for years & I enjoyed others far more. On the Beach or Earth Abides examine the human condition in an apocalyptic scenario very well. The Lathe of Heaven does that & describes dystopian worlds well in far fewer words. More story, less description.
Greg Bear was writing hard SF a decade before Kim Stanley Robinson. Arthur C. Clarke was decades earlier. Isn't the geosynchronous orbit area called the Clarke Belt? Isaac Asimov wrote quite a few nonfiction books as well as put a lot of science into some of his stories. So did Heinlein, for that matter.
I've tried both Robinson & Bear. I just found them boring - too much tech for the story. I like some. I read a fair amount of science & other nonfiction books, but I don't care for it when an author tries to baffle or overwhelm me with it. For me, SF science is the vehicle, not the destination. I don't read SF to learn science (concepts are another matter) but for a good story. Thankfully, there are still plenty of authors around writing that way.
Anyway, I just don't see what's so special about any of the SF after the cyberpunk thing in the 80s. There's been a lot of good stuff & it's become more generally accepted, but we're living in an age that is SF to many of us. Dick Tracy watches are a reality & we're reusing rockets. We don't have HAL, but we have Siri. SMH
Atwood is not creating new SF motifs but utilizing the traditional ones for pure and direct social criticism. Her prose and wordsmithing exceed any SF writer before her. "Oryx and Crake" is literally an ode to literacy.
KSR is about far more than the tech but also the complexity of humanity. It is the melding of tech with the other human aspects that makes Neo-classical SF distinct from previous periods in the genre.
Both Atwood and KSR are pastiches of SF themes. Atwood parodies Conservative and Capitalist value systems while KSR analyzes the nature of Man. But Kim does love his tech...
"On the Beach" are great films and it is interesting to watch both to view the change in Aussie attitudes towards America. The original film triggered the French auteur movement of Nouveau Vague which is where the disruptive SF writers of the 60s appropriated the name New Wave.
"Earth Abides" is a great book. Somehow I still haven't gone to "The Lathe of Heaven", LeGuin leaves me unfulfilled. Have you read or watched "The Road"? The novel is poetry in motion.
I still don't understand why you think Atwood & KSR are indicative of a new chapter in SF. I'm not trying to be dense - just don't get it. If anyone else has an opinion or can break it down for me, I'm interested. Might just be too subtle a difference for me. I don't do subtle.I've only read On the Beach, I think. I'll take your word on the movement & naming.
Ursula K. Le Guin has been very hit or miss for me as an author, too. The Lathe of Heaven was a hit as were the first 3 Earth Sea books. If you like films, watch the PBS version of 'Lathe'. There's a link to it in my review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
The rest of LeGuin's stuff hasn't done much for me. I think The Left Hand of Darkness is overrated.
No, I haven't read or seen The Road. From the reviews, his grammar & punctuation is poor. IIRC, it was stream-of-consciousness, too. 3 strikes, so it's out. I won't even bother. I liked the "No Country For Old Men" with Tommy Lee Jones, though. Maybe I should see the movie some time. I think PKD writes poorly, but I often like the movies made out of his ravings.
Philip K. Dick was a very sloppy writer but when he was good, he was brilliant.
Don't approach Atwood as science fiction but a tool for social criticism. Literary SF is never about the straight story but referencing. It is extremely Postmodern.
KSR gives you insight and a damn good yarn. Have you read his newer stuff?
Gregg wrote: "Don't approach Atwood as science fiction but a tool for social criticism. Literary SF is never about the straight story but referencing. It is extremely Postmodern."I don't approach a fiction book looking for anything but entertainment. A good theme is welcome, but boring me to make the point isn't the way to go about it. She does.
No, I haven't tried any KSR in a long time. If I see a short one by him, I might give it a try. Might give one of his older ones a try again in audio. Time & a different format may work.
PKD was a whack job. He had some good ideas, but was generally depressing & his execution sucked - probably too stoned. That's why I seem to like the movies made out of his stuff better, I think. Translation is needed.
Thanks, glad you liked the review of 'Lathe'. It's quite different from most of her other stuff.
Art is never easy but entertainment can definitely be more fun.
Art is also highly personal in taste. I like Zelazny's. He wanted to be a poet, but turned to a mix of fantasy & SF instead. It's odd, because I don't care much for poetry, but he can evoke pages in a few words through well place allusions & short, but meaningful descriptions. His writing relies on my imagination & often on my knowledge of classics or other well known literature. Definitely not for everyone, though. The main story is generally good, but nothing special. It's only if I can pick up on his often subtle clues that the story really comes to fruition.
A Night in the Lonesome October has a chapter for every day of October & seems fairly simple until all the allusions are explored. I have over 20 pages of notes on them from several group reads. He brings in characters from history, mythology, Lovecraft, & even B horror movies.
He used a lot of strange styles, too. In Roadmarks, there are 2 time streams, so chapters are simply headed with a 1 or 2. He wrote both out, then threw all the number 2 sections in the air & tucked them randomly in between the number 1s. It makes for a very strange read the first time through since it's confusing. Once I caught on to what he was doing it was better & rereads are a real treat.
Doorways in the Sand is a simple SF murder mystery, but every chapter starts in the middle of the action, looks back to where it started, & then concludes on a cliff hanger. We then start the next chapter without the cliff hanger being resolved - it must be, but we don't know how. We get caught up in the new situation, only to be brought back to resolving the original situation & then work ourselves back into the next cliff hanger & start it all over again.
Anyway, his art is something I like. He doesn't spend pages describing the obvious or setting the mood. He wrote somewhere that he tried to keep descriptions down to 3 pieces before moving on. If more were needed, they were dribbled out as the story progressed.
The biggest difference between THEN and NOW is that most of the Sci-Fi writers THEN were actual scientists who were looking to make a little extra scratch by writing fiction in their time outside of the classroom/lab.
But many of the pre-New Wave writers were also professional pulp writers such as L. Ron Hubbard. The foreword of Battlefield Earth is a great history of SF as a magazine industry. Hubbard felt he defined the professionalization if SF through his influence on Campbell. Through would argument above his impact on the Golden Age publication success.
PSXtreme wrote: "The biggest difference between THEN and NOW is that most of the Sci-Fi writers THEN were actual scientists who were looking to make a little extra scratch by writing fiction in their time outside o..."The first half of the 20th century & a bit more was certainly a different market due to the pulps. They blended well with the radio programs of the day.
Were most of the SF authors really scientists? Interesting premise & added to the quality of the work when true. I know Asimov, Clarke, Doc Smith, Fred Hoyle, & several others were. Heinlein had an engineering background & worked at it some, but mostly wrote for money. Bradbury, Blish, Brackett, Van Vogt, & Hubbard weren't scientists. Many were screen writers. The last was a con man.
I found a list of Golden Age authors on Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_...
There are links to their Wikipedia pages & most don't seem to be scientists. The list certainly isn't complete & mixes in what I'd consider fantasy writers, though.
Gregg wrote: "...Hubbard felt he defined the professionalization if SF through his influence on Campbell...."Hubbard was a charlatan & a con man, so his claims to anything should be examined closely. While I know Campbell championed many far out ideas including parapsychology, I thought he was Hubbard's mentor, not the other way around. I guess it could have been a 2 way street, though. IIRC, Hubbard didn't start dianetics until the early 50s & published with Campbell's help.
Parapsychology of all sorts has been very popular for over a century. Mark Twain was into it, the Rhine experiments of the 1930s added a lot of juice for all their flaws, & the CIA was into it as late as the 1960s, I think. It was great grist for the SF writers.
The idea that the mind was or could be compartmentalized with discrete personalities & abilities was used a lot in early SF. A.E. van Vogt used it a lot, most memorably for me in The Voyage of the Space Beagle (1950) & The Silkie(1969). I've been reading a lot of Keith Laumer's stories lately (60s & 70s) & he uses a lot of the same sort of pseudoscience. Another old favorite Man of Many Minds (1953) is available for free on Gutenberg.org. (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19660) Fun stuff.
Previously, you referred to him as Joseph Campbell, rather than John W. Campbell. I'm guessing it was just a typo since you seem to be using a phone. Anyway, here's his info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W....
The only Joseph Campbell I'm slightly familiar with is known for The Hero With a Thousand Faces which defines the hero in myth.
Yep, those phones will do that to you every time....Joe is a whole other rabbit hole and an important one.
However, Hubbard's influence over Campbell has not been disputed as far as I have ever heard.
Gregg wrote: ""Earth Abides" is a great book. Somehow I still haven't gone to "The Lathe of Heaven", LeGuin leaves me unfulfilled. Have you read or watched "The Road"? The novel is poetry in motion."Le Guin is one of my favorite authors, SF or otherwise. I'll concede that some of her stuff falls short. The Lathe of Heaven is one of her good ones. I believe it was written as an homage to PKD, and her writing is better than his.
Jim wrote: "The rest of LeGuin's stuff hasn't done much for me. I think The Left Hand of Darkness is overrated."I read The Left Hand of Darkness a long time ago and it has always been one of my very favorite books. I read it again a few years ago, and it affected me differently, but I still thought it was good. Generally, I put Le Guin in the same league as Steinbeck. Different strokes for different folks.
Buck wrote: "...Generally, I put Le Guin in the same league as Steinbeck. Different strokes for different folks."True & I've been wrong before, too. I purely hated Steinbeck for years because I was forced to read The Red Pony 3 times in school. When my youngest boy was in high school, he read Of Mice and Men & told me I HAD to read it. I did during one lunch hour. Loved it. I went on to read another half dozen of his novels & liked all of them, too. I skimmed part of the The Red Pony. I still detest that book. Apparently, it wasn't the way he wrote, but the subject matter. It's one reason I'll retry books or sometimes others by an author I generally don't like.
In the case of KSR, Bear, Atwood, & King's books since the mid 80s or so, I don't like the way they write, so no story is going to work for me. I've been reading long enough to know pretty quickly what turns me on & off.
Le Guin's writing is OK, but I often don't find the subjects interesting. I usually like Larry Niven's books, especially his Known Space short stories, but The Integral Trees left me cold. I just never connected with the story & seem to be able to forget it instantly. I don't think I've ever finished it & I've started it half a dozen times in the past 40 years. I still have the brand new paperback I got back when it first came out back in the mid 70s.
I guess I'm a moody reader, but I read fiction for pleasure. If a book doesn't please me, I see no sense in continuing. So many books, so little time.
Jim wrote: "I purely hated Steinbeck for years because I was forced to read The Red Pony 3 times in school. When my youngest boy was in high school, he read Of Mice and Men & told me I HAD to read it. I did during one lunch hour. Loved it. I went on to read another half dozen of his novels & liked all of them, too. I skimmed part of the The Red Pony. I still detest that book. ."Steinbeck is a favorite of mine. I disliked the The Red Pony, too.
Ray Bradbury is a famous SF Writer. The Martian Chronicles didn't do it for me, nor The Illustrated Man. I read Something Wicked This Way Comes, and became a Bradbury fan.
"Something Wicked This Way Comes" is one of my favorite books of all time. Having grown up in a small town that hosts the WV State Fair and having a father born in 1919 it really resonates with me.So tonight I am off to see one of the last of the Greatest Show on Earth performances. It ain't under a bigtop, there are no freaks, and no elephants but there will be magic "Out of This World".....
Let's hear it for Bradbury, the Ringlings, and B.T. Barnum - makers of magic and nightmares!
It's a shame they're closing. I always felt sorry for the animals, but loved the spectacle.
Mod
Pretty much the same thing happened to me. I underestimated Bradbury based on being disappointed with Martian Chronicles and Illustrated Man that I read in junior high school. My opinion was a bit like that of Martin from "The Simpsons":
-- "As president I would demand a science fiction library featuring an ABC of the overlords of the genre: Asimov, Bester, Clarke."
--"What about Bradbury?"
--"I'm aware of his work."
But "Something Wicked" changed my opinion. I even went back and re-read "Martian Chronicles" and loved it. I was trying to take it too literally when younger. But now I can appreciate it for style and imagery.
Mod
Thanks for that. I've pretty much skipped over him. But some of those sound really interesting.
Mod
His style definitely wouldn't win any literary awards. But he had really cool ideas.
While the movie "Blade Runner" is better overall, the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has some cool ideas that are not explored in the film. For example, in the novel Deckard explicitly wonders whether he is a replicant or whether he is just paranoid. And, if I remember correctly, one of the replicants he has to kill looks and acts exactly like the one he is in love with.
Ed wrote: "Jim wrote: "Art is also highly personal in taste. I like Zelazny's..."Thanks for that. I've pretty much skipped over him. But some of those sound really interesting."
I have written reviews for most of his books, I think. If not, there is a group devoted to his works here. It doesn't get much traffic, but several of us answer questions, if asked, & the topics cover most of his work. One of the members edited the 6 volume collected works by NESFA.
https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...
The Evolution of Science Fiction
Books mentioned in this topic
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (other topics)Of Mice and Men (other topics)
The Integral Trees (other topics)
The Red Pony (other topics)
The Silkie (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Larry Niven (other topics)Keith Laumer (other topics)
Joseph Campbell (other topics)
A.E. van Vogt (other topics)
Ursula K. Le Guin (other topics)
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