Robots and Aliens vs. Elves and Orcs

[Regin Hardhammer]

I ran across an interesting article on the recent drop in good science fiction writing and the fact that science fiction readers are a shrinking group. For the article, click here.

Sawyer gives some interesting reasons for this shift, but the one that caught my eye was this:

Sawyer thinks people have increasingly turned to fantasy works, such as Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings, because of the murky politics and ethics of contemporary society.

"Terrorism is happening, there are evil governments," says Sawyer. "People are looking for a simplicity in their fictional worlds where good and evil are clearly delineated, that you can't find in the real world, and that provides an enormous comfort -- and that, I think, has an awful lot to do with the reason fantasy is so popular."

This sounds like some "old style" complaints that used to come from supporters of "realistic" fiction who threw rocks at Tolkien for being escapist. It used to be at the conventions I went to that sci fi and fantasy fans actually felt they shared something in common. They were united against all the people who thought everyone should focus only on the "realistic", current world. And there were crossover works that had one foot in sci fi and one foot in fantasy. It sounds like that common ground has collapsed and instead sci fi people are starting to hurl complaints at Tolkien fans.

What do you think of these charges? Has the recent growth of interest in fantasy and Tolkien been responsible for the shrinking science fiction base? what about Sawyers' claim that "terrorism" and "evil governments" have contributed to the popularity of Tolkien and other "fantasy" books?

BTW, I am one of those people who like reading both kinds of books. And I wasn't sure if this question belonged in N & N, or Books....

[Lachwen]

I don't know where Sawyer came up with those ideas for the shift, but I heartily disagree with them. I believe it's due more to a proliferation of very good fantasy authors - Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey being two that jump to mind immediately - than some sort of craving for escapist literature. After all, who says science fiction isn't escapist? "Escapist" is not a synonym for "unrealistic." I am a fan of both fantasy and sci-fi, and I find science fiction to be just as good for escaping the "real" world as fantasy. Have you ever read Ringworld, The Integral Trees or Fallen Angels by Larry Niven? Larry Niven is one of today's very best "hard" sci-fi writers, but that doesn't mean his books aren't escapist. After all, who wouldn't want to escape into a world where humans live in free-fall, building their villages in the foliage of hundred-kilometer-long trees shaped like integer signs? (Really, read The Integral Trees and its sequel The Smoke Ring; it may all be real-life science, but it's as escapist as you can want )

To summarize: I think Sawyer's claims are a load of fetid dingo's kidneys (a term from a truly wonderful sci-fi/fantasy book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. )

[InklingElf]

And thank you for citing Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Lachwen

Regin I'm not sure I totally agree with this movement. These generes (Fantasy and Sci-Fi) are leagues of their own. I don't think it's fair to compare and undermine either, in this case that of science fiction.

I too love to read both generes but I don't think the lack of escapism is the problem as it has been pointed out in the last post.

[Lalwendë]

I don't claim to be an expert on sci-fi, but that article was interesting. Firstly, I think it's a mistake to say that Tolkien clearly delineates between good and evil; there are a lot of grey areas in Middle Earth lore, Gollum being an excellent example. He's one of my favourite characters in literature as it's impossible to say if he is truly bad. Even Gandalf warns against thinking in terms of black and white too much.

But, I was also interested to read that the quality of sci-fi is declining - I think it's changing in nature. There is some pretty good dystopian work, such as the film 28 Days Later, the virus in this is supposed to be based upon road rage. And surely, terrorism is nothing new, and if we have evil governments then wouldn't people want to express their distrust/disgust more?

The author of the article says that mainstream writers are using sci-fi more, citing Margaret Atwood - but she has already used sci-fi themes years ago in The Handmaid's Tale.

[radagastly]

I've always thought that the inordinate popularity of the Science Fiction in the seventies was a direct result of the popularity of "The Lord of the Rings" in the sixties. The pendulum has currently swung back the other way, in large part due to Peter Jackson and the Harry Potter books. There will, no doubt, be a resurgence in the popularity of Science Fiction as some people tire of dragons and elves in favor of the real creatures they see around them, whether those creatures are terrorists or stem-cell researchers or Martian microbes from Antarctica.

But Tolkien will still be there. One of the main reasons for his popularity is that he speaks to the arc of the human experience in a difficult world. Science Fiction tends to speak to social issues. Since social issues tend to change, Science Fiction must evolve with them. Fantasy at its best has no such constraints. It can embrace such temporal things, but it need not do so.

[Lachwen]

Science fiction doesn't necessarily speak to social issues, Radagastly. Books such as Niven's Footfall (can you tell he's one of my favorite authors? ) and Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind are delightfully devoid of serious social commentary (in fact, Footfall is about killer elephants from outer space ). I am not, of course, claiming that all sci-fi is free of politics; Fallen Angels is very political (and also quite good).

InklingElf - glad to be of service.