Currently I am working on editing an author’s book that is to be published next month (by another publishing house—not Roundtable). It’s science fiction, which is a genre I’m not that familiar with, as sci-fi never held any fascination for me, either to read or to write. But working on this book has gotten me thinking about the genre overall. Inarguably, despite the fact that I am not a fan, it has a wide following. Why?
It’s an action-adventure class of story, which has always appealed to men. Back quite a few decades ago, western novels, also an action-adventure genre, were massively popular. Overwhelmingly the readers were male. Sci-fi readers are also more male than female, but I think more women read sci-fi than the number who read westerns back in the day. Again, the question comes to mind: Why?
I think part of the answer can be found in the depictions of futuristic life. I don’t refer to the inventions, the “Beam me up, Scotty” transporters and the like. Rather, I am thinking of the interpersonal relations and the inter-ethnic harmony. We Earthlings and our interplanetary cohorts may still be fighting bad guys in these stories, but on board our spaceships and in our extraplanetary colonies, Blacks and Whites live together, Russians and Americans get along fine, women have unquestioned leadership roles, and we even get on great with the Worfs and Spocks of other planets.
In this idealized world, we have “given peace a chance” (thank you, John Lennon), and while we may be at war with the inhabitants of another galaxy or another solar system, we are not threatening each other with nuclear annihilation here on Earth any longer. Neither are we subjugating or trivializing any person because of his or her gender, skin color, nationality, or disability.
Back here on Earth in 2018, we are slowly improving our attitudes. Did anyone dare call Stephen Hawking a “crip”? No, we admired the man both for his sheer intelligence AND for his ability to overcome adversity. And although America has yet to elect its first woman president, other countries have or have had female leaders. Two men can hold hands in public without being stoned or spat upon. And interracial couples don’t raise anywhere near the number of eyebrows they used to. Yes, we’re making progress, albeit slowly,
If ever we reach the point at which these circumstances all become commonplace and not just the stuff of science fiction, will sci-fi retain its allure on just the strength of its action-adventure component, or will a new genre rise up to overtake it the way sci-fi overtook the once-popular “shoot-’em-ups”? I wonder what we will be reading then—and how long it will take us to get to that point?