But I am certainly not advocating or even justifying such bleak works as are cropping up nowadays. I think over-reacting to the perils of science can be as dangerous as painting science in purely optimistic colors. I’d just like to see more critical thinking in general. If you’re going to write SF, please have considered science seriously on some level. You can still make it fun for the reader.

My main problem with Mendlesohn’s article was that she seems to so thoroughly compartmentalize the genre that it no longer needs to speak to or about science. It seems irresponsible to me.

As for contemporary adult SF, I suppose some of it is doom-laden and some of it isn’t. I don’t know how to weigh adult against youth categories.

I think perhaps the reason “the future can’t be fun” is because we have reached a critical point where the consequences of techno-science can no longer be ethically ignored. We don’t need to demonize it outright, but it doesn’t make sense to glorify it in “shiny” ways either.

It is particularly frustrating for me that Farah Mendlesohn doesn’t seem to take into account the greater context such works are created in, and the fact that many of those “bright, shiny” works often carried xenophobic undertones typical of the Cold War. Many, also, were in fact very much cautionary tales and presented critiques of scientific endeavors.

Of course, I’m generally unclear as to why Mendlesohn chooses the generation of “any science fiction reader over forty” as a standard for such nostalgia in the first place. There was earlier SF, of course, tracing even back to 17th-century Utopian novels. Cyrano de Bergerac’s travels to the sun and moon were pretty fun, right? Or are we too far removed from that context? Because today’s generations of young readers seem pretty far removed from the context Mendlesohn holds up as the gold standard. Or perhaps I should say “absorbed by” rather than “removed from.” At any rate, it seems too much like the sort of generational put-down Mendlesohn rightly condemns. I mean, was your future REALLY so much better than theirs? Because it doesn’t particularly feel like it’s turning out as advertised.

I don’t know, perhaps I’m missing something here. I certainly don’t mean to make a rant, but having read Baudrillard’s essays on SF and (especially) the general work of Paul Virilio has made me perhaps overly cautious of “bright, shiny futures.” These are pieces of our contemporary mythology, not just products in a vacuum. They do have effects on the world beyond themselves.