Science Fiction as a Mirror

I didn't want to mix this in with the Archon thread, but one of the things that David and I talked about over lunch a couple of weeks ago was the use of science fiction as a tool to reflect/dissect contemporary culture rather rather than a manual/sears-roebuck-catalog for our ascension to the stars.

I don't know how many folks here read JMG's Agust 16 blog post:

https://www.ecosophia.net/the-worlds-that-never-were/

"As science fiction went mainstream in the late 1970s, it lost its grip on the future. As tenured academics stopped turning up their noses at “all that Buck Rogers stuff,” as a handful of the more literary SF authors found their work being reviewed in highbrow periodicals and the genre as a whole found itself afflicted with creeping respectability, the US space program began winding down, and a galaxy of technological breakthroughs that were supposed to happen sometime very soon—commercially viable fusion power comes first to mind—faded into that dim realm where might-have-beens spend their time.

"Meanwhile the genre itself stagnated: on the one hand, ringing an endless sequence of changes on the already overworked gimmick of interstellar travel; on the other, pursuing an assortment of political agendas in which the political correctness of the left and the patriotic correctness of the right played equally unhelpful roles. Readers accordingly drifted away, sales declined, and the remaining fans sequestered themselves in various sub-sub-sub-genres like desperadoes holing up in a box canyon, blazing away with mostly unloaded guns at imaginary posses."

I was--and still am--bewildered by this post. I was telling David that I read my first sf novel when I was 10-which was probably ther year JMG was born. It was Star Rangers by Andre Norton (AKA The Last Planet), and it was about a patrol from a dying galatic empire standed old a way-dstant planet when thei ship finally falls apart. It's 8054 AD and th ethree humans belong to distinctive sub-species. The fourth member is an alien (my first alien!). Written in 1953,the subtext is VERY MUCH about race relations. Norton wrote SF and Fantasy,and I still have 50 of her Ace paperbacks. Star Trek in the 60's--this year is the 50th anniversary of the original series.. I spent way too much money with the SCience Fiction Book Club in the 70's. Fantasy did have a boom in the 70's, but I was reading New Wave SF. Philip Jose Farmer was native son, and he returned home to Peoria in the early 70's. SF took off again in the 80's in a big way. From 1985 to 1999. I worked in a bookstore--in fact I got the job because I told the manger how many hardcover SF novels she had on the new book wall. I went to conventions, I was part of an online community, and I was a member of an SF/F bookclub at ther local library for 10 years. And the richness and the diversity and bthe volume of SF flourished.

Did SF divide into "sub-sub-sub-genres"? Yyyy-ay! Micky Spallane was a pulp fiction detective. Are only pulp fiction detective legitimate? Did mystery novels fade and readers sequester themselves in cozies and locked rooms and medieval subgenres? Wellll!

But that's not Where I started to go with this. Just in time for the 50th Trek anniversary CBS All Access is launching a new series Star Trek Discovery, and here is Stephen Colbert geeking out with the star of the series. Star Trek was about warp speed drives and replicators and all that shiny stuff, but it used science fiction to shine a light on civilization in the 1960's. It was a mirror for our times, and CBS apparently means to carry on in that tradition. Our heroine is Sarek's foster daughter, and if you listen to the Youtube cilp below, we are once again about logic and messy human emotion and the meaning of Vulcan IDIC

https://youtu.be/znooZB6dblY

ClareBroommaker's picture

Wet blanket response: I never read science fiction. I very rarely read any fiction. There are probably others like me.

The intent is to spread the Green Wizards message through storytelling. Which medium/genre would you use?

Well, Star Trek: Discovery premiered last night, and I gotta say, I'm pretty geeking happy with it. It was gorgeous to look at and full of that old Roddenberry spirit. We start off with martial arts star Michelle Yeoh as captain of the USS Shenzhou and Sonequa Martin-Green as First Officer (and Sarek's foster daughter) Michael Burnham on "the remote border of Federation space," and they find a Klingon ship lurking around. Captain Georgio: "You are in Federation Territory." Klingons: "Sez you!" Then the Klingon Captain says to his people, "Watch! These Federation people tell the Big Lie: 'We come in peace."

And I got so tickled with the "remote border" because way, way back in the day I sat down with the map in my Star Trek Concordance and tried to figure out how long it would take to get from the Klingon border to Vulcan crusing at normal warp speed and discovered how freaking HUGE "Federation" space was--and most of it unexplored and filled with "new life-forms and new civilizations". Are you kidding me? We've just staked out this part of the galaxy, and you can join us if you want to?

Now we are doing Jihad Klingon-style, and we will be geting the Klingon viewpoint and the Federation viewpoint.

And there is a pretty impressive cast. I am so ready for this.