Recently, a panel of literary and science geeks to honor a month of collectively reading Ray Bradbury’s science fiction classic, Fahrenheit 451. Panelists Ken Ruffin, Jerome Weeks, Phillip Washington and Charles Dee Mitchell had gathered to discuss what it was like for them to grow up with science fiction. They ended by admitting they loved the genre as youngsters, but by adulthood, all but one had abandoned science fiction.
It’s not that they stopped loving science -- Ruffin, after all, is president of the North Texas chapter of the National Space Society. Or that they stopped reading -- panel members Mitchell and Weeks are respectively immediate past president of the literary society WordSpace and a member of the National Book Critics Circle. OffWorld book club host Washington still reads science fiction, but even his group’s current reading is by 1960’s writer Philip K. Dicks.
What’s happened to science fiction recently? Is the genre truly dying, supplanted in popularity by fantasy, as has been reported for years? And if so, can science fiction be resuscitated? Or, should it, like extinct biological species, be left to die in peace?
In biological terms, one way of measuring a group’s success is the number of species it generates. I did a quick straw poll by comparing interests expressed by agents at the upcoming DFW Writers Conference, and was immediately struck by the proliferation of subgenres within fantasy on the agents’ preference list -- five, not including horror. It may also be overly generous to including paranormal romance as a fantasy subgenre. Even without horror or paranormal romance, eighteen agents reported actively liking one or more fantasy subgenres.
Science fiction garnered only two subgenres, if I include steam punk, whose validity as science fiction I personally find questionable. Only eight agents reported themselves actively seeking either science fiction or steam punk. If agents want to represent books they think they can sell, what does that say about the salability of science fiction?
What on Earth -- or off of it -- caused this discrepancy between the two imaginative genres of science fiction and fantasy?
“Star Wars came,” Weeks said, “and it was all fantasy.”
But it was more than the lack of scientific veracity, he believed, that killed science fiction. “I found, ultimately,” Week said, “I wasn’t interested in the technology. Ray Bradbury ages better because of his lack of technology. It’s the question of all fiction -- is it plausible? And does it say something to you beyond getting to Jupiter?”
I agree,” Ruffin said. “People tend to be not as impressed with science.”
“I grew up in a science fiction universe,” Washington said. “We live in a science fiction universe now. I don’t think people are that future oriented any more.”
A statement a younger member of the audience agreed with. “Science fiction isn’t imaginary any more. It’s real.”
(Next Monday, this subject is so dear to my heart, I’m going to extend the discussion one more week with suggestions about what might save science fiction, including comments from writers in the genre. In the meantime, a Dallas Big Reads month of Fahrenheit 451 has more events on offer, ending with a read-in at Klyde Warren Park Saturday, April 27, from 4-6 p.m. See www.bigreaddallas.org/. )
Showing posts with label Jerome Weeks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jerome Weeks. Show all posts
Monday, April 22, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Wordcraft -- Growing up with science fiction
Ray Bradbury originally insisted his 1953 dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451 was about censorship. But he didn't underestimate the role -- good or bad -- technology would play in our future.
From ear buds (he called them “shells”) streaming music relentlessly to twenty-four hour talk and reality programs shown on wall-sized screens to designer prescription drugs for every psychic ailment -- Bradbury imagined them all. Generations after the technology he foresaw, it was pertinent in this month of the Dallas Public Library’s Big Read emphasis on Fahrenheit 451 to consider what it was like -- and is like -- to grow up in a world shaped by science fiction.
So last Tuesday, Dallas literary organization WordSpace brought together a panel of literary and science geek speakers to discuss the role of science fiction played in their lives.
WordSpace’s programming co-chairperson Charles Dee Mitchell moderated the discussion by Dallas public media KERA’s Jerome Weeks, National Space Society of North Texas president Ken Ruffin, and WordSpace’s OffWorld Science Fiction Book club host Phillip Washington.
Joking that Washington -- obviously too youthful to have read Fahrenheit 451 at its initial appearance -- “kept this from being a panel of middle-aged men,” Mitchell asked, “what was your first science fiction experience?”
Washington cited Orson Scott Card’s 1980’s Ender's Game, “not because it has spaceships and interstellar aliens, but because it was the first book I read that made me consider long durations of time. It was mind bending.”
“My first exposure to science fiction was watching Star Trek,” Ruffin said. Too young to remember the show during its original 1960’s seasons, he saw it in later syndication. “My aunts and uncles were talking about this weird show with these fake-looking aliens -- it was ’60’s special effects. I’m eight years old, and I sat down in front of the TV and was mesmerized.”
(Not even Bradbury would have quibbled over Ruffin’s choice. Biographer Sam Weller notes that Bradbury, who would write many scripts for TV joked, “I never said I was against all television. I am just against bad television!”)
“Between the age of six and thirteen,” Weeks said, “I read everything in my suburban (Detroit) library” including anthologies that introduced him to such science fiction writers as Robert Heinlein and Bradbury. “My sister also subscribed to two science fiction magazines.”
Oh, those wonderful, pulpy science fiction magazines, Mitchell reminisced. The ones he looked at longingly on the book store shelves but couldn’t buy because their covers invariably displayed scantily-dressed women, “usually clutched by aliens, with tentacles covering the interesting parts.”
And then, somehow, the magic disappeared. No panelist except Washington would confess to reading or even watching science fiction after passing adolescence. Even science fan Ruffin said, “I have not re-read any novels -- as much as I enjoyed them when I was younger. I was afraid they wouldn’t have the same effect on me.”
What killed science fiction for them? And how do the newest generation of young adult readers view the genre? Can it -- should it -- be revived, or is it as dead as a T. rex? I'll continue the discussion in next Monday’s Wordcraft. Additional Big Read events include Bradbury biographer Sam Weller on a panel discussing censorship this Thursday, April 18, at Dallas’ Bar Belmont, 901 Fort Worth Avenue, from 7-8 p.m. The discussion is free, drinks are on you. See www.bigreaddallas.org/.
From ear buds (he called them “shells”) streaming music relentlessly to twenty-four hour talk and reality programs shown on wall-sized screens to designer prescription drugs for every psychic ailment -- Bradbury imagined them all. Generations after the technology he foresaw, it was pertinent in this month of the Dallas Public Library’s Big Read emphasis on Fahrenheit 451 to consider what it was like -- and is like -- to grow up in a world shaped by science fiction.
So last Tuesday, Dallas literary organization WordSpace brought together a panel of literary and science geek speakers to discuss the role of science fiction played in their lives.
WordSpace’s programming co-chairperson Charles Dee Mitchell moderated the discussion by Dallas public media KERA’s Jerome Weeks, National Space Society of North Texas president Ken Ruffin, and WordSpace’s OffWorld Science Fiction Book club host Phillip Washington.
Joking that Washington -- obviously too youthful to have read Fahrenheit 451 at its initial appearance -- “kept this from being a panel of middle-aged men,” Mitchell asked, “what was your first science fiction experience?”
Washington cited Orson Scott Card’s 1980’s Ender's Game, “not because it has spaceships and interstellar aliens, but because it was the first book I read that made me consider long durations of time. It was mind bending.”
“My first exposure to science fiction was watching Star Trek,” Ruffin said. Too young to remember the show during its original 1960’s seasons, he saw it in later syndication. “My aunts and uncles were talking about this weird show with these fake-looking aliens -- it was ’60’s special effects. I’m eight years old, and I sat down in front of the TV and was mesmerized.”
(Not even Bradbury would have quibbled over Ruffin’s choice. Biographer Sam Weller notes that Bradbury, who would write many scripts for TV joked, “I never said I was against all television. I am just against bad television!”)
“Between the age of six and thirteen,” Weeks said, “I read everything in my suburban (Detroit) library” including anthologies that introduced him to such science fiction writers as Robert Heinlein and Bradbury. “My sister also subscribed to two science fiction magazines.”
Oh, those wonderful, pulpy science fiction magazines, Mitchell reminisced. The ones he looked at longingly on the book store shelves but couldn’t buy because their covers invariably displayed scantily-dressed women, “usually clutched by aliens, with tentacles covering the interesting parts.”
And then, somehow, the magic disappeared. No panelist except Washington would confess to reading or even watching science fiction after passing adolescence. Even science fan Ruffin said, “I have not re-read any novels -- as much as I enjoyed them when I was younger. I was afraid they wouldn’t have the same effect on me.”
What killed science fiction for them? And how do the newest generation of young adult readers view the genre? Can it -- should it -- be revived, or is it as dead as a T. rex? I'll continue the discussion in next Monday’s Wordcraft. Additional Big Read events include Bradbury biographer Sam Weller on a panel discussing censorship this Thursday, April 18, at Dallas’ Bar Belmont, 901 Fort Worth Avenue, from 7-8 p.m. The discussion is free, drinks are on you. See www.bigreaddallas.org/.
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