 |
| Earth by NASA |
As we plunge
headlong into a
new century, science fiction has entered a period of change so
profound and extensive it seems fair to call it a paradigm shift –
most writers taking a new approach to producing the literature, so
long despised by the cultural elite, that has nevertheless grown into
our largest entertainment genre. Today’s writers are leaving
the spacelanes, the far voyages, the distant planets, to focus their
jaundiced gaze and speculative minds on trends becoming apparent
right here on Earth.
Modern
science fiction (henceforth SF) got its start as adventure stories
for boys, published in a half-dozen cheap magazines around the
beginning of the 20th century. Before that came Wells, with serious
and often profound novels; Verne, who tried to follow known
scientific principles in his popular adventure stories; and earlier,
Mary Shelley, with the novel many consider the first real SF,
Frankenstein.
With
a few exceptions, Verne’s novels were confined to the wonders
of science on Earth. Wells also set most of his stories on the
ground, though he did write the first important book featuring an
alien invasion.
With
the introduction of the first pure SF magazine, Amazing
Stories, in 1926, SF
continued a steady expansion outward, to the moon, the planets, and
finally, with Doc Smith’s “Lensmen” series and a
few others, to the stars. When Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, van Vogt
and many more introduced galactic civilizations in the 30’s and
40’s, the (fictional) pathway opened. By 1950 there were
probably more stories set in space or on alien worlds than on Earth.
That
no longer seems the case. But let me admit here that I didn’t
take three months to do a careful statistical analysis of the current
field to support this conclusion. Life is too short. My conviction
springs from constant reading in the literature, plus checking out a
lot of book reviews each month.
The
real space exploration program, in which your humble correspondent
spent 37 years (both military and civilian), has reached an
interregnum, a long “quiet time.” The world finally has
an International Space Station. With a little vision on the part of
coming American administrations, new and perhaps highly beneficial
discoveries await us. Communications satellites now blanket the
inhabited globe, bringing to life one of SF's more accurate
speculations, the Internet (and in the process creating a new global
community, unplanned, unexpected, and certainly not prepared for).
The Global Positioning System, designed and built to serve the
American military, also provides the civilian population with the
most powerful navigation system ever devised. Weather satellites
have lifted forecasting to new levels of accuracy. Earth observers
looking down from space greatly shorten the search for new natural
resources.
And
that’s where we’re going to be for a while. Barring some
unexpected (and unlikely) breakthrough in propulsion technology, one
that greatly reduces costs, the planned return to the Moon and on to
Mars will be a slow and expensive slog. We're lucky that competition
from Japan and China (replacing the U.S.S.R. as primary motivating
forces) will probably keep the U.S. manned space flight program
alive. But the current emphasis is on what space technology can do
for the people, right here on Earth, who are paying for it. And
that’s primarily unmanned spacecraft.
And
SF, which some of us like to believe serves a second purpose as
handmaiden to real science (the first purpose is entertainment, of
course), is also coming back down to Earth.
The
first novel (and we’re only going to cite novels here) to win a
Nebula was Dune,
by Frank Herbert, in 1965. Dune,
plus the long series that followed, featured an imaginary planet with
some very unEarth-like inhabitants. In 1966 Flowers
for Algernon, by
Daniel Keyes, returned briefly to Earth, but it was not a clear win;
it tied with Samual R. Delany’s Babel
17. After that an
occasional winner set the action on the home planet, but the large
majority were outward bound -- other planets, other star systems,
even other galaxies. But in 1984 William Gibson returned to Earth
with Neuromancer,
starting a trend toward looking ahead to a planet-bound future.
That
trend became more positive in the last decade of the century. In
1991 Michael Swanwick’s Stations
Of the Tide explored
a distant watery world. But in 1992 Connie Willis went into Earth’s
past and won for the time travel story Doomsday
Book. In 1993 Kim
Stanley Robinson transformed our most likely possibility and won for
Red Mars.
Greg Bear took on the big jobs by Moving
Mars in 1994. Robert
Sawyer ran his The
Terminal Experiment,
biological speculation, on Earth in 1995. In 1996 Nicola Griffith
won with Slow River,
a stream that flowed only on Earth. The
Moon and the Sun,
another time travel story (of sorts) also stayed on Earth, to win in
1997. Joe Haldeman roamed the solar system in 1998 with Forever
Peace, but Octavia
Butler returned to Earth (essentially) in the 1999 winner Parable
of the Talents. Greg
Bear ended the century in 2000 with Darwin’s
Radio, biological SF
that never leaves the home planet.
In
the new century, the winner in 2001 was The
Quantum Rose, by
Catherine Asaro, set on a distant planet. But American
Gods, by Neil Gaiman,
came back to Earth with a winning fantasy (fantasy novels winning
Nebulas and Hugos became another noticeable trend, and the large
majority are Earth-bound); Elizabeth Moon’s The
Speed of Dark won the
prize on Earth in 2003; Bujold’s Paladin
Of Souls searched for
answers in a fantasy set on a far planet in 2004; Camouflage,
by Joe Haldeman, stayed on Earth but featured some highly unearthly
visitors to win in 2005; and Jack McDevitt’s Seeker,
set a few thousand years ahead when space travel is common, won for
2006. Vernor Vinge remained on the home planet to win in 2007 with
Rainbow’s End.
Nebula
Awards are voted on only by active members of SFWA. But the more
broad-based Hugo awards are following the same trend. Looking back
only a decade in the last century, Lois McMaster Bujold won in 1991
for The Vor Game,
in 1992 for Barrayar,
and in 1995 for Mirror
Dance (the only
triple Hugo winners I can recall in a single series). All are
interstellar adventures. A
Fire Upon the Deep by
Vernor Vinge, won in a tie with Doomsday
Book in 1993, and a
follow-on in the same universe, A
Deepness in the Sky,
won in the year 2000. Kim Stanley Robinson took Hugos for Green
Mars in 1994 and Blue
Mars in 1997. Joe
Haldeman’s Forever
Peace added the Hugo
to his Nebula win in 1998. Out of the ten, only Doomsday
Book, Neal
Stephenson’s The
Diamond Age, 1996,
and another Willis, To
Say Nothing of the Dog,
1999, place the action on Earth.
In
2001, J.K. Rowling’s Harry
Potter and the Goblet Of Fire
continued the swing toward fantasy novels, with Neil Gaiman’s
American Gods
winning the Hugo, after already taking the Nebula, in 2002. Robert
Sawyer’s Hominids
kept us on Earth in 2003. Bujold’s fantasy Paladin
Of Souls took the
Hugo in 2004, as it had the Nebula. Jonathan
Strange & Mr. Norrell,
a fantasy set on Earth by Susanna Clark, won in 2005. Robert
Wilson’s Spin,
which includes space travel, took the prize in 2006, and Vernor
Vinge’s Rainbow’s
End stayed on Earth
to win in 2007.
What
I think this means is that SF writers are pulling back from the
vastness and openness of interstellar space to return to Earth. The
hot science for speculation and extrapolation is biology, not
rocketry.
And
that’s a paradigm shift.
This
new emphasis is by no means a complete change, and probably never
will be. You can still find lots of novels set in the starlanes, or
on distant worlds. But it seems to me the trend is there, and it’s
strong. Whether consciously or not, more and more serious writers
are accepting the fact that, for now, we’re stuck in this solar
system. They are turning their speculative attention to the effects
of the accelerating pace of scientific discovery on our current lives
and future prospects – where biology is key. They look ahead
to what comes next on Earth, doing what SF does best: constructing
scenarios that explore the social and political consequences of
scientific breakthroughs, and how these will affect our world. And
for some, worrying about a pace of discovery that seems to be
spinning out of control (or at least out of their personal control).
The
Audio/Visual media, as usual, are following the trail blazed by
print. After Kubrick and Clarke’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey
demonstrated that SF movies could in fact earn big bucks, the race
was on. TV had always had its boys’ adventure SF series, but
Star Trek
in 1966 was aimed at adults. It only endured for three years, but
paved the way for three more series that lasted about seven years
each. A fifth show, Enterprise,
became the first to fade after just a few seasons, indicating either
the show was weak or its public had finally become surfeited. Star
Trek became one of
the most profitable franchises in TV history. The movies followed
(though there was a long wait for the first one), and they too proved
immensely popular. In both TV and movies, Earth was an important
background element, but seldom a part of the main story.
The
three original Star
Wars movies carried
this trend a step further, into interstellar empires and galaxies
far, far way – losing any remaining distinction between SF and
fantasy in the process. (The Star
Wars movies, and a
great deal of the Trek
movies and TV series, can be called SF only by wrapping them in the
famous Arthur C. Clarke saying (this is not an exact quote) that “Any
technology sufficiently beyond the observer’s understanding
will appear to be magic.”) * Earth was relegated to history,
little more.
There
have already been some good SF movies set right here on Earth (and
not dealing with that counterpoint to human space travel, aliens
coming to invade us). Charly,
the movie version of Flowers
for Algernon, comes
immediately to mind, along with the several incarnations of Island
of Dr. Moreau and the
many unbelievable but great fun adventure movies made from Verne’s
books. But with a new Star
Trek movie now in the
works (the eighth? ninth?) and the three Star
Wars prequels finally
out, it seems safe to say the emphasis has not yet strongly shifted
back to Earth. Only the more nearly pure fantasies (the Harry Potter
planned seven movies, The
Lord of the Rings
trilogy) are Earthbound.
(If
this seems like selective choosing of titles to reinforce my thesis,
I can only plead that there are so very many movies and TV shows, as
there were books, that they can’t all be listed. Also, I’m
saying we are now IN
a paradigm shift – not yet out the other side.)
SF/Fantasy
has become the dominant movie genre – something no SF writer
predicted, of which I’m aware (just as no one predicted that a
half-billion of us would watch that first step on the Moon’s
surface “live” while sitting in our living rooms). Among
the large number produced over the past two decades, quite a few set
the action on Earth. Most dealt with future possibilities, as a good
little SF movie should. Bladerunner
and the Terminator
series come to mind, though there are many more. But the big box
office hits were, mostly, the ones set out yonder, among the stars.
All
of this has to tie in with the noted general decline in reading for
pleasure, throughout the print media; with the huge shift from books
to A/V as the preferred at-home entertainment medium; and with the
newest and fastest-growing demand on our scarce time, in all its
seductive and widely pervasive glory, the Internet.
Put
all these ingredients into a big pot and stir, and what emerges is a
renewed interest in me me! ME! – what’s going to happen
in my lifetime, on this world I live in, where my kids, if they’re
lucky, will get to grow up.
And
hey! if you disagree with this conclusion, there’s room enough
on my planet -- where you will be for the foreseeable future –
for both of us.
