
Why did science fiction stop moving forward? - rbanffy
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/star-trek-discovery/
======
maxlybbert
Based on the website address, I thought the article would be about written
science fiction, which continues to move forward if you ignore recommendations
from people who don't actually like science fiction. I think "The Martian"
counts as moving forward, but I'm much less happy with most of the books
Amazon recommends for me.

But the article is about television. I really am not qualified to say much
about television other than until very recently, it was very hard to have a
hit TV show that only appealed to a niche audience. A series faithfully based
on "The Martian" isn't likely to get a slot in prime time. The closest you'll
get is so-called soft science fiction, which presents stories that happen to
be set in unfamiliar locations (usually space), but where science has no
influence on the story.

Maybe there's a chance now, with a very different distribution model, but even
if hard science fiction fans can be perfectly targeted through Netflix or
Amazon, special effects will keep production costs high.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _even if hard science fiction fans can be perfectly targeted through Netflix
> or Amazon, special effects will keep production costs high_

It's a thing I've been wondering about - what makes special effects cost so
much, compared to previous decades? I mean, everything is done with CG now,
that's supposed to be orders of magnitude cheaper than what people did in the
XX century.

~~~
pixl97
I would think that practical effects would cost even more due to inflation.

Also you may miss how much of the shows are CGI if you aren't looking hard.
Watch a few shows from the 70s and 80s, ones with high production values, then
watch the average show today and you'll see that audiences demand much more
realistic sets and scenery. Just about everything in the background of a sci-
fi show is CGI.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Yet in a way it looks shittier. For example, take the two first sets of Star
Wars trilogies.

In the originals, the battle for the Death Star holds up.

In the prequels, you can see Jedi wildly waving their lightsabers at nothing
because the CGI team forgot to animate in certain places.

In the originals, Yoda was a puppet, and his skin and clothing reflected light
realistically. So what if his mouth movements had all of the nuance and
subtlety of a novelty nutcracker? Imagination bridged the gap between what we
saw and what we experienced.

In the prequels, Yoda was CGI, so he didn't have physical depth in the way the
other actors did, and didn't reflect light in the same way as the physical
cast, and it gave him an eerie, Photoshopped look.

CGI can make special effects look more realistic, but they also have a way of
preventing things from actually looking real.

------
ashark
> This show is post-racism, but still believes in “culture” with a Victorian
> faith in white mythologies

I'm fairly literate in Liberal Arts English, but I don't follow what this
means, especially as the context around it seems to complain about portrayals
of _race_. What does it mean to "believe in 'culture' with a Victorian faith
in white mythologies"? What does that modifier mean about one's belief in
culture (whatever _that_ even means, all on its own—do the scare quotes mean
we're not supposed to think culture's a thing anymore, or is this a hardcore
we-can-never-judge-a-culture-as-inferior thing the writer's assuming we all
buy?). How does that relate to the rest of the paragraph?

~~~
cannonedhamster
It means that the Victorian appeal of claiming oneself above the "savages" of
wherever the British Empire was conquering. The writer is equating the story
of Discovery with the story the British told themselves about colonialism. The
reference is that The Federation is the British and the Klingons are the
savages.

~~~
ashark
(Belief in) cultural superiority as racism, then? OK.

I'd be (genuinely) curious to see what form Klingon-hating in the show could
have taken that would have been similar in form but different enough that the
writer'd not have labeled it _white_ and _Victorian_. I'd like to know what
the diff looks like between the two. Is "they have always attacked us before,
so better to start shooting if you see them and skip the trying-to-talk-then-
being-fired-on-anyway bits" necessarily white and Victorian?

[EDIT] and if it's not _necessarily_ so, then what about the show's actual
depiction _was_?

~~~
slachance
Good question. I'd say that the ties back to imperialist days on Earth are
there because (1) it's a popular idea to hate this part of history, and (2)
despite having lead characters who are asian and black, the show is still
implied to be "white enough" for the comparison to be justified.

The claim is that _Star Trek_ 's premise is a problem because it makes the
flawed assumption that one culture can be better than another, and by
extension, that all cultures must be valued and respected equally. Without
going into the cultures of humanity in _Star Trek_ versus the Klingons, you
can examine similar claims closer to home even where some cultures are deeply
invested in medieval-level cruelty like stoning of homosexuals and adulterers,
female genital mutilation, and inhumane punishment by knife and cane. But
these realities don't fit the author's narrative, and therefore must be
ignored for the purposes of the thesis. Like Klingons, they're a benign
minority who are simply misunderstood by their would-be cultural oppressors.

The article's ostensibility about science-fiction, and managed to stay on
point for the first couple paragraphs, but it quickly devolved into the
author's pet theories on race and gender. I really had trouble with these
sorts of broad and totally unfair generalizations:

> _Uhuru was a service worker and Worf was a punching bag; when the show made
> a black captain, was it a coincidence that the show also became “darker” and
> less optimistic, when its characters started to be “flawed” and “ambiguous”?
> Voyager had a female captain, but it marooned her to the farthest reaches of
> the galaxy (and the less said about the garbage politics of the reboot
> movies, the better)._

~~~
ashark
Yeah, I glossed over that part with an "uh, yeah, kinda, sure" for the Uhuru
and Worf things (the put-upon not-terribly-competent "service worker" in TOS
is clearly Nurse Chapel, if it's any named recurring character, and Worf gets
punched a helluva lot less than one might think given his role and
demeanor—Picard is more often both the physical and emotional punching bag,
I'd think), an "I guess..." for the Sisko bits, and a "wait, what?" for the
complaint about Janeway (they gave her arguable the toughest circumstances for
any captain in episode 1 of their show in a Trek thusfar, but she did fine
because it's Star Trek and the good guys may have ups and downs but they do
basically fine in the end, and it's sexist somehow that she did really well?
That show has some deep problems, even with Janeway's character, but sexism's
nowhere near the top of the list) and an "I guess I missed something?" for the
reboot movies bit.

That should have primed me for being confused later in the piece, I suppose.

[EDIT] the Sisko thing'd have had more weight if that show hadn't spent so
much screen time openly dealing with humans (=the US, mostly, for production
and character reasons) racist past (mind you, I _like_ that aspect of DS9,
even if it doesn't always make much in-universe sense)

~~~
dragonwriter
> the put-upon not-terribly-competent "service worker" in TOS is clearly Nurse
> Chapel, if it's any named recurring character

Surely, Yeoman Rand...

------
eesmith
The title used here comes from a line in the article, which has the title
"Star Trek: Discovery". The essay starts "This week on Dear Television".

It does not look at the broader question of "why did science fiction stop
moving forward", but mostly Star Trek, with a few references to Battlestar
Galactica and The Expanse.

I write this because when I saw "L.A. Review of Books" I thought it would
include SF in books, and touch on things like Stephenson's Hieroglyph Project
(See [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dear-science-
fi...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dear-science-fiction-
writers-stop-being-so-pessimistic-127226686/) \- "Dear Science Fiction
Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic!".)

------
avar
If you're a fan of classic Trek check out The Orville. There's just 3 episodes
out but so far it's shaping up to be a true spiritual sequel to 90s Trek in
ways the JJ Abrahams-esque Discovery show won't be, judging from the first two
episodes.

~~~
mikestew
Umm, isn't _The Orville_ a parody of (primarily) _Star Trek_? (I have not
watched it.) I can't reconcile "parody" with "spiritual sequel". One would
possibly make me laugh, the other is often a metaphor for more serious issues
IRL.

~~~
avar
It's advertised as a comedy show and with Seth MacFarlane (of Family Guy)
headlining it I also assumed it was some cheap Galaxy Quest-esque jab at Star
Trek. There's some of that, in particular taking some jabs at Star Trek tropes
(e.g. one situation being neatly resolved by the crew using seatbelts)[1].

But it's not just some cheap comedy. Yes there's campy humor that's basically
the equivalent of TOS not taking itself quite seriously, but it's in every
other way a proper modern day sequel to TNG, and the humor doesn't get in the
way of that.

I'm not going to spoil the 3rd episode of it that just came out, but it's a
"moral conundrum" episode of the likes TNG was famous for, except it's IMNSHO
executed better than any such TNG episode. Those tended to get resolved with
some Deus Ex Machina or something resembling a stereotypically happy American
ending, but The Orville took the hard way out. I was very impressed.

1\. For those unfamiliar with Star Trek: Approximately half of on-screen
fatalities could be prevented by some combination of seatbelt usage, and the
computer consoles not being powered by 100,000 volts of electricity with no
fuses or circuit breakers[2].

2\. The other half being prevented by not bringing no-name red shirts along on
the away mission.

~~~
mikestew
Cool, thanks for a more in depth description. Sounds like it is worth watching
an episode or two for myself, I'll give it a whirl.

~~~
MikusR
In this case watching second or third episode first would be better than
starting with pilot.

------
captn3m0
I have a theory that budget for (SF+Fantasy) at any given studio is limited.
And Game of Thrones has gotten other studios to invest heavily in Fantasy,
leaving very little for SF. (Might dig into "running count" of shows with
genre filters on IMDB datasets for verification)

The only good TV content I've seen recently is Expanse, which is quite well
done. As others have mentioned, this is only limited to TV. SF Books/Movies
are still popular enough .

~~~
dreamcompiler
Completely agree about The Expanse. It's hard SF, and every episode is as good
or better than the best SF movies. I think this certainly counts as moving
forward.

------
pixl97
>feel like a single continuous 1990’s moment, a moment that began in a renewed
liberal optimism for multiculturalism and progress and the general advancement
of humanity.

and

>Why did science fiction stop moving forward.

Maybe because lots of sci-fi was optimistically wrong about the future of
humanity? Or should I say that sci-fi covers both the good and bad things that
could potentially happen. Some people don't realize the federation in Star
Trek story was born from the ashes of a world war 3. If they made a show that
covered that point of ST history it would still be science fiction, it would
just be rather dark.

Also on the points of multiculturalism. When Star Trek was originally airing,
there was little else on the air broadcasting a similar message. Now a large
portion of TV is very multicultural, some of it to the point it forgets to
have a story about anything else.

------
bigethan
Prolly because of the Sophons

~~~
dude01
Alright, a reference to Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy!

------
quickben
Tv always played it safe.

Books are where it's at.

~~~
toxicFork
Can you recommend a few good books that take risks?

~~~
kobeya
Anything by Alastair Reynolds (but _Revelation Space_ is a good place to
start).

~~~
tfandango
Yes! Revenger is a good start too.

~~~
kobeya
Also the audiobooks of Reynolds work are wonderful themselves. The narrator
John Lee is a master of his art form:

[https://tantor.com/narrator/john-lee.html](https://tantor.com/narrator/john-
lee.html)

(Sadly he did not narrate Revenger, which is part of why I haven't experienced
it yet. Thanks for the tip though and I'll add it to my list. John Lee did do
all of the Revelation Space universe however, including the short stories.)

------
cicero
> _deeply racist portrayal of its Klingons_

This struck me as strange. The Klingons started off as the violent bad guys in
TOS. Then in TNG and DS9 there was an attempt to make them more admirable. In
Discovery, I got the impression that the Klingons will be made more
sympathetic in that we will be given more of a picture of their perception of
the Federation, and why they perceive the Federation as a threat. Yes, Burnham
is prejudiced against the Klingon race (or culture), but I don't think the
message of the show will be anti-Klingon.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Let's hope not. The first two episodes have indeed portrayed Klingons in a
pretty sympathetic light. That they're a race of warriors bound by honor and
tradition is a well-established thing in Star Trek canon. But if you look
beyond that, the show establishes a pretty clear reason for them to feel
threatened by the Federation

------
t0mbstone
Would you agree that the tv show "Black Mirror" (on Netflix) has at least
probed into the future of science fiction?

