I thought the ending was very tight, in what was a provocative film. I remember watching the end of the film at a cinema, and my mate, who was one of those people who would talk through a film – went completely silent half way in, and was competely absorbed to the end.

Only last year, we found a planet around Alpha Centauri – the closest star to us. Using present-day technology (in the lab at the moment), we could get there in about 200 years. We’re testing suspended animation technology too. Given the response to Mars One, you can quite credibly wonder what would happen if we discovered an Earth-like planet around Alpha Centauri and evidence of life.

I agree that it’s a science-fiction staple, but revenge and social injustice is a literary fiction staple. No one thinks literary authors should stop writing about old and new money in America because F. Scott Fitzgerald did it in 1925.

What’s more, this stuff hasn’t lost its cultural relevance. Last year’s summer blockbusters included Men in Black (aliens) and Prometheus (space travel, aliens)… It’s desperately silly stuff, but most pulp SF from the Golden Age was equally daft.

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That doesn’t mean that science fiction authors shouldn’t be tackling contemporary issues like unmanned drones, privacy, bioengineering of people and animals, swarm robotics, nanotech terrorism, climate change, etc. However, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t dismiss The Windup Girl as implausible and scoring a cheap satirical point, and not want space travel and aliens either. The Windup Girl tackles climate change and genetic engineering in a post-apocalyptic future. The windup technology is daft, but it’s not clear why the idea of catastrophic climate change is implausible.

You seem to want more stories like Asimov’s and Arthur C. Clarke’s? Am I correct? I suspect the reason there aren’t stories like that anymore is because of the collapse of the pulp short story market. These days, speculative fiction short stories are written by writers, for writers. You need to have a pretty crazy background to be able to write like a literary writer while knowing the science. Asimov was a biochemist and Clarke a rocket scientist before he was a writer and you can see it in his writing. The writing was ‘functional’ and I’m sure would get rejected by many magazines these days. In the past, hack writing full of cool ideas sold better.

Links:

Alpha Centauri planet (Oct 2012) http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/16/alpha-centauri-has-a-planet/#.UZM5KLXrzYk

Suspended animation story (Sept 2010) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8024991/Patients-to-be-frozen-into-state-of-suspended-animation-for-surgery.html

Mars One (May 2013) http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/08/mars-one-applications-mission

Blockbuster info http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/dec/29/2012-year-of-dumb-blockbuster

Ultimately, criticism is an observational act. This kind of sentiment is usually backed up by an editorial mandate – maybe you ought to consider that.

I think that Suvin’s definition is a) not particularly helpful because there are loads of works of SF that produce no sense of estrangement at all and b) philosophically flawed because in order to define something that term needs to have been used in a systematic manner and I don’t think that there’s any real coherence to the way that the term ‘science fiction’ has been used over the years.

I can see why people find that definition useful as people writing MAs and PhDs need to be able to say ‘I’m writing about SF and when I say I’m writing about SF I mean that I’m writing about works that are a bit like this’ and the wide acceptance of Suvin’s definition makes it particularly useful for that type of discourse. I can see why people like it, but I think it’s about as theoretically unsound as you can possibly get.

You also say:

“Without a clear idea of what you’re looking for your argument at the moment does seem to be that there’s nothing ‘good’ being published, and that’s very close to ‘nothing I like’. ”

But that’s pretty much my exact position! There is not an ounce of moral or philosophical weight behind any of my preferences: I think SF is capable of doing something that it is not currently doing, I would find works of SF that did that thing more interesting that much of the SF we have at the moment, ergo I would like some more of that type of stuff please!

I think of SF as small marketplace of ideas and when I complain about the state of contemporary SF, I mean nothing more than the fact that the stock I happen to own is down.

I think there are a few decent and useful definitions of SF out there. I found Darko Suvin’s definition based around the idea of the plausible novum and exploration based around ‘cognition’ useful when I was doing my MA, for example.

I’d also disagree that the ‘literary devices’ that characterise SF are the kind of structural quirks that you bring up: it’s bigger than stuff like ‘info dumps’. Indeed, you find info dumps in all sorts of fiction and genres where setting or technical details are important – historical novels, thrillers, fantasy of course and even literary novels with particular aims or settings (think of the stuff about missile trajectories in Gravity’s Rainbow).

I see this ‘literary devices’ aspect of SF as a matter of the type of story that the plausible novum implies. It’s the answer to the question: what if? A lot of SF doesn’t bother giving a convincing answer to that question, content to repeat stories of adventure, colonialism or war, or to use the novum as an essentially metaphorical device to address literary issues (as in The Road, for example) or make satirical points of varying degrees of ripeness (does anyone really think The Hunger Games or The Wind Up Girl represent plausible futures?)

Anyway, I don’t expect you to agree with me on all that (and I’m not how clear that summary is: there’s a more detailed exposition in my review of Super Sad Love Story on The Zone), but I’d urge you to think a little more carefully about what SF actually is. Without a clear idea of what you’re looking for your argument at the moment does seem to be that there’s nothing ‘good’ being published, and that’s very close to ‘nothing I like’.

I think Paul K’s article is pointing out the lack of new or original stories that explore the the speculative, scientific aspects of SF. His statements here (apologies not to address you directly, Paul) imply that he thinks that can return, perhaps in a new way, but I disagree.

As to why that is, you raise an interesting point when you talk about ‘possible’ and plausible worlds (although I don’t think human nature’s ever been as important as scientific truth). I think this is the key element that is changing. The audience (the market forces you identified) are losing interest in plausibility, because the fact is that the universe is actually somewhat more boring than we anticipated.

Sorry, folks, no new worlds and new civilizations for you, no wise-cracking robot buddies, no ET, no Rama, no Deja Thoris, no Dr Who or Bene Geserit. People still long for those sorts of thing, though, so those stories keep being told, but story tellers and audience have abandoned the pretence of plausibility entirely.

What we used to think of as SF has disappeared into post-cyberpunk venture capital futurism, TED talks and digital politics of the type practised Doctorow and Stross or space exploration boosterism of the kind Vivienne’s advocating above (no offense, Vivienne, a worthy but IMO doomed enterprise). It’s nice and all, but society doesn’t really care that much and the ‘cultural references’ on which SF depended have lost their mana.

And of course, I don’t expect you to agree with me on that either. I suspect you don’t see those elements as essential – but, well, it’s all good fun, isn’t it…

Is it possible for a reader to grow old in this genre without getting mired in nostalgia, to keep one’s mind flexible and hungry for the new and challenging?
I certainly hope so, but it is only a hope…

I think you’ve got me back to front… I don’t think that the problem with contemporary SF is a lack of formal innovation or technical experimentation. I think if SF has a problem it’s not a problem that exists at the level of how well people write but at the level of what people choose to write about.

Karen pegged me as nostalgic for the New Wave but I think that’s probably more true of Paul as I don’t actually like any of the books that came out of the New Wave. I admire the sense of creative freedom and the desire to write more interesting science fiction but I like end-stage Ballard a lot more than I like New Wave Ballard and I have never really got on with the likes of Delany, Spinrad or Ellison.

I respond very strongly to formal innovation in visual media but I tend to find experimental novels a real chore. In fact, if another New Wave happened tomorrow, I suspect I’d probably just roll my eyes and go back to reading comics :-)