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Why does it seem that there is so little humor in Science Fiction? It is rare (in my experience) to find laugh-out-loud passages, yet other genres seems quite capable.
Is funny somehow antithetical to being taken seriously by conventional critics?
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I think it's the mindset of the modern sci-fi author. They (or at least, when I'm writing sci-fi) feel very analytical about my characters, delving deep into them. Besides that, I'm too used to writing damn essays!
There's nothing wrong with writing humour in sci-fi, and it's only rare, I think, because the writers forget that humour exists. I know that I forget the funny stuff in my writing, but my head's screwed up anyway....
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I've never read a book without a lot of laugh out loud funny humor in it. Of course, I'm probably easily amused, but that's not the point.
Farce is very much a alive in the science fiction field, something that is lacking in some other genres. Also, character depictions in most of the more serious science fiction that I've ever read are full of humor, and most writers of science fiction that I enjoy reading have a wonderful eye for pointing out the humor inherent in dramatic situations.
The only writer I really enjoy reading that really seems to make an effort to extirpate humor from her work is CJC, and it's not like she doesn't ever use humor. She just usually has all these depressed and screwed up characters that are in despair all the time. But still, there is a lot of humor and laughing, even if it is just the laughter of despair And a lot of her--how to say this--less morally inhibited characters have great senses of humor. One thinks of those aliens in Foreigner and Invader running around cheerfully killing everyone in sight.
I don't know. Maybe I've just never read the books that you're talking about. Who do you read?
[This message has been edited by Survivor (edited October 12, 1999).]
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I think, personally, that Sci-Fi takes itself too seriously.
Perhaps its the 'science' part of the quotient. To some, to be laughed at is praise, a reward. To others it is an insult. Sci-Fi seems to be of the latter mindset. To be believable, one must be taken seriously, and one cannot do so if one is being laughed at. Thus to be taken seriously, one must forego humor.
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Eck, maybe it was just me. Maybe it's just the "image" of science-fiction in general. Yeah, science-fiction's gotta be taken seriously in one manner--that the science has some kind of basis (or would it be science otherwise?), but I remember most famously Douglas Adams and HHGTTG (wow, that sounds like a rhyming scheme!). Personally, when I Write, I find it's mostly the character's POV and the character's frame of mind that dictates humour--as it should, in my opinion.
My point is this: if a character is a loose cannon, a Class A Joker, then the writing should reflect it. But on the other hand, if the character is a manic depressive, then perhaps it would be good to keep this point unless the most interesting of moments occurs and a truly hilarious situation springs from somewhere...or a truly cynical situation if that is what is appropriate.
I feel that most important to Writing (or my Writing, at least) is the creation of a character who differs in mannerism and...well, character(!) as much as history and outward looks. From this, such stylings as what kinds of humour to use should spring.
But this also tends to depend on the Writer, for obvious reasons (and yes, I am capitalising the word Writer for a reason). Still, it's nice to have the ability/opportunity to write a wide selection of character types, and perhaps switching between them, so that the writing style itself reflects the character enough, and that includes humour.
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I do know that some people feel that Their literature must be taken seriously, and so work to exclude all traces of humor from their writings. I also think that it's entirely misguided.
The ability to sense incongruity, the mark of a good sense of humor, is also the prerequsite for any depth of understanding or perception in a character that deals with science and technology. I mean, when you are attempting to solve any kind of puzzle or problem, you need the ability to look for unusual solutions. Anyone that lacks that ability would make an uninteresting hero, especially in a work that is partly about science.
Yes, it is true that sometimes my sense of humor is very dark, maybe not even very funny at all (except to me), but I still have one even in my most benighted moods. Let's face it, insanity is funny. At least the way I do it
If I don't get a good chuckle in the first couple of pages of a book, I put it down. Now, I laugh very easily, so this would be just about any perception of marked or original incongruity, or a striking use of beautiful language, such as in our little one liners topic. But I hold to this rule without wavering, having found that every time, without fail, that I have continued to read any work so deviod of interest, skill, intelligence, or good will as to not make me smile even a little in it's opening, I have regreted losing the hour of my life I could have spent sleeping.
I don't know that all of us laugh quite so easily, but if one defines humor as including commentary on life's little contradictions and paradoxes, striking and original phrases that fit more perfectly, and inventive use of language for effect, then any work that has no humor in it is the spawn of satan, and should be avoided at all costs.
Okay, maybe I don't really mean that, but then again, maybe I do Whatever I mean, I don't like any book that has no humor in it, and when you look at the way I define humor, you can see why.
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I agree that there is lots of humor in the writing. But I don't find very much of it laugh-out-loud-style funny. (I had considered mentioning the specific exception of Douglas Adams when I wrote the original posting.)
But I'm intrigued by the comments about character. It got me thinking that perhaps there is a deeper dilemma for sci fi. In most science fiction, characters are a vehicle through which compelling science ideas are explored. And in order to highlight the idea, the characters are often left flat and non-distracting.
But several people have suggested that the heart of humor lies in the characters themselves. That it is their perceptions and attitudes that give rise to the observations and comments that carry the humor. So very quickly the discussion of humor in science fiction turns to a deeper discussion about the treatment and development of characters and what role that plays in support or conflict with the development of the scientific thesis.
Or put another way, perhaps humor is a byproduct of characterization which is in turn antithetical to the development of science themes. Can anybody think of a novel that had strong character, strong humor and strong science?
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From what I've read of the genre (which is surprisingly little, considering...), a lot of Writers (not the majority I think, but enough as it stands) are either good at bringing out character or bringing out science, and very few end up bringing out both. Off straight memory, I cannot think of any authors who do an excellent job of both, though I know they exist, I just don't have very good book memory.
But in any case, there are two main types of humour, the slapstick, straight-forward kind and the satiracal/cynical/ironic/"deeper" (as some people say) humour, which isn't so laughable. The problem with the former is that it tends to turn books into B-movie-ish stories if it's taken out of context, or at least, it tends to overthrow the science half of the science-fiction novel. The latter just isn't the kind of thing that makes me (personally) laugh, it's only something that I take note of, unless it truly is something profound. But then again, I'm overly serious, aren't I?
In any case, having outright humour and hardcore science-fiction is possible, although it must be handled very delicately so that it does not throw the balance off to either side. But to reiterate it is possible!
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Crud. I wrote a reply to this yesterday, and I crashed the servers at hatrack. Well, maybe someone else crashed them.
Anyway, I made the comment that really strong science is actually pretty rare in the science fiction genre as most people think of it. I mean, particularly those writers that go to great lengths in expostulation of the 'scientific' justification of the devices they have in their work. Let's face it, most of the time the writer goes on about how exactly a bit of science in their story works, it is obvious to anyone with a passing knowledge of the field that they are getting it wrong. On the other hand, there is an author that almost always incorporates hard science, deeply drawn characters, and a lot of grim humor, and some more lighthearted humor, into stories about possibe human futures that ride on the development of technologies.
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Not just Douglas Adams, although he is truly outrageously funny.
I suggest the following:
Harry Harrison; The Stainless Steel Rat series
Codgerspace (Alan Dean Foster? I think).
Plus, I think you have to look for something beyond guffaws here. Many writers are just plain witty and you get a good laugh, but not at the expense of the actual story. Weaving humor into commentary about the human condition calls for a more delicate touch, otherwise the books would be classified as humor, not science fiction.
There's some good laughs in Harlan Ellison's short story work. Death Match 2000 (If I recall correctly) is a vastly funny story about Los Angeles freeways and family sedans equipped with high tech weaponry. It's surprising how long ago he wrote that thing -- well before the recent spate of freeway shootings and the modern hand-wringing about road rage. VERY funny story, though.
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I find a lot of humor in sf. Maybe, though, much of what passes for my sense of humor is really a sense of irony. Also there is the idea that it is funny when something bad happens to someone else. Sometimes, though, I laugh to keep from crying. And then there are some people who have a marked lack of a sense of irony and will probably never "get the joke." At any rate, here is a list of sf stories that I can think of, right off the top of my head, that have given me much mirth over the years: Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books were already mentioned. I would also add his "Bill the Galactic Hero" stories. These two series seem to be a deliberate (and sucessful) attempt at humor. If you like puns, there are also Piers Anthony's Xanth books. Some people don't consider puns funny. They have a right to their wrong opinions. There are other stories that are serious sf but also have really funny things in them. Like Heinlein's "Podkayne of Mars." (Clark, although contemptable, is also very funny.) "The Star Beast", " '--And He Built a Crooked House--'", and "By His Bootstraps" are all loaded with humor. Then what could be funnier than being invaded by aliens that look like baby elephants, or a guy surfing a giant tsunami through the streets of down town LA, for crying out loud! I'm referring, of course to Niven and Pournelle's "Footfall" and "Lucifer's Hammer." Some other humorous stories are Asimov's Robot stories, "Victory Unintentional", "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray", and his short stories, "Youth", and "What is This Thing Called Love"; Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of God", and "A Walk in the Dark"; and Gordon R. Dickson's novel "The Dragon and the George." To be sure, SF gets away with exploring a lot of serious and uncomfortable topics, but that's no reason there can't be a lot of humor in there too. But then, I'm a guy who laughs at much of E.A. Poe's stuff, so maybe I'm not the most qualified person to be talking about humor. You just never know.
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Poe was certainly amusing himself while scaring his readers! Kind of like Hitchcock in that sense. I like his "The Gold Bug" as a good example. Or maybe "Telltale Heart."
Well, I'm just about out of the humor examples. I forgot to mention Philip Jose Farmer previously though. He likes to deal with serious topics like the afterlife and the nature of religious belief in very twisted ways. Sometimes it can be quite humorous. He must be a big Sam Clemens fan because he made Mr. Twain a large part of the Riverworld series. Lots of humor there, though again more on the side of irony, or in this case, letting Sam Clemens be himself.
If you haven't read Riverworld, it is one of the few things I openly recommend to everyone I meet. Sadly, it is getting hard to find again, but when you do, it'll go for about a buck a book for paperback. It was reissued not too many years ago, so you have a decent chance of finding all the pieces.
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I liked Riverworld too, but it made me extremely angry the same way Henry James did before I wrote him off, too. It made me care a lot about the characters and what happened next, and then deeply disappointed me in the end. So I'm mad at Phillip Jose Farmer and refuse to treat with him henceforth!
Posts: 70 | Registered: Sep 1999
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This topic has been inactive for longer than any other thread not actually deleted. The post just prior to this one is nearly four years old.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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Oh yeah, love the Phule and Myth books! Surprised they did not get mentioned before... Watched the "Meltdown" episode of Red Dwarf last night - I still burst out laughing!
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One of the challenges of humor in SF is that the field is so broad there are few common elements to make fun of. There are several humorous fantasy writers--Asprin, Pratchett, and Anthony spring to mind--but they survive by parody and satire of a genre that has very deep cliches. For instance, if one of these writers chooses to insert a tee-totalling, vegetarian, pacifist, sun-worshiping dwarf, most people would instantly laugh, because all dwarves in fantasy have personanilties established by Tolkein. The same is true of elves, dragons, wizards, knights, etc. All have such deeply established roles that its easy to establish a comic effect by breaking these rules.
SF is much more diverse. Hitchhikers, Red Dwarf, and Futurama all poke fun of cliche's of sf--FTL travel is wonderfully skewered by an ultimate improbabilty drive--but they also use this parody to comment upon modern life--when Arthur Dent's house is about to be destroyed to make a highway, we can see the irony when the whole Earth is destroyed by alien roadbuilders. Or when Woodie Allen in Sleepers awakens in the future, it's funny when he discovers that science now knows that smoking and eating high fat foods are good for you.
So fantasy comedy can survive purely by poking fun of genre conventions, while SF comedy has to mix in stabs at modern pretensions to work. Can anyone think of a situation where this doesn't prove true?
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Well, I guess most of the humour in my favourite SF humour series (the Stainless Steel Rat stories) is actually fairly generic and would work in any setting.
I think there's great potential in the idea of a time travel farce. I can just see the kinds of effect that everything going wrong could have there...
quote:So fantasy comedy can survive purely by poking fun of genre conventions, while SF comedy has to mix in stabs at modern pretensions to work. Can anyone think of a situation where this doesn't prove true?
For a novel this may be true, but in a short story I think humor can work just by poking fun at genre conventions.
There have been some very funny science fiction movies: Back to the Future and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure come to mind. Both of them involve time travel, and I think that time travel stories contain more easily-accessible potential for humor than other types of science fiction.
I think that's because humor is usually based on inconguity, and anachronism (either future-person in the past or past-person in the future) provides plenty of possibilities for inconguity.
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Wouldn't the things that are funny about the human condition remain funny even if they took place on the planet xoedia in 2782?
Come to think of it, someone who started writing humorous SF novels would probably make a mint. For example, remember how popular the "Q" and Lwaxana Troi episodes of STNG were?
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Well it's been five and a half years since I started this topic. I've read somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 books since then (about 30% sci-fi: I'm broadening my tastes :-)
Still nothing funny to report. Also, still no strong characterizations to report. Unfortunately, a sorry decline in the quality of the science AND in the quality of the writing. It seems that "The Great Media Monster" is starving so greatly for content that more and more marginal stuff is being accepted for publication. I guess that's the good news.
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Connie Willis, To Say Nothing of the Dog -- an SF farce. Hugo & Nebula. Walter Jon Williams, The Crown Jewels, House of Shards I find a lot of humor also in SF not meant to be primarily funny. Jack Vance does a lot of this. I suppose there are some where the humor, what there is of it, is very subdues -- Mote in God's Eye -- but if I'm on the edge of my seat, I don't need the humor anyway.
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I guess to have humor in writing, one has to be expectional at both writing and comedy.
Even then, one would have to compensate for the lack of live performance, for good live comedy depends on delivery. It's easier for humor to translate into a standup act, a play, a TV show, or a movie.
Personally, I like a good comdedy, but when I peruse a bookstore, I'm 99% more inclined to pick up a novel that promises to be an interesting fantasy or science fiction epic, and pass on the book that seems humor-oriented.
I hate to speak like a hard-hearted capitalist, but is there a market for it? Perhaps it is the market that "decides".
[This message has been edited by ChrisOwens (edited January 24, 2005).]
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I'm stil not buying the idea that there are any successful SF books out there that don't contain laugh out loud humor. And I really don't even see that the market for SF farce is small or poorly represented.
There have been plenty of examples of good SF with strong comedic elements mentioned (some better than others, but that's inevitable). I'll mention Loius McMaster Bujold since nobody else seems to have done so, and Howard Taylor's Schlock Mercenary just because you deserve a laugh today.
But we lack any specific examples of good SF that doesn't have any laugh out loud funny parts. I'm serious. What have you been reading?
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I can't remember well anything previous to devouring the Runelord series. Of course, there was humor in it, for instance when Sir Borenson's father Roland crashes in an inn for the night, and wakes up next to a sleeping man cuddling up against him.
But then it's not parody. Just comic relief for what is to come later on.
I finally read the first Landover novel last year, which had attempts at humor, often too forced, and Terry Brooks did not hold my interest long enough for me to read his entire series.
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It might help to recall that humor can be extremely subjective.
Confession: I tried reading Terry Pratchett's tribute to MACBETH (WYRD SISTER) and found myself thinking every so often, "That's supposed to be funny," without laughing. My friends who had urged the book on me found it all uproarious, and were disappointed that while I could see that humor was intended, it didn't work for me.
I laugh out loud in Lois McMaster Bujold's books, too. But I laugh out loud at some of the things Survivor posts here on Hatrack. All that tells me is that Survivor and I have senses of humor that overlap at times.
My theory is that it can be very hard to like someone whose sense of humor does not at least overlap yours a little, and that the amount of overlap in senses of humor between people can be a very strong deciding factor in whether people understand each other well enough to even get along.
Something to consider: when someone here on Hatrack irritates you, it may be because their sense of humor (under the broad definition that includes how they look at the world--which I am willing to support as a valid definition of "sense of humor") does not fit with yours.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited January 25, 2005).]
quote:I hate to speak like a hard-hearted capitalist, but is there a market for it?
Among other things, Alan Dean Foster has consistently written sci-fi and fantasy with humor,and sold it. It's not always the laugh out loud, roll on the floor type, but more of the light-hearted, make-you-smile type, which is what the world needs more of. Just thinking about Mudge from the Spellsinger series makes me smile.
So I think there's definitely a market for humor in sci-fi.
People always enjoy what makes them laugh, and tend to pass it on, because, for one thing, when two people laugh at something, there is a temporary bond between them that takes away from the loneliness so inherent to being humans locked in our own brains.
For proof, consider all the jokes that end up in our email inboxes?
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The biggest hurdle is having someone take your humorous fiction seriously, comedy films have the same problems.
I can think of a good number of very funny sci-fi and fantasy books, but at the same time I do not think of these works as "serious" and tend to file them away as amusing and nothing else.
I love the Aspirin Myth Books, Good Omens (Pratchett and Gaiman), Bill the Galactic Hero & Stainless Steel Rat books (Harry Harrison) and of course Hitchikers & Dirk Gently (Adams).
There is definately a market for it, but writing something that is both funny and prolific is something that has escaped me and from my experience every other author out there, at least in this genre.
If there are prolific comedies out there in sci-fi/fantasy I'd love to read them.
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What do you mean by "prolific"? The only thing I can thing of is that you mean works that inspire a lot of imitation, and virtually all successful humor does that in spades.
Humor is indeed quite subjective, and can be a source of pain as much as of pleasure. There are few mismatches in humor more disheartening than trying to appear serious and only managing to seem funny. I'm going to go try and convince myself that KDW is usually laughing with me rather than at me
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The things you say that make me laugh, Survivor, are all insightful, incisive, and witty (in my humble opinion, anyway). So I definitely think of myself as laughing with you.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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So, I'm hearing a lot of votes that say "Yes, there's some good humour in sci-fi." Perhaps my reading tastes have not taken me down those roads. Or it could just be that I have a different humour aesthetic. For whatever reason, I rarely find good laughs in the genre.
So now I'd like to see some specific examples. As I've said before, to my tastes, the funniest examples arise from strong characterization. A guy can walk into a flower shop in just about any story. But if the character is drawn particularly well, his simple act of walking into such a place might be the funniest thing you've ever read. These examples are extremely hard to encapsulate for discussion here.
But can anybody come up with some examples that play well in capsule? I'm not interested so much in stories of how that chapter was uproarious, because they're so hard to discuss without reading the book. Rather, I'm interested in a quote that seems funny in and of itself, without elaborate context.
Just curious to see what others are finding funny. Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon. :-)
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Since it's longer than 13 lines, I've posted on my blog a humorous passage from one of my favorite funny SF novels, The Space Willies by Eric Frank Russell.
quote:And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.
Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost for ever.
This is not her story.
But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.
It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor – of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (when typed in word this excerpt is about 15 lines -- hope that's okay Kathleen)
For an excerpt from the first chapter or so, check out amazon.
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited January 27, 2005).]
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The problem with humor in anything, is that it changes based upon the reader. The reader's taste in humor will also change depending on mood, age, etc.
Have you ever said to yourself, "This would be funny if I wasn't so mad/tired/busy/stressed"?
"He's faster than a speeding bullet. He's more powerful than a locomotive. He's able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Why can't he get a girl?"
posted
I read that one...and one other about our bombing of Tehran back in 1983...I thought those were the only two :-) Posts: 552 | Registered: Dec 2004
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And a lot of her--how to say this--less morally inhibited characters have great senses of humor. One thinks of those aliens in Foreigner and Invader running around cheerfully killing everyone in sight. 
Whatever I mean, I don't like any book that has no humor in it, and when you look at the way I define humor, you can see why.
