Since the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing is upon us, mention of an article at Conceptual Fiction, Curse You, Neil Armstrong! seems appropriate. The thesis of the the article is that the moon landing pretty much brought the hey day of science fiction to an end. All those years of writers imagining travel to the moon and what it was like there came to a halt. Any scifi writer who was anyone had written a moon story from Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein. And when we landed on the moon, for a brief time the living writers were stars, in demand for interviews by the likes of Walter Cronkite and Mike Wallace.
I think I have to agree. Science fiction has shifted to deep space, safely unexplored except by telescopes, and to alternate realities. I think there is still the occasional Mars book, but no doubt once we finally land a human on Mars instead of a mechanical rover, that will change too. I also think, and maybe I am generalizing, that scifi tends to be less based on imaginary science and a vision of the future than real science. I love scifi, don’t get me wrong, but there seems to be something a little diminishing in that. Are we losing our ability to imagine things never seen nor dreamt of before? Just a thought.
I don’t read enough science fiction. I tend to not like machinery, and all the sci-fi I’ve read has all sorts of machinery. However, I have a huge pile of Philip K. Dick next to me… so I may change my mind!
Well, according to a tweet I recently received there are alien bases on the other side of the moon, so maybe there is still some scope for sci-fi close to home.
The moon landing anniversary has really made me think a lot this week about science fiction. When I was a child and teenager, I read a lot of it — Heinlein and Bradbury being my two favorites. I don’t read it anymore, though, because what I’ve read seemed so less interested in human emotions and issues than in building complex, but often not very interesting worlds. But I think this summer calls for going out and getting some of Heinlein’s wonderful juvenile sci-fi for my own boys.
I don’t know the genre well enough to know if the change you describe in your post is accurate or not, but it does make sense, and if so, that’s too bad. It does make me want to pick up some of the older good stuff though!
Daphne, I know what you mean about the machinery. I think you would really like a trilogy by M.K. Wren called Phoenix Legacy. It’s a space epic but the focus is on character and political intrigue.
Sylvia, alien bases on the dark side of the moon? And since you got it in a tweet it must be true!
Bloglily, I used to read scifi a lot more than I do now too. I loved Heinlein and I tore through the Dune series my freshman year at college. Those were the days.
Dorothy, my husband insists that the moon is still important in scifi but we are agreeing to disagree on that
The current fad (in books) is more for urban fantasy and alt history than hard science fiction but it’s out there.
An interview on the radio yesterday, The Guy (I think he was a Prof at UCB but I can’t find the transcript) stated that the average current cell phone has more computational ability than Apollo 11 did. Yowza.
Carrie, yes, I think you are right in your scifi assessment. Hard science fiction is out there if you look for it. I’ve not been able to get into the alternative histories. Urban fantasy is ok but maybe I am too picky because a lot of it seems so bland. Or maybe I am just too old fashioned