Science Fiction

[waterspyder]

I was going through a list of the top 100 science fiction books of the 20th Century, and realized that I've read many of them, or other works by the authors on the list and I started to wonder.

What is it about Science Fiction that makes it so stigmatized?

All of the books on that list are thought-provoking. Many are written with a finesse that is completely lost on the contemporary serial novelist. Is there a ton of science fiction out there that I haven't read that is abyssmally bad? Is the average reader incapable of fathoming the concepts that are presented? What is it that makes sci-fi so inaccessible?

Comments

[corradus.livejournal.com]

>>Foundation is quite possibly the greatest sci-fi series ever written, but the women in it are generally treated like property, or idiots, and the same is true of most books from golden age authors. 'Stranger in a Strange Land' is the big groundbreaking book in sci-fi for gender roles, but it's still a book which claims most rape victims were kinda asking for it.<<

That makes a lot of sense. Sci-Fi is a genre that tells a lot of its story through 'toys', and as Waterspyder and I have opined at each other on numerous occasions gadgetry is not what TENDS to interest ladies.

When one gender is left to its own devices in literature for too long it tends to get funny ideas about the nature of the other gender. Not to mention that in AC Clarke, Asimov, Bradbury and Heinlein's heyday it was still very much a 'Man's World'.

I know in my favorite book - Starship Troopers - women are placed upon pedestals, and pretty much left there. It's an older attitude that seeks to bombard women with the status of jewel in the hopes that all the flattery will outweigh the rest of male behaviour towards them at the time.

Some good points about insularity of concepts in the book too. Hadn't thought of that.