Charlie Finlay said in the comments on the last post that, for the past several years, every SF novel he’s read has seemed this way, which is why he’s trended towards fantasy. So I put some thought into what SF novels I had read recently.
The Execution Channel was the most recent one. Holy smokes, was this depressing. So it fits the bill. Postsingular seemed a lot more upbeat. In fact, it was the first near-future SF anything that I’ve read in a while that didn’t mention terrorism. So I haven’t really noticed a trend of depressive elements in my most recent reading of novels, but then, I don’t read a lot of SF novels.
I do know that Gordon has been talking about getting a lot more stories about death for a while now. Maybe I’m just now starting to see those stories being published here and there.
It’s odd, because I’ve spent the past couple of years kind of obsessed with death and the afterlife, and now that I’m coming out of that obsession and starting to feel better, I find death all over the place in my reading. Was it that common of a theme before? Not sure. I don’t remember it being so, but it’s probably a matter of my changed perspective as much as anything else.
Some questions.
1. Does anyone know how relatively optimistic the SF published in China is?
2. I don’t read Baen’s–are they more upbeat?
3. Do you think British writers have been more prone to depressive stuff since their own terrorist attacks recently?
4. Is there a need for upbeat SF? Not necessarily more positive, but maybe less, well, grim?
It’s very interesting, as I’m researching the prevalence of dystopias in Korean science fiction… as in, the absence of anything but dystopias in Korea SF. (But all I really have access to is films: I don’t know of any Korean SF authors, as opposed to fantasy and horror, which exist in larger numbers.
My impression was that British SF is not so dark as American is right now — that this is still a trend. But even so, Jetse de Vries was commenting on the darkness of submissions to Interzone more than a year ago, so maybe this hits short story markets first?
I’m oddly attracted to the question of whether Canadian SF is less negative. I mean, Robert Charles Wilson, Bob Sawyer, Cory Doctorow (we can claim him as Canadian, can’t we?)… they don’t seem like pessimists to me.
The terrorism thing — yeah, I am kind of making an effort to avoid it in stories these days. Weirdly, I was writing stories about scary techno– or bio-terrorists before 9–11, and as soon as it happened, I figured, well, shit,that’s old news now, what can I do next. (That said, the story I most recently sold to Asimov’s involves eco-terrorism on a huge scale. But I’m trying to steer clear of it as a theme… If someone wants to shed light on how we think of terrorists, it seems it’d be better to explore it through something that looks like something else. Like mythic 19th century “Anarchists” for example. Sort of like how the bug-people — what were they called again — in Perdido Street Station felt quite analogous to how Westerners in the 19th century felt about Chinese immigrant communities, and the immigrants’ reciprocal feelings.)
I’ve no idea what kind of stuff is being published in China, but I could ask my Chinese exchange students whether they have any friends who could answer that question. Someone’s gotta know someone, the stuff is so popular there.
Shoot me an email if I don’t post about it in the next week or so, would you?
I think it definitely hits the short story markets first. Canadians so far definitely seem more upbeat, based on your examples. I am not sure about the Brits though. They seem to have a dark streak, but they haven’t had their psyches bruised as badly as Americans have by 9/11. You make an excellent point about how to explore that theme, and I agree definitely.
I’ll shoot you an email about the China topic next week if I don’t see more about the subject. Thanks for digging into that!
I didn’t find any students who had an answer to your question, but if you like, I bet this blogger would be happy to answer your question with a nice blog post!