Science Fiction Novels

[bwv 1080]

My opinion (swiped from The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of): science fiction literature rose as a result of the increasing rate of scientific discovery and social change  of the 19th century. Previously, things had changed so slowly that people tended to assume the past and future were both pretty much like the present. But the industrial revolution and rise of democracy made people aware of change, and new scientific theories in biology, geology, astronomy, combined with increased technological sophistication and pervasiveness, showed how change had occurred in the past. It also provided tools for guessing how things might change in the future. A certain Mr Marx, for instance, attempted to use a synthesis of economics, history and sociology to predict a utopian future.

In fiction, this broadening of awareness meant that new realms of imaginative creation were open to writers. Swift had written Gulliver's Travels as pure fantasy, but now polemicists could present their ideologies as scientifically plausible speculation, e.g. Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backwards". Verne speculated what an advanced submarine might be like; Wells wondered how humanity might evolve over thousands of years. These weren't attempts at predictions - that isn't the purvue of fiction. It was just a new way of using imagination to stimulate thought and create drama.

The rot only really began with the rise of the pulps in the 20th century, when the successors to the penny-dreadfuls of the 19th century realised there was a new market to be exploited. They exploited it the way they exploited every other literary genre, with lashings of violence and sex, and to hell with character and credibility. Britain managed to retain some dignity for a while, with the philosophical epics of Stapledon followed by the mild-mannered speculations of Clarke, but lurid book and magazine covers eventually closed science fiction into a ghetto of unspeakability to which crime, horror and romance were never quite confined. In this ghetto, readers of low-grade pulp grew up to become writers of lower-grade pulp, and a vicious cycle of lowered expectations and abilities brought us to the present low point.

But the genre itself is capable of good things, and I'm sure those with great patience will find worthy successors to Wells in amongst the paperbacked garbage. Some likely specimens have been listed in this thread.

The other big factor, at least in the US, was the Depression.  The idea of "The Future"  grabbed the public imagination.  The 1920s were a period of rapid economic growth and technological change (it was when most middle class people got electricity and the corresponding inventions of radio, telephone and various appliances).  So they had recent experience of the transformative ability of technology and it was comforting to look forward to a better time where all the promise of technology could be realized.

[DavidRoss]

But I recall much if not most of the quality science fiction I read as warning about possible dire consequences for society and the human spirit caused by our headlong rush into the brave new world wrought by worship of technological "progress." 

[MN Dave]

But I recall much if not most of the quality science fiction I read as warning about possible dire consequences for society and the human spirit caused by our headlong rush into the brave new world wrought by worship of technological "progress." 

It's happening now!

[DavidRoss]

Yep--even when I was a child (even longer ago than for you!) it was pretty damned obvious that technological progress was creating more problems than it was solving, and that the real crisis our species faces is spiritual (a crisis of values), not material.

[bwv 1080]

Yep--even when I was a child (even longer ago than for you!) it was pretty damned obvious that technological progress was creating more problems than it was solving, and that the real crisis our species faces is spiritual (a crisis of values), not material.

So at what point should technological progress have stopped, so it would not have created more problems that is solved?

1950?
1900?
1600?
1000?
10,000 BC?

How uplifting for the human spirit was it to be a medieval peasant?

Given that nobody can agree on what constitutes a valuable spiritual good, wheras material goods are easily valued, I will take the latter over the former.  No amount of spiritual enlightenment could compensate me for, say, not having the full benefit of modern medicine for my children. 

[MN Dave]

Right before video games and cell phones.

[DavidRoss]

So at what point should technological progress have stopped, so it would not have created more problems that is solved?

1950?
1900?
1600?
1000?
10,000 BC?

How uplifting for the human spirit was it to be a medieval peasant?

Given that nobody can agree on what constitutes a valuable spiritual good, wheras material goods are easily valued, I will take the latter over the former.  No amount of spiritual enlightenment could compensate me for, say, not having the full benefit of modern medicine for my children. 

On the face of it I can summarily agree with MNDave, above.  I think you're misreading me, Steve, and perhaps some time soon I'll have time to address your response more fully.  For now let me say that access to life-enhancing material goods--such as modern medicine, the field in which I presently work--is a spiritual value about which I suspect there's near-universal agreement.

{edit} An addition, now that I have a bit more time (but only a wee bit!):  No one but you, Steve, has suggested that technological progress should have stopped.  Rather than offering wishful thinking about what I might have preferred to have happened, I made an observation about what actually has occurred.  If my wishes had any bearing on the matter, I’d have wished for many other things before an end to technological innovation:  immediate universal enlightenment, for instance!

[MN Dave]

Right before video games and cell phones.

And the Internet. LOL.