io9 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 6:38 PM
Sat Dec 5
18 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip your editors:
Editor-in-Chief:
Annalee Newitz |
News Editor:
Charlie Jane Anders |
Associate Editor:
Meredith Woerner |
Assistant Editor:
Lauren Davis |
Weekend Editor:
Graeme McMillan |
Contributors:
Joshua Glenn
Stephen Goldmeier |
Ed Grabianowski |
Austin Grossman
Paul Hogan |
Lauren Davis |
Chris Hsiang |
Lynn Peril |
Ann VanderMeer
Alasdair Wilkins |
Graphic Designer:
Stephanie Fox |
Interns:
Tim Barribeau |
Julia Carusillo |
Alex Eichler |
Cyriaque Lamar |
Caitlin Petrakovitz |
Mary Ratliff |
Josh Snyder |
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
04/21/09
The essence of the SF story is the "What If...," right? So much of that "what if" isn't so much about actual limitations, it's about 'soft' ones. Could we colonize the moon tomorrow? Yes we can. It's not realistic to think that we would, but that realism is bound up in a lack of will.
That core of "what if" is the basis for the sense of wonder in SF. When I think about sense of wonder, I think of being intoxicated on possibility. It's not the grandeur of space, but the possibilities that grandeur represents. Freedom maybe?
Looking retrospectively on childhood, that's equally what stands out about it. There was possibility. I don't mean fluidity of imagination, but the future had yet to be writ. You didn't know your limitations, so you had to assume you could do anything. What we miss the most out of childhood, is what SF is the most about.
And that's why something like the Somalian pirates is so damnably disturbing. Yes, it's that easy. Yes, we're continuously that close to so very, very many of the "what ifs" out there.
It just so happens that SF is the best vehicle for comprehending a grasp upon that feeling, that maybe gets transference elsewhere.
04/21/09
I suppose all this transhuman rapture talk goes over my l'i'l meaty head.
04/22/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments here, even though this is the first time I've witnessed an io9 disemvowelling. As for myself, I love both the "sense of wonder" stuff and the gritty dystopian stuff, and don't see it as an either/or.
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
Sense of wonder and exploration is what makes us human. "Hey, what's over that hill?" is why we're all over instead of just in Africa.
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
I can get scifi news anywhere, and I can get science news anywhere, but I hang out at io9 because y'all (and that y'all includes editors and commenters alike) use a proper scifi-inspired sense of wonder to look at the world. Keep it up, folks.
04/21/09
If it's awesome, sweet, wonderful, bewblicious, then I really have no complaints.
04/21/09
04/21/09
A little more than a year ago, I first discovered Doctor Who. This led directly to my becoming an IO9 reader, which in turn led directly to re-invigorating my dormant love of science fiction, which led, yes, to finding my sense of wonder.
And I am so glad to have it. A good healthy sense of wonder at the universe and at humanity - Doctor Who flavor - makes life here on Earth that much more interesting. I was in boring old Europe last month, looking at the Alps, and I thought: "bugger all, I don't need a TARDIS. This planet is fantastic."
But I was only thinking in those terms because of my scifi-grown sense of wonder.
04/21/09
I went to a space shuttle landing once with a bus full of Worldcon attendees. Out in the high desert at dawn to see and hear a spaceship land. We whooped.
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
But then again, the TARDIS these days is used largely for bumming around London. And I am quite capable of bumming around London all on my own, thank you very much. Though I do wish my backpack were bigger on the inside...
04/22/09
Also: I love that Discovery Channel Promo.
04/21/09
Perhaps '50s SF, in particular, dressed up technology in general and military technology in particular as friendly servants because, with Red Scares and the Bomb occupying the thoughts of the sort of people who read and wrote books at the time, the other obvious choice was grubby, muddy, wet-boot realistic novels about WWII and its consequences.
Alternatively, maybe the gatekeepers of publication back then were the sort of crewcut squares who complain about "bad worldbuilding" on the Internet now, with a different definitions of "bad."
04/21/09
But I like my sense of wonder. I just don't want it to include space exploration, because I don't want to hear about ETs and new planets and stuff like that. I want action and good stories.
04/21/09
And why the frell are the two mutely exclusive?
Theres just as much awfull distopia earth storys as there is bad space/alien scifi.
04/21/09
04/21/09
I also don't like Dr Who, because it seems too kitschy. (I know, I'm a hypocrite, I love Brazil but think Who is too kitschy) I want action, interesting landscapes, interesting stories, and interesting people. I want my imagination to explode. The vast majority of scifi does not do this to me.
04/21/09
04/21/09
(srsly. Farscape. Not sterile, great characters.)
04/21/09
I do like "sense of wonder" in my comics and fiction, but I do not enjoy hard scifi. I like fantasy a lot (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Fables, the Jack Spratt investigates books, anything with fairytales), but scifi does not do it for me. If it's got space or time-travel, I'm typically not into it.
04/21/09
04/21/09
(The webmaster has to fix the Javascript, it's broken in IE. Haven't tried it in Firefox.)
Anyway, to Garrison, as a hard science fiction fan, I reserve the right to refuse to eat the awesome sauce if I don't think it gets the science right.
But if the awesome sauce is packaged as pure fantasy--like superhero movies--I'll eat it just as readily as others. But for people like me, half the enjoyment of the awesome sauce is picking apart the physics mistakes of comics or movies.
To Bluewyvern,
I don't know if sense of wonder is that strongly coupled to depressing or joyous moods in science fiction stories. Case in point, 1984 gave me moments of sense of wonder, even in the midst of the most depressing novel in recent history.
04/21/09
04/21/09
@corpore-metal: I found a number of sense of wonder moments in Brave New World, and that book is both depressing and grown-up.
04/21/09
04/21/09
He's not saying that older folks want to be treated like kids -- he's saying that the current product is only being read by older folks. That there isn't anything to appeal to kids. It's an appeal for something that DOESN'T treat kids like old folks.
The people who came into it as kids with the earlier style have stuck with it and grown up to appreciate the more complicated stuff. But the young'uns of today don't have anything to draw them in, so they're not reading it.
(I guess they're all about the anime, which does have a lot of jaw-dropping stuff still)
04/21/09
As for wishing there was more SF for younger readers, I'm right there with you. I've championed young-adult science fiction, as a subgenre, many times. It's the fastest growing segment of the genre, and I'm excited to see more of it.
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
Yes, the real sense of wonder in experience is primarily seen in childhood--but does retaining it into adulthood mean that you are somehow stunted in the other areas of "growing up"?
Is my intellect diminished because I think things are awesome? My sense of ethics? It's not like wonder, or awe, or anything like that crowds out other experiences--that you are somehow less able to think about something in a nuanced political way simply because of how much you appreciate its marvelous complexity.
There's a big difference, also, between "child-like" and "childish"--a difference between seeing everything as though you're seeing it for the first time, and believing that it's never existed in time before.
Finally, in response to Nancy Kress's point: Maybe the world has gotten too grubby and jaded for "awe." Or I have.
You have. The world is exactly as big and complicated and beautiful and shitty as it's always been.
04/21/09
The rest of us should not have to give up on life b/c the authors have become emo kiddies who are metaphorically cutters.
Big applause for "a big difference, also, between "child-like" and "childish" and "The world is exactly as big and complicated and beautiful and shitty as it's always been."
04/21/09
You've written all these nice words, but the answer to the title is: No.
I'm as grumpy-old-fart as the next, but I still love the sense of wonder, and it's just out of fashion nowadays. Positive stuff in general is, like how we only get the dark&gritty&edgy movies/TV.
It has nothing to do with age -- teenagers are plenty depressed and cynical, always have been -- and more to do with fashion.
It's been decreed that sensawunda is automatically childish, so anyone who wants to be adult must reject it.
"authors not having a following among young people" is a sign of a genre that's working its' way into oblivion and irrelevancy (like the suburban middle-aged white male blah blah). That's the really unsettling part, that it's not reaching the next generation. It's not that everything should be written for children -- but something needs to be.
I think it's a failure of imagination. There are authors who still do sense of wonder, but most of them either are incapable or don't bother or have bought the "complex + depressing = quality" lie/fear.
And you can have grownup discussions and characterizations even in stories with the "wow!" factor. It wasn't 12 year olds with no relationships who went to the moon -- they were men with education, backgrounds in war, parents, wives, children, affairs... same for the support staff.
In short: failure of imagination or craft, misplaced desire to be more "literary", fashionable angst.
No.
04/21/09
04/21/09
And this, I think, is part of the decline of cultural naivety. People flock to fantasy because it depicts worlds filled with magic, and we're not sure where that will take us. To a happy ending, or at least solving a few problems or just defeating the evil horde or whatever. But science? We know where science leads, and it isn't to the perfect sky-car house-of-the-future utopia they tried to sell in the 50s. And all the good things science has brought us? We take those for granted.
So basically, it's hard to write a science fiction story that depicts the sense of wonder at functional MRI tests and exotic particle detection (even if I, personally, have that sense of wonder when I read about those things in the journals).
04/21/09
But science also leads to awesome stuff like your demolition derby car.
@Elizabeth Weinbloom: I was going to thank you for the comment, but that would be all polite and cheerful and I'm not sure we do that nowadays either!
(Being on the west coast and tending to sleep in, I never get to be a first commenter, so I jumped on this -- usually I'm stuck with "yeah what he said".)
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
04/21/09
I don't think I could handle BSG if I didn't have some Doctor Who to keep things balanced out.
04/21/09
Sure, it's crazy to think of people moving planets around without catastrophic events, but it's FUN to have stories with that.
04/21/09
Also, "Love and Monsters" rocked, and I remain proudly in the minority on that one.
04/21/09
I LIKE THE SILLY!
04/21/09
04/21/09
W'v cltvtd sch cnstrctd sns f nhlstc ndffrnc t vrythng n rdr t msk th fct tht w dsprtly wnt t blv, bt r t fckng lzy t ctlly wrk fr t. Tht's why thr ws sch hystrcl bcklsh t BSG's ndng--ftr fr ssns f wllwng n th rlntlss dspr, n n cld ctlly by tht ths flks cld hv hp. sr t sy t sckd bcs "Gd dd t."
Ppl wnt t rgrss t hppy, nncnt stt whn ll ws rnbws nd ppps, xcpt t rlly wsn't. Yr prnts stll hd t wrk t py th mrtgg, ppl stll sffrd rnd th wrld, nd w wr stll vry mch hstg t th rvgs f mrtlty.
Th bst strs r ths tht dn't hd th glnss f lf, bt ls dn't vrdrmtz t s bng wfl nd msrbl. Lf s t cmplx t b ll gd nd ll bd, nd bth th hppy-slppy "sns f wndr" phnmnn nd th mpty nhlsm f "grm nd grtty" nd t gt rssssd.
Ths s ls why Grm's psts sck, by th wy. H's bn n ths nfntlztn trnd snc Nwsrm.
04/21/09