Is SF dying?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Geralt

Fantasy which I mostly read has been really thriving for the past few years. The problem I have with science fiction in particular (not fantasy or horror) is that lots of books are very cold when it comes to characters. Most of what I've read wants to deal with big ideas and concepts, and character development takes the back seat. There are always exceptions of course and some of those exceptions are my favorite books (for example The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, but that's an old book I know).
Maybe my viewpoint is skewed because as a fantasy reader my number one interest is in characters, then comes the world building, and then the plot. But from what I've heard from my fellow fantasy readers a lot of them have the same problem, where SF is too dry, sterile and cold. I tend to agree in general.

I know what you mean. I tried reading Ancillary Justice. It's in the first-person, which I don't like much. I could have dealt with that, but the voice of the protagonist didn't grab me. It felt a tad distant. I might try again.

Banks got it right. He talked about all the big stuff, but his characters were alive.

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by Rizla

I know what you mean. I tried reading Ancillary Justice. It's in the first-person, which I don't like much. I could have dealt with that, but the voice of the protagonist didn't grab me. It felt a tad distant. I might try again.

How far were you in it? There is a reason for that.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by Rizla

And what about The Martian and Ready Player One, both great books. Have they been recognized by the Hugo? If not, bin the Hugo as irrelevant.

But these two works and others I have mentioned do show that great works of SF do still appear and that the genre is far from dying. But for conventional SF as headed by the Hugo and other traditional deciders of what is good, the future is not so good.

Ready Player One was not on the nomination short list in the year after it was published. It was eligible in 2012. The winner was Among Others by Jo Walton, and I suspect that it had a lot of appeal to the Worldcon attendees because it was a fantasy coming of age story from the mid-1970s, and a lot of the Worldcon attendees probably came of age within 10 years of that era. Also on the short list was A Dance of Dragons by George R.R. Martin, which is part of the Game of Thrones, Deadline by Mira Grant, a zombie apocalypse story told by bloggers, Embassytown by China Mieville, a tale of a city in the far future, with aliens, and Leviathan Wakes, by James S.A. Corey, a kickass space opera taking place in the solar system around the discovery of an alien artifact.

My personal take on the Hugos is that the winner and the short list are generally good books, but they're usually not the most popular books in the genre. For example, books with TV/movie tie-ins often wildly outsell anything that is straight genre with no TV/movie tie-ins. I also find that some of my favorite books published in any given year are not on the short list. No big deal, you're never going to totally agree with any best of lists, unless you're the only one compiling it.

[rollei]

A lot of good SF movies are based on SF books. The cinema scene would be different without SF.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Ready Player One was not on the nomination short list in the year after it was published.

It was very close, though - 6 votes in it, from memory.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by rollei

A lot of good SF movies are based on SF books. The cinema scene would be different without SF.

IMHO
CGI was what changed the bulk of SF movies from unbelievable to maybe

As always, there were some good SF movies before CGI

And let us not blame all on poor special effects.
Directors can butcher the original story lines by inserting stuff that was not part of the original

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Alpha o

Chaucer was a good observer, but you need a dictionary to read his works, and if someone read it to you in the original language that Chaucer used, you wouldn't understand a word of it.

You're exaggerating. Eg, here's the first four lines of the "Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales:

Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

The spelling is not modern (eg "shoures soote" -> "showers sweet") but to say that you "wouldn't understand a word of it" is simply not true, particularly if you read it out loud. It really doesn't take very long to get used to the language.

We could re-write the above in modern English as something like (and this isn't terribly good, so forgive me!):

When that April with his showers sweet
The drought of March has pierced to the root,
And bathed every vein in such liquor
Whose good qualities produce the flower;

Really the only thing you might struggle with is "vertu" - a French word - which does not mean "virtue" in its modern sense, but has a more general meaning of "the good qualities inherent in something".

Originally Posted by HarryT

Really the only thing you might struggle with is "vertu" - a French word - which does not mean "virtue" in its modern sense, but has a more general meaning of "the good qualities inherent in something".

While you're probably correct about it being understandable when read aloud, I could not make heads nor tails of that passage until I read your translation. In some cases the words had no meaning (e.g. "shoures soote"). In other cases it is decipherable only if the rest of the passage is understood (e.g. figuring out that "flour" means "flower" from the context). In yet others, the archaic spelling distracts from the meaning (e.g. "veyne in swich licour").

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by BWinmill

While you're probably correct about it being understandable when read aloud, I could not make heads nor tails of that passage until I read your translation. In some cases the words had no meaning (e.g. "shoures soote"). In other cases it is decipherable only if the rest of the passage is understood (e.g. figuring out that "flour" means "flower" from the context). In yet others, the archaic spelling distracts from the meaning (e.g. "veyne in swich licour").

Have you ever read Iain Banks' novel Feersum Ennijn or Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker? Many parts of them are unreadable unless spoken.

[bgalbrecht]

Originally Posted by theducks

IMHO
CGI was what changed the bulk of SF movies from unbelievable to maybe

As always, there were some good SF movies before CGI

And let us not blame all on poor special effects.
Directors can butcher the original story lines by inserting stuff that was not part of the original

Or they can butcher it by omitting or changing major plot lines. Even then, the director is often forced by producers, studio heads and various committees to make changes simply because they feel that they have to justify their existence.

Realistically, most movies can only be faithful to a short story or novella because the time it would take to follow a novel would take far more than 2 hours. That doesn't explain all the movies that are "based on" Philip K. Dick short stories, but movie by committee probably does.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by bgalbrecht

Have you ever read Iain Banks' novel Feersum Ennijn

I only just read that and ARGHHHH!!!