The War on Science Fiction and... Marvin Minsky?

Oh, dear. I know that wasn't supposed to be funny, but I'm belly-laughing just the same.

I am EXACTLY what that whiny brat is complaining about. And he can kiss my ovaries.

So, what made boys take an interest in science before Science Fiction? The whole Renaissance was pre-Star Trek, as far as I know.

Yeah, I've seen it. My initial reaction was along the lines of "WTF, epic fail." A mini-rant followed, which I posted on my blog, but I didn't get into too much depth.

Out out of curiosity I read the site's About page and realized the whole website is based on the strange belief that men are an oppressed group. There are other extremely sexist posts on that website.

Misogynistic? Not sure. Homophobic, definitely. The guy's pissed all right.

But he's got a point imo, to a degree, though he's ruined it with his bile.

Sci FI for the masses HAS been changed to appeal to a broader market. ( whether that's to appeal to Da Womminz or not I don't know) Which means it appeals less to those who love hard scifi. Do men like hard sci fi more than women? Well that's maybe a generalisation, but among the people I know who love to read spec fic, it certainly is so. But there's plenty of ladies who love to read it too I'm sure - and I'll bet they hate this change as much as the men. It's market change, some people will always hate it ( much as I hate some current trends in fantasy, which I would see as maybe more male and / or YA oriented, if I were being extremely general)

I think the writer is on a 'Things were better in the olden days' trip. He hates that things have been dumbed down ( among other things) and why not. He's entitled to love his hard Sci Fi. But while some parts may be broadly true ( my son loves Sci Fi for the missiles, and wants to be a robotic engineer when he grows up. My daughter likes Sci Fi / anything for the characters. She doesn't give a damn about the science. Pretty much the split same for me an the Old Man too) the specifics just reveal his prejudice. More fantasy now cos womenz love it? Because womenz buy more books. If it won't sell - it won't get published, simplez. Want to change it? Buy more books!

However how it's presented comes across as a testosterone fuelled rant against a specific chief of the Sci Fi channel and gays.

Which means I take everything he says with a 'Um, yeah dude, chillax, get over your prejudices against gays and try to be less ranty. It works better.'

And the John Scalzi smackdown: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/10/13/a-boys-own-genre-or-not/

Favorite bit:

1. Verily I say unto thee that science fiction is founded on girl cooties...

2. What? An insecure male nerd threatened by the idea that women exist for reasons other than the dispensing of sandwiches and topical applications of boobilies, mewling on the Internet about how girls are icky? That’s unpossible!

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I ROFLed at it this morning. (Point #1 refers to Mary Shelley, if you were wondering. But, damn, the man has a way with words) Read the whole thing, it's great.

I think it's idiotic, and he's ill-read in the extreme. He's afraid of girl cooties, poor baby.

I see no reason to send him traffic, either.

Lol Kitty I loved that post

Particularly this bit:

Well, actually, the thing to do is trap such creatures in a dork snare (cunningly baited with Cool Ranch Doritos, Diet Ultra Violet Mountain Dew and a dual monitor rig open to Drunken Stepfather on one screen and Duke Nukem 3D on the other), and then cart them to a special preserve somewhere in Idaho for such as their kind. We’ll tell them it’s a “freehold” — they’ll like that — and that they will be with others of a like mind, and there they will live as men, free from the horrible feminizing effects of women and their gonad shriveling girl rays.

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Here, dorky, dorky, dorky. Come to mummy with her Doritos....

Leave it to Scalzi to apply a righteous smackdown where one is righteously deserved. I'd like to see this guy say these things to Anne McCaffrey, Elizabeth Smart, Diane Duane, James Schmitz, or Andre Norton just to name a few.

While I agree that the SciFi Channel has begun programming (and has been for a long, long time) more fantasy programming, this diatribe was just bile from a homophobic perspective and one which has no clear idea of the foundations of real science fiction.

All right, confession time: I couldn't read it. I skimmed a bit, then filed it in the "Tin-foil hat" cabinet. Oh noes, Teh Others are invading his old boys club*. There's so much blinkered thinking there it's just not worth the time.

I half expect him to declare he'll make his own science fiction. With blackjack! And hookers! And then call the whole thing off when no one else cares.

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*Who wants to bet he thinks Andre Norton is a guy? Or James Tiptree?

This reminds me of a SF/horror fiction magazine I once reviewed which devoted two A4 pages to a splenetic rant about "man-bashing" in Star Trek novels. Words like "life" and "get a" came to mind then, and they still do now.

I've been to enough SF conventions (since 1991) to notice this: a significant subset of SF fans (certainly not all or even most, I should add) don't get on very well with other people in real life so don't want to have to engage with more-than-two-dimensional people and human emotions and interactions in their written or visual entertainment.

However, there are PLENTY of gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender SF fans and there always have been - they may be more visible nowadays, but that's more to do with society than the genre. And the GLBT writers have always been there - Arthur C Clarke from the 1930s onwards, Samuel Delany, Thomas Disch and Joanna Russ from the 60s on, for example.

And not a few women from early on, though many of them used their initials, like C.L. Moore, or had ambiguous bylines, like Leigh Brackett. That's nothing new and is still around (J.K. Rowling, anyone?) though to be fair there are plenty of examples of men using pseudonyms or their initials to disguise their sex when writing in genres primarily read by women.

SF often is a genre that appeals to people who feel themselves to be "other" for one reason or another - not just for sexuality or social impairments (Aspergers/autistic spectrum), but also for disability (sometimes severe disability), or for being unusually tall or unusually short or significantly obese. Go to a Worldcon (I've been to two - Glasgow in 1995 and 2005) and you will find fans fitting all of those categories - and all power to them.

I think he's dead right. Not that some of the changes aren't for the better, but every change he mentions has happened. More power to gays and lesbians, but I'm tired of SF trying to send a message about sexual orientation, politics, religion, and everything else.

Just tell me a damn story that entertains me. Stop catering to women, to gays, to liberals, to conservatives, to orphans, etc., and stop taking yourselves so damned seriously.

The syfy channel, and what moron made that change?, is truly a junk channel now.

Jamesaritchie said:

I think he's dead right. Not that some of the changes aren't for the better, but every change he mentions has happened. More power to gays and lesbians, but I'm tired of SF trying to send a message about sexual orientation, politics, religion, and everything else.

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Err dude . . . that's like 40 years old. That's Heinlein's era.

What are you reading lately?

Just take a look at the Hugo and Nebula award winners. Scalzi? Sending a message?

I don't think so.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

But unlike Scalzi, I don't think a link is necessarily "rewarding". Nor has anyone clicked the link I posted on my blog. So, for the moment, I don't feel dirty. Maybe I will later, when people actually get to that scum-infested morass through my blog.

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You can always use rel-nofollow.

Having met Scalzi last week, I can hear him saying those exact things. Highly entertaining.

I do believe the poster of the linked blog deserves a round of /popcorn. Thanks for the entertainment, buddy. Good luck with the agenda. You'll need it.

The girl cooties thing btw--See Dr. Debra Doyle (the Dr. Doyle of Macdonald and Doyle) on The Girl Cooties Theory of Literature.

More people need to read it.

Some day he might want girl cooties. Maybe.

The blogger seems to have put together an article from a whine by Dirk Benedict and an out-of-context quote by Marvin Minsky.

Benedict's whine is much funnier than the Spearhead article. The original Battlestar Galactica was a network cash-in on the success of Star Wars. The scripting is little more than Star-Trek lobotomised with a robo-puppy for the ankle-biters. Apparently the revamped Battlestar Galactica has become 'feminised' by adding drama, social commentary, first-rate production and decent dialogue -- sins of which I never found its predecessor guilty. Apparently too, Benedict doesn't understand that SF fans of both genders like their synapses to fire occasionally in their TV entertainment.

But then, looking through Benedict's acting credits, drama and wit don't seem terribly well-represented, though 'cigar smoking and smirking' makes a fair appearance. I'm sorry that the new series disappoints him. Perhaps someone would do him the kindness of explaining what SF is, and at the same time explain to Mr Pointhead who Marie Curie was.

oh no... do you think men will stop doing things, and stop discovering things, and stop conquering planets... what with this new feminized version of scyfy?

"Sci-Fi" as represented on TV has rarely if ever been hard SF. I've not seen the new BSG and only vaguely recall the old BSG from the '70's, but if as I've heard alleged before that it's watered-down compared to earlier TV "sci-Fi" then it doesn't particularly bother me. If anything bothers me about BSG it's the new-age religious influence I've heard about and that such stuff is so popular (I've had Close Encounters of The New Age Kind and I find it missing basic things like logic and reason) rather than for anything the blogger said.

frimble3 said:

So, what made boys take an interest in science before Science Fiction? The whole Renaissance was pre-Star Trek, as far as I know.

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Currently there are quite good opportunities for boys (and yes, girls too!) to get interested in science and technology, in addition to reading the older classic hard SF (and even slightly newer stuff). No TV required (and TV may well be detrimental). There's Make Magazine, the Atlanta Hobby Robot Club (see anyone you know on that page?) and lately places like Freeside Atlanta. I haven't been to that Freeside place yet, I need to go see it in person.

Relationships and drama are ok I guess, but I do want my science fiction to be primarily about interesting ideas, fascinating concepts and extrapolations of science. The Star Trek series are usually entertaining enough, and so is Babylon 5 and Stargate and Serenity, and others. But they are often stories that could be, with few tweaks, set somewhere else or in another era. The aliens are not really aliens, they are, in my eyes at least, usually just meant to represent other human cultures. The science is abused or ignored. I suspect it's because they just want to put their story in a setting that would make it look like it takes place in space or in some future-looking time.

benbradley said:

"Sci-Fi" as represented on TV has rarely if ever been hard SF.

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I'm not sure I can think of a single example of hard SF from TV. Most of them are ridiculous and could be set anywhere and in any era, and to move them into a future in space only complicates things since they are trying to focus on other things than the science.

bettielee said:

oh no... do you think men will stop doing things, and stop discovering things, and stop conquering planets... what with this new feminized version of scyfy?

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Yes. We will be too busy accessorizing our new pink Armani-Yutani handbags.