Lack of Imagination or Lack of Training or…
14. Feb, 2009 
8 Comments
I mentioned (before the long hiatus) that we had a roof leak.? As a result, I had to pack up the office/library (got some water stains on a book and lost a magazine as a result) and yesterday I spend about three-four hours re-sorting the paperbacks and packing them away in boxes again.? The boxes are nicely labelled and alphabetized, so it won’t be too difficult to track down a particular something I might be looking for – but boxes are absolutely no substitute for having shelves and being able to see spines.
While I was at it, I decided to leave a few choice volumes out – books others have mentioned recently, research volumes like Lundwall’s SF: What’s It All About? and some anthologies that I intend to mine for old SF stories that aren’t dated and stuff I just want to re-read.
A quickie I pulled out of the pack is Heinlein’s The Rolling Stones.? I can breeze through RAH (since I’ve read everything multiple times before), I haven’t cracked TRS for quite some time and I figured it would be a good one to try a test out on.
The chief charge leveled at SF pre 90s is that it is dated.? Technology is old, the society being reflected is dead and gone, the language the characters use has unrecognizable slang in it.?
So I steeled myself and dove in, keeping an eye out for every single instance that the tech, language, mores, etc., jarred with current reality.
I’m not quite done, but here are a few things I found:
Cas and Pol (the twin brother main characters) are going to be late for dinner – but never reach for a cell phone.? In fact, cell phones don’t seem to exist. (Despite Heinlein’s earlier reference – perhaps the first one in SF – to such devices in another novel.)
Much reference is made to zip-squealing messages with ‘tapes’ (one presumes miniature magnetic tape).?
Onboard ship computers are restricted to carrying out ballistic operations – no?reference is made to other uses like games or video, etc.
Communications is by radio – no microwaves.
The twins ‘flip a switch’ to turn the page on their electronic book reader.
Sliderules are routinely used for solving mathematical equations.
Other than that (so far), nothing that brought my hyper awareness up short.? Oh, I’m sure I missed a few things – I have read the book at least a dozen times previously so am no doubt ‘reading from memory’ rather than seeing it new – but those are certainly fine examples of why old SF novels are stinkaroos for the younger crowd, are they not?
No, they’re not.? I have no trouble at all devising mental rationalizations for each and everyone of those quirks, on the fly.
No cell phones?? Its the moon.? Its the moon relatively early in its colonization and development (soon enough after the revolution that Hazel Stone is still around).? A budding colony might not be able to afford the satellites & what-all necessary for a cell phone net.? Most things Lunar colony are underground?- they haven’t gotten the NYC subway outfitted yet.? If anyone on the surface already has a radio set in their suit – sufficient for line of site communication – why bother with the added expense?
The computer on the ship is limited to ballistic operations so that it can be made cheaply enough to justify sticking it on a ship.
‘Flip the switch” could easily be?local slang for ‘turn the page’.
No microwaves – same reason as no cell phones.
Sliderules in space?? Heinlein thought that anyone who couldn’t do calculus in their heads was a moron (ok, so I’m a moron, still like his stuff) and I see nothing wrong with a strong, patrician father instilling in his sons abilities that can be utilized when there is no power, no machines and nothing but paper and pencil available.? (I think allowing students to use calculators in math class these days is absolute idiocy, btw.)
The fact that these minor ‘glitches’ that are easily rationalized away manages to interfere with the current generation’s enjoyment of them leaves me believing that there is a distinct lack of imaginative ability on their part.? And I have an explanation as to why:
this is a media generation; they’re steeped in television and film, DVDs and video clips and their primary means of participation is passively watching.? Because these media do not allow them to inject their own imagination into the system, their ability to do so is atrophied.? When they read a book, they’re not reading the way that us oldsters do (we imagine what the alien looks like, or parts of the ship we’re not shown, or the under warrens of Luna City) – they read it as if it were a movie – where there is only room for the director’s vision of the story. Their imaginative powers start and end with accepting or rejecting that vision – and they never even think of changing it in their heads.
When I read a book – if the character as described is red headed and I think she’s a blonde, I keep on thinking of her as a blonde – I don’t let the author’s chosen description throw me off the story.? I don’t let minor incongruencies interfere – because I know that I can imagine my way around it.
it’s a theory.? I think it’s supported by the fact that most of the comic-based/game-based movies live or die on fan perception of it’s accuracy.? But it’s just a theory.
Gary,
well, based on feedback, I’m right and you’re wrong – lol.
I’m swamped by the worldcon discussion right now and don’t want to give this subject short shrift – those whipper-snappers need to have their meaningless culture shoved in their faces – but I can’t really devote the time right now to properly defending my argument.
If I were to do so, I’d offer some anecdotal evidence and then I’d go find the references to the studies that demonstrate that entirely different areas of the brain are used for video game play as are used for reading – and/or the studies that seem to show that the same things are going on when you play video games as happen when you smoke crack cocaine;
on the movie side – somewhere there’s a nice study that shows a graph illustrating the constant increase in graphic violence in movies over time – and it maps nicely to the need to provide the brain with ever more stimulation to get that endorphin rush.
And my personal experience working with the younger generation (coaching paintball teams) supports my contention: they are being trained to have a limited attention span, to seek entertainment that by-passes the language centers of the brain and to simply suck up what’s put in front of them without any real critical throught brought into the process. You mention fan fiction and ‘millions of game sales’. I’d be interested to see what (very small) percentage of those millions are actually writing fan fiction…
Hmmm… I agree with COF too on imagination, but got lost somewhere in-between the culprit and the hilarious banter in the comments.
I actually spent a whole bunch of years freelancing in various capacities for a bunch of major sf publishers, as well as starting out as a slush reader for Amazing and Fantastic, as well as a couple of years inhouse at Avon, and I wouldn’t have been very good at that if I let my own prejudices get in the way of understanding the likes and dislikes of other readers.
But, and I only mean this as the friendliest of disagreements, of course, I really do think your premises that film and tv fans lack imagination, or that the younger generation prefer passive entertainment, are just wildly contradicted by the facts. Sorry.
Here is a gigantic list of video games that have sold over a million copies. A really popular one will sell from four million to eight million copies. And any fan of any of them could explain to us with considerable evidence and logic that games are a heck of a lot more interactive than passive reading, which just sits there on the page, and doesn’t allow you any choice.
And, needless to say, not a whole lot of sf novels sell several million copies. To put it mildly.
Here is a set of umpty thousand fanfiction stories based on tv shows. Here are even more based on movies, games, anime, etc. Endless numbers of people comment on those stories interactively.
Now, tell me again about how these people are passive and unimaginative.
Gary, you’re supposed to be taking the fuddy-duddy side of the argument, not defending our replacements!
“Gary Farbergg” Or “Gary Farber,” even.
“(Despite Heinlein’s earlier reference – perhaps the first one in SF – to such devices in another novel.)”
Specifically, Between Planets, which is, incidentally, one of the best of the juveniles.
“The computer on the ship is limited to ballistic operations so that it can be made cheaply enough to justify sticking it on a ship.”
This doesn’t make any sense to me.
But I have to disagree with your entire premise: it matters squat how you or I or anyone can justify anachronisms, because a plain fact is that an awful lot of young people simply do find them anachronistic, and off-putting. But it’s not, by my observation, so much individual anachronisms, as simply the way popular culture has mined so much of what once caused sense-of-wonder. If sf ain’t got that swing (of sense-of-wonder), it ain’t got that zing.
And that zing is, to a very large (though obviously not entire) degree, that which is new: new ideas, new concepts, new imagery, stuff that provokes thinking about something new.
So while certainly there will always be new readers for old classics, most old sf classics will in general never again be as popular as they were when they were new. This isn’t remotely as much a problem with other genres, but it’s inherent to the concept of science fiction, in my opinion.
I don’t like it any more than you do, but I’ve talked to too many young fans who don’t care for most old classics to think it isn’t true.
“this is a media generation; they’re steeped in television and film, DVDs and video clips and their primary means of participation is passively watching.”
And this is consistent with the widespread popularity of sf-themed computer/video games, how, exactly?
“Because these media do not allow them to inject their own imagination into the system, their ability to do so is atrophied.”
And I have to say that I think this is just plain wrong, as well.
Certainly lots of young folks simply aren’t readers, period, at least of books, but the notion that movies and tv don’t allow people to fill in stuff with their own imagination simply doesn’t jibe with reality as I know it, in which media fandom is huge, and far more people write media-based fanfiction than read classic (or new) science fiction.
COF – I agree with you about the problem being lack of imagination (or inability to use it in this context). I am part of the earliest ‘media generation’, but I have always preferred reading to watching stories because I can make them better and more dynamic in my head than they can ever be in such a static form on screen.
I have to add though (sound of shoes scraping the soapbox) that this is at least partly the fault of parents and educators who don’t read to their children early on and push them to read for themselves later in life. Not just science fiction, but anything the child might be interested in. How can they learn to apply imagination to written stories if they don’t read them?
I see you got them on again. Cool.
Funny you should address this issue. I touched on it in my review of Journey to Infinity a couple of days ago. Like you, I have no problem with it the existence of inappropriate, or lack of appropriate technology. I didn’t examine it it as much detail as you have here (it was a book review, after all) but perhaps I will sometime. There’s a lot to think about and many different aspects to this issue. Good job of bring it up and some great points raised. I definitely think that some the charm of these older books exists in the naivete of their writers. By that I mean their technological naivete from our perspective, 50 years or so after the fact. It also serves to remind us of the power of these writers’ imaginations. We are reminded of the technological environment in which they existed and from which they extrapolated so much that came to pass and is being actively pursued in fact today.