Why isn't science fiction taken seriously?

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Originally Posted by Red-Headed

I like the 'allegorical' form of science fiction as well, but I think that it has, or can, have much more to say as a form.



Don't forget his theories on eugenics that are also promulgated in works like The Time Machine.



It is said that he turned the date 19(48) into 19(84). It is definitely a political allegory. If it wasn't set in an alternate future but in some unspecified country would it still be sci fi?

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Yes, I agree that it has much more to say. Bank's books routinely make assumptions about the nature of consciousness, and whether it would be possible to "upload" a mind into a body. Neil Asher does the same, but this is relevant now to debates upon the nature of consciousness as having an organic source.

Well's may well have been toying with the ideas of eugenics, but it was before it was a dirty word. The same thing could happen with gene therapy, (This is being discussed in another thread).

I think 1984's content, apart from the setting, would make it Sci-Fi, though it a strong comment on the politial issues that were current. The idea of Big Brother promulgated through technology is an example, as is newsspeak. They hold wide ranging implications, hence the constant references to them in modern culture.

I feel there is a sense that Sci-Fi is not credited with the same status as other literature, but should be for the above reasons and more. It has currency beyond the period it adresses, in the same way that literature in dealing with human relations and lots of other issues- historical etc.

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Originally Posted by mal4mac

Shakespeare and Dickens created literary fiction,

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I wouldn't disagree with this but the real origins of the novel in England are when the theatre was essentially emasculated by the paranoia of the Walpole government. Satirists like Fielding turned to the novel as a way of dodging censorship somewhat. Notwithstanding the epistolary novels of Richardson inter alia at around the same time.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Yes, I agree that it has much more to say. Bank's books routinely make assumptions about the nature of consciousness, and whether it would be possible to "upload" a mind into a body. Neil Asher does the same, but this is relevant now to debates upon the nature of consciousness as having an organic source.

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I think Frederick Pohl had some similar ideas.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

Well's may well have been toying with the ideas of eugenics, but it was before it was a dirty word. The same thing could happen with gene therapy, (This is being discussed in another thread).

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Those Nazis have a lot to answer for! I'm not so sure that Wells is completely innocent though, weren't the morlocks in The Time Machine supposed to be a eugenic projection of the proletariat working classes?

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I think 1984's content, apart from the setting, would make it Sci-Fi, though it a strong comment on the politial issues that were current. The idea of Big Brother promulgated through technology is an example, as is newsspeak. They hold wide ranging implications, hence the constant references to them in modern culture.

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Yeah, scarily prophetic.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

I feel there is a sense that Sci-Fi is not credited with the same status as other literature, but should be for the above reasons and more. It has currency beyond the period it adresses, in the same way that literature in dealing with human relations and lots of other issues- historical etc.

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This has been my point for a while. Perhaps if it was re-branded as something like 'speculative fiction' or something it might fare better?

This has been my point for a while. Perhaps if it was re-branded as something like 'speculative fiction' or something it might fare better?[/QUOTE]

Good idea. The problem with the term Sci Fi is that it is an accurate decription of the good stuff and all the trash on TV etc. I think fantasy has the same problem. perhaps in time the filter of discernment will hold up the good stuff as examples of the genre.

Another problem I see, though it may not relate directly to why genres do not always have equal weight, is the problem of the next frontier. Much of the fiction of science is now the possible science we have. Cloning is a rather non-dramatic livestock/pet reality, and it is only a matter of time before we clone ourselves. Warp drives, planet exploration, all this is on the horizon or nearly there, even cyborg technology. The only thing that I think is impossible is time travel into the past, as I do not see how we could control particle formation so precisely to reconstruct the already occurred to alter that. None of us are what we were at birth, because the body only provides an illusion of being one object. We shed flesh and bone regularly until cell function ceases viability, so I think time travel backwards will always remain pretty much a fancy, but much of science fiction we grew up with isn't fiction anymore.

I'd pay good money to see a warp drive. I think it is a few thousand years away personally. I'm inclined to agree about time travel, but with my very poor knowledge & understanding of quantum theory, there are supposedly possibilities even there.

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Originally Posted by Paulclem

This has been my point for a while. Perhaps if it was re-branded as something like 'speculative fiction' or something it might fare better?

Good idea. The problem with the term Sci Fi is that it is an accurate decription of the good stuff and all the trash on TV etc. I think fantasy has the same problem. perhaps in time the filter of discernment will hold up the good stuff as examples of the genre.

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I'm pretty sure Hugo Gernsback coined the phrase scientific fiction in an August 1923 magazine article entitled 'Science & Invention'. Later he planned a magazine called Scientifiction.

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Originally Posted by Red-Headed

I'd pay good money to see a warp drive.

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I read an article about it online, though I cannot remember where, and though it would not go zapping ships like the Enterprise about, the concept is the same, curving the time-space field in a feasible manner. It was one of those science fiction break through features trussed up for verbal persons like me. (And I have faith in my ability to understand Greene's Elegant Universe when I dare to finally unwrap it, right?:goof:)

Amazon has me on a virtual glut diet of free science fiction which actually isn't that bad, but nothing that really takes chances like Vonnegut and Sturgeon-- um, both of whom I paid for--but I think that so much of the genre is available for free, or well under Vonnegut's price, suggests the implicit assumption in your query is correct.

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Originally Posted by Jozanny

I read an article about it online, though I cannot remember where...

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Maybe Miguel Alcubierre?

Sorry to be bringing up this old thread. I've lost this forum for a few years, lol. But now I'm back.

One of my personal problems with most of science fiction is that writers are not real futurists and/or do not consult futurists, or even try to do much research before they start writing, instead they amplify a single futuristic idea with their scientific or technological preconceptions. This is why Jules Verne was such a great science fiction writer, because he did substantial amount of research, he was always knowledgeable about the cutting edge technological developments and combined this knowledge to foresee plausible futuristic expectations.

If you consult with various industry experts today, you'll find out that it's possible to have a general idea of where things are heading, and if you consult 20 or so industries, it'll be possible to make an interesting extrapolation from there on how these technologies could converge. It's a shame that we do not have a modern Jules Verne.

Most genre writers aren't taken seriously, perhaps with the exception of crime/mystery, as they don't have the broad appeal of mainstream fiction. They're written for people who like to read that genre and adhere to a certain formula. Sci-fi also has lots of new concepts that people have to get their heads round- similar to fantasy.

I like sci-fi in the sense of dystopia fiction but not really keen on spaceships and aliens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012...s-iain-m-banks

The above link is a piece in The Guardian book club, and discusses the "literary-ness" of one of Iain M Banks' former novels.

Whilst I agree that much sci fi is written for the sci fi audience, Banks is bringing a literary-ness into his work. A later novel - Surface Detail - is really good at challenging a literal view of what hell is like and should be for, and challenges our own expectations of justice within the novel.

I think part of the problem is how they are marketed. They must sell to continue the work, and so they have to fulfil a particular remit. Banks is unusual in this in that he alternates between conventional novels and sci fi - but I think there is an increasing sophistication about them. Margaret Atwood with Oryx and Crake has denied a sci fi tag, and maintained that it is a literary piece. Perhaps she's afraid of limiting or pigeonholing her audience.