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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 p

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.

zokier 9y ago
> I think "The Martian" counts as moving forward, but I'm much less happy with most of the books Amazon recommends for me I'd believe that more if there would have been any wider followup of similar works. But alas, there hasn't been (or at least I haven't heard of them), so I'm more likely to categorize The Martian as an outlier rather than a herald of new era.
- orless 9y ago
  I actually think Seveneves might have pretty much been inspired by The Martian.
  - eesmith 9y ago
    How so? Seveneves development started around 2006. The Martian was first published in 2011.
- maxlybbert 9y ago
  I'm sad that a lot of the progress looks like outliers, but I think it's a mistake to claim there hasn't been any progress (note, I'm not accusing you or the original article of making that claim; I would have liked more progress but I have to admit there's been some).
TeMPOraL 9y ago
> 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 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    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.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > Just about everything in the background of a sci-fi show is CGI. Didn't realize how much this is true until I saw the video 'lfowles posted. That's a good point.
- lfowles 9y ago
kwhitefoot 9y ago
> special effects will keep production costs high. The vast majority of written science fiction doesn't need a lot of special effects. There are almost uncountably many stories that could be transferred to television or film at no more cost than any other drama. Take Clifford Simak's Way Station for instance, most of Ray Bradbury's stories, J. G. Ballard, and dozens or hundreds more. Even stories with a grand idea and scope like Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days hardly need much in the way of complex sets or difficult special effects. Why is it that science fiction in video form always has to be space opera, alien invasions and so on? If we are going to go for special effects let's not waste them on more space cowboys. Let's have Charlie Stross's Accelerando and Saturn's Children or Ken McLeod's Sky Road, etc.
- maxlybbert 9y ago
  I would be happy to see those kinds of works get made. Perhaps the notorious faddishness of Hollywood and TV means that nobody says "let's do science fiction" without meaning "let's do a lot of special effects." It would be great to see that change.
manicdee 9y ago
There' not much in the way of special effects required for Anne Macaffrey, Arthur C Clarke or Asimov. IMHO the best science fiction only needs good actors, the props could be '70s Dr Who quality and we would still love the series.
- tzs 9y ago
  McCaffrey's Pern stories would need some pretty good special effects for the dragons, wouldn't they? Cheesy dragons really distract from the story in a movie. I think we've got sufficient effects technology to do a good dragon nowadays. Examples would be the dragons in Avatar and the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon (especially Toothless from the second movie).

zokier 9y ago

> I think "The Martian" counts as moving forward, but I'm much less happy with most of the books Amazon recommends for me I'd believe that more if there would have been any wider followup of similar works. But alas, there hasn't been (or at least I haven't heard of them), so I'm more likely to categorize The Martian as an outlier rather than a herald of new era.

orless 9y ago
I actually think Seveneves might have pretty much been inspired by The Martian.
- eesmith 9y ago
  How so? Seveneves development started around 2006. The Martian was first published in 2011.
maxlybbert 9y ago
I'm sad that a lot of the progress looks like outliers, but I think it's a mistake to claim there hasn't been any progress (note, I'm not accusing you or the original article of making that claim; I would have liked more progress but I have to admit there's been some).

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> 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 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > Just about everything in the background of a sci-fi show is CGI. Didn't realize how much this is true until I saw the video 'lfowles posted. That's a good point.
lfowles 9y ago

kwhitefoot 9y ago

> special effects will keep production costs high. The vast majority of written science fiction doesn't need a lot of special effects. There are almost uncountably many stories that could be transferred to television or film at no more cost than any other drama. Take Clifford Simak's Way Station for instance, most of Ray Bradbury's stories, J. G. Ballard, and dozens or hundreds more. Even stories with a grand idea and scope like Clarke and Baxter's Light of Other Days hardly need much in the way of complex sets or difficult special effects. Why is it that science fiction in video form always has to be space opera, alien invasions and so on? If we are going to go for special effects let's not waste them on more space cowboys. Let's have Charlie Stross's Accelerando and Saturn's Children or Ken McLeod's Sky Road, etc.

maxlybbert 9y ago
I would be happy to see those kinds of works get made. Perhaps the notorious faddishness of Hollywood and TV means that nobody says "let's do science fiction" without meaning "let's do a lot of special effects." It would be great to see that change.

manicdee 9y ago

There' not much in the way of special effects required for Anne Macaffrey, Arthur C Clarke or Asimov. IMHO the best science fiction only needs good actors, the props could be '70s Dr Who quality and we would still love the series.

tzs 9y ago
McCaffrey's Pern stories would need some pretty good special effects for the dragons, wouldn't they? Cheesy dragons really distract from the story in a movie. I think we've got sufficient effects technology to do a good dragon nowadays. Examples would be the dragons in Avatar and the dragons in How to Train Your Dragon (especially Toothless from the second movie).