3 ms·

I have a theory that between them Star Wars and Blade Runner killed, or at least seriously damaged, SF. Instead of forward-looking weirdness (like 2001) a lot

I have a theory that between them Star Wars and Blade Runner killed, or at least seriously damaged, SF. Instead of forward-looking weirdness (like 2001) a lot of SF - especially written SF - turned into reruns of WW II in space and 30s detective noir decorated with some stick-on SF greeblies. There are obvious exceptions. But a lot of SF became less interesting, with endless reassuringly predictable variations on battleships in space, and gumshoes/mercenaries with laser blasters.

PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
I understand what you mean, and there very definitely was a change, but I've always felt it was the shift away from late sixties / early seventies high-concept, almost-fantasy, semi-hallucinogenic wonderful weirdness. Just as culture pretty quickly went post-hippie (as it were), so too did science fiction. I feel as tho, somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, we collectively went "well that was a little embarrassing" after the sixties and reverted a bit to form culturally - not just in popular fiction, I mean, but more generally.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  thats entertaining but no.. disagree.. the "hippy visionary" gestalt got lots of airplay for certain.. but there was always a straight-line science crowd that went deep-dive into elaborate scenarios.. with Science.. not the easily-identifiable fuzzy-glowey you allude to.. heck, give credit where credit is due, and point to more interesting book covers, background settings and other ephemera to the artsy people.. and also see the heirarchy, hard logic, high-tech machines and serious life and death events that drove a lot of stories and their production..
cholantesh 3y ago
Star Wars began life as George Lucas' treatment for Apocalypse Now, in which the Rebels were the PAVN and VC, which would make WWII entirely the wrong war for SF creators to try and recreate...
- Finnucane 3y ago
  Maybe, but cinematically, most of the tropes Lucas used predate Vietnam. The actual movie is entirely constructed from nostalgia for movies before the 1960s.
  - yifanl 3y ago
    Apocalypse Now is itself, a treatment of the Heart of Darkness published 1899.
msabalau 3y ago
Pulp storylines have co-existed with "future looking" conceit driven SF in publishing for over a century. And, of course, they can co-exist in the same work. If Star Wars had an impact, beyond greatly expanding the SF market, it was in breaking the ability of a narrow set SFF fans and writers to pretend that all science fiction was (or could be, or should attempt) was something like "produce pleasurable estrangement by imagining the impact of some unfamiliar future technology" and that "space opera", originally a slur, was some outside thing, over there, separate from the genre. You weren't going to be able to keep the kids on the moisture farm after they had seen the galaxy.
keepamovin 3y ago
Aye, it is merely the gentrification of our quaint little Very weird strange little neighborhood in outer space or time or dimension or parallel reality. Where oh, where will the true weirdos move to now that we can say there goes the neighborhood
bbatha 3y ago
The pendulum has sung too far in the other direction in the last 20-30 years in my opinion. Now its a race to have the hardest sci-fi and anything less than a master's thesis on why the macguffin is plausible is rejected by fans. Its quiet tedious and misses the forest for the trees. At least Star Wars and Blade Runner had ideas and weren't just a regurgitation of Wired.
- mlyle 3y ago
  I think we have it all. Just thinking about TV alone-- Foundation, ongoing Star Wars, ongoing Star Trek, Silo, The Expanse, For All Mankind, Stranger Things, 3 Body Problem, etc. Some of these are harder; some are galactic empires; some are weird.
mandmandam 3y ago
If your definition of killing a thing is making it popular to the masses while making the first inroads into acceptance of nerdishness in global culture, sure. Strange definition though. Hollywood and finance killed SF (to the extent that it's dead, which it really isn't - Severence? Foundation? Silo? Three Body Problem? etc).

PeterHolzwarth 3y ago

I understand what you mean, and there very definitely was a change, but I've always felt it was the shift away from late sixties / early seventies high-concept, almost-fantasy, semi-hallucinogenic wonderful weirdness. Just as culture pretty quickly went post-hippie (as it were), so too did science fiction. I feel as tho, somewhat tongue-in-cheek here, we collectively went "well that was a little embarrassing" after the sixties and reverted a bit to form culturally - not just in popular fiction, I mean, but more generally.

mistrial9 3y ago
thats entertaining but no.. disagree.. the "hippy visionary" gestalt got lots of airplay for certain.. but there was always a straight-line science crowd that went deep-dive into elaborate scenarios.. with Science.. not the easily-identifiable fuzzy-glowey you allude to.. heck, give credit where credit is due, and point to more interesting book covers, background settings and other ephemera to the artsy people.. and also see the heirarchy, hard logic, high-tech machines and serious life and death events that drove a lot of stories and their production..

cholantesh 3y ago

Star Wars began life as George Lucas' treatment for Apocalypse Now, in which the Rebels were the PAVN and VC, which would make WWII entirely the wrong war for SF creators to try and recreate...

Finnucane 3y ago
Maybe, but cinematically, most of the tropes Lucas used predate Vietnam. The actual movie is entirely constructed from nostalgia for movies before the 1960s.
- yifanl 3y ago
  Apocalypse Now is itself, a treatment of the Heart of Darkness published 1899.

msabalau 3y ago

Pulp storylines have co-existed with "future looking" conceit driven SF in publishing for over a century. And, of course, they can co-exist in the same work. If Star Wars had an impact, beyond greatly expanding the SF market, it was in breaking the ability of a narrow set SFF fans and writers to pretend that all science fiction was (or could be, or should attempt) was something like "produce pleasurable estrangement by imagining the impact of some unfamiliar future technology" and that "space opera", originally a slur, was some outside thing, over there, separate from the genre. You weren't going to be able to keep the kids on the moisture farm after they had seen the galaxy.

keepamovin 3y ago

Aye, it is merely the gentrification of our quaint little Very weird strange little neighborhood in outer space or time or dimension or parallel reality. Where oh, where will the true weirdos move to now that we can say there goes the neighborhood

bbatha 3y ago

The pendulum has sung too far in the other direction in the last 20-30 years in my opinion. Now its a race to have the hardest sci-fi and anything less than a master's thesis on why the macguffin is plausible is rejected by fans. Its quiet tedious and misses the forest for the trees. At least Star Wars and Blade Runner had ideas and weren't just a regurgitation of Wired.

mlyle 3y ago
I think we have it all. Just thinking about TV alone-- Foundation, ongoing Star Wars, ongoing Star Trek, Silo, The Expanse, For All Mankind, Stranger Things, 3 Body Problem, etc. Some of these are harder; some are galactic empires; some are weird.

mandmandam 3y ago

If your definition of killing a thing is making it popular to the masses while making the first inroads into acceptance of nerdishness in global culture, sure. Strange definition though. Hollywood and finance killed SF (to the extent that it's dead, which it really isn't - Severence? Foundation? Silo? Three Body Problem? etc).