Wonder vs. Doom

All right, I've been stalled on a short because I'm having an existential crisis. I'm at a fork in the road where the story can go one of two very different directions.

On the one hand, there's a little devil on my shoulder. I call him Lovecraft. He tells me that stories should head toward horror, anti-gnosis, and terrible things. He tells me to go down the dark path, which ends in violence.

On the other, there's a little angel. I call this angel Hollywood. She believes that stories, especially sci-fi stories, should go toward happy endings, or at least hopeful ones. She thinks that people like to have a little hope at the end.

Based on my crits, people tend to prefer happy endings over sad ones. I tend to prefer horrible endings when writing, but I like happy endings when I read.

What sayeth the crowd? Lovecraft or Hollywood?

This all came about when I read Brad Torgersen's blog (he's a WotF winner and rookie year champion with several sales to Analog). He pointed out that bad endings are considered more realistic.

But is it so?

I mean, I've been researching life expectancy for a case of mine and the average person in the U.S. is expected to live into his/her 70s. This suggests to me that most people around here live a long life, a life that is not cut short due to disease or tragedy.

However, I've also learned that the human brain is hardwired to remember negative events for survival purposes. So for each bad event, it takes three or four good events to make up for it.

I've also come across studies that suggest that after an incredible event (very happy or very tragic), short term happiness changes, but then settles into a base line in the long run. Which means no matter how bad things get, we generally keep going.

As for life ending with death, we really don't know what death means.

So this idea that "real life" is tragic is probably due more to our biases than the facts.

Brad's point was to use the sense of wonder in short stories. I'm willing to bet that many, if not everyone here at some point in their life gazed up into the infinite sea of stars and wondered "What if?" Or "What's out there?".

I think this sense of wonder is what separates modern science fiction (and to some extent, fantasy) from other genres.