What happened to Ideas based Science Fiction?

[Serendipity]

Every so often, my braincell decides to blog about something that ends up not being so crazy. I thought this one might be of interest to the community - Science Fiction - Current Issues for Publishing Ideas-Based Stories.

 

[Swank]

I read your article. In the last few years I have read a number of new SF books that hinge on what I would call "big concepts". None of which were political in nature.

Your contention that SF has shifted to more internalized character information has eaten the bandwidth of books would make sense if books were a fixed length. But I have read some very long books recently, and some rather short ones. As pleasure reading comes with no deadlines, I don't get the concept of bandwidth applied to it.


I think the kind of point you appear to be making would come off as much less politically motivated in nature if you illustrated it with solid examples. SF was never non-political or lacking internal viewpoint. Think of the colonialism in 20,000 Leagues or the content of Brave New World. And space opera isn't really fantasy - the example you use is taken from a film rather than any modern book. Yet heavily fantasy filled SF novels are quite old - like John Carter. So without examples that illustrtate your points meaningfully, I doubt many will agree with you.

 

[alexvss]

Chinese science-fiction is very idea-based. In Cixin Liu's The Wandering Earth, they build thrusters to push the Earth out of orbit and away from the sun. In Sun of China, by the same author, a peasant who cleans skyscrapers goes to space to the janitor of the new artificial sun. I also remember a story where they build a giant mirror in space to block the sun. In sum, Chinese sci-fi is full of big ideas, most of them non-political. They win prizes and are well received by Western critics. It's an exception to what you said in your article.

I see your point though. It's not hard to see those three issues reflected on modern stories. Just read a recent issue of a SFF magazine and you'll see it.

 

[msstice]

From my interpretation of what you wrote, there are multiple dimensions to the discussion.

One dimension is the "hard SF" to "soft(?) SF" axis. I do feel that the genre has tilted towards soft SF for three or four decades now, and I feel this has been a loss because for me soft SF merges seamlessly into fantasy and I like to keep fantasy and SF separate, though, seeing what sells, most people are happy not making a distinction.

Another is the "people" vs "technology" axis of what drives a story. Something that sits firmly in the "people" side of the axis is "regular literature." Scientific speculation using exposition and given a thin veneer of literature to appeal to a popular audience can come in as Hard SF and on the "technology" side of the axis.

I like reading science fiction that sits in the middle and gives time to both.

Another axis is the "political" one, ranging from "subtle" to "bang your head with latest socio-political fad". There can not be a story with zero political content, because even the specification for an electric plug has political views embedded in it. On the other end propaganda has existed for ever, and we are quite good at detecting propaganda when it is "from the other side." We are less sensitive to propaganda "from our side."

I quite fancy myself at being able to detect propaganda from all sides, but that's just because I fancy myself one of those special centerists. Yes, I have a fear of commitment.

Your point about internality is well taken, though "the talkies" have been around for quite a while. Yes, the old literature where the reader spent four pages reading about a meadow full of daisies is less common now, but I will still read long descriptions from a skillful writer.

In movies (and games) I am often annoyed by how quickly a complex, lovingly rendered scene can flash by, without giving me a chance to savor it because we're in the middle of a car chase.

To circle back to how you opened your post: Please write your story your way. Fashions would likely have changed by the time it comes to market (unless you are hammering out two novels a year) and at least we will have something original in the pile and not another copy of whatever is on the bestseller trope today.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

Well, in the SFF movie sector I think there is a clear movement away from risk. Each release appears to be modelled after some previous effort that did ok at the box office. Not good news for lovers of originality or 'ideas-based' sf. I would imagine a similar trend may be occurring in written speculative fiction, although I have to admit I don't read much contemporary science fiction or fantasy.

 

[Wayne Mack]

I think you may be elevating the writing of the mid-twentieth century. At that time, space travel and rocketry were pure fantasy elements. If one applied the rules that some hard SF advocates apply to today's science fiction, anything describing living in space would have to be labeled science fantasy. Isaac Asimov's robots are still outside the realm of plausible science.

As for escapism, this is fiction that we're talking about. Regardless of the genre, fiction is read because people want to see something outside their own worlds. We're all Walter Mittys dreaming of investigating a murder on a train stuck in a blizzard, or surviving after being abandoned on Mars, or adjusting to a secret boarding school teaching us to use magic. I certainly do not want to read about the retired gentleman who gets up, makes a half pot of coffee and types on a computer.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

"The three big issues that are eating away at what I would call the core of science fiction: political manifestos, screen stealing and escapism from life’s complexities."

Another device that has entered Science Fiction bandwidth is the space taken up by emotional characterization. This can take the exact opposite intent of escapism. In this day and age, I can understand people not being entertained by cardboard characters even if there is a wildly thought provoking story zipping along. For me, it becomes a loss of bandwidth in presenting a story, when past events, such as including an ex-spouse and wayward children who have no part in the story, or other past events in a characters life, are prominently mentioned in the story.

Going way back in time there have been countless stories were the emotional content drove the entire story, that is the primary story. But if the emotional content is thrown in to considerably expand a characters presence, that ultimately creates two distinct stories. In order to keep the intent of the original story intact for most readers, one of the stories becomes the dominant story, the other becomes a background.

Perhaps a story with solid emotional content and a science fiction background is more popular for the general reading population. One estimate of the science fiction audience is 20 percent. If you include fantasy with science fiction, the percentage goes up a good amount. It would appear that in order to dramatically increase a science fiction author's readership, the science fiction aspect of a story needs to be second place. Good character development is apparently one way to do this.

 

[Swank]

"The three big issues that are eating away at what I would call the core of science fiction: political manifestos, screen stealing and escapism from life’s complexities."

Another device that has entered Science Fiction bandwidth is the space taken up by emotional characterization. This can take the exact opposite intent of escapism. In this day and age, I can understand people not being entertained by cardboard characters even if there is a wildly thought provoking story zipping along. For me, it becomes a loss of bandwidth in presenting a story, when past events, such as including an ex-spouse and wayward children who have no part in the story, or other past events in a characters life, are prominently mentioned in the story.

Going way back in time there have been countless stories were the emotional content drove the entire story, that is the primary story. But if the emotional content is thrown in to considerably expand a characters presence, that ultimately creates two distinct stories. In order to keep the intent of the original story intact for most readers, one of the stories becomes the dominant story, the other becomes a background.

Perhaps a story with solid emotional content and a science fiction background is more popular for the general reading population. One estimate of the science fiction audience is 20 percent. If you include fantasy with science fiction, the percentage goes up a good amount. It would appear that in order to dramatically increase a science fiction author's readership, the science fiction aspect of a story needs to be second place. Good character development is apparently one way to do this.

Are there any polls or statistics to back up this sort of assertion?

It seems that SF forum discussion regularly pivots around largely invented definitions and the insistence that certain trends are dominant in the market. And then the inevitable assertion that whatever kind of fiction isn't the poster's cup of tea has 'ruined' the genre. Yet no one can actually illustrate anything with specific examples and just point to definitions and trends noted by other people who may have their own motivations.

There certainly have been trends - new forms pop up now and then and catch on for awhile. But those trends don't extinguish the previous mainstream or force publishers to avoid material they would have otherwise been happy to print. People are still reading SF going back to the '30s, and while they may expect slightly more sophisticated approaches than what got early Asimov printed, there are plenty of new books today that are not all about character emotion or whatever at the sacrifice of solid SF storytelling (unless, of course, the critic is one of those fanatics that thinks there have only been 4 books that count as Hard SF or believes that Space Opera is a mutually exclusive category).



What I mainly see in these sort of discussions are people that have fairly narrow SF interests and feel put off by a range of books - many they have only read reviews of. And from that jumping off point have decided that the SF market has forsaken them. But the actual science fiction available today is quite broad, as it has been for quite some time.


It is also important to keep in mind that the broad averages of published fiction aren't necessarily indicative of what is important about the genre at any given time. Just as the most important trend in restaurant dining isn't the hot dog - even though there are probably more hot dog stands than any other kind of food. Literature is the same way - you have to look at which authors are making an impact, not the sea of passable writers who are winning or failing at riding the trends, but will be forgotten in a few years.

 

[msstice]

I certainly do not want to read about the retired gentleman who gets up, makes a half pot of coffee and types on a computer.

But what if the computer started to type back ...

 

[msstice]

Literature is the same way - you have to look at which authors are making an impact, not the sea of passable writers who are winning or failing at riding the trends, but will be forgotten in a few years.

I feel this is self-contradictory. A writer who is making an impact is selling well. What sells well attracts copycats, leading to a trend, which then extinguishes itself via over use.

From reading the rest of your note, I was expecting you to suggest that we look at writers who are more niche.

That would be my dream as someone wanting to matchmake readers and writers - an intelligent market for literature that cleverly pairs off readers with writers they would enjoy reading regardless of the absolute popularity of the works.

 

[tinkerdan]

Yeah--uhm--not buying that.
Though I agree with others that there are many more issues behind the blog--or maybe in between the lines.
I'm not buying the issue the OP highlights here.

Writing fiction has always been about writing well.
And the best science fiction--the stuff I like--is the stuff that takes future science and shows how the mc protagonists and antagonists cope or try to fit into that science--or in some cases how they don't fit .

The bottom line is that idea based fiction is alright, but if you don't write well and give the story some relevance you probably won't find an audience for your story and eventually someone will take the idea and give it a shape that the readers will read. I think that people that struggle with 'a new idea that is so compelling they must write about it' that some new authors have is that they can't turn the idea into a story. They become obsessed with the idea and surround it with one and two dimensional characters.

Now this might work if you have an idea that can turn into the central character; however, an idea as a character--done well--could easily take up a lot more pages trying to explain how it is that the reader might relate to this idea enough to carry them through the story.

New ideas are great.
New science is great.
But what will you do with this new science; how will it impact the characters in the story; how will it change their lives : how does it change the world?

And, yes, it might take a few pages to make this believable by creating believable characters interacting with the new great fantastic science idea that you have.

 

[msstice]

There is a somewhat relevant diagram in this article: What Readers Want from Writers in 2022

SF and F are lumped together, so it doesn't help, but I am always amazed at the size of Romance/Erotica. This is Hollywood/Gaming industry size money in that genre. Obviously, if you are in it for the money, you should be writing Romance/Erotica books.

My hunch is that Fantasy makes up the majority i.e. > 50% of the SF and F category. Things like epic fantasy sell a lot, I think.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I met a romance writer at an indie writers show. The amount of support that they get from the publishers is incredible. The publishers can't get enough material to publish, so instead of erecting barriers, gate keepers, and pushing authors away, they offer real help to get all the stories they can get. This translates into big sale numbers.

 

[Swank]

I feel this is self-contradictory. A writer who is making an impact is selling well. What sells well attracts copycats, leading to a trend, which then extinguishes itself via over use.

From reading the rest of your note, I was expecting you to suggest that we look at writers who are more niche.

That would be my dream as someone wanting to matchmake readers and writers - an intelligent market for literature that cleverly pairs off readers with writers they would enjoy reading regardless of the absolute popularity of the works.

I would kindly suggest that there are no actual copycats in fiction, because readers don't like just one aspect about a book. The notable writers aren't just creating subgenres, they are writing well at many levels. No one emulating an aspect of their work is able to cash in on the full experience. William Gibson remains the master of cyberpunk because his writing is masterful, not just because he achieved popularity early in the genre.

Classifying books by genre is simply one method of finding something to read. Popularity, reviews, comparisons to writing styles are others - and often much more reliable.

All of this talk about trends just falsely suggests that books are the sum of their classifiers. Nothing could be further from the truth.

 

[Serendipity]

Wow! What an explosion of interesting thoughts...

I met a romance writer at an indie writers show. The amount of support that they get from the publishers is incredible. The publishers can't get enough material to publish, so instead of erecting barriers, gate keepers, and pushing authors away, they offer real help to get all the stories they can get. This translates into big sale numbers.

From various hints I've had from elsewhere,I gather thriller/crime writers also have a lot more support that SF writers.

There is a somewhat relevant diagram in this article: What Readers Want from Writers in 2022

View attachment 96365
SF and F are lumped together, so it doesn't help, but I am always amazed at the size of Romance/Erotica. This is Hollywood/Gaming industry size money in that genre. Obviously, if you are in it for the money, you should be writing Romance/Erotica books.

My hunch is that Fantasy makes up the majority i.e. > 50% of the SF and F category. Things like epic fantasy sell a lot, I think.

About 5 years ago the ratio of new fantasy to SF novels was 6 to 1 - not sure what it is these days.

Yeah--uhm--not buying that.
Though I agree with others that there are many more issues behind the blog--or maybe in between the lines.
I'm not buying the issue the OP highlights here.

Writing fiction has always been about writing well.
And the best science fiction--the stuff I like--is the stuff that takes future science and shows how the mc protagonists and antagonists cope or try to fit into that science--or in some cases how they don't fit .

I can understand you would find my opening paragraph in the blog hard to believe... I'm still pinching myself about it as well... but the story I'm writing has turned out to be what it is.

I was assuming all publishable writing at the semi-pro and pro levels met a certain minimum standard of quality for it to be accepted. Just to reassure you, one of my life's crazy diversions had me take an MA in Creative Writing and believe me you don't achieve a distinction in the novel writing section without being able to write!

I think you may be elevating the writing of the mid-twentieth century. At that time, space travel and rocketry were pure fantasy elements. If one applied the rules that some hard SF advocates apply to today's science fiction, anything describing living in space would have to be labeled science fantasy. Isaac Asimov's robots are still outside the realm of plausible science.

Um... V1 and V2 rockets were being launched from Germany against the UK by 1944, and it was only a technology extrapolation from them that would lead naturally to space rockets.

I read your article. In the last few years I have read a number of new SF books that hinge on what I would call "big concepts". None of which were political in nature.

Your contention that SF has shifted to more internalized character information has eaten the bandwidth of books would make sense if books were a fixed length. But I have read some very long books recently, and some rather short ones. As pleasure reading comes with no deadlines, I don't get the concept of bandwidth applied to it.

The length of books is limited because of costs and what the reader (and therefore publisher) is willing to pay for them. Even if cost is no object like say for some self-published books, there are physical constraints... this is true even for e-versions - file size limits and the ability to transfer the across the internet.

Overall - yes my blog post is built on a lot of issues that are not brought out, but if I wrote about all the underlying assumptions, I'd be writing a thesis. I think this is backed up to a certain extent by the discussion here.

 

[Swank]

The length of books is limited because of costs and what the reader (and therefore publisher) is willing to pay for them. Even if cost is no object like say for some self-published books, there are physical constraints... this is true even for e-versions - file size limits and the ability to transfer the across the internet.

Yet Stephenson's novels are often very long. So there clearly isn't a limit for established authors.

On the other hand, I recently read Reynold's Permafrost and Ian McDonald's Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone. Two strongly personal tales built around big SF ideas, but in fairly short novella form.


Not seeing it.

 

[cyprus7]

There is a somewhat relevant diagram in this article: What Readers Want from Writers in 2022

View attachment 96365
SF and F are lumped together, so it doesn't help, but I am always amazed at the size of Romance/Erotica. This is Hollywood/Gaming industry size money in that genre. Obviously, if you are in it for the money, you should be writing Romance/Erotica books.

My hunch is that Fantasy makes up the majority i.e. > 50% of the SF and F category. Things like epic fantasy sell a lot, I think.

apparently there's also a market for billionaire alien tentacle monster pron...

 

[The Big Peat]

From seeing a few rejection letters (written to others), from chats with people around the industry in some way, I don't see much to disagree with the original article stating that big idea sci-fi is in a bad way commercially. It is harder to get published, harder to get noticed doing this.

Yes, some make it (particularly established authors).

And yes, some authors are allowed tons of pages.. and most aren't. At least, not at the big name publishers, and not if they're a debut.

I'm not sure I agree with the reasons though which, as pointed out, aren't always that new. I think it's simple risk aversion in publishers. They want an idea or name they know they can sell. If you're not either, then bad cess to you.

 

[Christine Wheelwright]

There is a somewhat relevant diagram in this article: What Readers Want from Writers in 2022

View attachment 96365
SF and F are lumped together, so it doesn't help, but I am always amazed at the size of Romance/Erotica. This is Hollywood/Gaming industry size money in that genre. Obviously, if you are in it for the money, you should be writing Romance/Erotica books.

My hunch is that Fantasy makes up the majority i.e. > 50% of the SF and F category. Things like epic fantasy sell a lot, I think.

Wow, I had no idea there was such a huge market for Religious/Inspirational books. I wonder if I could exploit that? I would have to invent a new religion first though, because I'm not a fan of the existing ones.

Regarding Erotica, I assume they are referring to the racier side of the romance genre (rather than actual pornographic writing, which is notoriously difficult to sell).

Also, strange that historical fiction isn't shown. I would have thought it gets a decent chunk of business.

Now, I'm off to write that racy, romantic, whodunit, set in a nunnery.

 

[Parson]

Wow, I had no idea there was such a huge market for Religious/Inspirational books. I wonder if I could exploit that? I would have to invent a new religion first though, because I'm not a fan of the existing ones.

I can tell you that when I looked into this about 20 years ago I was told by a consultant that unless you were a "name," or had a television ministry, "good writing alone will not get you published." The publishers "want a sure thing." So I think it's not so different there after all.