Although we science fiction writers like to claim that we predict or foreshadow the future in our work, historically our record isn’t really as great as we’d like to think, for a number of reasons, some of which I’ve discussed in previous blogs.

Arthur C. Clarke predicted communications satellites and the like very early and effectively, something like 60 years ago, but he also predicted we’d have cities on the moon and be able to travel to Jupiter by 2001. That was six years ago, and the way things are going, it may be sixty before any of that occurs — if it does at all. In The Forever War, Joe Haldeman predicted that we’d have interstellar travel by now. Isaac Asimov did all right in anticipating the hand-held computer/calculator [as he said, he even got the colors of the display for the first calculators right], but we’re nowhere close to his pocket-size fusion generators, intelligent humanoid robots, or even affordable automatic irising doors. Most of my incorrect speculations lie in my early short stories, and I’m content to let them remain there in obscurity. I tend not to have made as many incorrect speculations in recent years, not because I’m necessarily brighter than other writers, but because all of my SF novels are set far enough in the future that enough time has not yet passed to reveal where I may have been wrong. Writing the near future is indeed a humbling experience, and I prefer not to be humbled in that fashion.

For one reason or another, many of the past staples of science fiction have never come to be. We don’t have wide-scale use of personal hovercraft or helicopters, and likely never will. Despite quantum mechanics and linked electrons, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever have instant doors or transporters to other locales, even on earth. And for all the speculations about genetic engineering [or natural mutations] that will bring agelessness or immortality to us, research to date seems to suggest that while life spans can be extended and physical health as we age greatly improved, there are several biological stone walls to attaining great age, let alone immortality, one of which is that greater cellular regenerative capacity appears to be linked to greater carcinogenic propensity. As for a cloned copy of you — or me — that’s not going to happen anytime soon, either, if ever, because recent research appears to indicate that even identical twins aren’t, due to prenatal conditions, genetic “expression,” and other factors.

Against this backdrop, I am pleased to announce that astronomers have just discovered a billion light-year long void in the universe, a space absolutely devoid of normal matter, without stars or galaxies. A full report will appear in a future edition of Astrophysical Journal. For those of you who have read The Eternity Artifact, you will understand my pleasure at having one of my speculations proved right. At this point, however, since the locale is more than 6 billion light years away, there is no way to ascertain whether the reason for this void is as I postulated in the book. But… I did put it in print almost three years before the void was discovered.

“Coincidence” or not, sheer undeserved good fortune or not, I’ll take consolation in having at least one of my far-fetched speculative postulates being confirmed.

The other day I received an interesting response to my blog about the impact of social change in science fiction on readership. The respondent made the point that she felt, contrary to my statements, that fantasy had more social change depicted in it because at least there were more strong female characters in fantasy. Depending on which authors one reads, this is a debatable point, but it raises a more fundamental question. Exactly what are social change — and feminism — all about, both in genre literature and society?

The other day there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal, which reported on the study of performance of mutual fund managements. The study concluded that the results from funds managed by all-male teams and those by all-female teams were essentially the same. The funds managed by mixed-gender teams reported significantly less profitable returns. The tentative rationale reported for such results was that mixed-gender teams suffered “communications difficulties.” Based on my years as a consultant and additional years as an observer of a large number of organizations, I doubt that “communications” are exactly the problem. In mixed-gender organizations, where both sexes have some degree of power and responsibility, I have noted that, almost inevitably, men tend to disregard women and their advice/recommendations to the degree possible. If their superior is a woman, a significant number tend to try to end-run or sabotage the female boss. If the superior is a male, because women professionals’ suggestions tend to get short shrift, the organization is handicapped because half the good ideas are missing, either because they’re ignored, or because women tend not to make them after a while. Maybe one could call that communications difficulties, but, as a male, I’d tend to call it male ego and insecurity.

What does this have to do with feminism in speculative fiction? A great deal, it seems to me, because merely changing who’s in control doesn’t necessarily change the dynamics below the top. This is one of the issues I tried to highlight in my own Spellsong Cycle, as well as in some of my science fiction. In “Houston, Houston, Do You Read,” the solution proposed by James Tiptree, Jr., [Alice Sheldon] was to eliminate the conflict by eliminating males. As a male, I do have a few problems with that particular approach.

In Sheri Tepper’s Gate to Women’s Country, the males get to choose to be “servitors” to women or warriors limited to killing each other off, while the “violence” gene [if not expressed in quite those terms] is bred out of the male side of the population.

Ursula K. LeGuin addressed the dynamics of gender/societal structure in The Left Hand of Darkness, suggesting, it seems to me, that a hermaphroditic society would tend to be just as ruthless as a gender polarized-one, if far more indirect, and not so bloodthirsty in terms of massive warfare.

In the end, though, the question remains. In either fiction or life, is feminism, or societal change, about a restructuring of the framework of society… or just about which sex gets to be in charge?

Heaven — or something — save us writers from the amateur reviewers, and some professionals, who pan a book with phrases similar to “trite plot” or “worn-out character type” or “overused plot device,” “all too typical young hero,” “standard PI,” etc., ad infinitum.

Far be it for me to be the one to say that all books all writers write are good. They aren’t. Nor will every book I write appeal to those who read my work. It won’t, and probably shouldn’t. But… those of you who are reviewers or who aspire to be reviewers, please, please, don’t display your ignorance by basing your judgments on “worn-out” character types or “overused plots.”

As Robert A. Heinlein noted in his “Channel Markers” speech to the U.S. Naval Academy more than 35 years ago, there are NO new plots. There are only a limited number of basic plots. As a result, there are no overused or trite plots. There are writers who handle plots badly, for a myriad of reasons, just as there are writers who handle them well. There are writers whose characters do not fit the plots, but the problems don’t lie in the “plot.” They lie in how the plot was or was not handled.

Almost every plot Shakespeare used in his plays was cribbed from somewhere else or someone else, but his work remains “fresh” and “original” after more than four centuries because of the way in which he handled those very common plot elements.

The same type of analysis applies to characters. Certain archetypes or types appear and reappear in novels, not because they’re tired or the authors are lazy, but because they’re necessary. If one writes a courtroom drama, there will be good attorneys and bad attorneys and brilliant attorneys. There may even be marginally competent attorneys and evil ones, but there won’t be moronic ones because they can’t pass the bar. Mercenaries will almost always be ex-military types, because that’s where one gets that kind of experience. Private investigators will almost always be ex-police or ex-military, or possibly disbarred attorneys, for the same reasons. In fantasy, knights should almost always be either wealthy or older retainers of the wealthy who have worked their way up from common armsmen, or professional military, because in any half-realistic society, those are the only way to gain the resources and experience. Pilots need to have a high degree of training and education and good reactions — and good judgment, because they’re in charge of rather expensive equipment and lives.

All too often both critics and social reformers tend to forget that stereotypes arise for a reason. They’re real. There are “good cops” and “bad cops.” And whether one likes it or not, if you see a large minority male in gang-like attire emerging from an alley and heading in your direction at night, discretion is indeed the better part of valor, stereotype or no stereotype. The same is true of the sharp-dressing WASP male who wants to sell you a large bridge for the smallest of sums. Obviously, stereotypes and archetypes can be and are overused, but slavish avoidance of such is as much a contrivance as overuse.

Likewise, try not to criticize a writer because he or she writes a particular kind of book. I don’t see reviewers trashing mystery writers, or “literary” writers, or romance writers because they write the same type of book time after time. One can note that the writer continues to write a particular type of book — but if you say that, make sure that’s all that writer writes. You can certainly point out that the writer didn’t handle it as well as in the past — or that the writer improved, but don’t trash it because you wanted the writer to write something different.

So… if you want to review… go ahead. Just try to do it with a touch of professionalism and understanding.

Recently, Steven King wrote an essay that appeared in The New York Times suggesting, at least as I read it, that one of the reasons for the decline of short fiction was that all too many short works of fiction were written for the editors and the critics, and not necessarily for the readers. Among the host of those who have commented, Scott Edelman, the editor of SciFi Weekly, has just written a response that points out that, while it wasn’t King’s intention, effectively King has said to readers that there are so few good short fiction stories that all of the good ones are in King’s anthology and that readers really didn’t have to look farther.

Both King and Edelman are correct in noting that the short fiction market is “broken.” After all, eighty years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald was paid as much for any number of his stories sold to popular magazines that just two story sales in a year earned him more than the average annual earnings of either doctors or U.S. Congressmen — and he sold far more than two stories a year. Even then it took money to live in Paris.

There are some gifted short fiction writers in F&SF, and so far as I know, not a one of them can make a living purely off short fiction. By some counts more than a thousand short speculative fiction stories are published annually. This sounds impressive, unless you know that around a thousand original speculative fiction novels are published every year, and novels pay quite a bit more. The sales of major F&SF print magazines have been declining for years, and until the advent of Jim Baen’s Universe last year, the rates paid for short fiction have been low, and essentially static.

It’s also a well-known, if seldom-stated, fact that the majority of F&SF magazines are edited as much to promulgate and further the editorial preferences of the editors as to appeal to the full range of potential readers.

Jim Baen was well aware of these facts, and so is Eric Flint. That, as I understand it, was the reason why they created Jim Baen’s Universe, the online magazine. In fact, Eric once told me that his goal was not to publish stories designed to win awards, but to publish outstanding stories that would entertain and challenge readers, and that he felt that too many editors had lost sight of that goal. So far as I’ve been able to determine, Universe has a higher rate scale for writers than any of its F&SF contributors, and Eric and Mike Resnick are obviously working hard to create a magazine that will boost the F&SF short fiction market and increase reader interest.

Yet, interestingly enough, neither King nor Edelman ever mentioned Universe, and how it came to be, and Edelman certainly ought to have been aware of it. Why didn’t he mention it? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s a part of the debate/issue that shouldn’t be ignored.

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?