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

[zenten.livejournal.com]

There's also the fact that, more than any other genre, sci-fi is a boys club -- and books are consumed by women in a higher proportion than television, movies, or any other creative medium.

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.

Sci-fi is my favourite genre, but I don't think sci-fi is stigmatized. I think it's insular, navel-gazing, and hasn't climbed out of the 40s, because the 40s were so good to it. The last generation of popular sci-fi writers (Stephenson, etc) are the only ones who've started pushing character development to new places within the genre.

I have trouble believing that the foundation series is any more sexist than other books from the 40s and 50s. As to Stranger in a Strange Land, it seems pretty in line with books from it's era.

Claiming that science fiction hasn't climbed out of the 40s by referring to a book series started in the 40s doesn't make sense to me.

[twiin.livejournal.com]

SIASL came out the same year as Catch-22, The Stone Angel, and Thunderball. I don't think anyone is going to argue that Thunderball is the progressive book out of those three, but would still take Thunderball's portrayal of gender roles over SIASL's.

In any case, my point isn't that books were sexist fifty years ago, my point is that sci-fi has not produced the significantly progressive works every other genre has in the last fifty years to explain, provide context for, and replace them.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, but how the hell is Catch-22 progressive in terms of gender roles?

Stranger in a Strange Land took a sexist character, from a sexist universe, deliberately because most of the readers at the time were sexist and needed someone to identify with, and presented an alternate viewpoint.

As to things not progressing, the fact that something like Hominids can be written without people making much comment shows that it has.

[twiin.livejournal.com]

Catch-22 isn't progressive. Neither is Thunderball. That's my point. I haven't read the Neanderthal books yet, so I can't really comment on them.

What I'm saying is that in my experience, science-fiction alienates female readers (for a variety of reasons) far, far more than any other genre does. Part of it is gender roles. Part of it is technobabble. Part of it is an assumed language, and part of it is the fact there are so few female authors that there aren't a terribly high number of well-developed female characters.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I'm disagreeing with you on the gender role point. I can see the rest of them, but I was under the impression that most published authors, period, are male.