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.

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I suppose all this transhuman rapture talk goes over my l'i'l meaty head.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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(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.

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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)

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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.

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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.

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I don't think I could handle BSG if I didn't have some Doctor Who to keep things balanced out.

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