I was reading a book about pre-historic Indo-European cultures – actually a book about paleo-linguistics – which described, as an important part of the indo-European culture, the giving of large banquets in which long poems praising the feast-giver were recited and conferred status both upon the reciter and the feast-giver.
I suspect though of course there is no way to prove it, that elements of these have survived in sagas like the Iliad and the Odyssey. And perhaps it is because Western culture is descended from those early horse riders possibly from the Steppes (there are other hypothesis) that our literature is the form it is.
It doesn’t take a more arcane activity than watching Anime or reading Manga to understand that the literary tradition in Asian countries, venerable and well developed though it is, doesn’t tend to follow the same framework as ours. As for other lands, particularly those that were not literate when they first came in contact with Europeans, their stories can seem almost alien to us.
It’s not that telling stories is a mark of civilization – it is not, to paraphrase Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, any savage can tell stories – but that the stories we tell both are molded by and mold us into what we are.
The shift in interest from science fiction to fantasy seems to have come at a time when we moved out of what could be called the “steam punk civilization” – which wasn’t, of course, as it lasted well into the late fifties – where someone who was smart enough could master the principles of a scientific trade at home with books and determination. Instead, we were faced with a civilization that, to the average person, might as well be magic. Curiously, fantasy was most popular amid the people who should by rights know how to assemble a computer from scratch (and many of whom did.) Possibly because to assemble a computer we already need sophisticated components, which are, in themselves a form of “magic.”
Myself I think we need more science fiction, and have thought so for a while. And while I don’t object to hard science fiction that explains the insides of machines and how they work, (I enjoy it, if I’m in the mood for it) I think mostly we need science fiction that explains how society changes under technological impact, and by doing so prepares us for that change.
Look, when cloning happened it was a non-event for the science fiction reading public, even as it was a nine-day wonder to those who had never read science fiction. And the idea, so odd it amounted to nothing less than the possibility of reproducing humans without sex, left people who were prepared completely rational and able to cope with the situation. Meanwhile the non readers were having nightmares.
We’re changing now even faster than I expect and I think we need more and better science fiction to prepare people. Like those early sagas, this could prepare our civilization and make it strong and supple for the fast change ahead, giving civilization to withstand pressures that might otherwise break it.
The difficulty has been, for a long time, that publishers thought science fiction doesn’t sell. A certain type doesn’t, of course and it could be argued it’s the type they themselves favor. To sell any story has to be entertaining.
But in the fraught times ahead, I think we need science fiction writers skilled enough to attract the reading public back to the idea that a fast changing world can be wondrous rather than traumatic.
It is of course entirely possible I’m barking up the wrong tree…
Crossposted at Mad Genius Club
According To Hoyt 
I think the hardest blow to sf was the unmanned missions to Mars and Venus – Mars would be as difficult to live on as Dick thought in “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch,” and Venus is utterly impossible. We have in our homes computers far more sophisticated than any pictured in sf up to the early Sixties, and our PCs have shown no sign of sentience. I don’t recall anyone but Heinlein predicting the internet, and he didn’t see it as widespread as it turned out to be. And no robots – Heinlein and Vonnegut in “Player Piano” – odd combination, that – were the most accurate in picturing roboticization. A non-sentient idiot robot that can vacuum the home, and robots that will build cars. Though Vonnegut, of course, crammed in a ton of left-wing propaganda, he didn’t guess that there would need to be almost as many workers in the auto plant just to hand the parts to the machines and pass them to the next machine, and of course maintenance work on malfunctioning robots. Science as it unfolded in the Seventies encouraged introspection, there were reasons for all the bellybutton gazing sf.
So, let’s just skip ahead and settle the light speed question, and on to the stars.
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Charles;
Rather than Heinlein, I would tend to credit Orson Scott Card, among others, for foreseeing the shape of the Internet. In the first Ender story (short: 1977, novel 1985), the online exchanges between Peter and Valentine presage the influence that blogging is only now beginning to have over human affairs.
M
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It’s been a long time, so the citation may be wrong, but I recall reading Asimov on the three stages of SF. Stage 1 involves Tom Swift solving the problems of building a working motorcar. Stage 2 involves the adventures Tom has in his automobile. Stage 3 involves a future in which the car is commonplace, with cities dispersed into suburbia with its attendant age-segregation of families, pollution, traffic jams and vast swathes of asphalt baking in the summer sun, collecting snow in winter and creating serious runoff in rainy season.
With Stage 3 SF the accuracy of envisionment is perhaps less important than the anticipation of potential complications of technological civilization. Add in the persistence of long-established behaviour patterns (I expect all are familiar with the argument tracing modern railroads and automobiles to pre-Roman times) and there is room for some very interesting exploration.
For example, who anticipated the effects of the internet in mainstreaming porn and creating the kinds of situation in which Congressman Weiner was so recently caught? And yet it was predictable; I never forget that one of the first six movie cameras Edison built was (reportedly) bought by Argentinian investors looking to make what became known as “blue” films.
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forget porn. If it’s available, it will be there. Who would have forseen the internet destroying newspapers. Mark mentions it in another comment and credits Card with it. I have full respect for Card (though I’d like to have a protracted argument with him about things the Portuguese language has never done except in his books) but he didn’t quite. He foresaw webboards, not NEWS blogs. The only reason development lurched THAT way was the fact that the newspapers had stopped — by and large — doing their job. And so had TV and Radio. They left vast portions of the public unserved in opinion and their reporting was spotty (For a long time, if one believes Heinlein.)
In the same way, what is giving extra impetus to ebooks is that the system to get people what they’re willing to pay for in that domain is so uh… cluster fried. At every level, and no one’s fault, though of course I reserve the right to blame publishers-as-a-club that decides what doesn’t sell and what is “beneath them” — not all publishers. Baen has made a good living out of Space Opera, which other publishers decided wasn’t “real science fiction.” Oh, please! My only problem is that there wasn’t a Jim Baen in mystery and the cozy was similarly frozen out for being “not likely” and “undermining trust in police” or something. As a result, the Mystery cons look like third age homes. I’m a young and hot author, at nearing mid century. Um… that’s a subject for a post, isn’t it? Let’s just say I’m contemplating three mystery series that won’t go near a standard publisher. Of course, right now my problem is time. I want to not only finish my two books for Baen but send them a couple more as side-spins on DST, (no Thena, same world) plus a future of DST world space opera which is almost finished. I have two books due to Prime by the end of the year. I still have the colab with Flint, started, not finished. AND I want to feed the either self-pub or Naked reader epub if they’ll have me. Meanwhile, I sitll need to look after the mechanics of being alive — food, bathing, sleep — a household — minimal cleaning so I don’t get sick, cooking, cat boxes — the mechanics of being a mother — oh, you need to know what the guys are up to, you know? — losing weight — an hour walk, at least, every day — and some time off — say a day a month. This is when cloning would be SO helpful.
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