The Two Ways Science Fiction Is Slowly Destroying Itself

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The Two Ways Science Fiction Is Slowly Destroying Itself

Date: May 17, 2012 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi

Science fiction is in trouble and it’s not a lack of presence. Science fiction fans complain endlessly about the lack of sci-fi on television, but the truth is that there’s plenty of science fiction on television. There’s plenty of science fiction everywhere. It’s just the wrong kind.

Here’s a list of the science fiction movies being released through the rest of this year. See if you can spot a pattern…

Battleship
Men in Black III
Chernobyl Diaries
Piranha 3DD
Prometheus
Safety Not Guaranteed
Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World
Total Recall
Resident Evil: Retribution
Dredd
Looper

Did you catch it? Here’s the answer key…

Battleship: humanity doomed by alien attack
Men in Black III: time travel
Chernobyl Diaries: humans doomed by science run amok
Piranha 3DD: humans doomed by angry prehistoric fish
Prometheus: strange and dangerous discoveries on an alien planet.
Safety Not Guaranteed: time travel
Seeking A friend For The End Of The World: humanity doomed to a post-apocalyptic future
Total Recall: mind manipulation in a dystopian future
Resident Evil: Retribution: humanity in a doomed future full of zombies
Dredd: humanity doomed to a dystopian future
Looper: time travel

See the pattern? All of those movies, except for Prometheus, fit into one of two categories: Time travel or doomed, post-apocalyptic, dystopian future. Why should you care? Here’s the thing…

tardis
Time Travel Is Just An Excuse

Time Travel used to be the most surefire of science fiction premises. It gave us brilliant movies like Back to the Future, The Terminator, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Things started going south when Hollywood noticed how much money those time travel movies were making and wrongly assumed it was because of time travel, not great writing and directing. So they began working to insert time travel into all manner of ill-fitting vehicles, but that’s not what really killed it. Things really went wrong when time travel stopped being an actual premise and became more of an excuse.

At some point Hollywood had overused time travel so much that audiences became accustomed to it, so accustomed to it in fact, that they began to accept it shoehorned in just about anywhere. These days time travel isn’t actually used so much as an exciting science fiction premise but as an excuse for Hollywood to remake movies as a way to cash-in on their name recognition.

Time travel is now largely responsible for the destruction of the Star Trek franchise. The franchise’s last television series overused it until it lost all meaning and drove fans away. After a break they’ve managed to bring Star Trek back, but only by using time travel as an excuse to recast recognizable characters with hot, young actors. And Hollywood will keep using time travel to ruin existing franchises. They’ll keep changing the timeline in the Terminator universe as long as the name sells tickets. And now they’ve started using time travel as a way to sell decidedly not science fiction based films to people who wouldn’t normally be interested. Did we really need The Time Traveler’s Wife? I loved Hot Tub Time Machine as much as the next guy, but how many more of these time traveling mashups can we actually stand?

Time travel used to be great but thanks to overuse and misuse it’s become a tired, worn out cliché. It’s a crutch lazy writers use to tie up loose ends. It’s a way to save money on production by shooting on leftover wild west sets. It’s killing franchises and tricking men into seeing romantic comedies. Time travel is not going to get any better than it was in Back to the Future. Maybe Doctor Who gets a pass since he predates the cliché, but unless you’re telling a story about a character who flies around in a blue police box, just stop it. Time travel has become an excuse, not a premise. Enough.

Humanity Is Doomed Or Self-Loathing In America

There hasn’t been a single space opera on television since the early cancellation of Stargate Universe, but your boob tube currently plays host to no fewer than three series set in a post-apocalyptic future (Falling Skies, The Walking Dead, and soon to arrive Revolution) with even more on the way. Even Terra Nova, which was recently cancelled, used a dystopian future in which humanity was doomed as a catalyst for its time travel story. The offerings in movie theaters are much the same; every other science fiction premise seems to involve telling the story of a future where Earth is doomed or society is repressed and everyone has to struggle to survive or be free. It’s no accident that the most popular sci-fi movie of the year so far is The Hunger Games, which tells the story of a future where humanity is fractured and forces its children to murder each other for sport. Things are no better in the world of literature where this year’s Arthur C. Clarke award winner, The Testament of Jessie Lamb, is about a future where our pregnant women all end up dead. Post-apocalyptic, dystopian science fiction sells, but its usefulness is rapidly wearing thin.

The “we’re all doomed” premise used to be edgy and insightful, but now it’s become so overused that it’s no longer interesting, it’s a cliché. It’s evidence that science fiction is stuck in a rut. This sub-genre’s popularity is more a commentary on the depressed and hopeless modern day mental state of most American entertainment consumers than an actual window into what people want to see. Our insistence on assuming that humanity’s future is doomed is in danger of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. That dismal outlook does nothing to inspire anyone to greater heights or really do anything to fire the imagination beyond, say, thinking up new ways to fortify the fallout shelter you’re digging in the backyard.

In 1976 NASA named its first space shuttle “Enterprise” after the starship featured in Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, a show which inspired many of its scientists to reach for greater heights. It’s unlikely that any future advancement will be named after anything in The Walking Dead.

Whether it’s alien or zombies or angry prehistoric fish attacks, asteroid fall out, freak power failures, mad science run amok, or just a run of really bad voting from an under-educated electorate… we get it. If society collapses and things go post-apocalyptic, life will be hard. If the future ends up all dystopian things won’t be very nice. There’s not really anywhere else to go with it.

Predicting the end of the world is easy. What happens, though, if the Earth keeps right on turning? The possibilities of a future in which we don’t kill ourselves or force our kids to become gladiators are as endless as they are endlessly exciting. Maybe it’s time science fiction went back to exploring them instead of using time travel to avoid innovation or giving up and predicting our doom. We can do better.

Comments

Lauren

Independence Day for me,
http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways

Maybe SF is stuck in such a rut when it comes to dystopia/post-apocalyptica due to the fact that the world is a depressing place at the moment in terms of economic issues and human suffering? Writers, creators end up reflecting what’s going on in the world around them, the feelings whole societies are running with.

Hence why a lot of SF during the main years of the Cold War seems all so samey.

Also, you’re expecting narrative innovation from the mainstream and that’s pretty tough to achieve, especially in hard economic times when studios don’t like taking risks.
- JT
  
  There have always been economic issues and human suffering. Actually there have been a LOT worse times in history, where those things are concerned. We’re just more depressed about it than ever. Those things haven’t really gotten any worse, in fact they’ve probably gotten better (overall).
  - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
    
    To an extent. Though the widening gap between rich and poor, the increased manners in which to kill each others – it’s going to get reflected in our culture.
    - JT
      
      What “increased manners in which to kill each other” do you see? It’s pretty much the same as it ever was. Actually the threat of global nuclear war has drastically decreased since the 50s and 60s when sci-fi was at its most optimistic, so there’s one manner in which to kill each other which is less of a threat than ever.
      
      Back then most Americans thought we were all going to be nuked out of existence at any second. And yet, they managed to hope for a better future.
      - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
        
        Biological, cyberwarfare, industrial espionage.
      - JT
        
        Bio weapons have been around for a hundred years, so has industrial espionage. Cyberwarfare isn’t so much a way to kill people as it is a way to take money out of their bank account.
      - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
        
        Cyberwarfare is a big threat. You’ve obviously not heard about viruses getting into critical infrastructure systems like power plants in several countries, oil rigs too. It’s still an ongoing problem. Just imagine the systems for a series of dams being extremely compromised or nuclear power plants.
      - JT
        
        I didn’t say it wasn’t a threat, but it’s a threat to things like your bank account or your internet connection. We were specifically talking about new ways to kill people. Cyberwarfare isn’t killing anyone really. I can “imagine” dams or nuclear power plants being compromised but it hasn’t actually happened anywhere outside of a James Bond movie, so it’s just fantasy.
        
        I don’t mean to sound like I’m picking on you, but I do I think your comments are just reflective of the modern, depressed, we’re all doomed view which is feeding this obsession with post-apocalyptic doom in the first place. You’re in the majority for sure.
        
        Everyone assumes things are horrible and worse than they have ever been, even if they aren’t, and so they see no future.
      - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
        
        But power plants and oil rigs have been compromised and the systems only cleaned up or isolated in time to stop anything truly bad from happening. It’s not fantasy, it’s just something critical hasn’t had the time to happen yet. Plenty of countries and corporations aren’t investing in protection against cyberwarfare and so the threat is real.
      - JT
        
        When it happens I’ll say you’re right. Until then I really don’t think the threat of cyberwarfare is enough to say that things are worse now than they’ve ever been.
        
        If it’s a choice between cyberwarfare or Hitler, give me cyberwarfare any day of the week.
      - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
        
        Fine. Whatever.
        
        Getting back to my original points:
        So those things have been going on to degrees over the centuries, but due to global mass media, a larger more literate population, the straw of yesterday can seem like the falling anvil of today.
        
        Plus big media companies really don’t like taking creative risks during recessions. Loads of musicals in the ’30s, loads of sequels and adaptations right now. Expecting narrative innovation from the mainstream, who’s funders only worry about money is pointless. You want something different? Go and back an indie project.
        
        On a side note:Way to go with disagreeing with everyone that disagrees with your article. Real good editorial strategy that.
      - JT
        
        Sorry I’m not going to suck up to my readers. I assume they’re smart enough that I don’t need to. And I haven’t disagreed with everyone, mostly just you.
        
        For that matter I don’t entirely disagree with you. Completely agree with your point about media coverage skewing the public’s perception of reality. Actually that may be almost the entire cause for this depressed outlook.
        
        ” the straw of yesterday can seem like the falling anvil of today”
        
        Exactly.
      - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
        
        Well okay then.
      - JT
        
        Excellent point. Doesn’t really matter how you make those things happen, it’s still the same way to kill people.
      - M&Ns
        
        I disagree. Without the check and balance of a second super power, ie the USSR, the US, or even Israel, is MORE likely to use a nuke in their imperialist adventures as there’s less fear of like retaliation. Military excursions that are in essence an extension of competition between capitalists classes of different nations. Bush even advocated treating nukes as “conventional weapons” and not WMDs. This is why the imperialists want a missile shield; so they can nuke people and not be nuked back. With nukes off the table there’s no “equaliser”; the US would be
      - M&Ns
        
        It’s why Iran’s not allowed a nuke; they might defend themselves better when the US gets around to invading them and creating “regime change”.
  - Brian
    
    How much background knowledge of the history of science fiction do you have? If you disagree with milliways it seems like not much. Look at very early science fiction, turn of the century stuff, the wonderment of the whole idea of anything science fiction was out there…way out there and it was a good thing because nobody had anything to compare it to. Later on, say 50s 60s it changed to fit what was going on. Humans were getting into space travel and the science fiction followed suit. Humans were beginning to explore the unknown and science fiction became about exploration and what could be out there.
    
    Jump ahead to present day. What milliways has described is exactly right. It’s following suit with what’s happening with the world. It should come as no surprise that we’re seeing that reflected in science fiction. Look at Avatar. Look at the parallels between humans in that movie and humans right now. That was a fantastic movie, an amazing cinematic experience. Did those parallels hurt it? Absolutely not.
    
    I think it’s difficult to branch off because things have become so established, people are lazy thinkers these days and there’s not as much creativity. There are still great great great sci-fi storytellers out there. James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Joss Whedon. All of them can fit parallels with current times into their work and make it believable without hurting the quality of the story.
    
    I don’t know about you but I don’t want some cheesy campy kiddie sci-fi show with an “adventure of the week” formula all the time. I want some realistic stuff that I can relate to. That is believable. (see my above mention of SGU and BSG)
    
    The bottom line to all of this though is you, yes I guarantee you are in this crowd, are giving money to those projects that you so adamantly hate…which is everything apparently, and that funding shows that that’s what people will pay to see so it won’t change. I don’t think you’ll stop watching absolutely everything science fiction to get your point across.
    - M&Ns
      
      Mate, tell black South Africans they’re worse off then ever before lol. You are treating America like it was the whole world. America is suffering economically for the first time after many decades of growth and prosperity; the US is the most successful capitalist experiment in history. But now you’re experiencing a serious bust cycle; capitalists have ripped the resilience out of the US to make a buck, the rich have never been richer, but now the capitalists have to turn over stones, from which no blood can come, in search of new opportunities to exploit the little people economically. Fortunately, in Australia we haven’t followed the US down the gurgler as quickly as Europe; we haven’t yet drifted so far to the political Right. But that looks like changing soon…the dogwhistling Right are turning minds to mush, thus I see dsytopia as more likely then uptopia in the near to mid future.
      - Steve
        
        Yeah – it is all the capitalists fault – they did it, they did it!!
        No, it is your fault – if you do not like what is being sold buy something else.As for the rich being richer than ever – that is almost true- the truth is that there are more rich people in the US now than ever before and even the so-called poor have color tvs, air conditioning, at least one car and can have steak when ever they want to. The reason people in the US feel there is no hope right now is that they have been taught that for the last thirty years.
        I will bet that every one laughed when Newt Genrich said we should have project to put men back on the moon in a permanent colony – but if we had then maybe we would get a few TV shows showing how neat space travel could be. You get waht you pay for and if you don’t want to pay what you get is what someone else is willing to pay for.
      - William Carr
        
        You’re dreaming if you think poor people can eat steak “whenever they want to”. Talk about out of touch !
        
        Poor people may own a car; a lot of poor people don’t. That car isn’t new, it’s a rusty beater that’s held together with duct tape and wire, and just replacing the tires is a major financial challenge.
        
        TV’s and Air Conditioning? That might be a better argument if TV’s cost $10,000 apiece. But they’re cheap. Especially if you’re using a beat up old set with a cheap digital tuner.
        
        Owning a color TV is no proof of wealth, any more than owning an outhouse was proof of wealth 100 years ago.
        
        The reason people have no hope is because the Middle Class has been losing ground for thirty years, their incomes falling, while the incomes of the 1% have increased 275%.
        
        As for your “more millionaires” argument, it’s false statistics.
        
        We have MORE people than in 1950. If you get one millionaire per 100,000 people, then when your population doubles you have twice as many millionaires, but you have twice as many poor people too.
        
        That doesn’t prove ANYTHING. And it certainly no argument that America isn’t sliding into poverty.
        
        As it stands, the top 400 people hold more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans.
        
        The top one percent own 42% of the wealth in America; the top ten percent own 90% of the wealth.
        
        Leaving 10% of the wealth to be fought over by 90% of the people.
    - Red
      
      I’m with you on the whole Ridley Scott and Joss Whedon thing. What do you think of Frank Darabont?
http://twitter.com/DeepSpacer Brian Williams

I completely agree about the depressing nature of modern sci-fi. There is absolutely no optimism in it anymore.
Time travel has just become an overused crutch. It’s used far too often in tv shows as a way to switch things up even when it makes no sense to use it. Case in point: Supernatural. A show that was supposed to be about two dudes riding around the country killing monsters with shotguns that ran out of steam, and now they’ve traveled back in time at least 4 times now, even though it’s not a sci-fi show. It’s a dumb gimmick that has run it’s course.
I think the worst thing about using time travel as a plot device is how we have to sit through an explanation of what paradoxes are every single time it happens, suggesting that whatever universe this plot is happening in doesn’t have the same glut of time travel stories. It’s mind-numbing.
KingGerbil

We can only hope that after 2012 doesn’t happen (or happens, whatever) some of this post-apocalyptic culture will die down.
- JT
  
  I’d like that to be true but I think the whole silly 2012 thing is just a symptom of it, not a cause.
  - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
    
    It’s kinda similar to the fin de siècle culture from the end of the 1800s, only that was a whole end of a century thing. Obviously people didn’t get the idea of Y2K out of their systems enough.
    - http://iqueuefortea.tumblr.com/ milliways
      
      And by idea, I mean the notion that some crazy stuff is going to end everything.
skybluemarky

I think you are missing a little something about how narrative works.

Time travel is a useful tool because it creates tensions that couldn’t exist without it. The Time-Travellers Wife is a perfect example of this because the tensions that make the plot work exist almost entirely through time travel. It also serves to move the plot on. The story is character driven and Time Travel is just a tool. I agree with you about the use in “Enterprise”, but disagree it is a bad thing for the movie franchise. The Star Trek canon is sacred to so many fans that they needed to do something to change it or the movies would have never worked.

The post-apocalyptic dystopia/ external threat conventions are other settings that create tensions and allow plots to work. I just want you to think what would happen if we set a story in a Utopian future, a genuine Utopia not one threatened from external forces. Where is the story? The tension? Why would we care about these characters who have no adversity? We could easily write a story but it would be near impossible to make one that people are interested in. Characters need adversity to allow us to have a vested interest in them.

Can you think of a single good sci-fi that hasn’t had adversity? The most utopian I can think of it “Demolition Man” or “Minority Report” and in both the price paid for this perfect society is the lose of liberties for the individual? It is just another variant on dystopia, although maybe better disguised.
- JT
  
  Never said they weren’t useful narratively, but when every single movie, TV show, or book uses that same tool it becomes overused. They’ve become a crutch.
  
  I also never said there shouldn’t be adversity, but there are other adversities besides fighting a dystopian goverment, trying to survive an apocalypse, or traveling through time.
- M&Ns
  
  What about Red Dwarf? They have conflict, but there’s no monolithic bad guy or group. No static bogey man under the bed each episode, and it had some great sci fi content; and was hilarious. They also used time and time travel well before it was too cliched (eps “Time Sildes” “Future Echoes” “Backwards” #White Hole”). To the creator’s credit, when they brought back the ship Red Dwarf, they avoided the tried and tired time travel trick and opted for a ship rebuilt by nannites, crew included lol.
  - http://twitter.com/skybluemarky Mark Lees
    
    Red Dwarf is the ultimate Dystopian future, the entire premise is based around Lister being the last human alive (until they bring Kochanski back from an alternate universe). Rimmer represents the most recurring adversity in the form of Lister’s superior officer with many external threats coming throughout the series, starting in Confidence and Paranoia and continueing in episodes like Polymorph, The Inquisitor, Psirens etc…
    It is also true that Red Dwarf, as a sitcom, has more freedom in how it operates because sitcoms traditionally find their tensions in social circumstances rather than external threats. When external threats exist it is to unite the disfunctional group that the sitcom centres around. In addition to that it can make fun of traditional sci-fi conventions in ways that conventional sci-fi movies/series would have to be very careful of.
Eric

Anyone remember when DC comics Jonah Hex did both?
They used Time Travel to transport him from the Old West to..you guessed it, a dystopian post apocalyptic future where Hex dressed suspiciously like Mad Max! It was a desperate attempt to revitalize the aging hero in what was then (And continues to be for many) an interesting locale/situation because when all else fails with a beloved character or characters change their location to someplace more interesting! One reason why so many projects use the post apocalyptic or dystopian environments is that you need CONFLICT. I never did think that TNG was anything but a more advanced, pale imitation of TOS but the Star Trek writers for it were onto something when they said that one problem with Gene Rodenberry’s utopian future was that he envisioned that everyone was at peace with everyone else & that there was no money or disease or anything & while that’s all good & noble to wish for it really cuts down on the conflict which you need to sustain most any story. Seriously think about it for a minute. What would a story be without conflict of some sort? That’s right it’d be everyone sitting around talking about how wonderful everything is & would lose everyone’s interest in about five minutes. Conflict is essential & many of the non imaginative types in Hollywood just go back to the Time Travel, or dystopian/post apocalyptic well whenever they want to generate some in a project. It’s a shame that they’re overdoing it but I do see why. As great as “Close Encounters” was & as many as enjoyed “E.T.” (Both of which still had conflict within them I’ll note.) what if that was the only kind of science fiction out there? We’d be CRAVING some gritty nihilism!!!
- JT
  
  Totally agree. It’s a bad thing to have too much of any one type of science fiction. If every movie were about humans befriending aliens I’d be complaining about that. When something becomes overused it’s a crutch and it’s not creative and it limits the genre. Right now we’re stuck in this time travel/apocalypse rut. If we ever get out of it, then maybe it’ll be valid to revisit those topics in small doses. For now it just needs to stop.
  
  Every story needs conflict but there are so many other ways to create it that aren’t being explored.
  - History
    
    It’s interesting that the SyFy channel has a number of shows that aren’t dystopic. Stargate (SG-1 and Atlantis), Eureka, and Warehouse 13 were/are all shows that use outward forces (aliens, science experiments running amok, accidents, etc) for conflict, but avoid the whole “humanity is doooomed” plot devices (uh…actually, I think they’ve all used time travel at some point, but once in the whole series, not regularly). When SyFy tried to bring in a darker, grittier feel with SG Universe, it flopped. And while the above shows do occasionally kill off characters and have grey moral areas for the protagonists, they are generally lighthearted shows with good guys and happy endings. I wonder if that means SyFy is ahead of the times or behind them, or if there’s enough of an audience uninterested in dystopias to create shows for them.
    - JT
      
      SGU was darker but it wasn’t dystopic. It wasn’t doom and gloom. It was about discovery as well really. Maybe the characters were FORCED to become explorers, but they were exploring. Good example of a show that created a LOT of conflict without being about a doomed future for humanity.
      
      But it’s worth noting that out of the shows you listed on SyFy the only one that hasn’t been cancelled is Warehouse 13. All the rest are gone, most have been gone for several years… even Eureka which is finishing its last few episodes right now. In their place they’ve started doing “disaster of the week” movies, ghost shows, and reality.
      - History
        
        I didn’t realize that about SGU…I quit watching about 2 episodes in when I realized they were trying to smoosh BSG and SG-1 into a show that lacked the charms of either (IMO, obviously). I knew it wasn’t dystopic, I just really did get the impression they were trying to be gritty and edgy because grit and edge were what was in.
        
        You make a good point about cancellations, and I think the show replacing Eureka is Defiance, which, while it sounds great and I’ll be excited to see it, is described as having “a completely transformed planet Earth, inhabited by the disparate
        survivors of a universal war who endeavor to build a new society among
        the devastation.”
        
        “Build(ing) a new society” sounds positive, but I’m pretty sure “among the devastation” cancels that right out. Maybe SyFy is just now giving up on lighter Sci-Fi. I haven’t seen enough of their other original series to know if WH13 is the sole remaining straggler (although I did think it was one of their more successful shows).
    - Brian
      
      If you give any faith to the “siffy” channel at this point I will have zero respect for you. They have butchered science fiction and they shouldn’t be branding the name to any extent anymore. I like Stargate. Sure SG-1 and Atlantis are cheesy campy sci-fi but I watched them and still watch them on TV. There’s a certain charm to them and they are good fun most of the time.
      
      Universe was a masterpiece. That is where science fiction needs to go. While yes the “humanity is doomed” aspect can get old however there are shows that use it as a backdrop essentially. Battlestar Galactica is yes about humans under threat of doom but it’s not always the forefront of the story. A lot of the show is extremely character driven with their day to day dealing with the situation.
      
      SGU was similar in that sense. Real people being put into an extreme situation and having to cope and deal with being in that situation. I absolutely love SGU and BSG both. People need to be looking at how to drive a show with the characters rather than the “humans are doomed” situation being at the forefront all the time.
    - M&Ns
      
      I thnk SGU flopped and the new BSG suck because their full of dragged out, boring, days of our lives drama scenes full of drama queens lol
      - M&Ns
        
        Same with Walking Dead, Breaking Bad or most anything since Sopranos and Oz. Boring sopa operas in cool or scary settings.
      - Red
        
        Quit your whining. You get whatcha get you don’t throw a fit XD
    - William Carr
      
      The Stargate franchise was nearly as brilliant as Star Trek.
      
      Atlantis was cut short, in my opinion.
      
      Eureka is a farce, the Science never makes sense. And Warehouse 13 isn’t SF at all, it’s garbage. Fantasy with steampunk overtones does not Science Fiction make.
- M&Ns
  
  TNG and OST dealt with conflict just about every episode. What you want to see is more war imo.
- William Carr
  
  You’re right about the need for conflict.
  
  It was one of the reasons that Star Trek NG produced plot lines only to deliberately sabotage them.
  In “Up the Long Ladder” the Enterprise finds a peaceful planet inhabited by clones from the crew of a starship that had crashed.
  The premise was that the three men and two women who survived couldn’t reproduce normally, so cloned themselves and outlawed sex.
  Well, I wish I’d been their Script Consultant: I would have worn a whistle around my neck and blown it loudly when they pitched dumb ideas like that.
  If you have artificial wombs sufficient to clone humans, you can also do in vitro fertilization and build up your gene pool gradually.
  BUT, the ‘powers that were’ on Next Generation must have had a policy; I deduced it from study of the plot lines.
  NG Prime Directive: no plot line that implies Humanity is fundamentally changing will be allowed.
  A Clone society would be shockingly different; sufficient to REALLY change the Human Condition. Find a thousand outstanding people and reproduce them perfectly, over and over.
  Mankind would advance rapidly. Until the viewer at home no longer recognized these people AS Human, because they would have no weaknesses.
  So, NG’s Producers sabotaged the plot line. First, they made Sex illegal, and assigned it the Death Penalty, even though with contraception there’s no need for that, and people would revolt.
  Second, they made the cloning process a failure, inventing “Replicant Fading”, a non-existent problem. All you have to do is keep cells from the originals around, and only clone from those cells, not the clone to clone method.
  All problems that could have been solved.
  And of course, the original example of this is Roddenberry’s ban on Genetic Engineering, by claiming it always produces ambitious Supermen bent on conquest.
  Bogus.
http://twitter.com/YakovMerkin Yakov Merkin

I completely agree with your assessment. Time travel in particular has stopped drawing my interest. And in my own writing I have determined to never use time travel, both due to this and because of the plot issues it can cause. Dystopia hasn’t bothered me as much yet, but I can see it getting too commonplace, and it all ends up being humans saving the day. Aliens are less prevalent in sci-fi now, to its detriment in my opinion.
- JT
  
  Glad to hear you’ve sworn off time travel!
  
  I’m not sure it’s accurate to say aliens are less prevalent in sci-fi now… maybe a more accurate variation is to say that all but a certain kind of alien are less prevalent. Aliens are everywhere… but they’re always of the invade the Earth kill the humans variety now (and that’s really more an extension of the post-apocalyptic obsession than anything else). There is no other type.
  - http://twitter.com/YakovMerkin Yakov Merkin
    
    I agree that aliens are most always the faceless villains these days. What I want, (and what I write) are alien characters. As in main characters. The main focus of any story has to be the characters, and right now all I’m seeing is humans. (Which is one thing I love about the Mass Effect games. Though we play as a human, we get aliens who are truly alien, but relatable, and interesting characters.) I understand why it’s always humans (we’re human, after all, and it’d be a easier to write), but I’m personally getting bored of the human being the one saving the day; it’s a bit arrogant of us, to be honest. I feel like I’m rambling a bit, so I’ll stop here. But ultimately, I feel that having alien characters who are the heroes, who are relatable, will be what pulls sci-fi out of this rut.
History

I remember reading an interview a long time ago about how Star Trek was created in large part because all the science fiction of the day was bleak and dystopic, and G.R. wanted to show the possibility of a world where things actually turned out well for humanity (I’m paraphrasing here, it’s been a long time since I’ve read it).

America (in particular, I know this is elsewhere but I can’t speak for all other countries) tends to go through phases of disillusionment and despair (“Mankind has never been this badly off, our rich are as bad as Hitler and our country is spiralling into the dark ages”, a time of fire-and-brimstone preachers) followed by waves of optimism and somewhat equally unrealistic expectations of a bright future (“This bubble will never end! Why not take out a massive loan I can never pay back?”, etc). One ignores that humanity has come a long way (step by step) from a time when we had serfs, or slaves, or sharecroppers working without rights and pay, or had actual Nazis sweeping across the globe, and the other that we still haven’t reached a point where spending more money than you make is a good long-term financial decision, or assuming that just because you have a high-paying, in-demand job now you don’t need to prepare for a day when that won’t be the case. Both assume that the immediate state of things as reported by the media are permanent, and both are wrong. Our fiction tends to reflect those states, especially science fiction, and we are clearly in the former phase of doom and despair.

Too, Hollywood and the publishing industry have long histories of taking a successful story/theme/character pairing, etc (usually successful due to high-quality writing and production values), and beating it into the ground with shoddy remakes and knockoffs, none of which are as revolutionary, interesting, or successful as the original.

So all that being said, I really hope we’re at the end of this doom and gloom phase, not because I think some ray of sunshine is going to turn everything around for humanity, but because I’m bored with zombies and “gritty” reboots where the protagonists are dark, angsty, unlikeable people and the antagonists are evil corporations whose only motivation is to do evil because…hey, evil! Maybe Hollywood will take a look at the success of the Avengers movie, and go back to making films and movies where everything turns out okay at the end, no matter the odds, and the good guys are always good because that’s the Right Thing to Do.
- M&Ns
  
  “I remember reading an interview a long time ago about how Star Trek was created in large part because all the science fiction of the day was bleak and dystopic, and G.R. wanted to show the possibility of a world where things actually turned out well for humanity”
  
  Yes, and ever since people have been whinging its was too “socialist”, especially STNG. STNG spoke to the ills caused by racism, sexism, class, inequality, alienation and the abuse of power. But lets face it; dystopia is where we’re headed if we don’t fundamentally change the order of ultimately unsustainable capitalist societies. So the creator of Star Trek wrote in progressive, fundamental social change as a premise underlying OST, but especially STNG, and perhaps even DS9 and Voyager (although after STHG they seemed to mute or move away from the premise of fundamental progressive societal change having happened).
  - Steve
    
    It is only the ‘unsustainable capitalist societies’ tha have the money and technology to save this world – ALL third world nations are over-populated and under educated and only have the resources to get through this year with maybe the seeds needed for a crop next year. It is only when wealth is created by trade ( capitalism ) that there is enough wealth to divert to future projects.
    - William Carr
      
      You’re conflating trade and Capitalism.
      
      What many people simply don’t realize is that Capitalism isn’t making stuff and selling it at a profit.
      
      THAT’S Mercantilism. As in Merchants, selling stuff.
      
      Capitalism is making money with money.
      
      You have people that actually BUILD something, as Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built Apple. Innovators. People that open up new markets.
      
      Steve & Steve had investors from day 1, but only entered into Capitalism when they did their IPO.
      
      And then you have people that make money tearing other people’s stuff down, as in Bain Capital and Mitt Romney.
      
      That’s pure Vulture Capitalism. It doesn’t matter how you make your money, just spin the wheel in the Stock Market and hope to get lucky.
      
      And if good companies get destroyed by it, that’s not your concern.
      
      This is the stuff we have to regulate. The vultures destroy jobs, outsource manufacturing to countries where people are starving for a job paying fifty cents an hour, and leave our country a hollow shell.
      
      Roddenberry was WELL acquainted with these people, and tried to imagine a future society where their antics would not be permitted.
      
      A world where Mankind had cast aside stupidity like Racism, Prejudice, and Greed.
      
      To address your comment, about trade being the only thing that creates wealth: no.
      
      Manufacturing creates wealth. If you take a piece of steel worth twenty cents and turn it into a high-speed jet fuel valve that runs at 6,000 PSI and meshes together with surfaces that match within 50 millionths of an inch; then sell it for $3,000: That’s wealth creation.
      
      And wealth is created from Energy. It was when America began to mine coal that we became an industrialized manufacturing power. Without the cheap energy, it wouldn’t have happened.
      
      We are on the verge of a second Gold Rush, tapping into Concentrating Solar Power in the American Southwest. All that free sunlight ready to be turned into electricity and sold will make America prosperous, chiefly by making everything we want to do much cheaper and more practical.
      
      For one thing, we won’t be wasting our money on oil; that’s a tremendous savings.
      - http://www.facebook.com/ty.carter.501 Ty Carter
        
        I can’t find any place where your definition of capitalism is a proper definition or anywhere near being correct.
        Yeah capitalism is a system where the strong survive and some people
        fail but everyone has the chance to work hard and at least try to
        succeed. Would you rather have a socialist/communist society where everyone is the same, poor? I
        can not think of any country that has experimented with this form of
        government and has excelled because resources are limited and not
        everyone can have everything. Is capitalism fair to everyone? No, but if
        you work hard you can succeed, or at least you could before the
        government started to strangle the economy with over regulation and
        decided it would choose the winners and losers. If I had to guess I
        would say that we have very different political views. So let me ask you
        a question, why is it not okay for people who do not share your
        political views, like Romney, to “gamble” in the stock market, make
        money with money, or buy struggling companies and then do what he
        determines is best for his new business but it’s okay for people like
        George Soros to do similar, if not the exact same things, just because you share political views?
        Also unless there have been new advances in solar technology, such as
        batteries to store that form of energy, that technology is still not
        viable. I would love to not have to pay for gas and run my car on the
        sun’s energy but solar panel cars have been around for at least twenty
        years and they still do not work well enough to replace combustion
        engines. Overlooking the limitations of green energy just because that
        is what you want the future to be, will not make it work, only working
        to better the technology will do that. And finally, while I too hope
        that someday there is no longer racism, prejudice, or greed, you are
        talking about changing evolutionary behaviors and I don’t ever see those
        going away.
      - Wolf_Starbuck
        
        Uhm. I’m somewhat offended by your question and statement, “Would you rather have a socialist/communist society where everyone is the same, poor? I can not think of any country that has experimented with this form of government and has excelled because resources are limited and not everyone can have everything.”
        
        I live in Norway, I make the US equivalent of $70k a year, own my own house, automobile, and can more then afford my 5 weeks of annual – government required – vacation. I have a copay on medical (about $25 for a doctor’s visit. About $50 if i have to go to an emergency room). My kids have free dental until they hit 18. Norway is one of those socialist countries people in the states seem so afraid the USA might turn into. You should be so lucky.
        
        Oh, and by the way, socialism is not communism. There is private industry and businesses, although there are laws regulating things. Oddly, unlike the multiple edition law sets prevalent in the United States, Norway has a single volume of all its laws. Much easier to follow. There are rich, and there are poor. You can get wealthy in a socialist country. But the poor are never given the opportunity to fend for themselves on the street… instead they are given housing and an education followed by employment.
        
        Now please, keep your Republican, FOX news fed fears of “isms” to yourself, and concentrate on the subject at hand which is science fiction and the lack of creativity currently inherent in that arena.
      - Hunter
        
        Only problem with Norway…are the Trolls
      - Old Trekkie
        
        Are you (an obvious troll) implying that you are from Norway?
        Did the Billygoats run you out?
      - IG
        
        Oh don’t worry we’ve got hunters for those.
        
        Besides they usually only appear in souvenir shops.
      - Ivan Chen
        
        besides being touchingly patriotic and despite that everybody KNOWS Scandinavian countries have the highest standard of living in the world; you do realize that Norway can only function so luxuriously because its a relatively small country, where everything is so much easier to manage than say like, USA or China? so in fact there really ISN’T enough resources for everyone in the world to live in as much bliss as the Norwegians, and to brag about how your country can be so awesome and why all our other crappy countries can’t be more like you, is frankly severely rubbing salt in the wound.
        
        In reality, for one Norwegian to enjoy the prestige of being a Norwegian, a million other third world country people must live a poverty-stricken life. After all, Isn’t that how our society works? 5% possess the majority of wealth while 95% slave away in order for the 5% to continue being the 5%. So in essence, your description of Norway is of it being the elite 5% whilst condescending and belittling the other 95% for being, well, not as good as you. If Norway was a bigger country with more people, there is no way it would sustain its standard of living. Much like the case of Singapore with its marshal cleanliness.
      - Old Trekkie
        
        Thank you. Well said!
      - Ethan
        
        You have a misguided view of what Bain Capital did. They tore nothing down. They would buy companies that were failing and try to save them. Of the companies they tried to save most were already (Metaphorically speaking) On Fire. So yes some of them went out of Business but many of them were saved ergo jobs were saved. I am all for green energy. If you could power all of our houses, cars, and jobs off say the energy of anime fan boys. Id invest in that,but as a business man my self i like investing in what works. Concentrated solar power is a pipe dream. I wish it wasn’t and i wish it could do more than just lightly decrease the strain on our obese energy problem but it wont. If it does though i will deep fry my key board sprinkle on some ash’s of martyred economists, and eat it with a slice of Humble pie.
        
        oh an Ty carter is right on point just wanted to give him some creidit
        also you probably voted for Obama and if you did i am so sorry i wasted my time on your obviously inferior pants on head retarded mind.
Roger D. Fss

You’re mistaken, if not in fact dead wrong.
It’s true that time-travel and dystopian futures are and have been done to death, but that won’t (and I dare say can’t) lead to the death of SF. A lack of imagineation is the only thing that can kill media SF, and while there hasn’t been a good space opera since Star Trek that doesn’t mean another isn’t around the corner. The internet will see to that, and the widespread distribution of affordable digital tools which allow ‘ordinary’ people to make their own SF shows.
corrosivepress

I totally agree with you’re points about what wrong with Sci-Fi in Hollywood. But what’s really destroying Sci-Fi isn’t the concepts, but changes in entertainment over the last several decades. Today, the entertainment business is about THE FORMULA that best brings a profit to the company. The Formula has always been around (if one movie/TV show is a success, make six more like it), but there used to be other options for creative expression. That has all but disappeared for independent ideas. Now it is what the studios/corporations decide — using focus groups and endless script doctors — and putting that mish-mash of suggested/research-approved changes on the screen for optimal potential profit. That’s the bottom line, period.

In the past, a lot of great Sci-Fi got in through the back door with many studios expecting flops which could be an easy write-off. It gave then-independent directors and producers and writers (using the same concepts you pointed out) the chance not given today. Thus came the Golden Age with movies like “Omega Man,” “THX 1138,” “Rollerball,” “Soylent Green,” “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” “Sleeper,” “Logan’s Run,” “Westworld,” “Silent Running,” etc. (the list goes on). Then came “Star Wars,” the studio saw huge dollar signs and never looked back.

The irony is the original creativity that lead the studios to all that cash was the first to be killed off by the new Hollywood Formula.

The only place left for anyone original and creative is the internet. But unless you’re wealthy, try raising money to produce original Sci-Fi content brilliant enough to produce a massive hit. It will happen on day, just not today.

So, instead, we are mostly stuck with what I call No-Fi movies and TV which fit The Formula. If I’m wrong, then explain why someone thought it was original to green-light hundreds-of-millions of dollars to make a movie based on a child’s board game? But it’s already made huge money overseas! My nephew already predicted the next big budget junk will probably be “Stratego — The Movie,” and he’s 13.

So it’s not potential creative Sci-Fi writers that have created this mess, nor the fans, but the system. And until that’s changed, I’ll expect an announcement son of “Stratego” starring Nicolas Cage and Justin Beiber — about a General and his troops from a future dystopian world being thrown back in time to stop aliens from changing the D-Day attack and helping Nazis colonize the moon! (oh, wait — has that been done already?)
- Old Trekkie
  
  If it has already been done, it is very likely to be rebooted!
royal

Time travel has been an overused cliche for decades now. Usually used by a bad storyteller to rehash something that was more interesting than what they couldn come up with. Almost every show/movie that uses time travel destroys any value the show had. I stopped watching Enterprise with the initial pilot–time travel?! I’m out. Even the new movie, which was good, used TT again (eyeroll). The problem isn’t time travel–it is the bankruptcy of creativity and source material. Star Trek was a dried up husk of a formula, but let’s beat that dead horse again. The fact that we have thousands of science fiction novels is unimportant–as Hollywood types don’t read. They only see movies or watch TV. So they regurgitate was has already been visualized.

Disaster movies have been popular for many decades. Whether it is War of the Worlds in the 1950s, Towering Inferno in the 1970s, Armageddon in the 1990s or Transformers of this decade–we like to see destruction. And the current level of SFX and the mix of the future always allows for lots of ways to destroy humanity. Our view of what the future holds has always been about surviving mass destruction. Nothing has changed in at least 60 years.
- JT
  
  Disaster movies have always been popular, yes but they existed apart from science fiction. Now they have completely taken over science fiction until there’s no sci-fi apart from that.
  - Royal
    
    Well, there is non-disaster sci-fi (Paul, John Carter, Tron legacy, Avatar, Star Trek, Predator/Aliens, Serenity/Firefly, Repo Men, Push, Jumper, Surrogates, I Robot, Minority Report). But marketing people sell easy brain dead concepts best. “U.S.Navy vs. World destroying alien water-army.” It has to be digestible in eight words or less for an “executive.”
    
    The reality is most sci-fi isn’t sci-fi at all. Go into a book store and you’ll find a “science fiction” that contains fantasy. This is how bad our use of language is. The reality is all science fiction *IS* fantasy. Fantasy *IS NOT* science fiction. Science rarely shows up in sci-fi. Reversing the polarity of the deflector dish isn’t Science Fiction. It is Fantasy, futuristic fantasy. The science pulled out of sci-fi long ago, and now it is just there to satisfy people’s fantasies. It isn’t rooted in life, but fantasies of extremes–and extremes tend to be drastic. It is comic-book plotting. The only way to make the story more exciting is to make it bigger. The evil threatens the entire U.S, wait, no, the entire continent, wait, no, the earth, wait no, our entire solar system, wait no, our galaxy, wait no, our entire universe, wait no, dozens of universes, wait no, I have the best idea… the multiverse is threatened. Our hero will save them all. That will make it exciting. It is a teenage boy’s thinking that only bigger makes it better.
    - JT
      
      Well said.
UnRiel

Yes, my favorite sci-fi novels include humankind overcoming indomitable odds.

Battle:LA was left out above; US Marines overcoming technologically superior alien attackers. Alien and Aliens had humans overcoming aliens that were supposedly unbeatable so unless the author saw Prometheus, we should be less sure of the conclusion. for that matter, did the author miss The Avengers?

But the point is worth making; too many writers are determined to cast mankind in the poorest light.
I would like to see some sci-fi classics finally make it to the screen. Specifically Louis Wu, Larry Niven’s Known Space hero. Always weaker and less intelligent than the aliens around him, the crafty evolved monkey always finds a way to win and live. Bring us the Ringworld please!
It would be fantasy rather than sci-fi, but Harry Dresden has huge potential as the little mortal who defies demons, faery and demi-gods with equal disdain.
And Sclazi’s Old Man’s War is supposedly in pre-production; where the heck is that?
- JT
  
  While The Avengers does indeed contain sci-fi elements it’s more superhero than sci-fi. Superheroes have really become their own genre in recent years. I think that makes it irrelevant to this particular discussion.
Gypsy

Some of the Movies you listed are not Science Fiction, they are Horror. I think a lot of people make this mistake. The MIB is a comedy it just happens to have aliens in it, and approches the premise as a comedy not sci-fi
baby fart mcgeeziaks

Interesting read but I don’t agree 100%. Even ignoring Terminator and
Back to the Future and looking at more current movies Star Trek was
thoroughly fun (I just wish Abrams would have made it into a series
rather than a sequel) and MIB3 looks promising to me.

I’m sick as hell of crappy apocalyptic movies and zombies or generic CGI aliens
only make them worse but I think they’re just a fact of the times. In
the 50s you had a lot of invasion and mind control type SciFi because of
the Cold War, dystopian future could be a symptom of the global
economic recession- feelings of inevitable decline and hopelessness.
Furthermore the theme can be done right. Avengers incorporated a generic
CGI army bent on world destruction for an enemy not unlike what is seen
on the Battleship trailers, but it did it with a good script and great
actors and in a way played more on the notion of banding together
despite our differences for hope (not unlike the space
shuttle-Enterprise thing) as opposed to just cashing in on peoples’ fears. That said there have always been Earth vs the Saucer Men and Nicolas Cage’s 2012 type movies like that and there always will be. I personally see a bigger problem- lack of any originality.

Battleship- movie “based” on a board game made by the company that makes transformers, need I say more?

Men in Black III- sequel

Chernobyl Diaries- Don’t know anything about this one.

Piranha 3DD- sequel (and just a crime against cinema in general)

Prometheus- sort of a reboot/prequel thing of Alien

Safety Not Guaranteed- Don’t know anything about this one

Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World- Don’t know what this is

Total Recall- remake

Resident Evil: Retribution- sequel

Dredd- remake

Looper- no complaints

Some of these may turn out to be good like Prometheus and MIB3 but why is it that with the exception of Looper every other film is some sort of sequel, remake or dystopian future/doom thing? John Carter was probably the last really fresh sci-fi/fantasy film and no one paid attention to it, people are afraid of new things and you can’t rely on every sequel/reboot to be Avengers or Planet of the Apes.
http://www.facebook.com/ali.ries.3 Ali Ries

I think the Studios forget that we watch TV and Movies to escape the oitls and problems of our daily lives. the last thing we want is Reality (which is mostly scripted and above the norm) TV or Doom and Gloom. Apart from Comedies which only go so far, we need something uplifting and EPIC in our lives. Something to look forward to, not something that will depress us even more. that is what Star Trek and others like it did in their time. they gave us a FUTURE to look forward too. A day when we could travel across the stars, seek out new adventures, and see new inventions that might actually come to pass in our lifetime.
On to a new and brighter SciFi,, not a dumbed down depressed SyFy for those morons content with doom and gloom and unrealistic Reality Shows. Give our kids something to look forward to.
- http://www.facebook.com/ali.ries.3 Ali Ries
  
  TOILS and problems……..sorry can’t type.
http://twitter.com/robtclements Robert Clements

Many years, i saw a defense against the charge that splatter films were
misogynistic that it was giving the films credit for a thought it didn’t
have. In a weird way, you may be making the same mistake

Yes, the tone in modern SF has become narcissistically nasty recently,
with humourless comedy & aliens conflated with monsters; but this
isn’t unique to SF – the same tones appear in Bones, 2 & a half men,
Hell on wheels & Madmen as well. Even Warehouse 13 – like Eureka
before it – seems determined to have one vicious death every episode,
which makes it less of an exception to the rule than you might like to
believe

The real problem is cheap pop filmmaking, based on big bangs & easy
CGI (which admittedly isn’t very cheap). Why tell a story when you can
create a photo-realistic stunt? It safe; & easier to explain to a
corporate committee

Not so long ago, a popular SF blog quoted approvingly the opinion that
the new Dune film had to make sure the sandworms looked perfect; &
my grouchy retort that the more relevant question was how the producers
intended compressing 500 pages of dense narrative into a sensible
feature was considered negative. It was as if the blog had accepted
up-front that the film was going to be garbage but would put up with it
if it looked & played cool; which suggests that the difference
between the bright but vapid A Princess of Mars & what one assumes
will be the dark but vapid – though perhaps more entertaining – MIB III
isn’t particularly big

What frustrates me is that even the indies are going this way. I can’t even find literate SF projects on IndieGoGo. They all want to make cut-price zombie flicks. A new Time-traveller’s wife – which i actually liked as light SF & romance – would be a be a pleasure to back
- http://twitter.com/PandoranAge Chronos Productions
  
  http://pandoranagechronicles.com/
  
  http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/101314?a=10537
  
  The nemesis is modeled after traditional demons found cross culturally through history, in this case from an alternate dimension. Set 2000 years in the future, the galaxy is littered with various histories-both grand and tragic.
  
  http://www.amazon.com/Tales-Pandoran-Age-Chronicles-ebook/dp/B005HKD9U6
  
  http://www.amazon.com/The-Pandoran-War-ebook/dp/B003V4B2Q8/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1337707903&sr=1-2
  - http://twitter.com/robtclements Robert Clements
    
    I’ll pass. Give me a story to care about; not a gushing blurb about all the technological & marketing opportunities
  - John
    
    “$125 raised of $250,000 goal”
    Even the people involved don’t want to fund this pig.
- M&Ns
  
  Here here! So sick of zombies already. never thought i’d say it! lol
  - M&Ns
    
    That should be “hear, hear” actually…
MnkyLv

The problem isn’t the plot but the weakness of characterization, the lack of relevance of the theme, and so forth. For example, in contrast to the examples given, consider The Road.
http://twitter.com/KarenLawler Karen Lawler

I find it extremely amusing that your slightly apocalyptic complaint that science fiction is destroying itself is actually framed much in the same way that so much of the post apocalyptic sci fi you complain about is! Things are bad – they will get worse.

I think there are clear reasons why post apocalyptic sci fi is popular right now, which have more to do with publishing and hollywood following the populace rather than setting the trends…Since the 2007 crash the majority of the world has been in a state of ‘things keep getting worse’, a perception certainly helped along by the media, but not an unrealistic attitude, all things considered. I mean, with choices for the cause of apocalypses so rife at the moment – environmental, financial, political, terrorist – the idea of a post-apocalyptic world is better than no world at all after an apocalypse!

That being said, science fiction, and in fact all genres of storytelling, go through trends. Two or three years ago, you could have written this article (well, a sci fi/fantasy article, relevant because in most laymen’s minds there’s no distinction between the genres) and been talking about vampires, and paranormal romance more generally. Thank god for the fact that twilight has faded from our minds at least somewhat…that was a MUCH worse trend, both for the genre and for women imho, so bring on the kick ass heroines and post-apocalyptic worlds if it saves us from Bella and Edward.

Also – I like dystopias. And time travel.
- Jacob
  
  totally agree.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1173270531 Richard Morgan

What’s destroying science fiction is the science fiction fans who complain endlessly about every show that comes out. Of course, once the show is cancelled (usually because of all the complaining) then they then complain endlessly that such a great show with unexplored potential was cancelled.

This is particularly obvious when spin off series don’t “live up to the original series”, e.g. Caprica, Enterprise, Crusade.

Wow all 3 were set/destined to be set in space! All 3 got trashed by scifi geeks who just couldn’t keep their mouths shut!

FFS any scifi is good scifi, when the alternative is mind rotting reality TV that can be made at 1/10th the price.

Stop trashing scifi shows, if you don’t like post apocalyptic / distopian then your day will come, there will be other space operas.
- http://twitter.com/robtclements Robert Clements
  
  BS Richard. The problem is precisely the opposite: there are too many fanbois out there who will work themselves into a joyous lather over the faintest hint of SF they won’t care if the show’s unmitigated garbage. Until we make it clear to producers that we won’t buy ****, **** is all we’ll get
http://twitter.com/KlingonGuru Jim Yager

WHAT? Star Trek Enterprise was not a Time Travel show. It took place in th epast in the Star Trek world, but, STNG, DS9 and Voyager took place in the future so they are time travel shows as well? Its not the “concept” that makes a movie or show good, or, the CGI or FX, it’s a good solid story and characters that we care about. Then put them in a situation and we can explore it and live it along with them, that’s what makes a good story.. This aricle is nothiing more than empty ffill for a slow day. Of the movies mentioned 3 are re-makes, 4 are sequels one is reality based and 3 are original. Are we out of good ideas for movies, It looks like we are. Shoulod we re-make, ro, re-imagine everything? The star Trek re-boot in 2009 proved without and doubt that if done correct they can generate alot of interest and make money.
- JT
  
  It’s not the fact that it took place in the past that made Enterprise a time travel show, it’s the fact that the plot of the show centered around a Temporal Cold War which made it time travel focused.
Vermontist

I would encourage everyone who is looking for some new science fiction that will offer a positive view of humanities future, but also packed with fun and adventure to check out this new project being offered on Kick Starter called “Space Command” http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58936338/space-command
- http://www.facebook.com/NinjaNezumi Kevin Conner
  
  And check out my novel. It’s a historical sci fi fantasy novel about a black superhero set in the 1950s. Yes, science fiction can be historical and it can be any field of scientific study.
  http://www.facebook.com/thejohnrocket
http://www.facebook.com/NinjaNezumi Kevin Conner

Hey, Josh – Prometheus DOES deal with Time Travel, so your comment about how all “except Prometheus” deal with doomed humanity and time travel is incorrect.
- http://www.facebook.com/NinjaNezumi Kevin Conner
  
  And it deals with dooming humanity.
- JT
  
  It does? Have you seen it? Or am I just missing something in the trailers?
http://www.facebook.com/b.j.andersen7 Bj Andersen

The reason we’re getting a ton of “Dystopian Future” stuff the last few years is because many people see right now as the perfect time to allegory a dystopian future. Starting with the Bush II era & 9-11/Iraq/Afghanistan we have seen more & more “We’re DOOOOOOOMED” popular entertainment. This happens during times of actual social upheaval as people tend to be drawn to these tropes in movies/TV/books for the basic reason that they want to see people succeeding against those environments of war, terror, oppressive governments etc. When the economy starts getting better & people stop worrying about their jobs all pop culture will change including Sci-Fi. Doesn’t mean necessarily that it will get any better, just that it’ll change. Hopefully there are some brilliant Sci-Fi stories out there waiting to be told-I’ll look forward to them whether there are Zombies, Big Brothers, Klingons, Q, Empires or whatever else.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Chad-Lynch/100002467611215 Chad Lynch

Call me when A&E does a Wildcard series
Owfyc

2001: a Space Odyssey isn’t on here!?
mike

This is all too true. I’ve penned a Scifi novel that takes a very different and unique approach. I just wish I had the contacts that the people who keep on writing the same old stories do!
mike

One other thing to complain about: The use of special effects to make up for the lack of a descent story and the inclusion of beautiful women to offset bad acting. Also Hollywood needs to learn that you can’t just keep rehashing the same stories over and over again until you get them right (or at least profitable).
http://twitter.com/umbrarchist umbrarchist

The problem is people don’t take good science fiction seriously and actually THINK and try to understand the science. It’s 43 years after the Moon landing. How can anyone who actually comprehends STEM, Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, not understand that planned obsolescence has been going on in cars for ages?

DUH!

Oh yeah, we are supposed to pay attention to SCIENTISTS. Do Scientists have any idea how skyscrapers must be designed to hold themselves up? Oh yeah, 200 ton airliner totally destroys skyscraper 2000 times its own mass in less than two hours and you complain about SCIENCE FICTION. Give me a break.

People who can’t comprehend science or don’t want to can’t appreciate science fiction that is worth paying attention to. 2001: A Spce Odyssey is better than 9/11. At least the physics looks like it could work.

But then people who can’t comprehend science can’t figure out if global warming is a real possibility. So the Post-apocalyptic theme makes sense. Apocalypse via stupidity.

Try Rite of Passage by Alexei Panshin. Better than Hunger Games.
Granorg

call me a fogey if you like, but I do agree with the points made here about the lack of inovation in sci fi, and while I have enjoyed many of the new films and remakes such as star trek, it has to be said that some of my personal favourate sci fi films are from the 50′s. For example, forbidden planet, the day the earth stood still and the quatermass films, ok, some of you will scoff, but these were classics, many made during a period in the world when everyone was scared of ending up a frazzled radioactive ash pile. For example, the day the earth stood still, the original, not the ghastly remake, was clearly inspired about our fears of a nuclear war, gort being the nuke, that once set to its course, cannot be stopped, all wrapped up in a gripping story with little or no big ass special effects. A master piece of story telling. Then we have Forbidden planet, again, a film that was about the story and not just lots of big set piece moments, yes, the special effects were amazing, especially for the day, but it was a really good story, and well acted. Coming somewhat more upto date, Blade Runner is another example of a fantastic story, that didn’t have to lean on its awesome special effects, but rather a gripping story to draw those that watched it, a film that makes you stop and ask questions for years to come, my buddies and I still can’t agree on the whole our hero a replicant or not?.. thats the sign of a good movie, book, tv show, something that makes you use your mind not just you eyeballs. Sadly, sci fi, as with horror, a lack of real exciting and interesting new ideas, which is sad, yes, the big studios are all just looking to make mony, and yes, I do go and watch the big budget lots of stuff blowing up cgi romp fests, cause like many, sometimes, i don’t wanna have to use my brain, but I would love to see sci fi get its magic back, I love a good sci fi movie, book, show, but lets get some new material. There is an australian auther called Matthew Reilly, the guys books are awesome, with a heavy sci fi slant, lots of action, but also really good characters and good plots, I love this guys work, yet, not one studio has made any serious attempt to put one of his books up on the screen, why?… the pace of the books rads like a fast flowing pulse racing movie already, if new material/ideas/writers are in short supply, then here is one they should approach. ok, thats my bit said, I’m off to wait for the rest of you to rip me to bits.
- Granorg
  
  p.s. sorry for the fractured grammer, am on a break from work and kept getting interrupted, I hope you can all still fallow my attempt at logic. Granorg
- M&Ns
  
  We might see Matthew Reilly’s work movie-fied someday; it seems in their desperate effort to avoid too much actual creativity and risk on their part, those producing movies are turning to popular books as a source material occasionally. Harry Potter. The Road. The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit. Hunger Games. Twilight. The Lorax. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The Children of Men (too old to include?). (new Dune, Alice in Wonderland, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but are they remakes of movies or based on the books?)
David Tkach

I would say that at least one startlingly good exception to the glut of recent time travel movies is Primer, in which time travel is a way of exploring the nature of identity and choice. Also, the story of its production (for $7000!) is incredible.
http://www.facebook.com/dalehoppert Dale Hoppert

BRAVO, Josh. I could not agree more. Where is hope, nobility, heroism? The genre doens’t need more dystopianism and it doesn’t even need more Star Trek. It needs the NEXT Star Trek. A new vision of a future worth striving for.
Subsplot

You’ve missed a huge point with Dredd, it may be dystopian but humanity is in no way doomed in it, more humans live in Mega City One than are alive now and MC1 is one of about 30 mega cities. Half the reason why the world is so chaotic is because it’s at the center of a huge interplanetary trade and travel network that constantly brings food, materials and new life to the shattered world while constantly ferrying away anyone with any intelligence or desire to make something of them selves. (These people also have a tendency to go off into cursed Earth to try and re-cultivate at least some of the land.) The only reason the writers felt the need to start writing the huge apocalyptic storylines was to keep the population under control and to stop them making the Judges redundant by turning the place into a very weird utopia.

And just like Dr Who it should be noted that Dredd, or more specifically the comic it comes from (2000AD) is an original, before it was all superhero’s and WWII comics. Launched in 1977 it actually predates the franchises such as Starwars & Aliens, although admittedly it has more in common with Mad Max and Blade Runner.

Oh and to really wind you up, Dredd features a hell of a lot of time travel.
Angry Reader

You got complaints, you want ligher SciFi, stop groaning about it online and write it yourself!
http://www.facebook.com/noahlot Noah Mullette-Gillman

There’s a reason that the “doomed” stories are so popular. It’s not that writers and directors think they will sell, it’s that we feel like we need them. The idea of a bright and shiny future now seems naive and unlikely. It’s a reflection on our society. Our nation and our civilization was brought into decline over the last 30 years and we feel, in our souls, that things are going to only get worse.

The advantage we get from shows like The Walking Dead, movies like The Book of Eli, or books like The Road or Luminous and Ominous is that we get to try and SOLVE the problems. We get to face our fears and hit back. We need doomed fantasy right now, so we can plan how to fight back against the scary future we expect.

When our present becomes more optimistic, we will be ready for bright space-ships and costumes again… but not yet.
- M&Ns
  
  “We need doomed fantasy right now” Nooooo! Pls don’t conflate science fiction with fantasy; they are distinctly different genres. And cross overs between the two usually just turn out to be futuristic settings for fantasy, which I still enjoy. But science fiction needs to be actually plausible according to the best of human knowledge; scientifically determined knowledge; science. If it isn’t, it’s bad sci fi or not sci fi imo.
  - http://www.facebook.com/tdibble11 Tom Dibble
    
    “fantasy” was used as a general term for something which is not reality (ie, fiction), not “Fantasy” the genre which is decidedly not science fiction yet gets lumped in along with science fiction in every bookstore and movie rental house nationwide. So, a point for a correct statement, but minus a point for taking offense at an innocent poster who did not say what you thought he’d said.
  - Red
    
    Science Fiction needs to be SCIENCE… Complete opposite my friend… -_-
    - http://www.facebook.com/sylvain.pimpare Sylvain Pimpare
      
      Agreed but in a society who still believe that we went on the Moon even if that’s impossible to survive the cosmic radiations below our protective magnetosphere, it’s hard for those people to known about REAL science by being brainwashed by the Mass Media.
not an filmophile

Don’t get me wrong, I hate all movies
who don’t have an SF thematic, but the problem with
“science-fiction” is that SF stories have no narrative so an SF
gimmick is used to move things along. That is less an issue of
commercializing intellectual products, and more an issue of lacking
imagination.

I like the first “Planet of the apes”
movie, even tho there’s some plot holes: what about the findings of
the people in the cave – the protagonist recognizes, based on their
skeleton, that they are not the same kind of humans as he himself,
but one of those people had an cardiac pacemaker; and than there’s
the plastic doll – an plastic material wold turn to plastic dust
after an few centuries, the plastic dust wold than need thousands of
years to decompose, but after only an few century’s there wold be no
plastic object left to be recognizable as an doll. So an completely
new human species at our technical development level goes extinct,
and at the most five hundred years later there’s an new genus of apes
who talk English and who are at least on the sixteenth
century technical development level (they have guns), and the
“Liberty statue” enclosed by volcanic rock [W.T.F.]. The
possibility’s are endless. [O yeah there's also numb humans of
today, on the technical development level of the stone age]. I don’t
think that “Below the Planet of the apes” answers these questions
and I also don’t like the movie (its an pointless “cash donkey”).

The first “Alien” movie, and the
first “The Thing” movie are O.K , the first “Time machine”
movie is satisfactory…. And all other SF movies suck (the first
part of the first “War of the worlds” movie is more than O.K ,
but the rest of that movie is B.S.).
RINOVirus

What the writer is talking about in this article is just a symptom of a greater problem. This same general issue has seized hold of every media entertainment form available to us from music, tv, movies and even recently video games.
In this era, in any creative effort there are two groups involved in making it. The first group is the content creator, the people that dream these things up. I’m talking about writers, directors, musicians, actors, Then you have the second group: the beancounters, the investors, executives, accountants and lawyers. The second group basically has all the money that the first needs to create. This group has been the downfall of modern creativity. You basically have people who have zero creative ability with control over the creative process. To them originality or quality take second place to dollar signs. Their answer always has been and always will be to retool everything to cater to the least common denominator to maximize profit.
When these people focus on actually making a quality product ass opposed to just making money then that will work. If something is good enough it will make money regardless.
- John
  
  I’m pretty sure the ancient Greeks were making the same complaint.
http://profiles.google.com/neotechni Techni Myoko

”
Did we really need The Time Traveler’s Wife? ”

Yes. It was vastly superior to the hot tub time machine
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=619933278 Angel Samuel Mendez

Hollywood does this with everything it touches. “The Poseidon Adventure” was a great disaster movie/drama from the 70′s with memorable performances. “Poseidon” however, was trash. It’s having the same effect on science fiction.
rafael607

no offense, man, but this article is 100% subjective. i love the current state of sci fi. i actually think it’s stronger than ever.
- Pervy McDirty
  
  It’s all not worth a tinker’s dam,with the exception of the Avengers. That thing is golden.
  - M&Ns
    
    Avengers isn’t science fiction; its fantasy by definition. Throwing a few metal suits and guns into a flick doesn’t make it science fiction; it has to include some actual science lol.
    - CP7
      
      There’s science in Avengers. But you all just speak of tv and movies. Remember that was a comic long before the recent film. And the film talks of using iridium to maintain a anti-matter supported wormhole.
      - http://www.facebook.com/tdibble11 Tom Dibble
        
        But, at its core, there is a strong non-scientific element, which makes decidedly non-realistic resolutions to problems possible and even predominant. That’s the definition of Fantasy, versus Science Fiction.
http://twitter.com/techsean Sean OConnell

This is why I’m supporting the Space Command movie kickstarter project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/58936338/space-command I want a better future in film.
jkokich

Brilliant article and spot on!
gamesinner

Original ideas are a thing of the past in the US. There are no more risk takers just politically correct rehashes of what’s been done before. It’s the fall of Rome.
- M&Ns
  
  I can’t believe you’re trying to pin pathetic state of sci fi in the USA on the “politically correct” instead of the Hollywood capitalists who are responsible fro recent drivel. Political correctness is why no black slaves are featured in representations of our future; it’s got nothing to do with the poor writing, acting, direction or timid producing we’re seeing.
Ben F

I think you might be conflating the term “doomed” with “threatened.” Few of these films are actually about the extinction of the human race.

Nearly all movies about threats to and even the near-extinction of the human race aren’t about doom, they’re about hope. They’re about interconnection and love, about finding reasons to live and the will to make it happen. About appreciating what precious and irreplaceable things we have.

Science fiction isn’t destroying itself or anything else. It has only just begun in recent history, and will continue to grow and shift and branch out into new things. The problem is the marketing and sales of fiction in a corporate economy where businesses funding these projects are looking for the next big thing or sticking with formulas they think work. So no, it’s not the writers who are to blame, and there is no lack of innovation on the bookshelves. It’s Hollywood, silly.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=557559505 Rick Thatcher

The problem with current sci fi isn’t dystopian futures, and it isn’t time travel. It’s shit writing and shit acting. Don’t make excuses for it. Those premises can still be compelling, they just need to be backed up with solid writing and some decent performances.
- Mohoho the first
  
  True: Poor quality / depth level / credibility of script
  with a poor illustration of theme (time travel/threat to humanity doomsday etc) at the center of plot without anything worth a nod around
  
  BUT to that you can add the overall overuse of said themes and exasperation in seeing again and again the same mediocrity…and making money again on non sci-fi fans wallets.
- Kelly
  
  Agreed, I have seen so many instances on TV and in movies of fantastic dystopian and/or time travel storylines. Maybe the general plot itself is what needs to change instead of using the same formula over and over. THese are just plot devices; write a better story.
  
  PS, Time Traveler’s Wife doesn’t necessarily imply an only sci-fi themed movie, especially since it was based off a pretty darn good book, but it does involve an aspect used a lot in sci fi. Not really the same thing.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Emile-Lamarque/564650145 Emile Lamarque
  
  EXACTLY! THIS JOURNALIST IS A TWAT!
- grant landis
  
  Though I disapprove of the profanity, I agree with your point. The superhero genre is all over the place, but the journalist didn’t feel the need to complain about superheroes.
  - http://www.facebook.com/peter.robertson Peter Robertson
    
    maybe because those movies are well-made, popular and feature charismatic acting and directig. Superhero movies are in their heyday.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Todd/100000659962886 Brian Todd

Bring Back Jericho! We need more DOOM! Sorry to break it to you folks but we are actually doomed. Notice the summers getting hotter, the winters getting warmer. Notice how the economy is in a rut no matter who is in charge. We’re not running the economy the right way. We’re not protecting the environment. Also notice nuclear threats, terrorism, developing technologies that pose a threat ie; robotics, nanotech, biotech. Notice the piles of garbage bigger than a country. This spells doom for us all, and I think shows like The Walking Dead and Falling Skies speak to this sense of looming dread of the future that many people feel, and that is why those shows are such a success. Star Trek is not reality. We will never reach the stars, not for hundreds of years, but by that time the Earth will be a wasteland.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Todd/100000659962886 Brian Todd

test.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Bf-Caffrey/100000376924378 B.f. Caffrey

Two “Thumbs up” for the opinion piece. Right on the money. Star Trek’s franchise succeeded because it gave us hope that our future would be as we viewed it. For the same reason, Sci-Fi authors like Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Assimov, Clarke, et al. painted a future history that showed mankind spreading throughout the universe. These writers tickled our imagination and made us eager to explore the universe. There’s nothing wrong with an “alien invasion” movie, as long as it’s not predicting a dismal you’re-screwed-with-no-hope future of enslavement. Even if we just barely manage to run the beggars off (for the sequel) it’s the kind of optimism people want.
Just like the optimism in Jericho or the staunch faith of The Book of Eli.
http://www.facebook.com/nathan.p.kennedy Nathan Paul Kennedy

By it’s very nature entertainment is cyclical. Just looks at the Sci-Fi being produced at the beginning and middle of the 70′s (Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, A Clockwork Orange, Death Race 2000, Westworld), all miserable, downbeat “the end is nigh” kind of stuff. By the end of the 70′s we’d had Star Wars, Flash Gordon, Superman and Star Trek: TMP. Not all of the doom and gloom stuff was banished, but a lot of cheerful movies were coming out. Same in the early 90′s with music, it was all slit-your-wrists moaning about things then suddenly Brit-pop came along and changed the world!

My point is, people like something for a while, then they want something different. Sooner or later it swings back to something you’ll like, in the meantime, that’s what DVD boxsets are for!
ZNickel

Quote from SGA: “My dad always hated the phrase “Save the Planet”, the Earth will still keep on turning, just without us.”
ZNickel

What I’m saying is bring STARGATE back!

Giant Freakin Robot