Why is Science Fiction so unappealing?

dlowan wrote:

Lol!

You have a Hulk doll.

I rest my case.

Hahah, that actually belongs to my roomate.

But I wish it was mine, it's a cool memento of my younger days reading comic books.

I will readily agree that there are good and bad scifi and fantasy authors; but is any genre free of this?

I am a futurist; I enjoy and understand the technology and science in the books. In fact, I crave it. It stimulates new ideas within my mind.

I don't think enough people think, really sit down and think, about the logical consequences of the progression of science and technology. I believe that it is extremely important to do so! I'm 26, and the greatest struggle of my generation will be to study, understand, and apply ethics and morality to emerging sciences and technologies.

We can all see there is a flip-side to every issue; gotta take the good with the bad. For example, Nanotechnology, the 'great leap' that promises so many things we couldn't do before; but it also promises great risk and danger. Isn't it important that we try to think about the ethics and morality of our science before it goes into wide application? About potential problems, issues, limitations, benefits? Not thinking ahead about science, and our abilities, has gotten us into some pretty sticky debates today; cloning, safe abortions, pollution, nuclear weapons, WMD of all kinds really. All of these things have moral issues which are still unresolved, and this is in part because they hit society before people had taken the time to really plot out the impact that they will have.

I consider it my mission in life to continue to study, make my voice heard, and vote according to what I believe the correct moral path with respect to new technologies. I understand that there are many other moral and life concerns, and that not everyone is interested in such things; but someone needs to be, and that someone is me.

If you don't think that this is a serious issue, ask yourself what's going to happen to the US population once we really get advanced in Gerontology. We've already doubled the average human lifespan in just 250 years; in the next 50 we will double it again. If noone thinks about this in advance, we are all going to be living a lot closer to our neighbors than we thought we would.

Cheers

Cycloptichorn

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

If you don't think that this is a serious issue, ask yourself what's going to happen to the US population once we really get advanced in Gerontology. We've already doubled the average human lifespan in just 250 years; in the next 50 we will double it again.

God I hope not... I work enough now as it is Laughing

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Cycloptichorn wrote:

dlowan wrote:
Lol!

You have a Hulk doll.

I rest my case.

Hahah, that actually belongs to my roomate.

But I wish it was mine, it's a cool memento of my younger days reading comic books.

I will readily agree that there are good and bad scifi and fantasy authors; but is any genre free of this?

I am a futurist; I enjoy and understand the technology and science in the books. In fact, I crave it. It stimulates new ideas within my mind.

I don't think enough people think, really sit down and think, about the logical consequences of the progression of science and technology. I believe that it is extremely important to do so! I'm 26, and the greatest struggle of my generation will be to study, understand, and apply ethics and morality to emerging sciences and technologies.

We can all see there is a flip-side to every issue; gotta take the good with the bad. For example, Nanotechnology, the 'great leap' that promises so many things we couldn't do before; but it also promises great risk and danger. Isn't it important that we try to think about the ethics and morality of our science before it goes into wide application? About potential problems, issues, limitations, benefits? Not thinking ahead about science, and our abilities, has gotten us into some pretty sticky debates today; cloning, safe abortions, pollution, nuclear weapons, WMD of all kinds really. All of these things have moral issues which are still unresolved, and this is in part because they hit society before people had taken the time to really plot out the impact that they will have.

I consider it my mission in life to continue to study, make my voice heard, and vote according to what I believe the correct moral path with respect to new technologies. I understand that there are many other moral and life concerns, and that not everyone is interested in such things; but someone needs to be, and that someone is me.

If you don't think that this is a serious issue, ask yourself what's going to happen to the US population once we really get advanced in Gerontology. We've already doubled the average human lifespan in just 250 years; in the next 50 we will double it again. If noone thinks about this in advance, we are all going to be living a lot closer to our neighbors than we thought we would.

Cheers

Cycloptichorn

Yeppers, I can agree with lots of that..... I guess it is as literature that I think it fails so often. And I suppose there are those of us for whom that is a problem, and those for whom it isn't.

I will sometimes read a Sci Fi novel that deals with a specific issue...like nano technology, as it happens...( I read the one by the guy who wrote Jurassic Park...forget his name) if I think it is likely to be well researched. (IF that one was...I have no idea.)

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If you limit your sci-fi reading to those novelists who are regularly nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards, you generally won't be disappointed.

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I read a Science Fiction novel the other day set in Iraq. Turns out that the protagonist was a US soldier trying to protect the forces of freedom from a new secret weapon of Al Qaeda - sand sharks with frickin' lasers attached to their heads.

Cycloptichorn

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Clearly that is science fiction - the President has clear strategy in Iraq that will belay the use of sand sharks and other hybrid geological/repltilian weapons.

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And therein lies the trouble with Science Fiction-- sharks and stars that blink out of the night in the face of world annhilation. Piffle, I tell you.

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I bet you give Hans Christian Anderson short shrift too. And Mark Twain.

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hingehead wrote:

Clearly that is science fiction - the President has clear strategy in Iraq that will belay the use of sand sharks and other hybrid geological/repltilian weapons.

And this is the crux of matter--science fiction pales into insignificance when one considers the leadership President Bush is providing to bring peace and freedom to the people of Iraq.

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has he already brought them peance and freeance? or are those still in the offing as well?

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As discussed the better SF lends itself well perhaps most often to the short story. Often the better examples are found in the award winning short story collections. The category SF (for better or worse) encompasses much more than Hard Science Fiction, SF also now means speculative fiction for example. Witness Ursula K. Le Guin and Ray Bradbury.

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Sure, there are writers who are the very best at what they do, like Bradbury-- But, it's not a one size fits all proposition. Sort of like your man is going to a fancy gathering and he decides to where a white tuxedo with a chartreuse fluffy shirt. It's all a matter of preference.

Or perhaps he decides to wear a space helmet and to temporarily get his fingers webbed.

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The beauty of SF (by whatever classification) is its potential to have plots and circumstances and characters etc that would be difficult if not impossible to provide in other genres. Also, I don't think some people realize just how long SF has been with us in one form or another. By SF I mean Speculative Fiction of which Science Fiction is often enough folded into now. The term SF is often enough used instead of Science Fiction, and to me it makes some sense to do so.

Quote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculative_fiction

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Huh? Speculative Fiction. Isn't that sort of like saying Intelligent Design instead of evolution?

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Nope Gala Unit #1, it is not "sort of like saying Intelligent Design instead of evolution"

Intelligent design is Creationism re-branded.
Evolution is the scientific theory of biological origins.
Science fiction is a form Speculative Fiction.
Speculative Fiction encompasses much more than just Science fiction.

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Speculative fiction is (at least this is my understanding) stories about, say, how the earth would be if Hitler had won or if the South had prevailed during the Civil War.

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Aha, I see. But you know, we used to use this derogatory expression growing up when referring to someone we didn't like who was from a town we thought inferior-- "You can take so and so out of Pawtucket, but you can't take Pawtucket out of so and so." The expression was lifted from an old cigarrette commercial.

Anyway, Speculative Shmeculative. Had Hitler lived, or the Confederates won, it's still an eery premise worthy of being named Science Fiction.

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Believe me I am not one to stand on nomenclature especially since for the most part it comes after the fact and is grossly oversimplified. For example do you define Country by its emphasis of the major pentatonic?

If so are you going to argue that the "inventors" (if even you can argue there was such a thing) would have known or cared about the delineations of the major pentatonic at least in any academic and/or organized sense?

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Chumly, say wha? Are you referring to my trying to cattle-call Speculative Fiction into the Science Fiction range? What's pentatonic got to do with it?

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Gala Unit #1

It's a reference to popular music categorizations and how a similar underlying impetus relates to the literature in question.

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Why is Science Fiction so unappealing?

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