That Younger Generation
Two years ago, they announced that the average age of a Science Fiction short story reader was 39 and climbing. This is the literature of the “future?”
I find it terrifying that the field shows such an age bias. The wagging heads would have us believe that the aging of SF fans is because “kids these days don’t read.” My word. Like we’ve never heard that one before. I think every generation recognizes that the succeeding generation doesn’t read as much as we did.
But it’s a response that I find bewildering and, frankly, terrifying. When Apple computer doesn’t sell a model, they try and find out why.
I would be the first to agree that today’s young reader faces a bewildering array of competition for entertainment time and dollars. Movies are far more dramatic than they were in the Golden Age of SF. Computer games are almost as realistic as movies. But I still don’t buy the “kids don’t read” theory…Ok, so it’s not highly scientific, but the SmartGirls.com survey finds that most respondents read a book a month, and that almost an equal number read 2-3 books a month. Most of the reading is done for pleasure. Most of the respondents consider themselves to be readers. Only a small percentage thought reading was uncool or claimed no time for reading. I’m sure that other surveys would have slightly different findings. Perhaps among young men where computer games offer even more copmetition. But I don’t see a massive reaction against reading.
In fact, I will argue the reverse. Computer games are blamed within the genre for taking away the younger reader. I won’t argue that the children of my friends in the 14 to 18 y.o. range don’t stay up all night playing computer games.
But these same young people are staying up all night reading, too, on occasion. Just because they are playing games–just because they aren’t reading the Big Three outlets of short SF–doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in narrative, interested in reading, and, most particularly, interested in SF.
On the other hand, could it be that people under 25, men and women, aren’t interested in the content of Analog, Asimov’s and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction? When I look through the April 2003 issue of Analog, there is a long, well written piece by Catharine Asaro, “Walk in Silence” which has aliens in it but is essentially a story of a husband and wife overcoming the cultural barriers that separate them in the advent of their child. It has strong nostalgic feel that will appeal more to those who have had children than to those who will have children.
“Emma,” by Kyle Kirkland, is blatantly anti-future: the title character, Emma, is brought from a contemporary setting into the future to solve an indistinct political issue. Her main function in the story, however, is to complain about being brought back as old and to show the scientist who resurrected her that he was wrong to think that she might enjoy the future.
Not that Emma ever explores the future she has awakened into, accomplishes anything or attempts to solve the problem of the future herself. The main message here is that the future is to be avoided, merely because it’s the future.
This is the future that those who are under 20 will have to live in. The message that it should be avoided merely because it is not now or a comfortable time in the near past, will appeal to a very narrow audience.
“Coming of Age,” by Mary Soon Lee, is about Duncan, a middle aged soloship racer, invited to Cary’s eighteenth birthday. Cary is a soloship enthusiast and amature pilot who has followed Duncan’s career devotedly. The crux is that Duncan has never actually flown a soloship in a race himself. Soloship racing is too dangerous. He always uses remote control.
In the course of the story, Duncan will learn to fly a soloship directly, and come to appreciate the joys of immediate experience. However, the subext is that Duncan’s previous career flying by remote control is without value, passion or enthusiasm. In other words, don’t play computer games with your friends. Get out and play in the yard.
There is a soft spot in my heart for any story in which the human sprit is enlarged. What Mary Soon Lee has missed is that the community of gamers–the nearest analogy to remote soloship piloting–is filled with passion and active interest: who makes the best equipment? What’s the coolest game? It is not, by and large, a group of spiritually truncated individuals, waiting to be reborn as soon as they can pry their hands from their joysticks. They are bright, ambitious and passionate about technology and its benefits.
I would claim that technology itself does not diminish the spirit, but that seems to be part of Mary Soon Lee’s message here. The message that technology, in and of itself, is reductive to the human spirit is a one more likely to appeal to those who fear technlogy and by extension, the future, and will appeal less to those who live comfortably with today’s joysticks and are faced with the need to live in an increasingly technologized future.
I don’t want to pick on Stan, the editor of Analog. He’s a delightful and intelligent person who has produced a wonderful magazine.
I don’t want to pick on these (or any) authors, who work very hard for modest recompense out of their love for the genre.
But I do feel that these themes–omnipresent concern and apprehension of the future, nostalgic appreciation of the comfortable past, subtle bias against technology and a preoccupation with issues that appeal to a specific, age delimited demographic–accurately represent most of the stories published in the Big Three outlets of science fiction.
The readers are out there. The question is: why aren’t they reading SF, and how do we get them to come in?