Hi there,
So I’m riffing off an [interview](https://youtu.be/aA6OxzQ3ON8) I just watched today with Baen Books regular author [Charles Gannon](https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Charles-E-Gannon/77867934) talking about the lack of interest in Hollywood and television generally in the topic of science fiction generally, but more specifically: hard sci fi.
It’s an interesting discussion if you have time for it. Charles talks about his career working as a script doctor for tv and film, particularly for companies interested in documentaries, his example being the discovery channel and listening to pitches for realistic science fiction programs. He makes the comment that executives and producers generally were uninterested in the genre and that it is seen as being too intellectual or high brow for modern general audiences. Yet as he points out, the Expanse did very well, earning itself 7 seasons and I think I can speak for most here, we would like more please.
So if he is correct, and you hardly ever see hard science fiction in film or tv these days (Ad Astra is another great example) why is that? From the 1930s even til the 1970s hard science fiction was considered the most serious and arguably popular version of science fiction. I think of the all the [radio dramas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_7z1I6D_dc) about how mankind might deal with the harsh realities of space travel or what it would take and be like to get to the moon.
Is it because we met some of our sci-fi dreams? Is it that we are really too stupid to appreciate this type of fiction anymore? Or does Hollywood like Charles says here, not understand a genuine organic appreciation for thoughtful high quality science fiction.
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by damegawatt
5 Comments
Which hard SF books are you talking about? Because **Lensman** was super popular and is as soft SF as you can get. **2001** starts out kind of hard SF but is super not hard SF when it’s over. **Foundation** is not hard SF, **Dune** is about alien space worms pooping out psychotropic precognition drugs, a lot of the classics of the genre aren’t particularly hard SF. Hell, **The Expanse** involves an alien infection that violates physics in several ways.
Charles (through your post, I didn’t read the interview and am unlikely to) sounds bitter that his work isn’t more successful rather than profound in his analysis.
Hard science fiction seems to have been mostly respected at times when actual science was also highly respected. Think about the fever in America about the space race in the fifties and sixties and think about how little respect science gets from the population at large now.
A few reasons.
The more science advances, the less someone without a scientific background can understand it and arguably more importantly, you become increasingly limited as the true limitations on things become apparent, which makes it harder on authors. The harder a genre is for authors, less of them will care to attempt it.
Remember how visible changes in technology were back then. Advances were often times very clear to the average person. Now most advances are “under the hood” so to speak, which in turn helps drive a type of apathy.
These things going cycles and hard sci-fi, arguably even sci-fi in general, is simply out of vogue right at the moment. Such as it goes.
Andy Weir seems to do okay.
I’m not the most well read in hard SF, but one thing that seemed fairly common was elevation of tech and (sometimes) plot over character. If people lose their gee whiz interest in the tech, it might have to go beyond what’s plausible, which means losing the “hard” part. If you don’t want to do that, the plot and character need to step up and, as so many authors have found through the centuries, plot and character are tricky.
I can speak to my circles of friends. A lot of hard sci-fi was not character forward. I think it developed a reputation for being dry by a lot of folks. I don’t know how accurate that is across the board but character focused SFF absolutely dominates today which tends to be less high fantasy and hard sci-fi in favor of low fantasy and whimsical worlds