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I left it deeply concerned for the future -- not merely of my chosen genre or my chosen country, but my species.

... Incredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting. They no longer find science admirable. They no longer instinctively lust to go to space.

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Every so often, people despair that humanity will ever go to Mars and beyond. They point out that we haven't even gone back to the moon. Obviously, humanity has lost the will to go into space.

Baloney.

The problem is that, right now, space is just too expensive.

Minumum estimates for a mission to Mars are in the neighborhood of $5 billion. Sure, our government spends more than that on tons of things, but it just doesn't seem to be a priority right now.

The pessimists look at this and think that the situation will never improve, and that therefore humanity will never get to Mars.

They should know better.

A $5 billion Mars mission would be about 0.25% of the U.S. national budget. But we don't want a simple there-and-back like we did with the moon. No, let's talk about the costs of a full-fledged permanent colony on Mars. $50 billion. Too little. $500 billion? $5 trillion?

Let's take the $5 trillion number for the sake of argument.

That's about half of our annual GDP. Even if you spread the cost over ten years, that's a full 5% of our national output. We could never afford that.

That is, we could never afford 5%. That doesn't mean we could never afford the $500 billion ($5 trillion over ten years.)

Assume our economy grows at an average rate of 3%.

In 2103, it will take about 0.25% of our economy for ten years to establish the Martian colony. And that's assuming new technology hasn't made it less expensive than the original estimate.

Still too expensive? In 2203, it will only take about 0.014% of our economy to do it.

In 2303, it would only take 0.0007% of our economy.

If we wait five hundred years, it would only take 0.0000019%.

Wait a thousand, and it's 0.00000000000073%.

Somewhere over the next thousand years, the costs of colonizing Mars will be low enough relative to our economic situation that we will do it.

It will happen.

I know this, with the surety of...well, mathmatics, for lack of any plausible means of introducing my more solid evidences here.

I am less than concerned with the fate of the species, though I don't suppose I will go into a debate on the topic right now.

Technological, economic, or any other kind of progress is not a more or less upward trending curve, and certainly not a continuing exponetial progression, any more than biological populations are, taken over the long term.

We may fund a one shot manned expedition to Mars, perhaps even several. But people are beginning to sense the reality of our progression towards a dystopian future where the bright visions of the "Space Age" will be veiled by the smoking fires of war, pestilence, famine, and death.

The financial issue is certainly one of the most significant challenges. Many people desire those funds to help solve problems at home - at least, those who support the government using funds to improve our lives here on Earth. Our current leaders are perfectly happy in spending $1 billion a week to "keep us safe" from a threat of, well, whatever. Certainly we should do our best to prevent terrorism (too late?). Our President has "asked" for $87 billion from Congress to deal with Iraq - um, I think he is already spending it, so what's the point of asking?

Too bad for those without prescription plans, or health care, or food or homes, and any trip to Mars can surely go to h***.

I don't mean to be political - the other side of the story is of course to return the money to the people, so they can solve these problems on a local or state level. Sure, when Bill Gates gets all that tax money back, I just KNOW he is going to start a health care system for seniors and the poor... or fund research into technology to take us to other planets. Maybe he'll just grapple an asteroid while he's at it to make sure we have all the metal we need.

I'm just so glad I got my check for $800 back from the government. I'm sure we don't need all the programs that got cut. I'd like to know how the gov't can afford to give me money BACK, but spend $1 billion a week in Iraq. Ugh. We'll invest the money in our childrens' college fund - it'll stimulate the economy in about 17 years.

My earliest memory was getting up really early in the morning and turning on our big black and white tv, which sat under our picture window, and watching a huge rocket take off. I had gone to bed the night before telling Mommie and Daddy I was going to watch men go to the moon. I was so excited! And I did. Later I wanted to go too, but got older, got scared, and did poorly in chemistry and physics - I changed my mind. Then I watched Challenger blow up. I cried - I felt so bad for those people and their dreams and their families... but I knew we'd go again. And again.

I think, with the right leaders, the right technology, the access to materials and money, that we will go to Mars. It should be a world-wide effort. I would love to see it in my lifetime. But that would take a miracle. In the meantime, I guess we can dream, and write down our dreams for others to read, and hope that they'll have a dream too.

Robinson seems perturbed that all the ingenious imaginings of SF literature haven't translated into reality, as though it had been a given. Kind of like Pharaoh in the Ten Commandments movie: "So it is written. So it shall be done."

"About the only part of our shared vision of the future that actually came to pass was the part where America just naturally took over the world." Interesting on several counts, not the least of which is inaccuracy. If America had taken over the world, or was trying to, we wouldn't be pussy-footing around in Iraq. The place would either be in cinders or replacing all the Iraqi flags with the Stars and Stripes.

"But while it's prepared to police (parts of) a planet, the new Terran Federation is so far not interested enough to even glance at another one." {sic} Does he mean the US or the UN? The differences are substantial. At least for now. The fact is, when someone resents your way of life and wants your blood, you've got to be careful what you say in a glance. Any sign of weakness is an invitation to a jackal.

The sad truth is, you can't force an audience or a readership. After all, SF is competing with scientific advances like TV and video games. And maybe, just maybe, readers don't like the visions of the future some of the SF literature have proposed.

Go figure.

P.S., Punahougirl. The government did not give you anything that did not first belong to you. Focus on the word "back." It had your tax money and returned it to you. It wasn't a matter of affording anything. So many attitudes would change if we didn't have withholding. If people received their full pay and then had to write their tax checks to the government...people would finally question how much government they could afford. Now there's a SF story that would deserve to come to pass!

The writers that founded the scifi genre frankly gave humans too much credit. The year 2000 was the magical number, if you recall. We were supposed to be living on the moon under a dome or on a space station, possibly even on Mars. Even if the U.S. government had spent all the time and money in the world these goals would not have been reached by now.

All that said, I agree that it is incredibly disappointing that people don't dream more. I'm not sure they dreamed as much as he thought they did when he was a kid, but I know that only a select few people dream, along with me, that we will one day go into space. (Personally, not we as in all humans.) As much as I don't believe we could have gone as far or as fast as the scifi writers of old prescribed, we now seem to be at a complete standstill.

More than that, the government seems to be blocking attempts for our progression. Commercial space flight is my current and most realistic dream for how to personally get into space, and there are several companies who are currently trying to be the first to provide this service, but they are being blocked by burocracy and red tape. (Try www.nss.com for more info.)

Money, yeah, yeah... This is more than a matter of money, really. Mars might be too big for us now, I'm not expert enough to know, but other things aren't being done either. Besides, I could argue that space exploration has always turned a proft in the end, but most people can't see it because they only see the money going into the space industry, not the money coming out. So in reality, money is a block if for no other reason that people *think* it is.

On to the writing portion of the article...

At a class I attended OSC alleged that fantasy is crowding out Science Fiction because fantasy writers write better, and sci fi is turning out poor stuff. I think this is what Spider was saying in his article as well, although not as clearly (to me).

Science Fiction is as infinite a genre as fantasy, but somehow current writers can't churn out an original idea. They keep rewriting stuff, and sometimes, as Spider says, it is Star Trek or Star Wars look alikes.

Here's a theory...I have no proof and am not alleging anything, it's just a theory. Maybe when Science Fiction began it was written by people who were scientists first and writers second. People who were creative and could apply their creativity to a discpline in which they were well versed. I get the impression that new science fiction writers are writers first and scientists second or never. (I include myself in this, but then I freely admit that I write Science Fantasy, a subset of Science Fiction with less technical explanations and more mystery.)

As another theory, perhaps publishers are messing things up. They are businessmen first, after all, not artists. A lot of times they see what sells, and are unwilling to take a chance on something new. They try to sell copies of what has sold in the past only we don't want to read those stories again.

I think you (and OSC) have a great point about writing science fiction, and having or not having some level of science knowledge behind your story. I am currently trying to read Charles Sheffield's "Borderlands of Science: How to Think Like a Scientist and Write Science Fiction" for that very reason. But for me, it is not an easy read (so far). I think if we left the writing to just those with this knowledge, we'd have fewer stories, but those would have a lot of "science" in them. I admit, I prefer to have the good plot and characters, and am willing to forgive science such as "warp drives" (knowing OSC does NOT - yes, I read his book on writing sf/f too!). I'll never write "hard" sf, but I think that is ok. I'll let someone else worry about how we get there, and spend my time considering what we'll do on the way, and when we arrive.

Kolona - yup! I added one more "back" to the post. Actually, you do have the right to take exemptions - you can modify your withholding quite a bit, but unless you are a great saver, or are happy to go to jail to protest what your money might be used for, or unless you can change the law, or eliminate waste in government, or decide what you will pay for, a-taxed we will be, with little say. Yes, yes, I know, there are lots of ways in which we DO have a say (voting, yada yada!), but many don't take advantage of them - and there is not a box on our return to check saying if my money will or will not go to this or that function of government. Who'd choose to pay for certain things if they did not have to? The system makes sense in a way, needs lots of changes, but we're stuck with it until we do something, or somethin' better comes along. From Pharoah to Picard - "Make it so."

And yes again about the whole "American Federation" thing - we could just nuke them and have done, but that messes up the whole oil thing, and some other countries might not like it. What a mess. We probably could just take over, but we don't really want to. There is cultural rebellion against "Americanization" (see EuroDisney and some fuming French - they should check where we get our fairy tales from!) - our culture does seem to have found its way into others - look at the clothes some wear even in Iraq. Some good spec fic alternate histories are going to come out of this.

There are some uncomfortable visions presented in sf, but I think the lower readership goes beyond that. In the 9/03 issue of Writer's Digest, the following numbers are quoted as the division of popular fiction sales:

Romance - 35.8%, Mystery/detective/suspense - 26.6%, General fiction - 17%, Science fiction/fantasy - 6.6%, Religious/occult/western/male adventure/general history/adult/movie tie-in - 14% (what a combination!) (page 35, source given as Romance Writers of America, based on Book Industry Group, American Bookseller Association and Ingram reports). I don't know the time period these numbers are covering, and the piece talks about short fiction - not sure how novels fit in. But it is telling. I am not in the majority when reading or writing my favorite genre. And I don't know why... especially with Harry Potter nowadays!

My mother, an intelligent, creative, loving woman, who was an avid reader, read almost everything EXCEPT sf/f. She would buy it for me. She did read "Lost Moon" - science was of interest (both her parents were chemists). Why not sf/f? She said she had trouble getting into it - it did not relate to her. I posit that a large percentage of the reading public reads fiction to escape, but want it to be based in their reality. How does a gothic romance become real to them? Basic themes, I'm guessing. Love is something most people do, or want to, relate to. Battling evil bugs may not work for them, even if the struggle between good and evil is a classic theme(and how many of us have not read at least one "beat the alien bug" story?).

So how do we attract them? Well, I'd say J.K. Rowling has helped quite a bit, and I hope many of her young fans move on to the stuff we've all known and loved. I think science has come so far, so fast (to me) that a lot is taken for granted. My kids won't know life without calculators and computers, and I have trouble remembering what I did before those inventions. For my kids, what is next? What is the next wonder to strive for, the next frontier to broach? What forward looking stories will leave them hungering to work toward a future just beyond their grasps? It won't be Harry's stories - it'll be some wonderful sf - hope I'm around to read it (dare I hope to write it?).

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I posit that a large percentage of the reading public reads fiction to escape, but want it to be based in their reality. How does a gothic romance become real to them? Basic themes, I'm guessing.

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I don't remember which book I read this in, but some writer was describing a potential story to an editor or a producer. The writer painted this word picture of a breathtaking car chase that finally ended in the car shooting off a cliff and exploding in a fantastic fireball. The editor/producer sat there unmoved and asked, "Who was in the car?"

What people don't understand, and for some reason are unwilling to understand, is that science fiction is very broad. There is a great deal of it I don't like, mostly hard core. I'm bored by long technical explanations and want to hear how humans deal with the new technology, I'll take your word for it that it can exist. (Well, up to a point, anyway. )

Just for the record, I am not a Star Trek fan. I hope I do not offend anyone by saying this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I enjoyed the next generation briefly as a young girl, but I outgrew it. Frankly, I find Star Trek to be immature. I find it very frustrating that whenever I mention that I like scifi the immediate assumption is that I am a trekie. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

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Technological, economic, or any other kind of progress is not a more or less upward trending curve, and certainly not a continuing exponetial progression, any more than biological populations are, taken over the long term.

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Essentially, what you're saying is that the resources available to us are insufficient to sustain economic growth for hundreds of years, and therefore economic growth inevitably will come to a halt.

You would be right, except that as technology progresses, more resources become available to us.

For example, as drilling technology improves, oil fields that were not worth drilling become so.

But eventually we'll run out of oil, right? After all, there has to be a finite supply of oil in the Earth, and no matter how good the drilling technology gets, once we get it all, it's gone.

Not necessarily. See this Discover magazine article on a thermal depolymerization, a process that converts waste biomass into oil: http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html

As certain resources become scarcer, that increases the economic incentives to find new sources or to develop alternatives.

Science fiction readership is shrinking because (and this is all speculation):

1. There are less consumers to go around
2. Most people have an automatic prejudice against science fiction
3. For whatever reasons (societal, financial), the human race isn't looking forward as much as they used to (an attitude science fiction requires of an audience)
4. For whatever reasons, science fiction writers aren't looking forward as much as they used to, and turning out depressing stuff
5. Science fiction is competing with actual advances (which, I might add, are coming at an almost terrifying rate)
6. Science fiction writers, on the whole, don't write as well as writers in other genres
7. The pool of science fiction writers is being poisoned by people who are primarily writers, which alienates the fan base
8. Publishers are unwilling to take a chance on something new (which science fiction almost invariably tries to be)
9. People have a harder time relating to science fiction in general

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Mission to Mars and Red Planet. Probably because none of us saw them? I was musing in the Discussions of OSC that the Starship Troopers movie was also a death knell of popular Sci Fi, and it made me come back to look at this thread.

Back in the early 1980's, hour-long dramas were at the top of the ratings, and people declared that sitcoms were dead. Then along came The Cosby Show.

It wasn't that long ago people were declaring that children nowadays didn't like to read books. Then along came Harry Potter.

What we obviously need is a science fiction Harry Potter: a story about a young boy who has problems with his relatives and gets taken off to a special school, where he learns that he is important because he may be the only one who can defeat a terrifying enemy.

Maybe we could get someone like OSC to write a story like that.

Maybe the story could be about this other young boy who has problems with his relatives (mom out of the picture, dad missing and presumed dead, pain in the butt uncle). He ends up traveling with an obtuse old man (who dies on him), a couple of robots, a space pirate, a walking carpet, a bossy female member of deposed royalty, a teacher who sounds like Grover and speaks in Reverse Polish Notation (who dies on him), has to learn an obscure method of fighting, against guys who never hit anything no matter how much they blast things, has to blow up the bad guys' big round toy twice, and the bad guy is his dad and he ends up becoming good again...

Nah, that would never sell.

Need some new ideas...

Most Malthusian projections tend to fail because they are...well, Malthusian, and at heart deal with availability of a specific physical resource (food, originally: which seems sort of silly given that humans make almost all their own food, and more humans means you can grow more food--particularly since human waste is one of the best resources for artificial cultivation...). Though the specific substances argued over tend to change with the times, the mistake of arguing over physical resources remains a constant.

The essential resources and dangerous waste needed and produced by economic and technological advances isn't physical at all, it is psychic. And we are depleting our resources and producing waste at an alarming rate.

My wife reads some science fiction. When she was a kid, she loved Star Trek and Star Wars novels. (A few of the Star Trek novels are quite good, actually - Best Destiny and The Vulcan Academy Murders come to mind. Many of the Star Wars novels are great fiction, despite the authors having to deal with Lucas's junk scientific foundation.) She's read some Asimov, and she likes 2001. But she won't read much nowadays, having become disenchanted by so many science fiction authors' tendency to present us with dystopian or depressing settings.

Asimov's and Clarke's novels are full of hope for the future, for the most part. Sheesh, even Star Trek has us becoming better than we are. She wishes more were like them. Frankly, so do I.

"But it's my art! I must express!"

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. What good is the art if people don't read it?

The only readers I've heard "This story is just like such-and-such except for this-and-that" from are science fiction readers. I honestly can't imagine hearing "Oh, it's just another disenchanted wife story" from a romance reader.

I think science fiction readers - especially hardcore types - tend to look past the story, characters, plot, and dialogue, and extract the cool concepts. Well, we're running out. The guys who came early got the good ones. The science fiction readers wonder where all the good authors went. They're still around, but exploring the old ideas (and a few new ones) in a different way. To the science fiction reader, he's rewriting.

Then we've got the science fiction readers who actually like a good story. Maybe they don't mind slogging through technical explanations; maybe they do. But they're attracted to where the good stories are, which invariably has them branching out to other genres.

This could be a problem because science fiction doesn't usually attract readers of other genres. It has its own core of fanatics that buy all the books. When some of the core branch out, they're not balanced by people branching in.

Science fiction has a stigma and a stereotype attached to it. If you read it, you're a nerd. There's the stigma. Science fiction books are invariably either depressing or hard to understand. There's the stereotype.

I think it's fixable. It might require the authors to make some adjustments. I think these two adjustments would work:

1) Be more optimistic.
2) Make your science fiction better all-around fiction.

I'm not sure what would happen to the fanatical core, but it would probably quash the stigma and stereotype in the long run.

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Maybe the story could be about this other young boy who has problems with his relatives...

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I don't understand why Star Wars didn't become the sci/fi Bond. I mean, that guy's been a public icon since the 60's hasn't he? And, as far as I know, Star Wars was pretty big when it first come out. That, and the books just seem to go on and on (and on and on...). I haven't done an exact count, but I'm pretty sure there's more Star Wars books than Bond books, probably because whereas Bond was written by one man, Ian Flemming, Star Wars is written by multiple writers.

It just doesn't make sense to me, is all.

But this whole prequel thing seems to be kind of reaching for an audience that it would have had anyway, if they'd just kept going.

But what do I know?

James Bond in License Renewed by John Gardner