The best rant on io9 this week:
If geek stuff is so hip, then why are two of the season’s biggest scifi hits, CBS show Eleventh Hour and bestselling Neal Stephenson novel Anathem, adamantly classified as Not Scifi? Because nerd culture will never be pop culture. That’s why Borders slashed its scifi section. And it’s why JJ Abrams, director of the new Star Trek movie, denied that it’s for fans of the scifi franchise, instead telling Entertainment Weekly that “it’s for fans of movies.” Successful science fiction, in other words, is still stealth. To get your spaceships and freaky science into the mainstream, you have to hate yourself just enough to shove your inner dork into a gym locker and keep her there.
Why is it, do you think, that the mainstream still makes science fiction jump through hoops that crime fiction and historical fiction doesn’t have to?
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There are no negative images brought up by “Crime fiction fan” or “historical fiction fan”, but there is a strong one for “Science fiction fan”. Is there such a thing as a visible crime/historical fiction fandom? I think the existence of a visible scifi subculture may create an “us and them” attitude in the minds of those outside fandom. (It’s been so long since I was outside I’m not able to say :))
I think a *somewhat* similar thing may happen with romances, though I haven’t thought about this theory very hard so am not willing to defend it against any strong counter-examples 🙂
I think it is fear of the word ‘Science’ for some but for others I think it is a form of literary snobbery that can’t get past the fact that only the pulp publishers would touch it for so many years regardless of its literary merits.
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What gets me is that it’s simply not logical. Historical fiction is overwhelmingly slash, and a distressingly high proportion of crime fiction is slasher-wank. What justification is there for the high-horsing?
Because far too many people have spent far too long thinking of sci fi as something only geeks, ergo losers, can like – ergo something they like couldn’t possibly be sci fi, because sci fi is all spaceships and stupid uniforms and sweaty nerd-boys.
And the notion that “we can’t label this as sci fi, then we’ll lose our audience” works like the “people won’t watch movies with women leads” idea works – no basis whatsoever in reality, but enough people in influential positions cling to it and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Just did a quick bookshelf survey in our living room. At least 25% is pure SF, another 30% falls in a more general category of SF/Fantasy.
I guess I COULD be biased. . .
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This. Nail. Head.
I’m totally with QoT on this. The overwhelming stereotype is so pervasive that it really becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And if a science fictionish show tanks in the ratings, it’s because it’s SF, not because it’s poorly written or badly acted or competing with American Idol. Funny that when sitcoms fail, no one takes that as an indication that people just don’t like shows with dysfunctional suburban families, or when yet another hospital show doesn’t take off that people don’t like watching stories about doctors.
Sci-Fi (especially the fantasy sub-genre) has a long history of middling-quality serials and fans who can’t get enough of them. It’s in a similar position to romance, westerns (probably just a US phenomenon) and mysteries.
To a degree, fans are to blame for the ghettoization of the genre. If I ran a bookstore, and it’s probably best that I don’t, I’d want to divide each genre into cranked-out crap and worthwhile books; you can hardly lump In Cold Blood in with “True Crime” or Lord of the Rings in with “SF/Fantasy,” though the labels do apply.
I really like imagining the supremely Jeevesish bookshop cat you would have though.
@Peggy: Absolutely, and wasn’t that the exact same rationale a studio used for no longer making films with women leads? Because it can’t be that they kept casting great actresses in awful films, nonono, clearly the public just can’t handle Jodi Foster in a leading role.
@QoT: Yup. And coming around almost full circle, I think that kind of logic is also part of what is behind the assumption that women don’t like SF. It couldn’t be that there’s a lot of SF where the female characters appear based on adolescent males’ sexual fantasies, could it?
@Notgruntled: I’d shop at your bookstore 🙂
Nongruntled I’d go there just for the cat. And possibly to argue with you about what was in the crap vs not crap section, but in an enjoyable “you can’t be serious!” way not a “you are wrong, wrong, wrong” way.
When I think Sci-fi I see in my head all those Star Trek fans dressed up and talking Klingon and that makes them the ‘other’. Of course this ignores things like the SCA where everyone pretends to be mediaeval, or black powder shooters who dress up like Daniel Boone. Quite bizarre that there is a differentiation made.