What I have read in various works by SF writers (Lester Del Rey's _The World
of Science Fiction 1926-1976_ New York: Garland, 1980 and Brian Aldiss'
_Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction_ New york: Atheneum,
1986) is that for AMERICAN SF (and it's true that with some exceptions what
we are talking about on this list is American SF, and there's often to
little awareness on our parts, definitely I include myself, about the
literary traditions that underlie what we might call "SF" in other
countries), John W. Campbell pretty much set the definitions and boundaries:
he favored stories based on extrapolation of current scientific knowledge
especially in the fields of what is so interestingly (for gender studies)
called "hard" science--i.e. the math based disciplines of physics,
chemistry, and astronomy. Biological sciences were less important; the
social sciences ignored, and the humanities completely dismissed. Campbell
was editor of Astounding Stories/Astounding Science Fiction from 1937 to
1971, and is credited with major influence on and publishing of Clarke,
Asimov, Heinlein, etc. Obviously this focus had a major influence on
excluding work by women (and men) not trained in these disciplines (Campbell
had a degree in Physics and wrote fiction as well as edited the magazine).
The "New Wave" revolution (Harlan Ellison editing the _Dangerous Visions_
anthologies wrote a lot about this) brought in SF based on extrapolation
from the biological and social sciences. The feminist utopia writers of the
seventies pushed at the fact that technogocal innovation leads to social
changes: Russ and LeGuin have both published essays pointing out how the
Golden Age/hard SF was able to present stunning technological changes, but
all the characters still lived in the basic nuclear family/suburban social
structures of the 50's. (And this is true--without wanting to attack these
writers as sexist, the conventions of the time that dicated, for instance,
that Clarke was alway presenting "stewardesses" on space ships and
restricting the piloting ships for men in his earlier work definitely showed
the TIME the work was published.)
"Hard" science fiction is still being published (Greg Bear, Gregory Benford,
and David Brin leap to mind)--although for a while people complained it was
disappearing--and some of the writers have some pretty strict dfinitions.
Clarke says that although he loves _Star Trek_, it's a fantasy because there
is no way to extrapolation to faster than light tavel. Other critics have
pointed out the way the "hard" SF people work very hard to extrapolate or
explain what then become shorthand conventions for other writers: space
travel, for example, or various alien biologies. But the popular
mind/media culture still tends to assign the status of science fiction to
anything with aliens or spaceships in it. _Star Wars_, despite the fx, is
basically a fairy tale: farmboy rescues princess. The fact that robots and
a space smuggler in the _Mellenium Falcoln_ help him as opposed to talking
animals doesn't make SW SF, because there is no science in it.
The question is how much the big success of such productions (sometimes
called "space opera" in a slighting way) has affected the chance of making
real SF movies. I'm a huge SF fan, but can barely stand to watch most of
the movies that have come out.
Robin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:33 PDT