Charlie Stross has a fine argument about where sf can grow. Better yet, it's about what sf does. It's in response to a defense of Star Wars - nay, not so much as defense as passionate advocacy for making sf more Star-Wars-like.
to what extent is current sf writing influenced by Star Wars? The answer is simple: Not enough.
I also enjoyed this response from Ian Macdonald. For a bonus, he concludes with this great quote* from "Paul McAuley who, in typically two-Uzied-style-- chanticleers what needs shouting from the spire tops of Coruscant, or whatever other simplistic, moralising shit they try to peddle you:"
Science fiction doesn’t have a job - it’s too busy hanging out on street corners, trying to look tough and knowing, cracking wise and dissing passing scientists: ‘Yo, Hawking! See this? See what I did to your fuzzy black hole my man? You like that?’
Science fiction is the holy fool of literature. It can say what it likes and get away with an examination of truly radical and subversive ideas because no one takes it seriously. When it’s at its best, we’re generally in trouble. Science fiction flourished during the social and economic upheavals of the 1930s, during the Cold War, and during the Iron Age of the 1980s. It should be flourishing now, damn it, but too many people who used to hang out with it have wandered off into some kind of fluffy make-believe world or other. Real science fiction doesn’t make stuff up. It turns reality up to eleven. It takes stuff from contemporary weather - stuff no one else has bothered or dared to question - and uses it to make an end run on reality. It not only shows us what could happen if things carry on the way they are, but it pushes what’s going on to the extremes of absurdity. That’s not its job: that’s its *nature*. And what’s happened to science fiction lately, it isn’t natural. It’s pale and lank and kind of out of focus. It needs to straighten up and fly right. It needs to reconnect with the world’s weather, and get medieval on reality’s ass."
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