Saphira: Sure. SF should include complex, multi-level female personalities, closer to reality, just because it is the way the things should be. But, I was referring to a particular issue mentioned by Marc in the original post: the one that says “women read more than men” as a probable cause for SF declining. If SF writers want to be more accepted by a wider audience, including female readers, must change the way they present us in their books.
In general, of course, women have been represented in plain characters in almost every genre and it is a problem we have to solve.
Bill, there are few examples of interesting, strong female characters in SF and in Fantasy too, but lately Fantasy has been changing this situation, maybe because there are more female writers in Fantasy than in SF or maybe because something else…

Sorry about the counter jab, Laura. I guess I missed the wink.

Saphira, such a study of “What Women Read” (lol) would be very useful to someone like me who targets them as a readership.

Both of you. I meant what I said earlier about the problem with SciFi being fixable. It comes right down to treating ones work like a business–seek out your customer and give them what they want. If the SciFi market is shrinking (which I agree with Mark that it is, but I disagree with him that the disease is terminal), then those of us who want to survive, or even thrive in the market must figure out how to adapt. Traditionally, as with other businesses, such hard times can be the making of opportunity. Or like they sing on an old Disney movie that I enjoy…”From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success” (Chitti Chitti Bang Bang).

Mark

You write that “major industry figures declare the next decade will see massive rates of change in science and technology. So how is it even possible for a novelist writing near-future SF to stay relevant and ahead of the real world.”

One of the reasons there has been this massive leap in technological advances over the last two decades is because the huge wave of science fiction that came after WWII made such an impact on all the young minds who then grew up and went into science. The plundering of sci-fi is well known in this regard.

Unfortunately most young people today only read about vampires and magic wands, so the smart money has to be on the scientific revolution slowing down over the next few years, as all the young people think you can solve problems with magic dust and a few sentences spoken backwards.

The bottom line is that both genres are about escapism. Fantasy readers want to live in the past and sci-fi readers want to live in the future. Science fiction must rise in popularity over fantasy at some point, but until it does we face a less intelligent future.

I hope you’re right, Dave. I would agree that science fiction will rise up as fantasy wanes, which is inevitable as tastes change and fantasy becomes “uncool” again. The only thing I would add is that science fiction is as we speak absolutely massive. In fact it is considerably bigger than fantasy – but on TV and not in the bookshops.

There is no fantasy equivalent to Battlestar Galactica, or Lost, or Flash Forward or any of the other massive sci-fi TV hits. The problem is money-conscious publishers who throw all the good sci-fi manuscripts into the trash because they don’t include pointy hats with stars on them or magic wands.

At some point a publisher brave enough to turn this round will take the plunge, and hey presto – the sci-fi kids’ books will follow and then it will be a rollercoaster. Also, at some point in the next 15 years or so there will be a manned mission to Mars, and this will trigger a massive hysteria in sci-fi again right across the general population.

Don’t leave David Vincent out in the cold – bring on the Sci-fi!!

Atsiko

Of course I exaggerate to make my point, but you cannot deny the emphasis on the supernatural or fantastical in fantasy fiction that is used as both motive in the plot and solution. It wouldn’t be fantasy without that, would it?

I agree that readers of fantasy are intelligent – I never said otherwise, but I am concerned about a world with such emphasis on magic, mythical tropes, supernatural, etc., as opposed to a world based on scientific solutions.

I think this is a fair point. All I want to see is an end to the total destruction of sci-fi literature at the hands of myth-based supernatural fantasies. 50/50 in the bookshops would be fine by me.

I have a wonder, Arizela. What I derive from what you’re saying in that statement is that if a SF book is written by a man, it’s basically misogynistic?
or is it if main character and hero of the story is male?
I cannot account for the quality of the work, admittedly, but there’s at least on example of a strong female character in SF with the Honor Harrington series.
A SF author, that even, is not a male, CJ Cherryh has without a doubt a collection of strong female characters, in Fantasy as well as in SF. Lois McMaster Bujold is another fantastic example the list goes on and on.
I find that it is best not say to something if you have not properly researched it.
I also feel that alot of people just swings the Politically correct or chauvinistic or misogynistic argument around way too often. It’s so easy to throw out those age old accussations rather than actually delve down and find new points of criticism that are more prevalent.

You are saying this for a situation in your country, Dr. X?
Let’s see, Elsie, of course there are SF books where female characters are more than bimbos, but most SF written in the past didn’t have progressive ideas regarding social roles, especially with women, and some SF written today is strongly focused on male characters who act alone or with other men and you do not see any interesting woman around them. Just that. Other thing: many SF books are strongly interested in the “idea” and forget the story itself. Readers could miss some more adventures, more interesting characters (male or female), more literature than just science.
And don’t misunderstand: I love SF.

I don’t know. I do not read Urban Fantasy, sorry.

Man, what a brutal discussion.

A brief intro: I’m a kids adventure and SF novelist working on a sequel to a previous SF book.

I find the bandwidth of this discussion fascinating because in the end no one made the definitive case for or against the question is SF dying. It all came down to opinion and how to interpret stats and trends. Whatever the state of affairs, I don’t want SF to die. I’ve only recently published and started on the road to finding readers and a voice in the fiction world. So I have a stake in keeping SF alive. Hell, I’ll give it mouth to mouth if that’s what it takes! I grew up on Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc. I went to the moon with Neil and Buzz in 69, I stared at the stars so hard every night that I can tell you where the constellations are during the day. “Why, oh, why,” I’ve cried, “didn’t ET land in my backyard!”

Here’s my take on the problem:

As has been said, technology is big, science isn’t. I believe the turning point was the advent of the calculator. Who needs to learn math when the machine will do it for you? Likewise, technology and special effects have made the reading and movie audience lazy. Star Wars supplanted Star Trek with battles and FX. Who needs to think and imagine when someone else will do the heavy lifting? So writing space opera and military SF became the cash cow and who can blame the writers who milk it. But it put us question posers and science thinkers in the back seat as writers and readers.

On the sexism issue, in the heyday of classic SF, Rocket Jockeys, along with everyone else in the world, were all men. Women were meant to be by their side, like Maureen Robinson in Lost In Space. Most male writers at the time couldn’t imagine it differently. Sally Ride, Desert Storm, and Hillary Clinton has put self assured women who don’t behave like men in politics, space and battle. But while the world has changed, much of SF hasn’t.

As far as waiting for the next voice in the genre, we shouldn’t hold our breath if Mark’s comments about finding publishers to push the genre for us holds any water. Which I believe it does. Publishers print books to sell. They can’t print books that are ‘good for the genre’. The marketplace is too tough for that. From what I understand, 90% of books published in a given house are held up by the 10% of writers who actually turn a profit for them. That translates to a lot of risk for publishers trying like crazy to find the next big thing to sustain themselves on before one of their current wells go dry.

So where does that leave us writers? Let’s see… we need to excite the audience with some action, include science without boring them, create complex women characters so that we can attract complex women readers. Anything else? Oh yes, and fit it into a cross over space where fantasy readers can dig it, too.

Not a small order. Since no one in this discussion actually offered solutions, let me be the first to stick my neck out to fellow, and successful, writers on where I think we can help make it work:

Science is exciting. It shouldn’t have to sell itself. But we have to sell it the way it excited us in the first place. Remember the epiphany you had when SF first spoke to you? That’s what you want to give your readers. Take small bites. don’t over explain. You can’t bring a new reader in to quantum gravity by discussing MOG theory compared to Dark Matter. Create someone in the story who is as confused as the reader, someone who can share the frustration, someone who is overwhelmed and needs to be brought along.
Another great ally is humor. Laugh at how bizarre it all seems that this science stuff is baffling.
Have characters explain some stuff while involved in other drama. If you stop the story to give a lecture, it’s time to zip up the body bag – you’re dead.

Women. Women are the same…only different. For male writers to write female characters we have to be careful not to just plug our own stereotypes into them. The ‘same’ part is that women are jealous, angry, loving, stupid and physically challenged by a brain in a frail body just like men. For storytelling the ‘different’ part is that many women solve problems from a different perspective. This is one place where many SF (and other genre) female characters break down. No matter if we’re writing about drama or relationships, or combat many male writers just put a woman’s name on their male character. We’ve heard it often said that ‘women like to read more relationship and emotional conflict driven stories’, not so much on the guns ‘a blazin’. So creating females that jock up their gritted pearly whites while they pull back the bolt on that blast action murdalizer only take our girl readership so far. Those ladies exist, but not in high numbers.

When it comes to conflict resolution, women might prefer cunning, dealing, compromise, and leadership, over bullets and battle. Use science to help them find these kinds of conflict resolution. Allow female characters to be resourceful as well as smart. Create a different frontier for plot resolution than you might consider for a man.

My first stab at a female lead was in a first person narrative. I made it work by allowing her to be vulnerable but not stupid. She learned from her hard knocks and took on the conflict through teamwork and understanding. Not the first tools most male heroes would reach for. She didn’t understand the science needed to overcome obstacles, but she learned to rely on those who did.

If you’ve read this far, well, I hope it helps. Personally, I believe that dark matter, higher dimensions, and other quantum concepts are exciting and I want to share them with readers. However, as I’m sure many of you have found, when you talk to friends about these concepts, their eyes glaze over. At the same time they become instantly impressed that I understand such ‘advanced’ concepts and they wish they knew more. That belies a serious curiosity about quantum concepts amongst the reading population. They’d like to understand, just don’t feel they can.

There’s our challenge: how to make science accessible so the audience is brought along with our imagination while the story keeps their eye somewhere else, like a good magic trick. It’s a delicate balance but I firmly believe that the writers who can pull it off, will create the first SF Harry Potter or Buffy series.

My blog http://planckscaleblog.blogspot.com discusses quantum concepts and SF story ideas.

Well, it is now february 2011. The movie situation has changed: Avatar and Inception have struck a massive blow for Science Fiction in both the talking space squids and Philip K. Dick senses. As predicted by Ben, the gothical penis envy fascination with supernatural metrosexuals shows no signs of abating.
Are science fiction proper sales up now, dragged up by Avatar and Inception? Anyone – figures?
And about authors leeching sales from science fiction by absorbtion of its plot elements: those pointed out by Ben are responsible for like 0.1% of the phenomenon, I mean – their sales are not even statistically significant. Now the bigger boys, with the 300 – 400 millions sales to their names, like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton – these are the real culprits:D They are the ones who take our precious alien invaders/friends and super technologies and time travel and… By the way, anyone notice that there is now in many places on the web a separate romance sub-genre: “time travel romance?” Curioser and curioser.
N

This is in sharp contrast to how things are in movies and video games. Sci Fi is dominating movies (avatar, transformers, district 9, inception. Just to name a few) and video games (mass effect, cryis 2, vanquish, killzone 3. Just to name a few). I haven’t seen a decent fantasy film in years. The last good fantasy movie I saw was the return of the king. Don’t get me wrong, I do love fantasy quite a bit, but people have been saying sci fi is dying for over 30 years now. It isn’t dying, it’s called cycles. Things rise and drop in popularity over time. It will bounce back.