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Was I the only one who read the headline, thought about who might compare with Asimov, Heinlein, Phil Dick, "Doc" Smith, Ursula LeGuin and so on...
...and then was dismayed to find everybody under discussion was some movie or TV person? Reply
...and then was dismayed to find everybody under discussion was some movie or TV person? Reply
@bobert: The headline says "of this decade," and most of the people you mention haven't been producing anything during the last decade.
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@bobert: I was also rather annoyed. The headline doesn't specify "SF film/TV" so naturally I expected book authors to be discussed - film/TV SF productions are usually inferior and those people mentioned in this article certainly aren't "masters" of SF in general.
A more literary article would be much more interesting.
(SF master of this decade? Without a doubt Alastair Reynolds) Reply
A more literary article would be much more interesting.
(SF master of this decade? Without a doubt Alastair Reynolds) Reply
@Annalee Newitz: That and, since this is a videogame blog, and none of the aformentioned writers have ever contirbuted to a videogame (beyond inspiration), I think it's safe to say that not many people actually thought of Asimov.
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@Annalee Newitz: I'm cool with a chart that only talks about tv/movies. But just a nitpick of your statement--Ursula K LeGuin has published 12 books this decade, including Lavinia, which won the Locus award for best Fantasy novel of 2009, and Powers, which won the Nebula in 2008. She's still a powerhouse of sf/fantasy.
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@wealhtheow: Love LeGuin, and have read pretty much everything she published in the last decade. Note that I said "most" of the people, not all.
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@Annalee Newitz: This post is also on Kotaku, for reasons unknown, which is, in fact, a gaming blog.
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@Raynre: The chart came from io9.com if you read the byline at the bottom. That's Gawker Media's Sci-Fi sister. Thus we can throw out video games as the primary source for this chart.
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@Annalee Newitz: Well, this article appears to have been posted to Kotaku and not io9 which would have made more sense, so that may be where the confusion is coming in.
(edit) Okay, that's weird. Instead of being a citation on Kotaku that takes you back to the io9 post, it's posted as if it's on Kotaku, too. I haven't seen that before, but I think that's where the "videogame blog" comment came from. Reply
(edit) Okay, that's weird. Instead of being a citation on Kotaku that takes you back to the io9 post, it's posted as if it's on Kotaku, too. I haven't seen that before, but I think that's where the "videogame blog" comment came from. Reply
@Annalee Newitz: Sorry. Let me rephrase my remark more simply:
WHY WEREN'T ANY AUTHORS OF WRITTEN WORKS ON THE LIST? HAS HOLLYWOOD COMPLETELY TAKEN OVER SCIENCE FICTION IN THE LAST DECADE? OR WAS THE POST PERHAPS MIS-TITLED?
There. You don't need to understand my allusion to "past masters of written science fiction" and deduce that I'm asking a parallel question about why "current masters of written science fiction" are excluded from consideration.
You hold a doctorate in English from Cal, but I had to explain that. Egad. Reply
WHY WEREN'T ANY AUTHORS OF WRITTEN WORKS ON THE LIST? HAS HOLLYWOOD COMPLETELY TAKEN OVER SCIENCE FICTION IN THE LAST DECADE? OR WAS THE POST PERHAPS MIS-TITLED?
There. You don't need to understand my allusion to "past masters of written science fiction" and deduce that I'm asking a parallel question about why "current masters of written science fiction" are excluded from consideration.
You hold a doctorate in English from Cal, but I had to explain that. Egad. Reply
@Annalee Newitz: Hence Bobert wants to know who, from this decade, would compare with the great authors of /previous/ decades. No-one suggested Asimov produced in this decade
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@bobert: This is what I was thinking. As one SF writer once said, SF on TV and film is about 15 years behind the curve on where literature is (best exemplified by the gap between NEUROMANCER and THE MATRIX), so what was on screen this decade was pretty much stuff we'd seen in print years ago.
In the meantime, we'd seen some cracking SF novelists emerge this decade: Adam Roberts, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan, David Louis Edelman, Jaine Fenn and a lot more, with a few of the older hands still doing good work like Vernor Vinge, Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter and Kim Stanley Robinson (the Killer Bs seem to have taken a sabattical though). It's actually been a decent decade for SF novels.
So yes, the list was either mistitled and somehow left out a vast chunk of the SF field. Reply
In the meantime, we'd seen some cracking SF novelists emerge this decade: Adam Roberts, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan, David Louis Edelman, Jaine Fenn and a lot more, with a few of the older hands still doing good work like Vernor Vinge, Peter F. Hamilton, Stephen Baxter and Kim Stanley Robinson (the Killer Bs seem to have taken a sabattical though). It's actually been a decent decade for SF novels.
So yes, the list was either mistitled and somehow left out a vast chunk of the SF field. Reply
@Adam Whitehead: "SF on TV and film is about 15 years behind the curve on where literature is..."
Yep. Or more.
The greatest "masters" among science fiction authors demonstrate their creativity by shedding light on human (or sentient) nature, using novel combinations of scientific conundrums and solutions, or at least new approaches to exploring old combinations.
From that perspective, all the movies and TV shows on the post's list seem terribly derivative and, frankly, boring. I guess that's why I read a lot and don't go see many movies or watch much TV. :-) Reply
Yep. Or more.
The greatest "masters" among science fiction authors demonstrate their creativity by shedding light on human (or sentient) nature, using novel combinations of scientific conundrums and solutions, or at least new approaches to exploring old combinations.
From that perspective, all the movies and TV shows on the post's list seem terribly derivative and, frankly, boring. I guess that's why I read a lot and don't go see many movies or watch much TV. :-) Reply