I especially agree with Daniel, Alastair, and Peter. Science Fiction is not a static, strictly defined thing that exists independently of our own existences, and which may die if it isn’t fed particular kinds of ideas. No. We are Science Fiction. Science Fiction is us. It is a collective that exists for the sake of the authors and readers who enjoy it, whichever way they enjoy it. Therefore, it can never lose relevance. It has been and always will be a reflection of our experiences, our knowledge, our passions. The more of us there are and the more varied our voices, the more SF will evolve to be something bigger and more inclusive from what it was in bygone days. That has never been a problem. SF and we will be no worse because of that.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this article, and to the authors who offered their thoughts and insights. I enjoyed the read and ruminations.

When you listed urban fantasy, steampunk, and alternate history, you left out military sf. Seems to me it fits right in that comfort zone. Did you leave it out because it’s not really a new development? Or maybe because it’s not so large a movement as it so often seems to me to be? Or some other reason?

Possibly military sf is as much an anti-Enlightenment subgenre as is epic fantasy. It’s pretty firm on its claim that no progress can be made past war.

That makes my question even more impossible to answer. It doesn’t have to be a Jordan, a Martin or even a solid midlist writer…

Here’s Maybe A Big Idea: what are the consequences of a society, say, 10, 100 times more collaborative than we are now, where the constraints to collaboration (including lack of reward) have been removed? This might include removal of both social and technical constraints.

These constraints are being removed in the software industry, which is experiencing a Cambrian explosion of innovative tools and methods. This is (IMO) a result of synergy between an idea (FOSS) and a technology (github).

Stross maybe goes part of the way in Accelerando. I think.

Perhaps what we’re seeing is invisible innovation. Technical and social advance unaccompanied by incipient or potential explosions. Exploding rockets punctuate advances in innovation with a bang. WordPress allows *anyone* with an internet connection to self-publish. Ruby on Rails is unlikely to make the news, despite reducing web application development by orders of magnitude. Collectively changing the world 140 characters at a time. I claim these are incredible innovations. I’m tremendously grateful to be a bit player on this field.

More importantly to the principals in this conversation, thank you for your books, and I have a few new authors to check out.

And whether Mr Stephenson is “right” or “wrong” is much less important than keeping the discussion moving.

Re: Greg Egan — I don’t think I’ve read a single thing discussing him that talks about how much his novels are filled not only with mercilessly hard science, and epically mind-blowing ideas, but incredibly lovely moments of humanity. Despite all the criticism I’ve heard about his characters, he is still one of the few SF writer that fully engages my emotions in a mature way. I found Diaspora and Schild’s Ladder incredibly moving. Egan’s characters may be minimally drawn, but he gives serious attention to human questions, and it is the human stuff that is half the reason I think he’s so wonderful. Egan deserves so much more love than he gets. He is not just one of my favorite SF writers, he is one of my favorite artists.

It may say as much about me as it does about the field that I included two YA titles without even thinking about it and no one else did. It seems to me that one of the problems of the big idea science fiction that we’re talking about is that so many of them are for people whose reading experience is already so steeped in big idea science fiction.

If you were to poll people and ask what the greatest technological advancements of the last decade have been, they would say the iPhone and social networking sites. I have done zero polling or research to prove that or back it up, but I’ll go out on a limb. The interest in science and technology for the average person is more inward-looking and entertainment or convenience-oriented than anything else. Poll those same people and very few would claim the Kepler telescope or the Large Hadron Collider, or even know what those are. Once again, I have nothing to back that up, but I am reasonably confident in the claim.

I’ll agree that SF writers need a fast-forward button, and that it is a tough task. But it has been the primary task of SF writers since Verne and Wells got a twinkle in their eyes and a twitch in their writing hands. The more appropriate question, rather than “Is SF still the Big Idea Genre?” might be “Why the hell wouldn’t SF be the Big Idea Genre?”

Greg Egan is writing Big Idea SF, but how accessible is it? Then there are writers like Jack McDevitt, whose books are accessible but not in the vein of “Big Idea” SF; they are not grounded in hard science, but certainly not ignorant of it either. Instead, McDevitt draws a reader in with Golden Age-type adventure and broad swaths of cosmic mystery. Sometimes asking Big Questions, and then leaving them unashamedly unanswered, is enough to get a reader’s gears working. Laying a Big SF MacGuffin at the heart of a story is not enough, nor is it (necessarily) accessible to the reader.

This is really a good discussion with some very high quality writers and doesn’t need to be derailed. My apologies.

Although I still think it was rather funny.

I think science fiction authors (myself included) need to fast-forward our brains a couple of centuries and ask ourselves a lot of “what if” questions about what will be possible in the year 2212 and beyond. And then start writing.