For a long time now, years even, I’ve had an aching hunger to find and read a great science fiction novel. When I was a kid I stayed in a constant science fictional high – from opening my eyes in the morning, to dropping into unconsciousness at night, I kept a running sense-of-wonder buzz-on fueled by pulp fiction, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space missions, and fantasies about the future. This craving I have now is really a psychological need to return to that old passionate state of mind. Does the desire to be young again really mean wanting to be physically twelve again, or to feel mentally like I was twelve again?
I remember when I was a kid, when the oldsters used to moan and groan about aging, I used to think, what’s the big deal about getting old? So what if I turned wrinkled and bald – I could handle that! No big deal. It never occurred to me that my mind would get old too, in some unimaginable way. Jeez, if someone could have put this emotion in a horror film, it would have been the scariest monster movie ever to frighten kids.
I keep thinking if I could only find the right Sci-Fi tale it would be Viagra for my mind. This summer ABC ran four episodes of Masterpieces of Science Fiction on successive Saturday nights. I had great hopes, but my sense-of-wonder was left limp. It’s a crying shame when TV shows like Big Love and Mad Men, about renegade Mormons and 1960s ad execs are more exciting than a new science fiction program. Damn, Robert A. Heinlein never predicted this future.
Imagine reading in a 1939 issue of Astounding Stories about the year 2007 where Americans aren’t living on Mars, but waste their lives watching reality television and fighting an endless war, not with brainy alien invaders, but with humans whose only desire for the future is to go back to the past, to the seventh century.
Have science fiction writers stop writing astonishing stories, or has getting old allowed the mundane world to grind down my adolescent excitement? I think it’s a little of both. I suppose if I was twelve in 2007, and reading Asimov’s and Analog science fiction magazines for the first time, I’d be just as wild-eyed about the future as I was in 1967 reading Galaxy and Worlds of Tomorrow. But I’m not twelve, so how do I get my old Sci-Fi high again?
Could it be after waiting forty years for mankind to travel to Mars, I’ve just given up hope? That makes me think of the old preacher at the beginning of classic film, The Big Chill, and his eulogy about lost hope – then the organist starts playing with perfect irony the Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” Making Mars earthly by terraforming seems a lot less important now that we’re turning Earth into Venus.
As I have come to learn, the future is everything I never imagined. Science fiction was just fantasy. Nevertheless, I’m still looking to find that old thrill to spike some high quality sense-of-wonder to my vein. If you are past fifty, and thought Heinlein from the 1950s was the crown of science fictional creation, and have discovered any new books that bring back that level of thrills, write me and let me know what they are. Please, please, I need a fix.
jwh
Auxiliary Memory 
James,
I too read science fiction voraciously as an adolescent and then stopped reading it for many years. I gave it another chance in the 1980s when William Gibson’s Neuromancer launched the Cyberpunk movement, but then quickly lost interest and stopped reading science fiction again for about 20 years.
Recently, I’ve started reading it again, largely inspired by Charles Stross’s book, Accelerando. Accelerando is so exuberantly imagined that it inspired me to see what other treasures might be lurking on the science fiction shelves since I last gave them a serious look. Accelerando is a kind of ambiguous techno-utopian singularity story, in which each chapter takes place ten years after the last, so that Stross is able to ramp us up through the curve of accelerating change with mind-blowing results. It is as if Ray Kurzweil’s books The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near were the research notes for Stross.
Another recent read that I am very excited about is Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon. I actually liked this book so much that as soon as I finished it, I started at the beginning and read it again cover-to-cover. It is not as optimistic a vision of the future as you may be seeking, though. In fact, it is positively brutal, violent, and graphic. Even the second reading packed almost as much visceral kick-in-the-guts slam as the first. But Morgan creates a rich and compelling universe and populates it with characters that seem a bit more mature than those in many other science fiction tales. In Altered Carbon, teenagers don’t build rocketships, make first contact with aliens, single-handedly win intergalactic wars, or save the universe. Morgan’s characters are all older–some, much, much older, and as I’m not a teenager myself any more, I found this sort of refreshing.
Rick Kleffel has some outstanding interviews with both of these writers posted as mp3 files to his Agony Column web site (http://www.trashotron.com/agony/) that I recommend checking out if you’re curious. Direct links follow:
September 13, 2006 interview with Charles Stross: http://trashotron.com/agony/audio/charles_stross_2006.mp3
March 22, 2004 interview with Richard Morgan: http://www.trashotron.com/agony/audio/richard_morgan.mp3
November 2, 2005 interview with Richard Morgan: http://www.trashotron.com/agony/audio/richard_morgan_2005.mp3
July 26, 2007 interview with Richard Morgan: http://www.trashotron.com/agony/audio/richard_morgan_2007.mp3
Isaac Asimov was always my hero. A mind like that, that could imagine different worlds, different ways of living and, most importantly, different ways of looking at life, always fascinated me.
When I was young and naive I thought it was the worlds I craved. The newness and the adventure. ‘To boldly go …’. I was constantly fascinated and, more importantly, constantly asking: “What if …”.
What if they had decided to do this instead?
What if the experiment didn’t work that way and went this way instead?
What if they didn’t survive the explosion?
My child’s brain churned with unanswered questions and devoured every book I could get my hands on just to see if Asimov (and later other writers) answered my questions. I relied on them to do so and stopped reading authors if they didn’t fire that part of imagination, didn’t answer my need.
I have re-read Asimov’s books – not 330-something of them, just the 50 or so I own – many times and have learned something new about life in each and every reading. But I haven’t read any of them in nearly 10 years now.
Why?
I think it’s because I discovered it wasn’t the PLACE or even the TIME that fascinated me. It was the PEOPLE IN A SPECIFIC PLACE AND TIME and the ways in which they interacted with their world.
It was the way one small germ of an idea had evolved into an intricate, working, believable world with believable people experiencing believable emotions.
It’s that germ of an idea I look for now. Even badly written stories or stories with poor plotting have them – if I can force myself to get through the stupidness of some of the plotting and writing. As long as the people behave believably.
I read less SF now than I ever did. I don’t even watch it on TV much anymore. All the series we have available in Australia are reruns of Sliders and Star Trek (various series) and SG1. I’ve seen them, I know the theme, new episodes don’t surprise anymore. There are no new ideas.
The one SF show I will search for and even rearrange parts of my life for now is Dr Who. Each episode takes a germ of a very ordinary idea – usually some new science breakthrough that promises wonderful things and possibly ends up delivering nothing. It mixes this germ with some known history and some people to provide emotional reaction and comes up with a show that excites my brain and once again I’m asking “What if …”
The ‘germ of an idea’ fascination has encouraged me to be more interested in research happening in the scientific world at the moment – I have RSS feeds that give me precis of current research projects in different universities around the world. I’m even more interested in, heaven forbid, politics. (Don’t ask me any questions about politics, I usually last 5 minutes listening to a politician’s speech before I ask myself if they’ve ever learned to consider consequences, and can’t they see how ridiculous their suggestion is because it’ll disadvantage so many people, before acting and turning the TV off or throwing the newspaper in the recycling.)
I’ve decided I don’t need to keep relying on other people to provide me with great SF stories. When I mix the germ of an ordinary idea with my imagination, I create my own. Often I write a series of questions down and begin to build the answers to those questions but it doesn’t get much further than that.
I think, just as SF has changed over the years, so have I. I’m dissatisfied with what’s out there currently because it all seems so short-sighted and narrow-minded that all it does is irritate me. It feels juvenile.
And I’ve grown past that. My brain is no longer juvenile. It’s looking for something more. Something truly imaginative, something that has an impact on people’s lives (and therefore mine).
Ray,
I have read some of Charlie Stross’ short stories, and I’ve read Altered Carbon. I have Accelerando, but haven’t read it yet. Stross is exciting intellectually, but emotionally his stories leave me cold. I think it’s because I can’t get involved with his characters. Morgan’s story was a fun futuristic thriller, but it didn’t provide any sense-of-wonder for me.
I think my problem with modern science fiction is it fails to promote a positive future. Additionally, it doesn’t present a future I will be living in. When I was a kid I thought mankind would be colonizing the moon and planets by now. After waiting for the future to unfold for forty years I realize it’s pretty much more of the same, but with interesting complications.
Maybe my problem is I’ve gotten too old to have much of a future. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still entertained by SF – I just read Cory Doctorow’s “I, Row-Boat” and was immensely charmed. But that was due to good story telling and not just ideas.
I think Heinlein was a great story teller, and most modern SF writers rely to much on far out ideas and not enough on developing good characters facing emotionally engaging conflicts.
jwh
James,
Thanks for your thoughtful reply. I get what you’re saying, but I have to wonder how much of it is actually in contemporary science fiction literature vs. how much is in us. We humans seem predisposed to find an especially large amount of wonder in art we first experience as teenagers. Books, movies, and music we first encounter between about the ages of 13 and 19 have an inordinate impact on us. After we mature, it’s unlikely that any piece of art, no matter how good, will be as influential to us, as meaningful, or will fill us with as much sense of wonder. It’s why there are so many radio stations devoted to specific eras: “Oldies” (pre-1960), “Classic rock” (1960s and 1970s), “Eighties rock”, and so on. Each generation tends to get “stuck” liking the music they grew up with as teens.
I’m nervous about making blanket statements about “modern science fiction” because I really just haven’t read enough of it. So far, not much of what I have read has really grabbed me. But I haven’t lost hope. There is a vast universe of modern science fiction to explore and discover. And I’m no longer just reading for the vicarious thrill of escaping into the writer’s plot or fantasy world. I’m also interested in the big ideas, in how they do or don’t connect with our world in the here-and-now, and in seeing the influence of thinkers from outside the genre. These are interests I didn’t possess when I first started reading science fiction as a child, and I think they open more doors, more ways to enjoy contemporary science-fiction, for me now.
It used to be that science fiction lead futurist thinking. Nowadays, I don’t think that’s as true. As Elaine pointed out in her post, a lot of big ideas futurism is occurring in non-fiction. Writers like Howard Rheingold, Francis Fukuyama, Ray Kurzweil, Neil Gershenfeld, Frank Tipler, and James Hughes, among others, are presenting visions of wonder divorced from fictional characters and plots. Science and technology progresses so rapidly now that it sometimes seems science fiction must run full speed ahead just to catch up. We live in a science fictional universe today more so than ever. So I’m reading voraciously both science and science fiction. Both have been hit-or-miss, but both still excite me with their possibilities.
Ray,
The most exciting times in my life were from 1962 to 1969, or from age 11 to 18. Like you said, we’re imprinted to those impressionable years like a duckling to its mother, so whatever I loved back then I love for life. I tend to believe the music of the sixties is better than the music of any decade since – but I couldn’t prove it.
I was laying awake about three this morning thinking about my essay and wondering if it’s really science fiction that I’m missing. Maybe I’m missing my enthusiasm for science fiction. My enthusiasm has been redirected over the years. In the late seventies it was transferred to computers. Then in the nineties it was the Internet. I’m currently excited by reading nonfiction – the big ideas you talked about. I tend to admire the writers I see at Edge.org.
I think there are two kinds of science fiction. The first kind, the kind I’m looking for, is fictionalized philosophy about the far out aspect of exploring reality. The second kind, is adventure fiction set into a background that was first imagined by writers of the first type of story.
The first type of story doesn’t have to be published as science fiction any more. Have you read Yann Martel’s The Life of Pi? Martel surfs the event horizon of fiction to trick the reader into experiencing a particular exciting view of reality.
Science fiction maybe not be about traveling to the stars anymore.
jwh
I am a bit younger than you, 39 to be exact, and so am in that weird place where you experienced some of the science fiction as a child that I am just beginning to love as an adult, and no doubt some of the science fiction I grew up with that fueled my science fiction fire (The Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison especially) are ones that you might think lesser of in comparison to those classics you cut your teeth on. I say all that to say that I find it hard to recommend science fiction to someone who has a leg up on me like you do. I have a friend who is your same age who has read so much more than I have in the genre and I find the same difficulty in recommending more current stuff to him.
I can share that I felt something akin to what you are describing back in late 2006 and hadn’t even realized I felt that way…it took reading a review of John Scalzi’s book Old Man’s War and picking it up myself and reading it to realize that I had let my science fiction fire grow a bit cold. That book, perhaps because it reminded me of the way I felt about Harry Harrison’s work and Robert Heinlein’s work, broke open the bottle on all my memories of how wonderful science fiction was. It isn’t that I hadn’t kept reading it, I just didn’t have the kind of passion about it that I had as a kid. I certainly have a renewed passion now. That is in large part to Scalzi’s books followed up by the desire to do two things I hadn’t done before: dig in and read many of the classic works that I had previously been too intimidated to read, and keep up with more current science fiction in order to have a pulse on what is going on today. And that is what I’ve been endeavoring to do and I am in heaven.
If I think deeply about it I certainly am disappointed that we are where we are in the world. But I certainly haven’t lost that sense of wonder when I look up into the night sky or read a particularly thrilling science fiction book. I still have hope, even if it doesn’t come in my lifetime. The experiences that I have had in reading thus far this year (a standout being the original Foundation trilogy) have done much to continue my ever-growing enthusiasm for the genre of my youth.
I was recently given a copy of the short story anthology ‘The World Turned Upside Down’, edited by David Drake, Eric Flint, and Jim Baen. What is thrilling about the concept of this book is that the editors included stories that they read as young men that cemented their love of science fiction. It is always a thrill to discover what stories lit the science fiction fire in others and I am really enjoying discovering these classic stories that these men are so passionate about.
I hope you find what you are looking for because I look forward to reading about the books and stories that excite you throughout 2008.
Okay, so I’m 2.5 years late on this subject, but better late than never.
I loved reading science fiction as a child. My intro to science fiction lit was Robert Heinlein and Lester Del Rey. On TV, I watched “Creature Double Feature” and gobbled up every rerun of “Star Trek,” “Space: 1999” and “In Search Of.”
Science fiction makes me wonder and makes me think.
Alas, society has lost its imagination in the face of greed. Technology has become more concentrated and inward-thinking. We await the next smaller cell phone so we can sit on our butts and twitter about why we text and “sext” so much.
The space race is almost dead. No one wants to go back to the Moon. No one wants to see any space stations like “2001.”
But, there is hope. This is not the first time the world has experienced the “blahs” when it comes to science. After every major period of scientific advance, there has been a let-down period.
For example, after the telephone revolutionized the way the world communicates, pundits and selected members of the church community began to rebel, saying that we were probing into areas we should not meddle in.
Then, came wars small and large (WWI) and the world became isolated.
But, lo and behold, the Golden Age of Science Fiction came along. Pulp fiction from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Howard and others reinvigorated and stimulated society’s wonder and imagination.
When WWII’s aftermath pulled the world closer together, the world entered the start of a scientific and technology advancement period never before seen.
Now, there is this feeling that we’ve done all we can do. Ironically, it is caused by some of the things that should be advancing it. We’ve become inwardly concerned at our economic survival despite the fact that technology should drive us to make new things that will provide jobs. We’ve also let cell phone, iPods, texting and other technical items make us more isolated. Public meeting places such as libraries and even simple things like meeting up after school to talk about what to do have been eliminated by technology.
I think we’ll eventually come out of our doldrums, but it will have to be as before. A few people, maybe like Richard Branson, will have to do something big to spur us. If space tourism comes about in a big way, if new technology to clean up the environment takes off, if the space shuttle replacement works, etc…
The future can be frightening. In this time of uncertainty about the economy and, thus, about the future, we just don’t know or seem to want to know.
I have faith that we will survive.
In the meantime, I’ll keep reading science fiction to stimulate my mind and I’ll keep writing.