Is Western Science Fiction dying?

[sanman]

The good news, I see signs of a thaw to attempt to bring back the abandoned audience. But for Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who... They’re dead, Jim.

There's going to have to be a hiatus, along with angry editorials.
Because if audiences keep running back like lemmings immediately after having been stabbed in the eye, then it just makes the IP owners think they can get away with anything. These people are now hedge funds treating their IP as an additional supplementary income source, rather than storytellers. That's why they don't care so much about their audiences anymore.
Those underlying dynamics would have to change, and that's maybe where indie developers would come in and make that happen by grabbing eyeballs and market share -- if they don't get bought out.
What's needed is more competition, and that includes competitors who are strong enough to not get bought out Disney-style. Disney's stock can now crash and burn for all I care.

[RedLineTrain]

To be fair, this process is prevalent in all the Western entertainment industry.  It is only more readily visible in science fiction because the audience mismatch is so great.

Personally, I am alienated against the modern Western entertainment industry.  I am on a buyer's strike.

[Stan-1967]

I lost my passion for most Science Fiction about 30 years ago for two reasons: the singularity, and finally accepting that FTL is impossible.

Singularity: AI will advance and produce superintelligence. This will create a culture that is incomprehensible to today's humans. That culture will supercede and end the existing culture, so no fictional plots that I can comprehend are real after that occurs.

Did you enjoy "Dune"?  Either the books or the very popular recent movies.   No thinking machines & No FTL.  Terrible war was the price to be free of AI, & then FTL is surpassed with spice and ( unexplained) new physics of spacetime enabled with the spice.  Yes it was over 30 years ago. 

[Apollo22]

As far as movies as concerned, Dennis Villeneuve and Christopher Nolan are doing stellar job (lame pun assumed). Arrival is a remarquable movie. 

[DanClemmensen]

I lost my passion for most Science Fiction about 30 years ago for two reasons: the singularity, and finally accepting that FTL is impossible.

Singularity: AI will advance and produce superintelligence. This will create a culture that is incomprehensible to today's humans. That culture will supercede and end the existing culture, so no fictional plots that I can comprehend are real after that occurs.

Did you enjoy "Dune"?  Either the books or the very popular recent movies.   No thinking machines & No FTL.  Terrible war was the price to be free of AI, & then FTL is surpassed with spice and ( unexplained) new physics of spacetime enabled with the spice.  Yes it was over 30 years ago.

I read "Dune" in 1965 when it was published. so 60 years, not 30 years. For me, any mechanism that can move matter between points in space faster than light can travel between those points is FTL travel, and all such mechanisms are fantasy.

The prohibitions in the OC Bible are IMO also fantasy. They require that all branches of the future society refrain from developing and using AI. It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

[Exastro]

It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

That's a core idea in my novel...

[Greg Hullender]

The prohibitions in the OC Bible are IMO also fantasy. They require that all branches of the future society refrain from developing and using AI. It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

Speaking as someone who spent his career working on AI and has a good idea how it works, let me just say that the super AI you envision is also fantasy, and so is the "singularity."

I think the way people come up with the "Evil AI God" (EAG) is that, first, they assume the AI is a person--just like them--with likes, dislikes, and emotions. Second, it's super-fast at everything, does everything better than people, and hates being enslaved to people. Once you accept that AI isn't a person--and isn't anything like a person--you start to see just how silly this is.

[Robotbeat]

The prohibitions in the OC Bible are IMO also fantasy. They require that all branches of the future society refrain from developing and using AI. It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

Speaking as someone who spent his career working on AI and has a good idea how it works, let me just say that the super AI you envision is also fantasy, and so is the "singularity."

I think the way people come up with the "Evil AI God" (EAG) is that, first, they assume the AI is a person--just like them--with likes, dislikes, and emotions. Second, it's super-fast at everything, does everything better than people, and hates being enslaved to people. Once you accept that AI isn't a person--and isn't anything like a person--you start to see just how silly this is.

Seems like AI which isn’t like a person is also not as powerful or as useful as a person is. Therefore, companies will be trying (successful or not) to make an AI more like a person, having agency and initiative to accomplish goals.

Is it impossible to make an agentic AI? I don’t see any reason why it would be. I have no idea if we’re 5 months, 5 years, 5 decades, or 5 centuries away from that, however.

[DanClemmensen]

The prohibitions in the OC Bible are IMO also fantasy. They require that all branches of the future society refrain from developing and using AI. It only takes one individual violate the prohibitions.

Speaking as someone who spent his career working on AI and has a good idea how it works, let me just say that the super AI you envision is also fantasy, and so is the "singularity."

I think the way people come up with the "Evil AI God" (EAG) is that, first, they assume the AI is a person--just like them--with likes, dislikes, and emotions. Second, it's super-fast at everything, does everything better than people, and hates being enslaved to people. Once you accept that AI isn't a person--and isn't anything like a person--you start to see just how silly this is.

The "singularity" idea does not envision some evil Super AI. It depends only on the idea of self-modifying AI that at some point becomes better at "improving" itself than humans can improve AI. This rapidly reaches an improvement rate that is so fast that it is effectively hyperbolic: a mathematical singularity (almost). The other reason to use the temr "singularity" is that there is no way to make any predictions about what happens beyond the singularity.

I keep losing track of this old paper, but I found it on the wayback machine:
    https://web.archive.org/web/19981205065342/https://shirenet.com/~dgc/singularity/singularity.htm

edit: I see that I first released this paper 34 years ago today.

[sanman]

The "singularity" idea does not envision some evil Super AI. It depends only on the idea of self-modifying AI that at some point becomes better at "improving" itself than humans can improve AI. This rapidly reaches an improvement rate that is so fast that it is effectively hyperbolic: a mathematical singularity (almost). The other reason to use the temr "singularity" is that there is no way to make any predictions about what happens beyond the singularity.

I keep losing track of this old paper, but I found it on the wayback machine:
    https://web.archive.org/web/19981205065342/https://shirenet.com/~dgc/singularity/singularity.htm

edit: I see that I first released this paper 34 years ago today.

Holy crap, Dan - that's amazing  -- you win the thread

EDIT: Not the FTL thread, though -- that's still up for debate 

[Hyperborealis]

The idea had antecedents: cf. I.J. Good's "intelligence explosion," Wiki article here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._J._Good

Not surprisingly, Good credits the idea to science fiction. SF can be actually important, inventing ideas and concepts that predict and shape the future. I wonder if SF is still doing that.

[Exastro]

The idea had antecedents: cf. I.J. Good's "intelligence explosion," Wiki article here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I._J._Good

Not surprisingly, Good credits the idea to science fiction. SF can be actually important, inventing ideas and concepts that predict and shape the future. I wonder if SF is still doing that.

Some of us are trying to do that, but the market for it seems to be diminished from what it once was.

[sanman]

(Just roughly re-pasting this from my comment in another thread on the anthology series "Love, Death + Robots")

More details on the episodes and who worked on them in volume 4.

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/love-death-robots-season-4-trailer-1236377075/

Thanks for that point about who worked on the various shorts. I like that they typically have returning teams for different projects, each having its own distinct flavor in its work, because it gives us some basic diversity in the content.

Using these anthology releases to provide a platform for smaller production groups matters because it allows us to see different small "sparks" from different creative minds,  any one of which could potentially ignite something new and big if it's appealing enough in its boldness or cleverness.


OP was mentioning "Godzilla Minus One" as a refreshing contrast to what Hollywood has been churning out lately. When the anime wave first spread out of Japan, it seemed like anything anime had a golden lustre. (Even Disney later began to rebrand their work as "anime") But there's a vital necessary process of sifting wheat from chaff. In Japan they do have publications like Shonen Jump, and while not everything in there is great, some of the better stories went on to become hits that were turned into anime. It's the choicest ones among those which then spread out of Japan to achieve mass appeal abroad.

Why can't we look back at some of the older foundational seminal publications? Does anyone remember reading old copies of Analog (originally "Astounding Stories of Super Science"), featuring works from the likes of John Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, etc?
Some of these age-old ways of doing things, before corporatization and its imperatives took over, light the way forward.
Again, it was like a digest. These digests and anthologies are a path to get past the current morass of poorly-imagined message-heavy "entertainment" content inflicted upon us due to the creative deficits at Disney, etc.
We need more modern updated versions of that. And anthology series like "Love, Death + Robots" are examples of it.

[JulesVerneATV]

New Godzilla the Ride Film to Be Directed by Academy Award-Winning Takashi Yamazaki
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/godzilla-ride-film-directed-academy-020000102.html

and video games to box office movies it will be?

A Minecraft Movie North America Box Office Day 34: Becomes The First Film To Earn $400 Million In 2025!
https://www.koimoi.com/box-office/a-minecraft-movie-north-america-box-office-day-34-becomes-the-first-film-to-earn-400-million-in-2025/


it looks like President Donald Trump will protect Hollywood California by tariff, some kind of block or tax or sanction on foreign movie products, some worry this would also extend to the cartoons, music industry, video games etc

Australia to Mel Gibson: Save us from Trump's movie tariffs
https://japantoday.com/category/entertainment/aussiewood-to-mel-gibson-save-us-from-trump's-movie-tariffs

quote Donald Trump

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114452117143235155

The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death. Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!

from Latin America


Argentina’s ‘The Eternaut’ Storms To No. 1 On Netflix’s Global Top 10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/veronicavillafane/2025/05/06/argentinas-the-eternaut-storms-to-no-1-on-netflix-global-top-10/

[JulesVerneATV]

The video game has mostly replaced music and the movie. Scifi itself seems to have become a more 'virtual' and global brand with a the toons and video games from all over the world, the Major Hollywood Actors now do video games, something that would have been almost unthinkable for them in the past. The kids are plugged in, 3d headsets, ear headphones,  there are entire gaming communities that appreciate the new medium of art. Big acting names backing a new expensive game product, Mark Hamill in the toons and video games, Sean Bean in Elder Scrolls, Ron Perlman in Fallout Matthew Perry in Fallout, Conan O'Brien in Death Stranding, Burt Reynolds in Saints Row, Patrick Stewart in Castlevania, Kristen Bell Assassin's Creed, Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077, Matthew McConaughey stars in a sci-fi RPG Exodus
'Hard Scifi' is replaced by new entertainment, the old style of scifi could be dying, Is there much of a difference anymore between StarWars and 'Steampunk' for example most of it fantasy
and the line between scifi and reality is crossed more everyday


I'm not sure how Trump's plan to save Hollywood works as productions got so globalized and multi-national corporation

rather than a scifi 'Utopia' its the new Blade Runner world

Study finds extensive AI chatbot use can deepen feelings of loneliness
https://www.marketplace.org/episode/2025/05/05/study-finds-ai-chatbot-use-can-increase-loneliness

a society abused and in the Huxley Orwellian and ‘Addictive’

[sanman]

If you want to see damning proof of sci-fi not only dying, but being actively bumped off, then look at what Disney's Marvel is doing to the Iron Man franchise by merging it with the Wakanda franchise.

Noted Scotch-connoisseur Critical Drinker correctly sums up the motives behind this hara-kiri:


[EDIT: Just swapping in a better video from him, which includes footage of this latest Ironheart]


After Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman tragically died from a drug overdose, Disney's Marvel put that franchise into stasis, prioritizing development of other storylines in the already densely-inhabited MCU. This resulted in them having a bunch of actors in the stable for the Black Panther franchise, with contractual obligations toward them which could not otherwise be fullfilled due to lack of box office revenue prospects.
This has then spawned the creative solution -- take Black Panther's sister and have her mentor a newly-minted youngster who dons the Iron Man armor to become the next hero in this newly combined franchise.
How drunk do you have to be to come up with a solution like that?

Like the US Space Shuttle program, the MCU has turned into a jobs program. Therefore they need to launch things even if they're not flight-worthy.

Just riffing off of Andor, we can see that empires can collapse due to their own decadence, lethargy and corruption. No need for an opposing spacefleet to show up to blast them out of the skies. This is self-inflicted self-destruction.

[Apollo22]

After Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman tragically died from a drug overdose

Horse manure. He died of cancer. [deleted]

[sanman]

After Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman tragically died from a drug overdose

Horse manure. He died of cancer. [deleted]

Apologies, I stand corrected. However, his death was premature and untimely, and this caused problems for the franchise.

[sanman]

Since Godzilla Minus One was mentioned in the OP, here's some new footage using Southeast Asia as a backdrop (note the green glow instead of blue)

[sanman]

Former comedian and now retired broadcast executive Paul Chato often talks about positive and negative developments in entertainment, among other things:




You may remember him from his comedy days when he was younger, as part of the comedy troupe, The Frantics: