Talk:History of science fiction

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History of science fiction was a good article candidate, but did not meet the good article criteria at the time. Once the objections listed below are addressed, the article can be renominated. You may also seek a review of the decision if you feel there was a mistake.

Date of review: July 27, 2006

I miss Lucian, The Steam Man of the Prairies, and !!!Bellamy!!!. Kdammers 07:30, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

We really have to do some-thing about this HoSF: It is too unbalanced. J.-H. Rosny Aîné is not mentioned at all as far as I can see, yet there is a whole section on Beat Lit (Burroughs and Kerouac). I'm sorry, but this is weird. Also, I know we think of JV as toward the end of the cnetury, but if you check his dates, you'll see he began doing SF in the '60s (JttCotE: 1864). Kdammers 06:03, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] fixing up the article

I'm going to work on this article seriously. I added a section on SF of the '80s, and I'm going to rewrite the "onward and upward" section nearly entirely. There are some parts that are important, particularly the mention of Vonnegut, Amis, Banks et. al... But the reference to Dick is irrelevent to the history of the genre (it's only of interest to the history of Dick's own evolution as a writer), the discussion of Levi is overlong and misplaced (especially since Levi wrote 50 years ago), and calling Tom Wolfe science-fiction because the aerospace technology he's writing about factually was once the stuff of fiction is hilarious.

Admittedly, I have a bias against the author's idea that the future of science fiction lies in it becoming assimilated into the mainstream entirely. I'm going to work hard to try to maintain NPOV, and I urge people to watch me on it. I think I did a fair job of discussing cyberpunk, though I have an ideological hatred of that subgenre.

I'm not sure what to do with the Television and Film section. It's decently written, but it seems out of place. There are already stray references to TV and Film throughout the article, and it might be the best plan to just remove the section and put all the important references in their correct chronological places. Ferret-aaron 14:38, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

  • I agree that there doesn't seem to be a point to breaking off television and film if they aren't a *historically* different force in science fiction. Of course, there might be a Science fiction in television and film article, or some such, and it might be appropriate to have a separate history section there. -- Creidieki 15:50, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Some thoughts on the way I'd like to organize this article... The early stuff is important, but needs to be totally reorganized. There's too much before the contents that belongs under early European or early American science fiction. I think we need a new introduction, probably. Something like

This article covers the history of the literary genre of science fiction.
Before science fiction (SF) there were travellers' tales. These tales told of strange cultures, exotic fauna and flora, and mysterious phenomena that existed somewhere around the partially explored world. Science fiction was made possible only by the rise of modern science itself, notably the revolutions in astronomy and physics.
There are a number of earlier stories that can be considered to be science fiction in some way, but the genre only really developed starting in the 19th century. Its development took off in the 20th century, as the permeation of new technology into society created an interest in literature that explored technology's influence on society. Today, science fiction is a medium with significant influence on world culture and thought.

Then, after Early Science Fiction (which should probably be enhanced with non-Western early SF. I'm no expert on this, but surely Chinese folktales exist with SF elements, and I think a discussion of the Tower of Babel as SF might be appropriate, though as an Orthodox Jew it pains me to think of it that way) there's Verne and Wells, who really deserve more than two lines in any good history of the genre. Because is there any SF theme that one or the other didn't write about in one shape or form?

After Verne and Wells, the confluence of ideas in the 20s and 30s that includes Metropolis, the first SF-only pulps, Modernists like Kafka and Capek, etc.. is discussed, as it is currently, though not under the heading "The Golden Age", as I reserve that for the age of Campbell. Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers should be mentioned in terms of filmic SF representations.

Then comes the Campbellian "Golden Age", which I feel should be beefed up. Ellison's Dangerous Visions has an introduction which offers a decent history of the Golden Age. When I find my copy, I'll work on this section. The SF movies of the 50s should be discussed here in some form. Probably Star Trek fits in with this general trend.

Then the Beats and the British New Wave (and its American counterpart) come. Here the article is fairly good, though I'd change "Modern era and New Wave" to just "The New Wave" and cite a few specific examples of New Wave writers. The stuff about 2001, Clockwork Orange, etc... definitely belongs here. Star Wars has more of a connection to the pulps of the 30s, but should be mentioned here for chronological reasons.

Then the SF of the 1980s, the section I just added. I'm pretty happy with how it is now, though I'm open to any suggestions. Significant modern SF movies should be mentioned here, particularly Blade Runner and The Matrix as examples of cyberpunk film.

Lastly, the Onward and Upward section, significantly revised, should discuss the most modern trends in SF and discuss possible future directions. Ferret-aaron 21:09, 15 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite

My rewrite, largely complete but by no means perfect, is now sitting at History of science fiction/rewrite. Please read and comment on whether this should replace the current article. Feel free to make changes, fix mistakes, etc... I feel this is a much clearer arrangement of the history, much better sourced, and much less POV. Ferret-aaron 18:42, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] To Do List

I just pasted in my rewrite. It's not perfect, and here's a To-Do list of things that we can make better.

1. Internationalize as much as possible. Stanislaw Lem is a looming omission, because I don't know enough about his work to place him, and historically he's difficult to place, because the language gap meant that he was not widely read in English until long after he started to write. Borges, Levi, and Calvino probably should be referenced. Any international SF discussion should note that there is tremendous one-way influence from English language SF to non-English SF, but rarely do non-English SF writers influence English SF. And as a result, it is tricky to discuss international SF in the context of SF history.

2.Create a better assessment of contemporary SF. This is tricky because it's contemporary, but we should do the best we can. We shouldn't hide from contemporary SF.

3. Better and broader discussion of the Hard SF/Soft SF distinction,its relationship to the New Wave, and its place in 1970s science fiction.

4. Better discussion of SF film, television, comic books, and video games and its relationship to SF history. I'm not knowledgeable enough to write any of this.

5. Fix links from the article. There are too many glaring SF stubs. Once we're happy with this article, I'm going to start going through the links from it and improving them. Ferret-aaron 18:36, 25 December 2005 (UTC)


I think the rewrite is very good. Take a bow. The gap that I see is that there is nothing about the 1970s. It comes across that this period just sort of whoooshed by between the New Wave and the cyberpunk movement. However a lot of important things happened in the 1970s - it's just difficult to sum them up neatly. Some of them were at the periphery of literary sf, but there were also things like the emergence of Joe Haldeman, important work by Joanna Russ and Samuel R. Delany (the whole heterotopia thing which looms very large in the minds of critics belongs here, though Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed were, hmmm, when exactly? Maybe a bit earlier?). Then there's the sudden eruption of media sf with the orginal Star Wars movie. This was also the decade of Gravity's Rainbow, perhaps the most important quasi-sf book sitting just outside the genre that has been written so far. I can't quite see how to sum this up, but we need something to cover this exciting decade, even if it's just a further sub-heading under the New Wave and its aftermath heading. Metamagician3000 06:14, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

^I have no idea why the above has gone into italics for the last few sentences, but never mind. :) Metamagician3000 06:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Fixed your italics- you used a double quote instead of two single quotes before The Left Hand. I agree with you that I'm sparse on the seventies. This is partially attributable to my using sources that were written in the 70s, and is partially attributable to there not really being a distinct MOVEMENT for the '70s to discuss. In trying to write a history that painted with a broad pen, it was easier to focus on specific movements and their influence on SF than it is to focus on specific writers. That's why I'm trying to paint the '70s as an ideological standoff between the New Wave's general spurning of harder science and a backlash of hard SF writers. It's also fair to link '70s SF more closely to the post-modernists, a la Gravity's Rainbow. If you want to try your hand at filling out the details, go ahead. I'm also going to give it a try, but I'm working at reworking the '90s first. Ferret-aaron 18:32, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
SF in the nineties was (POV->) diluted by a massive (POV->) infiltration by fantasy writers and publishers calling fantasy and science fantasy "sicence fiction." While the line between F & SF has never been firm, the '90s saw a definite blending as an alternative to cyberpunk. The same period, more or less, also saw a lot of post-modrn type writing is certain SF circles. In another area, traditional SF did not disappear either, with Perry Rhodan ) which, besides doing nicely in Germnay: "Translations of Perry Rhodan are currently available in Brazil, Russia, China, Japan, France, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands" (Wik article on PR).) as just one example. Kdammers 06:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
I confess I had never heard of Perry Rhodan until you mentioned the name, but if the WP article is anywhere near accurate, I find myself absolutely opposed to mentioning Perry Rhodan in the contemporary SF section of the article. If you can find a place for him in the '60s section, do it. But just because the series still exists doesn't mean it should be cited as an example of a current trend in SF. However, I don't know non-English language SF very well, even in translation, and I depend on others to fill in those parts of SF history that were transacted in other languages. I've been trying to read Lem lately to rectify that gap in my knowledge, and find myself frustrated that in English Solaris reads an awful lot like a Jules Verne novel does in English. It's that kind of experience that makes me wish I were more multilingual, but as my non-English linguistic experience is largely in Hebrew and Spanish, I'm not going to have much luck tangling with Polish or French. Ferret-aaron 04:28, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
I agree that Rhodan belongs in the sixties section. I simply brought it up as an example of the continuing presence of more-or-less traditional SF. Kdammers 10:01, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Systemic bias

This article is focused almost exclusively on American and British writers. What about European (especially Polish and Russian) science fiction, like Stanisław Lem and Strugatsky brothers? Ausir 19:40, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's a known problem with the current version of the article, see above. Thinking some more about it, it may be difficult to incorporate all non-English traditions into one article since, as other editors have pointed out, the influence was almost entirely unidirectional. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there were some attempts to introduce foreign language science fiction to the Anglo-American audience (Magidoff, Lem, Barbet, Strugatsky, etc), but they were commercially unsuccessul and faded away in the 1980s. Other markets may simply not have enough in common to squeeze them into the same article. If so, then multiple language- or country-specific articles will eventually emerge, at which point this one will be renamed to reflect that it covers "common origins of the genre" and its subsequent development in the English language market(s). Ahasuerus 20:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
But some paragraphs on the subject would be welcome. Either they stay here as separate sections, or they can go to a new article or articles, with a cross-link. Septentrionalis 21:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Sure, this article is as good a place to start fleshing it out as any. Once we have some meat on the bones, we can decide if some/all of it would be better off as standalone articles. Ahasuerus 22:54, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] niggles (and POV)

In the description of War of the Worlds, the assertion that "the story is resolved by an illogical deus ex machina" is clearly POV and (in the view of most critics who have discussed the novel) dismissive of one of the book's thematic points: that even the intellectually and technologically superior Martians are not immune to something as basic as a disease for which their evolution has not prepared them. This is not just my POV but a critical consensus. (I can, if necessary, provide sources when I have the time to rummage through my library.)

This points to a somewhat subtler POV issue in this section, signalled by the reasonable and supportable assertion that SF has always exhibited "a tension . . . [over] whether to present realistic technology or to focus on characters and ideas . . . , whether to tell an exciting story or make a didactic point." There is indeed a cultural tension that runs through SF, but it's not quite as flat as is implied here by the opposition of "realistic technology" and providing "an exciting story" to "didactic" qualities. (There's a forced-choice, false-dichotomy thing going on here.) It should be possible to acknowledge that cultural divide (which is primarily a characteristic of the readership) without oversimplifying the qualities of the fiction and implying an aesthetic value judgment--"didactic," used outside a literary-critical context, often has negative overtones: dull, dry, one-dimensional.

Some true niggles and details: In "Birth of the Pulps," note that the pulp magazines had been around for a couple decades when Gernsback started Amazing, and that SF had been part of that mix right along (Princess of Mars, 1912, is cited--it appeared in All-Story Magazine). The wording obscures the fact that the SF pulps were just one part of that publishing environment.

Genre divisions within the pulps, however, were more recent; though I'd hate to have to source that. Septentrionalis 04:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In the "Modernist Writing" section, Joyce, Eliot, and Woolf are not magic realists--that tradition comes after their time, out of South America. And "modernist" is the preferred modifier, not "modernistic."

Brave New World is properly located among the dystopias but is characterized as depicting "a stable, happy society." The commentators I'm familiar with see it as dystopic or at least deeply ironic.

"A stable society of content people"? That's what dystopic, of course. See also The Machine Stops or We.Septentrionalis 04:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Now you're being ironic, right? The language as it stands says the opposite of what I suspect the writer meant to say. A repair would amend to to something like "an ironic portrait of an ostensibly stable, happy society." And now I also see that the final clause of that sentence needs to be fixed. RLetson 21:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That "many other works of later science fiction patterned themselves on the tradition of these dystopian novels" (my emphasis) is incautious--better to write "followed in the tradition." (There's a significant difference between working in a tradition and patterning one's writing on preceding books--ask a writer.)

The Golden Age might be identified as the GA of American SF--it is tied specifically to American magazines and the writers who published in them.

But "Golden Age of SF" is the fised phrase, and should be in quotes. Septentrionalis 04:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

In the section on Astounding: As soon as I see the line "science fiction began to gain status as serious fiction," I ask, "With whom?" While one might argue that the long, long process that got us to where Margaret Atwood can cop SF motifs for Handmaid's Tale starts with ASF, he might also trace it back to Stapledon, or Wells, for that matter. I wonder if what is meant here might be something more like "Campbell demanded and encouraged a seriousness of purpose and thought that had previously not been seem much in pulp SF."

In the "Beat Generation" section, I'd like to see a source that discusses Beckett's influence on SF. I know that writers like Silverberg read and admired Beckett and other modernists, but I can't recall much comment on direct influence. A case can certainly be made for W. Burroughs, but that would better be placed in the "New Wave" section.

New Space Opera: The term is much more recent than the 1980s--I didn't see it until a few years ago, when it started to be applied to the work of Iain M. Banks, Stephen Baxter, Neal Asher, Charles Stross, and other, mostly Brit writers. It can usefully be applied retroactively to much of what is discussed here (in fact, the line between NSO and the good old stuff from the 80s onward is blurry), but it might be a good idea to get the timeline straight. (And a real nerdly niggle: is the Foundation series, especially the late stuff, really space opera?)

RLetson 18:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

So edit, until someone disagrees with you. Septentrionalis 04:04, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Many of these problems, and I agree that at least some of them are problems, stem from the fact that when I rewrote this article, most of it was working from sources, but I needed to fill in some essential gaps. Those places where I filled in gaps are susceptible to POV problems. Feel free to make any of these changes yourself. That's what Wikipedia is about.
Let me note that I applied the term NSO to this early '80s stuff because I found a source for it, in the Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, that used that term for those authors. Prior to reading that, I was at a loss for what to term those writers. Further, Foundation's Edge at the least certainly seems Space Opera to me. Ferret-aaron 18:32, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I just did a rewrite on the NSO section. I added a bunch of examples and tried to get the sequence right--the term itself is fairly recent, but it has been retroactively applied to work going back 20 years and more. I haven't seen the Cambridge Companion yet, but I'd think that's what they're doing (I know the editors and I think I know what they know, if that makes any sense). I also tried to leave the material about cyberpunk in without having it unbalance the section--there was just a hint of carrying on an argument, only one side of which you can hear. There are some interesting connections, but mostly the result of NSO soaking up motifs from from other subdivisions of SF. In fact, I'd say that's one of NSO's significant characteristics, but that might be a bit POV for this venue. RLetson 05:24, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GA on hold

It is on hold for two minor and easy to fix concerns :

  • This sentence is tough to understand : It has an account of i.a. the launch, the construction of the cabin, descriptions of strata and many more science-like aspects. Overall it's a fairly ironic story though.
  • There are no pictures ... Just put pictures of books that have been talked about beside each section.

As for the progression :

  • It needs to have inline citations.
  • It needs to turn red link into articles. Lincher 17:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I added some pictures ... it still needs more. Lincher 17:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article nomination has failed

The Good article nomination for History of science fiction has failed, for the following reason:

Some of the concerns initially raised were not addressed.
Section headers with all words in caps is not in keeping with established style guidelines.
There are bits of non-NPOV writing sprinkled throughout the article.
Although a good list of references is given, it would be much more helpful to have inline citations. That way, we know what opinions (and there are many in the article) are backed up by sources.--cholmes75 (chit chat) 15:58, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New Weird?

For the modern science fiction, should we mention the New Weird works of writers such as China Mieaville? They are more fantasy oriented, but they often contain Sci-fi elements.

[edit] Richard K. Morgan

Why insert Morgan into a list of New Space Opera writers? Altered Carbon was pretty well received, but he's not generally classed with the NSO crew. I'm inclined to cut him from this list, though the nameless editor (who also wonders about China Miéville and the New Weird above) might be able to suggest a more appropriate spot for a mention. RLetson 21:09, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

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