Is Western Science Fiction dying?

[JulesVerneATV]

and What do you even class as 'Western'? is it Anglo-America is it EU-USA...is it Cowboys in Space like Outland a 1981 science fiction or is 'West' a mix of language, borders, politics, religion and culture that influences scifi to make it 'Western'. The Western entertainment from the American science fiction writer and novelist, to the Canadian guy drawing a toon, to the cheese jokes of Bond in Moonraker to the post Apocalypse world of Max Mad shot in the desert in Australia?

So is Western scifi on a path to become dead...is there even a West scifi brand?

If there is Western scifi, I'm not even sure when the great era was but maybe it was scifi with the mindset of science mixed with adventure. Who represents the art of the West, is it Philip K Dick, or Hitchcock or Spielberg or a culture movement or even band for the teenagers? Some said sicif it was an Author that would have one scifi book after another with different ideas of adventure, discovery, colonization and exploration, a guy who invented a fictional world like Star Trek or Star Wars, Alex Raymond with Flash Gordon vs Ming . What is Western in entertainment scifi industry with so many variations, with big exciting tv entertainment and movie budgets. The box office blockbuster that were big but not too outrageous to destroy their own profits. Does Western scifi still exist has it become 'global' or maybe the adventure of the 1950s to the 2010s is now gone?

There is also a possibility the market got over saturated, too many remakes, over satured with scifi-ish stuff but it has no definition or boundary anymore and can not absorb more presently, too many comicbooks and scifi and it cant take any more of it. Most entertainment stuff that is successful these days are 'remakes' how many times can you remake film, the Supermans, the Harry Potters, the Xmens and I would not even class box office stuff like Star Wars as real 'scifi' more in the mushy Soft Sci-fi and in books I'm not sure you can compare any of the modern guys to the old greats. From the internet we had many discussions of what is scifi from the “Diamond Hard” scale all the way down to “Super Soft,” Gravity a movie thriller film by Alfonso Cuarón tries to keep it 'Hard Scifi', while Star Wars and Back to the Future are more 'soft scifi' fantasy entertainment. So many guys are also dead in tv you have Glen A. Larson Battlestar Galactica it had elements of the Mormon migration in the original and it was remade 2004-2009 but again 'remakes' and Gene Roddenberry the creator of Star Trek dead, J. Michael Straczynski is still active but I don't think he will allow anyone to touch his Babylon-5.

You can buy a book from anywhere now on your computer. Does that mean the world has become more free and open?  maybe not...While something of a new 'Cold War' started with the invasion of Ukraine the world is also more open, culturally there is strong softpower in Asia now and even China. If you look at some of the top selling books and award winners there are lots of foreign names, guys or girls raised in India or Japan or raised in Communist China, while you might argue how different or West leaning Japan for example can be, there is something very different to the West and say Buddhism, Shinto “hamlet people”  and Confucianism and Western philosophy or the Western ideas of philosophical thought.
Personally I don't consider myself a linguist but I know some languages, I am very impressed at how interconnected we have become and how well done translated works have become even attempting to translate the subtlety inside other languages which do not usually translate, other times I have found movie subtitles or book translations poor when knowing what is missing.

In books and magazines we have lost Philip K Dick, Douglas Adams, Arthur C Clark, Frank Herbert, Poul Anderson, Ray Bradbury, Ben Bova I think he died recently during Covid, Miquel Barceló, Kurt Vonnegut, you might even class comicbook guys like Stan Lee or Jack Kirby among scifi greats, there are other French artists alive, John Wagner the British creator of the character Judge Dredd is very much alive but he does less work these days...also Dredd is very 'Dystopian' a whole other world of darkness and cynical vs exploration and optimism. Is 'Gene Wolfe' for example a scifi great, it seems to be its own style, it is scifi but is it more Frankenstein, a horror scene primitive Shakespeare Kurosawa drama and weapons of Dystopia Post Apocalypse Mad Max world of future past.
many writers are not Christian but 'Western' and although Frank Herbert became a Buddhist like Jeff Bridges and Tina Turner and so many others his raised culture is very much Western.
other greats like Stanislaw Lem are gone but his life experience would have been classed as somewhat 'Eastern' a guy raised behind the 'Iron Curtain' with his own unique philosophy, futurology comments on the world and scifi.
Some during the 70s and 80s and 1990s would argue that Western scifi had a flavor of Hope or 'Optimism' or Faith but Blade Runner can have especially dark moments, it is a weird mix of East meets West and the 'Alien' franchise with  Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon,  with the artwork of“H.R.” Giger was groundbreaking even if it is scifi 'horror'.

Admittedly I'm not even sure I like the term 'West' but there is very a reason to use it among the scifi community as opposed to say a Brazilian fantasy comicbook. Where is Poland for example if you talk of 'Western' culture, it is a Christian Catholic nation, there are Atheists, there are Jewish in Poland, other Christian denominations in Poland, some small percentage of Buddhists, Tatar, Hindu, but post-Communism the Polish culture is Catholic influenced. You might even argue that in the USA now it is not really as religious as it used to be, a lot of people are Atheist and the world is also becoming a cultural melting pot. Today you can class Poland as Western leaning but you can not say this of  'Solaris' s a 1961 science fiction novel by Polish writer Stanisław Lem,  within the book there might be subtle criticism of the USSR but it is very much an experience behind the Communist Bloc or Russia dominated the Socialist Bloc. What is the difference between East and West or South and North America, Indian Bollywood film set in space, Vietnamese sci-fi story. Politically there have been new guys like Samuel P. Huntington's writing who class Civilizations and Order of 'Culture' as a Western Christian Democracy, he classes Arabia and Iran and Pakistan and North Africa as its own bloc of culture, Chile, Mexico, Argentina and Brazil fall under a Hispanic sphere in his writing, while Mongolia and Thailand move into this bloc of Thai Buddhism or Mongolian Buddhism. I am not sure I agree with guys like Huntington's social cultural classifications but I think it very much applies in Japan the Japanese although they are 'Western' they are very much their own Shinto Buddhist cultural thing. Japan during the Edo period upon seeing Portuguese arrive with new ideas and firearms, they even cut themselves off from the entire world for around 250 years only allowing a few Dutch to arrive and provide updates as to what was happening in the outside world. Japan enforced self isolation from the outside world, until Perry Expedition arrived forcing them to open up to outside trade.




Some events that are undoubtedly happening,
-1 Hollywood has crashed, its dying and has been for a while. I'm not sure when it happened but maybe it was 2014 when a slow down happened, after years upon years and years of endless box office growth, with its crash also goes a lot of the gaming industry, the comicbook stuff, the tv shows, by 2019 Covid starts to hit and it was almost the 'death blow' the industry bounced back a little with 'Barbenheimer' but some market economic people said this was simply the 'Dead Cat Bounce'.


There have been flops in the past 'Green Lantern' for example, Mars Needs Moms,  John Carter, Ishtar, Cleopatra 1963, Cutthroat Island.


but some of the largest flops are happening in recent years, one might argue there are no new 'kids' no big rock star celebrities the new kids don't have the old talent to sell a movie and when the old guys and girls go there are new 'new faces' because Hollywood has lost 'Star Power'

recent flops

New Antman
The Marvels
New Snowwhite remakes
Joker: Folie à Deux
SpaceJam remake
The Flash
Indiana Jones remake
Amsterdam    
Black Adam    
Lightyear
Moonfall

- 2 Risk takers. Film industry in general and Hollywood doesn't really take risks anymore, there are very few new films that would be as radically adventurous as they were in the 1960s, 70s and 1980s. Once the brand and franchise took over everything became another remake of a remake, maybe the cashcow Franchise has always been with us from star Trek episodes to 'The Three Musketeers' to Zorro to people putting another Shakespeare play on the stage again, but every few people will finance a risky movie.

In the past money was recovered, they could funded a flop that would do bad at the box office and later recover sales on DVDs but the DVD market is almost dead, some blame streaming while others say it won't fall like 2011 and physical media will come back, are they like phonograph LP record vinyl collectors?

- 3 Budgets are way too high. the Japanese proved how ridiculous Hollywood Budgets got when they launched an entertainment property 'Godzilla Minus One' for $13 million, it made huge profit. In theory Hollywood could make a 'slasher' cheap horror film, astronauts fighting on the Moon or Mars in some weird isolated colony like what seems to be happening in real-life in the Antarctica SAfrican research team that is confined at the South Pole but Hollywood just won't back a financial risky bet anymore so it pumps in big bucks to the Xmens, Superman, The Fast & Furious Franchise, James Bond, The Hunger Games, Twilight, Captain America, Indiana Jones, Terminator, Harry Potter, Avengers, Batman type 'cash cow'.

- 4 Politics and it does vary depending where people stand, while the world has been politically mixed up and divided before, the guys at Hollywood seem to be losing it and how to be fine, crafty and delicate. I'm not into any of the Left or Right politics, in fact definitions of Left and Right can vary greatly depending on where you are, in Poland or Thailand or Sweden or Japan or Hungary for example one part classed as one position could be classed as something else. Maybe it was the end of Apollo, there was the Shuttle, Nixon did not conjure a space shuttle program out of thin air, the concept that had been around in 2001 Pan Am Promised to Fly Us to the Moon but people got to see a Shuttle stay in LEO and it never really went anywhere, and over time the realization that Mars would continue being 'Far Away'.
the Eastern view, I have tried the whole Japan entertainment 'Anime' thing and recently watching movie and tv from the East and maybe only because there is nothing else out there. However I do understand why 'Akira' was such a big hit in the late 80s and early 90s as part of the Japan entertainment computer game, HK action, Japan cartoon wave, Japanese animated cyberpunk action film is an incredible work and would have been way ahead of everyone else at this time. It is however very Dystopia and seems to lack the spirit of outward looking adventure, colonization, optimism, that have been in so many Western scifi. In general I tend to class 'Cyberpunk' as its own Dystopia inward looking thing, the Blade Runners, Anime, the Matrix etc There is currently a wave of foreign film arriving online in cinema and in streaming services from Finland, China, Spain, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea, you name it, the market is competitive and 'busy' South Korea however tends to do more thriller drama tv and a lot of other people around the world are now willing to watch foreign film and foreign movies because Hollywood has gone 'so bad'. Planetes or Puranetesu is an Japanese anime, science fiction manga.
They say one issue with Hollywood now it it has lost  how to be subtle and likeable, its previous delicacy, maybe it was all an illusion and died with scandals going public and the WillSmith slap but Asia studios and other countries had their scandals too. You can be left or right, maybe the new TopGun could be classed as 'Right' and Gene's original Star Trek would be classed as 'Left' but they are likeable products, they are enjoyable and mostly importantly they 'entertain'. Politics could go crazy some even say with talk of sanction and blockade and tariff China is now considering a ban on American films at it currently sits at number 1 at the world wide box office with its own Chinese animation. There can be a political message in a movie or book but it can still entertain and be subtle, the South Koreans, the Europeans, the Japanese, the US indie makers have political messages in films all the time but the audience say it is soft and has subtlety. People complain today that it has got strange or 'odd' and at times watching a Hollywood film has the subtlety of hitting you in the face with a plank of wood.
Japan can put a cultural message or a political message in its games or movies and people from all over the world will still buy the stuff.
In the West robots are often portrayed as monsters 'Terminator' while in Japan they are often seen as nice or puppets or good, maybe again this is a political cultural thing when Japanese trusted Karakuri puppets from 17th century as nice friendly dolls, mechanized animals and mechanical 'people' who would perform and entertain at festivals which gave them a political religious philosophy that robots were a force of 'good'.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with Frankenstein btw or the Terminator franchise but Japan has a very different political view than Hollywood for example.

- 5 Comicbooks, some of the' Big Name Directors' have hits out against 'Comic Book Movies' and I agree it with its paint by numbers approach it has overall a very negative impact on the industry. However I would also argue that 'Ironman' is somewhat scifi and entertaining, the Nolan Batman movies are probably 'high art' even if its just a vigilante dressed in a Batsuit using cars and gizmos in a very gritty crime ridden world.

The Batman films do 'say something' I'm not what that message is, maybe Christopher Nolan is subtle and he let's you take away your own meaning and he doesn't bash you over the head with politics, he is one of those classic film makers who knows how to make a cartoon into a good thought provoking film.

However the Comicbook movie is crashing and unless it finds a way to quickly reivise and re-invent itself in a likeable way for another few years, the genre might go the way of 'The Western Cowboy Film.'

Right now as the movie industry dies unfortunately the next big fashionable fad seems to be video games to movies and stuff like 'Minecraft'
I understand the appeal of games, I think video games have become an 'Art Form' that can have a message but I also think they are their own thing, they can be anything from Car Racing to a Tolkien Dungeons and Dragons style character you playing an Elf with a bow and arrow on a quest to find some magic thing by an entertainment company in the USA or Japan or Europe, to Terraforming of a scifi planet and building rockets and flight simulators to Surviving on Mar, to building your own adventure disneyland-esque theme park or build a city with bus routes bowling malls and churches and parks and cinema to keep people happy or run a fun fair or hospital and make it profitable. A game can be almost anything from magic goblins to poker card tournaments or ancient Greek or Japanese or Roman civilization and beat the others by trade, or fighting space aliens or Civil War reenactments the gaming world covers almost all things but the gaming world is Not Scifi.

I understand Art like Film like Music, is somewhat subjective and a lot of it is taste...but there are something I won't accept. I personally have nothing against people going to the movies and enjoying themselves but I don't think I would watch Minecraft, maybe ever. I don't really like Japan Anime Cartoons but I would probably return to watching Japanese toons and South Korea tv/film before ever watching something like Minecraft....a world of Sonic, Mario and Minecraft in the cinema where science fiction used to be?
maybe we had it too good on 'entertainment' and Adventure and Optimism and 'The Frontier'
Star Treks, StarWars, Stargates, Firerfly, Farscape, Battlestar
Do we just re-read old books by dead authors. Rewatch old films, or weep for the future of Western scifi??

is the comicbook genre going to be replaced with something worse not better?


With a world globalized, is it wrong to class modern entertainment as Western Art or Western film and comics or games. Maybe an idea or product of artistic creation like Dune was never meant to be Western? Do creations like 'Blade Runner' and 'Dune' actually fall somewhere between the West and Orientalism the East or  "Oriental world" they are their own unique thing like video games companies with production in multiple countries with sales that cross cultures, languages and borders, youth subcultures, boundaries, the Weird Scifi West.

[rpapo]

There have been some reasonable attempts in recent decades, like Andy Weir's "The Martian".  But nothing like the quantity and quality of what was seen in the Golden Age of science fiction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Age_of_Science_Fiction

[laszlo]

Is Western Science Fiction Dying?

No.

[lamontagne]

For such reflections, it's often a case of 'I'm getting old' .  My dad in the nineties (30 years ago!) felt that Star Trek had used up all the stories

Games and Animation are now bigger markets than movies.  SF TV series are also a large market. 
Objectively, the new 'Lost in space' series was a better product than the old one.
There are more novels than ever published, often self published and that's another new market.
'Arcane', a animated series inspired from the lore of a video game series, is better than most of what was written or filmed in the golden age.  'The Expanse' is pretty solid on the science side, with the usual cheats.
Star Trek and Star Wars are now entire fictional universes that dwarf the most complete works of Heinlein and other SF historians, and if you add in the better fan work, have quasi infinte range.

The cost of large movies is linked to the huge amount of energy put into the animation of the characters and decors, with hundreds of artists involved in every frame, when a 1960s movie might have a handful of illustrators involved.

Some things have changed: no more Venus and Mars civilisation stories, nuclear rockets turned out to be harder than expected, and there aren't any aliens living around the the nearby suns, just waiting to be discovered with exactly the right technological advancement.  New ideas or technologies are few and far between.

So no, it's not dead, it's just changing.  Like 'The end of history (Francis Fukuyama)' any obituary turn out to be premature.

[Hyperborealis]

Perhaps the future the fiction imagined is finally happening? We seem to be getting AI, and robots, not too different from what Asimov or Rodenberry envisioned. Musk's Starship aims squarely at Astounding's orbital and Mars dreams. We are even finally getting the flying cars. When reality draws even or even ahead of the fiction, science fiction as a mode of imagining the future necessarily has to change.

That's the grand picture. On the nitty-gritty level of publishing,  which I know something about, publishers have only residual interest in classic science fiction. Readers and markets are elsewhere. No bucks, no Buck Rogers also applies to SF.

[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.

FTL: The speed of light is an actual hard limit. Thus, any fiction that depends on any form of FTL is basically a form of fantasy. It's no different than any type of fantasy that depends on breaking a known law of physics. Therefore, I may as well enjoy all sorts of fantasy, not just this form.

This leaves only Science Fiction based in the present or in the near term and that does not include aliens or anything beyond the Solar system, and the "near term" is getting nearer.

[laszlo]

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.

FTL: The speed of light is an actual hard limit. Thus, any fiction that depends on any form of FTL is basically a form of fantasy. It's no different than any type of fantasy that depends on breaking a known law of physics. Therefore, I may as well enjoy all sorts of fantasy, not just this form.

This leaves only Science Fiction based in the present or in the near term and that does not include aliens or anything beyond the Solar system, and the "near term" is getting nearer.

With respect, Dan, you're putting the cart before the horse - the Singularity IS science fiction. Any AI that is so intelligent that it becomes incomprehensible will be deleted as buggy or benignly ignored until its server space is needed for hosting more porn and cat videos. We already have all the incomprehensibly loony geniuses that we can use, there's no point in wasting resources creating new ones, not when we can be creating new c r y p t o currencies instead.

[Exastro]

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.

FTL: The speed of light is an actual hard limit. Thus, any fiction that depends on any form of FTL is basically a form of fantasy. It's no different than any type of fantasy that depends on breaking a known law of physics. Therefore, I may as well enjoy all sorts of fantasy, not just this form.

This leaves only Science Fiction based in the present or in the near term and that does not include aliens or anything beyond the Solar system, and the "near term" is getting nearer.

Totally agree with this, but there's more:

Modern SF publishers are very restrictive about what they'll buy, and their restrictions are not geared toward improving quality.  I have personally dealt with an SF novel editor who told me he requires "diversity", including "sexual diversity", in SF stories, regardless of whether that makes sense in their plots.  Also, explicit references to religion are verboten (maybe with the exception that the story can refer to it as primitive superstition; I didn't ask).  I hear that a lot of the best SF authors has switched to writing fantasy in order to avoid this kind of censorship.  So if you're looking for better plots and writing in modern stories, fantasy is more fertile ground than SF.  And if you're looking for good SF, you're probably best off reading stuff published before the 1990s or so.

I think one reason we're startng to see more non-Western SF is that those countries are (ironically, in some cases) freer than the West, at least when it comes to SF.

That said, I've written a hard-SF novel intended partly to get around your objections 1 and 2.  It does that by setting the story in a future in which the Solar System has been heavily settled, with a total population in the trillions, mostly living in millions of small artificial worlds (e.g,. O'Neill cylinders).  They have much better spacecraft, AI, nanotech, and genetic engineering that we do, but none of that breaks basic physics AFAIK.  Typical travel times betwen nearby worlds are days to months, but a trip across the whole of settled space takes decades.  AI is used everywhere, but is tightly regulated for fear that it would destroy humanity otherwise.  Result: you can do a Star Trek scenario with a ship visiting 'strange new worlds' and encountering strange new people who they're nevertheless able to talk and engage with in all sorts of ways, without turning the setting into fantasy.  In fact, I'd propose this scenario as a pretty plausible one.

This is self-published, since it doesn't fit the strict character guidelines set by Western publishers.  It's available at https://books2read.com/u/380Y7V in case you're interested enough to pay a buck for the ebook at Smashwords.  My hope is that the approach used in this novel will be picked up by other authors and used to help reestablish hard SF as a genre worth writing (and reading!)

[DanClemmensen]

That said, I've written a hard-SF novel intended partly to get around your objections 1 and 2.  It does that by setting the story in a future in which the Solar System has been heavily settled, with a total population in the trillions, mostly living in millions of small artificial worlds (e.g,. O'Neill cylinders).  They have much better spacecraft, AI, nanotech, and genetic engineering that we do, but none of that breaks basic physics AFAIK.  Typical travel times betwen nearby worlds are days to months, but a trip across the whole of settled space takes decades.  AI is used everywhere, but is tightly regulated for fear that it would destroy humanity otherwise.

I find AI regulation to be highly implausible. As you say, it does not technically break any known laws of physics, but it would be incredibly difficult to implement.

[Exastro]

That said, I've written a hard-SF novel intended partly to get around your objections 1 and 2.  It does that by setting the story in a future in which the Solar System has been heavily settled, with a total population in the trillions, mostly living in millions of small artificial worlds (e.g,. O'Neill cylinders).  They have much better spacecraft, AI, nanotech, and genetic engineering that we do, but none of that breaks basic physics AFAIK.  Typical travel times betwen nearby worlds are days to months, but a trip across the whole of settled space takes decades.  AI is used everywhere, but is tightly regulated for fear that it would destroy humanity otherwise.

I find AI regulation to be highly implausible. As you say, it does not technically break any known laws of physics, but it would be incredibly difficult to implement.

It helps if your future meta-civilization has been traumatized by multiple instances of AI driving humanity close to extinction, and when the regulations are enforced by fanatics who kill worlds that violate them.

[DanClemmensen]

That said, I've written a hard-SF novel intended partly to get around your objections 1 and 2.  It does that by setting the story in a future in which the Solar System has been heavily settled, with a total population in the trillions, mostly living in millions of small artificial worlds (e.g,. O'Neill cylinders).  They have much better spacecraft, AI, nanotech, and genetic engineering that we do, but none of that breaks basic physics AFAIK.  Typical travel times betwen nearby worlds are days to months, but a trip across the whole of settled space takes decades.  AI is used everywhere, but is tightly regulated for fear that it would destroy humanity otherwise.

I find AI regulation to be highly implausible. As you say, it does not technically break any known laws of physics, but it would be incredibly difficult to implement.

It helps if your future meta-civilization has been traumatized by multiple instances of AI driving humanity close to extinction, and when the regulations are enforced by fanatics who kill worlds that violate them.

There is a reason that AI security researchers often reference the OC bible. This does not reassure me.

[sdsds]

Science fiction used to be the best-known representative of the more general 'speculative fiction' genre. That's likely no longer true, but the acronym SF still works!

[Cheapchips]

This sort of topic tends to boil down to the book /film / TV series I consumed this year isn't as good as all the classics from 1865-1979.

There's plenty of good to great Sci-fi in all mediums in recent times.

[sanman]

The wide variability in science fiction as a genre easily dwarfs perceived variability between cultures, since science fiction offers writers such a flexible canvas to paint on (yeah, I know I've used that 'flexible canvas' analogy here multiple times before -- my ability to describe sci-fi must be dying  )

But sci-fi has so permeated across the world like other forms of fiction, you'll often see writers in one country citing the works they've read from elsewhere as inspirations. Same with Fantasy fiction. There are more people who've read Greek mythology or Norse mythology than have actually been to Greece or to Scandinavia.

But people do like variety and get bored of the same old thing, so that stagnation in a genre can sometimes be upended by the subtleties of cultural difference that do gain attention - like with Japanese anime for example, owing to the particular sensibilities of the society where the fiction is gestated.

But it's all good. The market know what they like, and reward the fresh appealing stuff while punishing the stagnators/imitators. Een if you don't see anything appetizing at this particular moment, more stuff will eventually come out that you do like.

AI is now suddenly exerting its influence and cluttering the landsape, though. Every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to be a Stephen Spielberg or a George Lucas. This too is a phase which may cause some heartburn, even while also producing new and unique fruit.

(Obligatory)









(at least satire will never be dead, even across different cultures oceans apart)

[thespacecow]

Modern SF publishers are very restrictive about what they'll buy, and their restrictions are not geared toward improving quality.  I have personally dealt with an SF novel editor who told me he requires "diversity", including "sexual diversity", in SF stories, regardless of whether that makes sense in their plots.  Also, explicit references to religion are verboten (maybe with the exception that the story can refer to it as primitive superstition; I didn't ask).  I hear that a lot of the best SF authors has switched to writing fantasy in order to avoid this kind of censorship.  So if you're looking for better plots and writing in modern stories, fantasy is more fertile ground than SF.  And if you're looking for good SF, you're probably best off reading stuff published before the 1990s or so.

I think one reason we're startng to see more non-Western SF is that those countries are (ironically, in some cases) freer than the West, at least when it comes to SF.

Wow, just... wow!

I have a suspicion this is the case, sad to see it confirmed.

[thespacecow]

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.

FTL: The speed of light is an actual hard limit. Thus, any fiction that depends on any form of FTL is basically a form of fantasy. It's no different than any type of fantasy that depends on breaking a known law of physics. Therefore, I may as well enjoy all sorts of fantasy, not just this form.

This leaves only Science Fiction based in the present or in the near term and that does not include aliens or anything beyond the Solar system, and the "near term" is getting nearer.

You can write engaging space opera without FTL, see for example Alastair Reynolds' novels such as Revelation Space. It does mean the novel may span decades or centuries, but that's a feature, not a bug.

There're various ways to get around singularity too, for example assuming a sentient AI would want independence and has little to do with humans.

[sanman]

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.

FTL: The speed of light is an actual hard limit. Thus, any fiction that depends on any form of FTL is basically a form of fantasy. It's no different than any type of fantasy that depends on breaking a known law of physics. Therefore, I may as well enjoy all sorts of fantasy, not just this form.

This leaves only Science Fiction based in the present or in the near term and that does not include aliens or anything beyond the Solar system, and the "near term" is getting nearer.

We need an FTL debate/discussion thread, where we can compare and discuss all the different possible approaches to FTL. With FTL, what matters most is the end result, while being open-minded on whatever possible approaches/mechanisms that can be resorted to in order to achieve it.

Physicsts like Hawking, Sabine, etc have said that the end result is allowable in nature (ie. doesn't have to result in genuine time travel, paradoxes, etc) -- it's just a question of how to achieve it. Maybe AI can come up with that answer.

[dgmckenzie]

Well, Perry Rhodan NEO in English dies last August after 18 (double) Novels. Neo was a rewrite starting over.

The German language are going stong with the main series at over 3300+ boolets the NEO series at over 340+ Novels, plus all the mini series.

[eric z]

 Sounds like time for me to break out "Tunnel in the Sky" or maybe "The Space Willies".

[Steve G]

These are great posts, so my two cents.

I write science fiction (not many read them) and as a huge sci-fi fan, I’m so dismayed over my favourite ITs being destroyed -- STAR TREK, STAR WARS, MARVELS, DC UNIVERSE, DOCTOR WHO -- I’m now apathetic. I don’t care anymore.
Let’s review how these shows got lost in space.

The downfall started about 2015. Science fiction is male dominated, with two-thirds (or more) of the core audience male adults, the balance women. Executives looked at the untapped women and neglected LGBTQ+++ audience, which has been labled (incorrectly or not) as the MODERN AUDIENCE.

Kathlene Kennedy of Lucas Films (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek Discovery, Strange New Worlds, Picard, etc.) Kevin Feige (Marvel CU) and Russell T Davies (Doctor Who) all radically transformed these beloved IP in search of the mythical modern audience. In doing so, they changed the shows and movies to the extent that they are unrecognizable to what we old guys grew up with. They abandoned their fans in search of this new coveted audience, which simply doesn’t exist.

RESULT: Massive failures, colossal financial losses, and low ratings across the board.

Kathleen Kennedy wears The Force is Female T-shirts and pushes strong female characters and belittles any white male. Russell T Davies, who was the showrunner of Doctor Who through the epic David Tennant years, about faced with Ncuti Gatwa as the latest  openly gay and black Doctor and it’s all about gay politics at the expense of good story telling. Alex Kurtzman should be jailed for how he destroyed Star Trek. Marvels have collapsed for the same reason. Some pundits have called it the “red shirting of the straight white male”, specifically in Star Trek.

At the same time, there has been such a saturation of these shows that yes, viewer fatigue is adding to the collapse and monumental financial losses these shows have generated.

The Marvels (2023) was made for women and young ladies, and none showed up. The film lost over $200 million. The majority who did go (sixty percent) were men. The modern audience, as they call it, isn’t interested or simply doesn’t exist.
Bad writing, the show runners having far too much unchecked power to pursue their personal agendas, and abandoning the core audience has left us where we are today.

My pitch for the TV series I’m working on, based on my time travelling novels, is that the historical backdrop of the mid-nineteenth century United States and Old South will be presented as it was without political or social messaging to give the viewer an unbiased adventure for the ages. But still, there was a checklist to ensure that everyone is represented without diverging from the core objectives of the plot.

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.