As I noted in passing in my earlier blog, various “authorities” have suggested for at least close to twenty years that one of the reasons why science fiction readership has dropped off, and it has, at least in relative terms as a percentage of the population, and even possibly in absolute terms, is because all the themes that were once the staple of science fiction are now scientifically possible and have often been done. We have put astronauts in orbit and sent them to the moon, and the reality is far less glamorous than the “Golden Age” SF writers made it seem. We have miniaturized computers of the kind that only Isaac Asimov forecast in work published around 1940. We have lasers — and so far they don’t work nearly so well as the particle beams in Clarke’s Earthlight or the lasers in 2001. We’ve created a supersonic passenger aircraft and mothballed it.

These reasons all sound very plausible, but I’m not so certain that they’re why SF readership has dropped off and why fantasy readership has soared. Earlier, I also explored this in terms of the “magic society,” but my personal feeling is that there is also another reason, one that has to do with people — both readers and the people and societies depicted in much current SF… and that includes mine, by the way.

Socially, human beings are incredibly conservative. We just don’t like to change our societies and domestic arrangements. Revolutions do occur, but just how many of them really end up in radically changing society? When MacArthur “restructured” Japanese society after WWII, the economic and political bases were changed dramatically, but the domestic and social roles remained virtually unchanged for another forty years. It really wasn’t until the 1990s when significant numbers of Japanese young women decided they didn’t want to follow the roles laid out by their mothers. Corrupt as he may have been, one of the largest factors leading to the overthrow of the Shah of Iran was that he was pressing to change social and religious structures at a rate faster than his people could accept.

While at least some of us in the United States like to think that we’re modern and progressive, has anyone noticed that “traditional” marriage is making a come-back? It’s making so much of a come-back that gays and lesbians want the benefits and legal structure as well. Despite the growth of the number of women in the workplace, women still do the majority of domestic chores, even when they’re working the same hours as their husbands, and the vast majority of CEOs and politicians are still male.

Now… what does this have to do with SF readership?

I’d submit that there’s a conflict between what’s likely technically and what’s likely socially, and social change will be far slower than predicted. In fact, that’s already occurred.

When my book Flash was published several years ago, one of the reviewers found it implausible that private schools would still exist some 200 years in the future in North America. I’d already thought about this, but the fact is that the traditional school structure goes back over 2,000 years. The structure works, if it’s properly employed, as many, many private schools and some charter schools can prove, and with 20 centuries of tradition, it’s not likely to vanish soon.

Yet more than a few books suggest the wide-spread growth of computerized learning, radical new forms of social engagement, and the like. Much of this will never happen. Look at such internet “innovations” as E-Harmony, Chemistry.com, etc. They aren’t changing the social dynamics, but using technology to reinforce them. Women still trade primarily on sex appeal and men on looks, power, and position. They just start the process electronically.

Most readers don’t really want change; they only want the illusion of change. They want the old tropes in new clothes or new technology, but most of them want old-style men in new garb, and brilliant women who are sexy, but still defer to men who sweep them off their feet.

Again… I’m not saying this is true of all readers, and it’s probably not true of the majority of SF readers. But, as a literature of ideas and exploration, the more that SF explores and challenges established social dynamics, the fewer new readers it will attract, particularly today, when it’s becoming harder and harder to create true intellectual challenge, because so few people want to leave their comfort zones. That’s an incredible irony, because our communications technologies have made it easier and easier for people to avoid having their preconceptions challenged.

Most fantasy, on the other hand, merely embellishes various existing social structures with magic of some sort, and it’s becoming increasingly popular every year. Perhaps that’s because, like it or not, technology has made one fundamental change in our economic and social structure, and that is the fact that physical strength is no longer an exclusively predominant currency in determining income levels. More and more women are making good incomes, often more than their husbands or other males with whom they interact. Sociological studies suggest that male-female relationships often reach a crisis at the point where the woman gains more income, power, or prestige than the man. It’s unsettling, and it’s happening more and more.

Enter traditional fantasy, with its comforting traditional structures. Now… isn’t that a relief?

When ANALOG published my first story, there really wasn’t that much of a fantasy genre. Oh, Tolkein had published the Lord of the Rings, and there were some Andre Norton witchworld novels, as I recall, and Jack Vance had published The Dying Earth, but fantasy books were vastly outnumbered by science fiction novels. Today, virtually every editor I know is looking for good science fiction. They can find plenty of decent, if not great, fantasy novels and trilogies to publish [good short fantasy stories are another matter].

What happened?

First, over the last forty years science got popular, and simultaneously more accessible and more complicated than ever. Second, technology complicated everyone’s life. Third, the computer made the physical process of writing easier than ever before in history. And fourth, the world became “magic.”

Science is no longer what it once was. Philo Farnsworth was a Utah farm boy, and effectively he invented television on his farm. RCA stole it from him, but that’s another story, and the important point is that one man, without a research laboratory, made the key breakthroughs. Likewise, Goddard did the same thing for the rocket. Earlier, of course, the Wright brothers made the airplane possible. Today, science breakthroughs that effectively change society require billions of dollars and teams of scientists and engineers. Writing about the individual in a meaningful sense in this context becomes difficult, and even if an author does it well, it’s usually not that entertaining to most readers. Add to that what science and technology have delivered to the average North American or European. We have near-instant world-wide communications, travel over thousands of miles in mere hours, pictures of distant galaxies and the moons orbiting distant planets in our own solar system, lights that can be turned on with a handclap, voice activated equipment… the list is seemingly endless. So much of what once was science fiction is now reality.

As I’ve noted in a previous blog, technology is no longer the wonder it once was. Too often technology becomes the source of strain and consternation, and for all that it delivers, most people want to escape from its stress and limitations. Admittedly, many of them use it for escape into forms of alternative reality, but more and more readers don’t want to read about technology.

Then there’s the impact of the computer, which makes the physical process of writing easier. It doesn’t, however, make the process of learning and understanding science and technology easier, and understanding science is generally useful for writing science fiction. So what do so many of those would-be speculative fiction writers concentrate on? Fantasy and its offshoots.

But the biggest factor, I believe, is that we now live in a “magic world.” A little more than a century ago, if one wanted light, it required making a candle or filling a lantern with expensive oil and threading a wick and using a striker or a new-fangled match to light the lantern or candle. Today… plug in a lamp and flip a switch. How does it work? Who knows? Most young people would have a hard time explaining the entire process behind that instant light. In a sense, it’s magic. Once transportation meant a long slow walk, or feeding, saddling, grooming a horse, taking care of the animals, breeding them, and still having to make or purchase bridles, saddles, and the like. Today, step into a car and turn the key. In more than 95% of all cars the transmission is automatic, and, again, how many people can even explain what a transmission or a differential does? It’s magic. You don’t have to understand it or explain it. I could go through example after example, but the process — and the results — would be the same.

As a society, we act as though almost all our physical needs are met by magic. Even the environmentalists believe in magic. How would many of them deal with the coal-fired power plants that fuel so much of our magic? By replacing them with solar and wind power, of course. But building solar cells creates much more pollution than using a coal-fired power plant for the same amount of power. And wind turbines, while helpful, cannot be counted on to provide a constant and continuing power source for our magic.

This mindset can’t help but carry over into what we do for entertainment. We act as though our society’s needs are met by magic, and we want to escape the incredible stress and complexity beneath the surface of our magic society. How many readers really want to deal with those factors, accelerated as they will be in the future? [And don’t tell me that technology will make things simpler. It never has. Physically easier, but not simpler. Allowing individuals to do more in the same amount of time, but only at the cost of more stress.]

To me, the “magic society” has far more to do with the comparative growth of the popularity of fantasy and the comparative decline of science fiction than the fact that we’ve reached the moon and surveyed planets and their satellites.

Have you noticed how “stressed” everyone is today? Professionals, white collar workers, tech workers, sales workers, even high school and college students all complain about being stressed or overstressed. Many older Americans dismiss such complaints as the whining of a younger generation, a group that just can’t take it… but are these complaints mere whining… or do they have a basis in fact?

One fact is fairly clear. Americans today, on average, have a better life than did Americans seventy-five or a hundred years ago. Very, very few in the work force today had to live through the Great Depression. Nor do they have to worry about children dying of polio and whooping cough. The statistics show that most people are living longer and doing so in better health. There is a greater range of choice in occupations, and more Americans are able to get [and do obtain] higher education. The size of the average house is larger, and most houses have conveniences hardly imaginable a century ago. Although the average American work week is now longer than that of all other industrialized western nations, it’s far less physically arduous than the work of a century ago.

So why the complaints about stress?

Technology — that’s why. It’s everywhere, and it’s stressing us out in more ways than one. Those scanners in supermarkets and every other store? They not only ring up the sales and feed into inventory calculations, but they also rate the checkers on how fast and efficiently they handle customers. I knew this in the back of my head, so to speak, but it was brought home to me when a single mother who was a checker at a local store told me she’d been demoted to the bakery because she didn’t meet speed standards.

Computers, especially those with color graphics and associated high speed printers are another source of stress. Why? Because they successfully invite revision after revision by overcareful supervisors and clients. Do it over… and over… and over.

Then, there are instant messaging, emails, and texting. IMs and texting, especially among the young, lead to carelessness in spelling and grammar, and that feeds back into the need for those endless document revisions, because, believe it or not, those grammar and spell-checkers just don’t catch everything. Then… emails… which encourage everyone to get in on everything, until at times, it seems as though everyone is watching and looking for ways to make completing anything difficult. On top of that, add bosses who feel slighted if one doesn’t answer emails quickly, and all that answering and justifying and explaining doesn’t get the projects done. It just takes up time that can’t be used to do real work, a problem that some supervisors just don’t get.

As for students, keeping in touch through the technology of cell-phones, emails, and texting seems to occupy their every waking, walking, and driving moment. Add to that the allure of the wonders of hundreds of cable or satellite channels, and the need to earn money for an ever-more expensive education — or vehicle payments — and they’re stressed out.

The impact of technology pervades everything. Computerized legal databases and software make litigation ever more complex — not to mention expensive and stressful.

Healthcare has even more problems. We have more than 47 million Americans without health insurance, and the number is growing faster than the population. Why? Because expenses are growing, thanks to a proliferation of medical technology and drugs that raises costs. When my grandfather was a doctor, diagnostic technology was essentially limited to a few blood tests, a stethoscope, and an X-ray machine. Today, the average doctor’s office is filled with equipment, and that equipment creates an expectation of perfect medicine. That expectation, combined with the opportunism of the technologized legal system, leads to far more litigation. That leads to higher malpractice insurance, and more stress on doctors and more and expensive tests and procedures to make sure that nothing gets missed — or to cover the doctor from legal challenges. It’s not uncommon for some medical specialties to have annual malpractice premiums in excess of $200,000 a year. Assume that a doctor actually sees patients 5 hours a day in the office some 50 weeks a year, the other time being spent in things like hospital rounds, reviewing charts, etc. Under those conditions, an annual malpractice premium requires a charge of more than an $80 an hour. If the doctor has a million dollars in medical and office equipment and that’s not unusual either, the amortization will be excess of $100 per patient hour seen. Needless to say this creates stress and pressure, and for all the complaints about the medical profession, doctors have one of the lower life expectancies of professionals.

In higher education, computerization has led to ubiquitous on-line evaluations and anonymous ratings of professors, and the subsequent inevitable grade inflation, because tenure often depends on pleasing the students. It’s also led to a proliferation of policies and procedures, so easily printed on those handy-dandy computerized systems. In my wife’s university, the policies and procedures for rank advancement and tenure have been rewritten and changed once or twice every year over the past decade, with scores of drafts being circulated electronically before each revision was finalized.

In effect, the expectations of technology have created more stress for modern society than the wind, rain, and inconsistent weather ever did for our agricultural forebears — largely because technology also makes people more and more accountable, even when they can’t do anything about it. The way technology is used today also creates what my father called “being eaten to death by army ants.” No one wants to kill you, but everyone wants a little something — reply to these emails, revise that set of documents, change that phrase to please the attorneys, change this one for the boss’s supervisor — and when it’s all said and done, who has time to do actual new work?

Yet, if you ignore the army ants, everyone thinks you’re difficult and uncooperative, and you lose your job. Is it any wonder that American professionals are working longer and longer hours?

But… ah, the blessings of technology.

Roughly twenty years ago, Allan Bloom published an incendiary book entitled The Closing of the American Mind. In it, Bloom charged that abandoning the traditional literary canon in favor of multiculturism and gender- and ethnic-based literary selections effectively had gutted the American liberal arts education. I’m oversimplifying his charges, but they run along those lines.

During the 1960s and 1970s, and thereafter, but particularly in those turbulent years, there were numerous and loud cries for “relevance” in higher education. Those cries reverberate today in such legislation as the No Child Left Behind Act and the growing emphasis on institutions of higher education as a version of white collar and professional trade schools. Less than ten percent of U.S. collegiate undergraduates major in what might be called “liberal arts,” as compared to twenty percent in business, sixteen percent in health, nine percent in education and six to ten percent in computer science [depending on whose figures one uses]. Less than three percent major in English and history combined.

As a writer who effectively minored in English, I’ve thought about the writers and poets I had to study in the late 1950s and early 1960s and those studied by students today. Back then, for example, there was a fairly strong emphasis on poets such as T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, and Wallace Stevens, none of whom are now listed as among the topmost poets assigned in college English classes. Now… times do change, but I realized that poets such as Eliot bring certain requirements that poets and writers such as Maya Angelou, Jane Austen, and Toni Morrison do not. For much of Eliot or Yeats to make sense, the student has to have a far wider grasp of literature and history. Much of the difference between those writers once assigned and those now assigned, from what I can tell, is that a far greater percentage of those now assigned are what one might call self-affirming writers. They affirm a set of values that are either explicitly contained in the work at hand, or they affirm current values. By contrast, poets such as Eliot and Yeats often question and use a wide range of references and allusions unfamiliar to most students, some of which are current and some of which are historical and few of which are “common” knowledge.

In that sense, the best of F&SF, in my opinion, is that which stretches the reader into considering old values in a new light and “new” values through the light of experience, accepting neither at face value. Many F&SF writers present the “new” in a way that proclaims its value uncritically, while others present and trash the “new,” as does Michael Crichton all so well. Then there are those who appear to believe that shocking readers is equivalent to making them think and stretching their horizons. Most of the time, it’s not.

According to Mark Lilla, a professor of political philosophy at Columbia, recently quoted in The New York Times, “What Americans yearn for in literature is self-recognition.” But struggling with unfamiliar themes and values, searching out allusions and references require work and can be an alienating to students, and certainly doesn’t boost self-recognition.

Particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it seemed to me, there was a concerted effort in the SF field to raise issues while adhering to some degree to the tradition of the “literary canon,” and this effort continues with at least some authors today. This melding represents, again in my opinion, one of the great strengths of the field, but paradoxically, it’s also another reason why F&SF readership tends to be limited, at least for these types of F&SF, because a reader either has to be knowledgeable or willing to expand his or her comfort zone.

This gets down to an issue at the basis of education, primarily but not exclusively higher undergraduate education: Is the purpose of higher education to train people for jobs or to teach them to think so that they can continue to learn? Most people would ask why both are not possible. Theoretically, they are, but it doesn’t work that way in practice. Job training emphasizes how to learn and apply skills effectively and efficiently. Thinking training makes one very uncomfortable; it should, because it should force the student out of his or her comfort zone. At one time, that was one of the avowed goals of higher education, and part of the so-called literary canon was chosen so as to provide not only that challenge but also a cultural history of values as illustrated by literature, rather than a mere affirmation of current values.

In addition, today, with the smorgasbord approach to education, a student can effectively limit himself or herself to the courses that merely reinforce his or her existing beliefs and biases. It’s comfortable… but is it education?

Once more, just the other day, someone said to me and my wife, “We never really went to the moon. It was all a fraud.” This person is not uneducated. In fact, the individual has an earned graduate degree and spent some fifteen years as an executive in the financial industry.

It doesn’t seem to matter to this individual — or the millions that share such a belief — that scientists are bouncing laser and radio beams off the reflectors left on the moon by our astronauts. Nor do the photographs and records that could not have been obtained any other way count against this belief. Nor the fact that ground-based and space-based evidence agree. Nor does the fact that we and other countries have put dozens of astronauts into space matter.

Nope. To such people, the moon landings were all a fraud.

Maybe this kind of belief has something to do with the brain. A recent study confirmed that there is indeed a difference between the way “liberals” and “conservatives” process and react to information, and that that difference goes far beyond politics. Liberals tend to be more open to new experiences, conservatives more entrenched and unwilling to move away from past beliefs. And, of course, interesting enough, there are those who classify themselves as liberals who actually have a conservative mind-set, who will not deviate from what they believe regardless of evidence, and there are those who claim that they are conservative who are very open to new evidence and ideas.

Neither mindset is necessarily “good” or “bad.” As many conservatives would say, and have, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” That can be very true. On the other hand, no matter how hard one wants to believe that the earth is flat, I’m sorry. It just isn’t. When new information arrives that is soundly and scientifically based, regardless of opinion and past beliefs, a truly intelligent person should be willing to look at it objectively and open-mindedly.

In a sense, I think, most people are basically conservative. We really don’t want to change what we believe without very good reason. In evolutionary, historical, and social terms, there are good reasons for this viewpoint. Just as in mutations affecting an organism, most changes in social and political institutions are bad. Only a few are for the best.

The problem occurs when the probability of danger from an event is not absolute, or unitary, as some economists put it, but still likely to occur, and when that occurrence would be catastrophic to the human race. Over the history of homo sapiens, some hundreds of thousands of years, or millions, depending on one’s definition of exactly when our forebears became thinking human beings, this kind of situation has not occurred until the past half century. While it might be unthinkable and improbable to most, a nuclear war would be devastating to the human race. So, it appears, will runaway global warming, regardless of cause.

The “conservative” view is to wait and let things sort themselves out. After all, hasn’t this worked throughout history? Well… not always, but in terms of survival and civilization, there was always someone else to carry on. When the Mayan civilization fell because they hadn’t planned well enough for unforeseen droughts, other human civilizations carried on. The same was true of the Anasazi, and now recent satellite measurements and photographs suggest that the same occurred to the Cambodian peoples who built Angkor Wat, then a city complex of over a million people, when drought struck in the 1500s.

But what happens when we as a race face a potential climate catastrophe as devastating as global warming could be? One that affects an entire world, and not just a continent or subcontinent? Can we afford to be conservative? Or is it a situation where, in reacting, we could fall for anything?

Is global warming a fraud perpetrated by scientists, as those who deny the moon landings believe about that? Or is it a real and present danger? Or is it over-hyped, the way all the warnings about DDT appear to have been – a real danger in limited areas and to certain species, but truly not the harbinger of a universal silent spring? And how should we react, whether conservative or liberal?