Is there a Creativity limit in science fiction? General fiction?

[W_L]

I just got a thought from the fan fic thread.

 

How far can a single filmmaker or writer's creativity last in any genre or any genre's creativity last in human interest. Looking at mainstream science fiction today, I am rereading stories that I know Asimov and Heinlein went over 60 years ago. Watching TV, despite how entertaining Dr. Who can be, storylines seem like rehash of old stories after a while. Star Trek used to ascribe this to fatigue on part of writers and audiences. Yet, I think it's another issue, creativity limits within any plot or story.

 

Does anyone think stories and universe have creativity limits?

[thebrinkoftime]

To a point. There isn't much new epic poetry written today, is there? At least in the modern first world there isn't a whole lot of new oral traditions and stories being created that survive to the point where they become folklore, is there?

 

However, instead of epic poetry, you do have concept albums where the music (especially rap music) is supposed to sell a story from the start to finish, which is similar in that it's primarily spoken word narration bound by things like rhythm or rhyme. And now that we have an urban environment, we have urban legends, which isn't exactly orally-passed down folklore, but resembles it.

 

Many academics often refer to a cycle in art forms containing eras where it is a burgeoning, new medium exploring the new rules and becoming grounded, matures to a golden age, but then withers due to stagnation and lack of innovation.

 

I think of it as a cycle between eternal aesthetics and tradition, and innovation brought on by advancements in the living world. So we repeat the traditions of the past indefinitely, but always do so in ever newer and newer forms brought about by science and technology. People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not. Occassionally, we get new traditions too!

 

We did not have science fiction until people had enough working knowledge of science to create it. We did not have the novel (well mostly) until the actual physical requirements of its proliferation in paper and printing existed. Novels themselves went through stages and trends that had their own cycles of innovation, maturation and stagnation. So did science fiction. How long the cycle of an actual medium's life lasts has a lot to do with how it adapts. Stage plays are still alive and relevant in many, many forms because they did not stay set in stone from Shakespeare's day, even though they certainly are not the most widely accepted mainstream genre of writing or storytelling today. On other hand, in Japan, people still write new tanka even though it is largely considered a pretty much dead poetic form.

 

(Speaking of Japan, did you know there's a debate than amongst literature, Japanese science fiction doesn't exist and should be called speculative fiction or thought experiment because the bulk of it is so removed from the traditional science fiction model? Whether that's true or not, it is a sign that the creativity juice in mediums can be reignited when it is adopted or transmitted to other cultures. Also, recently visual novels, the pure love genre, light novels and the story as textbook or personal enlightenment non-fiction have become enthusiastically supported new genres or mediums in Japan and this all happened within the last decade or so. I'm sure you can find relevant examples in your culture too.)

 

Mark my words, as the world progresses, a 100 years from now there will be literary genres and methods of conveying them that none of us dreamt of while the people of those days might look wistfully.

 

So is there a creativity limit? Well, that's difficult to answer. Human minds can only stretch so far, but the human future seems like it could be limitless.

[JamesSavik]

One might think that there are no limits to sci-fi but that's NOT true.

 

Science-fiction is defined as speculative fiction: a treatment of what if. What if we have jump drive and can go 300 light years at a time and explore? What if we have genetic engineering down to a science and can engineer humans? What if we have nano-tech or implants or a million other techs?

 

Sci-fi differs from related genres like fantasy and horror. Unlike fantasy, sci-fi actually might happen! (If we develop the right tech.) Unlike horror, sci-fi doesn't rely on racial archetypes, myths and legends.

 

Sci-fi may sound unlimited but it does have limits. The limits of sci-fi are defined by three boundaries:

 

The first limit is culture. If you move too far away from the norms that our culture imposes, people simply don't understand. They lose a certain common frame of reference that helps people make sense of what is going on. For instance- suppose that there is race of intelligent aliens that lay eggs and eat some number of their offspring. We see this in nature but how do we cope with the concept in sentient beings? How can we deal with such a race that is so far off our cultural norms?

 

The second limit is education and intellect. A great part of the general audience sees the science in science-fiction and flees. They are stupid and watch the reality-show garbage that is on TV. They rarely read and are barely sentient themselves so f***'em. You won't see them at book stores or signings. Ignore them and write for your audience. Think marketing and the concept of your target market because you won't please everyone and you shouldn't try.

 

The third limit is self imposed. How far can your writing craft take people? That part is up to you.

[Daddydavek]

Science fiction also faces a dichotomy of expectations vs. experience.   We sort of expect some marvelous breakthrough to happen and solve many problems in the human condition and it has turned out to be slower than we thought after the first big break-through of landing a man on the moon.   That event amazed the world.   But it was hugely expensive and the NASA budget has not kept pace as a percent of government spending.  

 

Likewise, color TV was a big deal in the 1960's and early '70's.  Today we have Hi-def flat panel TV's up to 60 inches wide in many homes and some have 3D besides.   That would have been science fiction when I was in highschool.   Likewise, today's smartphones are phenoms.   I can do more on it than almost all of the more than 15 computers I have owned since my first Commodore 64 in the early eighties.  The internet, DVR's, MP3's, cars with blind spot warnings and lane control would also be incredible to a modern day Rip Van  Winkle who went to sleep during the Reagan presidency.  

 

In summary, my point is that change has come incrementally and while looking back it seems as if it was very fast, it really wasn't going through it.  For today's sci-fi writers to amaze us, they have to think some twenty to thirty years in advance and right now the crystal balls look pretty cloudy.   I think Dan Brown tapped into that angst when he wrote his book  "Inferno".   Too many people, dwindling resources and an ever greater gap between the haves and have-nots.   If we ever get space travel, only the mega rich will be able to afford it. 

[lathe_biosas]

My first thought is that creativity is unlimited, regardless of defined universes, genres, or reader cultures. There is the very old, Ecclesiastical lament that 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun'. But thebrinkoftime makes a better argument:

 

... we repeat the traditions of the past indefinitely, but always do so in ever newer and newer forms brought about by science and technology. ...

 

I'd say philosophy and art also contribute to the newer forms in which we reinvent the traditions. In this sense creativity is unlimited, and speculative/science fiction is the best way to creatively explore the massive array of possible futures.

 

After reading these posts however I understand that the more specific problem is whether unlimited creativity has unlimited entertainment value. Is SF running out of plot lines that the masses can understand and haven't heard before? I don't think we are running out of science, technology, philosophy or art. I think that the bizarre pace of technological and social change in the daily lives of people all over the world provides ample lived experience that can feed fresh, relevant SF plot lines. The entertainment comes from people seeing themselves or something they love in the stories, experiencing emotions, and feeling as though they've gained insight, if only momentarily. Even if the basic story was told 60 or 600 years ago, as long as the creative retelling plucks those emotional strings, it can be entertaining without limits.

 

There are still creativity barriers running rampant, as identified by jamessavick and Daddydavek. I'd also add the following creativity barriers to avoid:

- political correctness and generally avoiding anything risque can make for a boring story

- over-reliance on violence, sex and world-shaking events kills creativity and desensitizes your audience.

[Cia]

Ahh, one of my favorite genres. There are many well-worded responses here but I'd like to make a few examples that broaden the horizon beyond that one genre. Sure, Kirk and Spock can beam to just about anywhere, if Scotty is around ... but so could Harry, Hermoine, and Ron. Machines ruled the world until Erasmus grew complacent and underestimated Serena's human instincts sparking the Butlerian jihad just as surely as Saruman misjudged Gandalf's commitment to the races of Middle-Earth sparking his call to the races of men, dwarves, and elves to unite against Sauron. You can find similar tropes in all fiction. What brings readers/viewers/fans in, and keeps their interest, is what you do with them. The stories you tell are limited only by the imagination you use to bring them to life.

[Zombie]

All the plots have been written and re-written times over, along with all the human emotions that underpin them - in every permutation. But that's not a problem because these are just tools of the writer's trade, and tools can always be used by skilled craftsmen to shape something fresh and interesting.
It's like music - only 12 notes in the western tradition. How could all the tunes not have been written already? How could someone come up with a fresh interpretation of an old standard?
Humans are infinitely creative - it's what defines us.

 

 

 

 

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Edited September 5, 2013 by Zombie

[Ashi]

I just got a thought from the fan fic thread.

 

How far can a single filmmaker or writer's creativity last in any genre or any genre's creativity last in human interest. Looking at mainstream science fiction today, I am rereading stories that I know Asimov and Heinlein went over 60 years ago. Watching TV, despite how entertaining Dr. Who can be, storylines seem like rehash of old stories after a while. Star Trek used to ascribe this to fatigue on part of writers and audiences. Yet, I think it's another issue, creativity limits within any plot or story.

 

Does anyone think stories and universe have creativity limits?

 

You mean how long can an author/film maker's creative juice lasts.  Like how long will their vision lasts?  I would say it's not like a reservoir with limited mojo, but a rollercoaster ride....  If my own personal experience could be an accurate projection....  I don't know where my creative juice came from and don't know when it would hit....  Sometimes I could have tons of ideas and sometimes my mind is just barren.  I think you should ask film maker like Steven Spielberg and know he got his vision.

 

And then there are writers like like P. K. Dick., who said he couldn't write without drug.  As you know, some drugs gives hallucinations and give visions.  Storytellers in Native American culture sometimes smoke peyote to give them visions. 

 

On top of that, I remember Brink and I had a discussion about some artists live in the world of their own fiction.  It sounds like schizophrenia to me, and I believe some of the greatest artists have had condition that seems to be schizo to my unqualified prognosis. 

 

I read quite a bit of speculative fiction translated from Japanese when I was a kid.  And I can say is it's not the same model as the U.S. one.  American sci-fi may feature things which may based on real scientific theories, such a tachyon beams, which I've never seen it as a real tech but only exists in sci-fi stories, but theoretically sounding (and blue laser was only in theoretical stage when I was in high school, and now a reality).  Japanese speculative sci-fi stories may be purely out of author's vivid imagination.  Big Bang Theory was almost like a science fiction to most when it was first hypothesized by Carl Sagan, but it has since proven by Red Shift phenomenon.  What I mean is, some sci-fi are fact-backed, some are not.  Sagan's novel, Contact (and the movie based on it) is a great exploration on the subject.  What Jody Foster's character experienced, is that a major scientific break through, a mass hallucination, or is it a spiritual experience?

 

As for sci-fi series got stall after a while.  Well, W_L..., many long running shows like Star Trek are not really written by one person, but by a team of writers, and they do rotate, so not all episodes are written by the same writer and/or teams.  The creator of the series set the tone and usually after one season or two, the new team came over and follow it up.  By then the show already have some established tone and characterization, the new team just follow the "stereotypes" so to speak to write the new episodes, much like writing a fan fiction.  The creativity, given the confined rules of establishment, can plateau after a while.  Maybe that's why there is not much original ideas in modern eras (noticed I didn't say no, just less original ideas).

 

If you like real sci-fi, I suggest dive into medical field.  Much of the human body is still unknown and make great sci-fi story backdrops.  No, we still don't know how can brain turn glucose into memory, or how liver work to detox our body....  We now know how kidney works but just a decade ago, it was still a mystery.  We just know what they do, but we don't know a sh*t about them....  I was studying this bacteria whose spore can endure UV-C (no living cell can survive continuous UV-C exposure), so it's not impossible in the future people could just put on nano coating of this bacteria's spores like sun screen and skin cancer can be prevented with good efficiency (though you have to think about the aftermath of such consequence, because UV rays are responsible for keeping bacteria's number in control on our skin).

[W_L]

I guess my thought was connected with entertainment and creativity in one.

 

If you are creating stories that people enjoy, it seems like you are writing based on the audiences defined interest. A lot of science fiction today is based around that concept, your audience defines you.

 

If audiences like robots with emotions, then the writers or film makers create a story about a robot that is filled with human flaws. (Asimov had already done that a dozen times and Ridley Scott incorporates it every time in his Alien franchise).

 

However, if you the writer want to create a robot that perceives things without human concepts, without aesthetics or senses of taste/smell/texture in human sense, even adapting its own independent reactions to phenomenon The audience might not understand the robot, but it is a being that should not be anthropomorphic in the first place or so human that it is no longer a machine.

 

Philip K Dick is a good example of a writer that created the audience, not the other way around. Dick wrote about worlds with suspicion and dystopias that readers of his day were not huge fans. However, stories like Blade runner, Total Recall, and Minority Report were not famous in their time, but developed followings during their movie debuts.

 

Most Sci-Fi writers, including TV writers, are not pushing the limits to create an audience rather they are feeding the audiences with the same recycled plots and stories that forerunners have already traversed.

Edited September 6, 2013 by W_L

[crazyfish]

Most Sci-Fi writers, including TV writers, are not pushing the limits to create an audience rather they are feeding the audiences with the same recycled plots and stories that forerunners have already traversed.

I would not look to TV for innovative ideas.  TV is too ads-focused to be innovate.  

 

If you're looking for interesting SF to read, I'll look at short stories published in the pro-paying magazines. The editors are careful to fresh stories free of cliche. And you'd get a lot of interesting thematic ideas in the short story format.  Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld Magazine, Strange Horizons  are some of the well known mags. Also ideas  are spawning in other genres that aren't quite sci-fi.  Have you looked at the so called New Weird genre pioneered by China Mieveille?  Steampunk/dieselpunk/cyberpunk?

Edited September 6, 2013 by crazyfish

[Celethiel]

To a point. There isn't much new epic poetry written today, is there? At least in the modern first world there isn't a whole lot of new oral traditions and stories being created that survive to the point where they become folklore, is there?

 

However, instead of epic poetry, you do have concept albums where the music (especially rap music) is supposed to sell a story from the start to finish, which is similar in that it's primarily spoken word narration bound by things like rhythm or rhyme. And now that we have an urban environment, we have urban legends, which isn't exactly orally-passed down folklore, but resembles it.

 

Many academics often refer to a cycle in art forms containing eras where it is a burgeoning, new medium exploring the new rules and becoming grounded, matures to a golden age, but then withers due to stagnation and lack of innovation.

 

I think of it as a cycle between eternal aesthetics and tradition, and innovation brought on by advancements in the living world. So we repeat the traditions of the past indefinitely, but always do so in ever newer and newer forms brought about by science and technology. People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not. Occassionally, we get new traditions too!

 

We did not have science fiction until people had enough working knowledge of science to create it. We did not have the novel (well mostly) until the actual physical requirements of its proliferation in paper and printing existed. Novels themselves went through stages and trends that had their own cycles of innovation, maturation and stagnation. So did science fiction. How long the cycle of an actual medium's life lasts has a lot to do with how it adapts. Stage plays are still alive and relevant in many, many forms because they did not stay set in stone from Shakespeare's day, even though they certainly are not the most widely accepted mainstream genre of writing or storytelling today. On other hand, in Japan, people still write new tanka even though it is largely considered a pretty much dead poetic form.

 

(Speaking of Japan, did you know there's a debate than amongst literature, Japanese science fiction doesn't exist and should be called speculative fiction or thought experiment because the bulk of it is so removed from the traditional science fiction model? Whether that's true or not, it is a sign that the creativity juice in mediums can be reignited when it is adopted or transmitted to other cultures. Also, recently visual novels, the pure love genre, light novels and the story as textbook or personal enlightenment non-fiction have become enthusiastically supported new genres or mediums in Japan and this all happened within the last decade or so. I'm sure you can find relevant examples in your culture too.)

 

Mark my words, as the world progresses, a 100 years from now there will be literary genres and methods of conveying them that none of us dreamt of while the people of those days might look wistfully.

 

So is there a creativity limit? Well, that's difficult to answer. Human minds can only stretch so far, but the human future seems like it could be limitless.

I don't know that what you say is true...

Poetry, great poetry might still be written, just nobody has an interest in reading poetry most of the time...

And Many people like to keep their poetry to themselves... such as my mother. Remember poetry is a very private thing that many times describes the writers emotions on particular moments...

 

for oral traditions and so on in the Modern First World...

Hows this Alligators in New York's Sewers...

The story about the girl who had sex with her boyfriend then the next morning woke up to him dead hanging upside down with his hand moving back and forth on the top of the car...(she was still in the car i might add)

 

Science fiction is a dream about the future that's been going on since the beginning of Man, just in different forms...Science fiction is just the newest form of it, and that form has actually been around since the 1800's when men first dreampt of time machines and going to the moon in something resembling a rocket...

[thebrinkoftime]

Celethiel, I know I posted a rather long post, but nearly all of your objections concern something I already said in my post. I think there might have been a misunderstanding.

 

I don't know that what you say is true...

Poetry, great poetry might still be written, just nobody has an interest in reading poetry most of the time...

And Many people like to keep their poetry to themselves... such as my mother. Remember poetry is a very private thing that many times describes the writers emotions on particular moments...

 

I said that epic poetry, such as The Iliad, is rare today, because we do not have poets who memorize incredibly long poems by using poetic devices so they can tell stories about gods and heroes they believe existed. That's pretty much gone extinct because people write it down these days and call it fiction from the start. I did not say all poetry, which would be absurd, because there are numerous types of poetry flourishing all over the world today, like how I pointed out the small, small amount of tanka writers who still produce content despite the form largely being considered over, or how rap music is considered a form of modern poetry under some interpretations.  As for private poetry, I did say that many critics acknowledge that after a form has declined, enthusiasts produce new examples of it, but it is often considered niche, in my original post. There's nothing wrong with niche, but my intent was to show that the form artistic works take alters throughout the ages and is reflected by the society of the time. Hence, my epic poetry analogy. It was all the rage in ancient Greece; it isn't now, but arguments can be made that it evolved into something different.

 

for oral traditions and so on in the Modern First World...

Hows this Alligators in New York's Sewers...

The story about the girl who had sex with her boyfriend then the next morning woke up to him dead hanging upside down with his hand moving back and forth on the top of the car...(she was still in the car i might add)

 

 

This is called an urban legend. And that's why I made references to how urban legends can resemble folklore, but aren't entirely the same thing. The difference between an urban legend and the old world of orally handing down folklore is that urban legends spread through other, non-oral forms of media much quicker and are disseminated and disected for their truth in a way the suspicious residents of yesterday didn't often do. So whether they are the same thing changed into a new form tends to be a hot debate among academic circles. You get arguments either way.

 

Science fiction is a dream about the future that's been going on since the beginning of Man, just in different forms...Science fiction is just the newest form of it, and that form has actually been around since the 1800's when men first dreampt of time machines and going to the moon in something resembling a rocket...

 

 

I hate quoting myself, but look, I said the same thing in a different way: "People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not." Science fiction is actually often argued to have started when Lucian wrote about a trip to the moon in ancient Rome, or with the stories of homunculus, which seemed to have been taken from a Greek source and readopted early in the Dark Ages, or with the increasing practice of alchemy in the early Middle Ages, at least in the Western world. A lot of literary historians peg it somewhere in the time period where Christians started experimenting in the natural world to better understand God and the stories that popped up from such experiments.

 

So while it looks like we entirely agree with each other, when you say that you don't know what I am saying, are you expressing that you don't know what you are saying is true too? Help me out here, I'm kind of confused!

Edited September 8, 2013 by thebrinkoftime

[Celethiel]

Celethiel, I know I posted a rather long post, but nearly all of your objections concern something I already said in my post. I think there might have been a misunderstanding.

 

 

I said that epic poetry, such as The Iliad, is rare today, because we do not have poets who memorize incredibly long poems by using poetic devices so they can tell stories about gods and heroes they believe existed. That's pretty much gone extinct because people write it down these days and call it fiction from the start. I did not say all poetry, which would be absurd, because there are numerous types of poetry flourishing all over the world today, like how I pointed out the small, small amount of tanka writers who still produce content despite the form largely being considered over, or how rap music is considered a form of modern poetry under some interpretations.  As for private poetry, I did say that many critics acknowledge that after a form has declined, enthusiasts produce new examples of it, but it is often considered niche, in my original post. There's nothing wrong with niche, but my intent was to show that the form artistic works take alters throughout the ages and is reflected by the society of the time. Hence, my epic poetry analogy. It was all the rage in ancient Greece; it isn't now, but arguments can be made that it evolved into something different.

 

 

This is called an urban legend. And that's why I made references to how urban legends can resemble folklore, but aren't entirely the same thing. The difference between an urban legend and the old world of orally handing down folklore is that urban legends spread through other, non-oral forms of media much quicker and are disseminated and disected for their truth in a way the suspicious residents of yesterday didn't often do. So whether they are the same thing changed into a new form tends to be a hot debate among academic circles. You get arguments either way.

 

 

I hate quoting myself, but look, I said the same thing in a different way: "People writing stories about the mysteries of the universe used to do it like Dante or Homer, now we have Dr. Who. The format has changed, the tradition has not." Science fiction is actually often argued to have started when Lucian wrote about a trip to the moon in ancient Rome, or with the stories of homunculus, which seemed to have been taken from a Greek source and readopted early in the Dark Ages, or with the increasing practice of alchemy in the early Middle Ages, at least in the Western world. A lot of literary historians peg it somewhere in the time period where Christians started experimenting in the natural world to better understand God and the stories that popped up from such experiments.

 

So while it looks like we entirely agree with each other, when you say that you don't know what I am saying, are you expressing that you don't know what you are saying is true too? Help me out here, I'm kind of confused!

I didn't get what you were saying...  obviously...

maybe the meaning was lost in the rambling

 

Ie you said so much that I couldn't strain through it and get the meaning...

since you were obviously saying the same thing as me

[W_L]

(By the way, I love Steampunk and Cyberpunk, plus Post-Modern Sci-fi structures, just don't see much of it in good ways on Sci-Fi. The only source of TV that provides steampunk for me is Warehouse 13 and I watch it more for laughs than legitimate intrigue.)

 

Another issue with some Fiction today, too much action A lot of plot heavy stories, because audiences want their payoffs early and fast.

 

Many call Tolkien the forefather of Fantasy genre, but if you really read his books, it take time to get into the good parts. Lord of the Rings reads less thrilling than the movies.

 

Just like TV viewers, the average readers' attention span have shorten over time, so grand works like Tolkien in Fantasy or stories like Asimov's Foundation series may become far too wordy for modern audiences in their complete form, i.e. shorten movies with less explanation and more action.

Edited September 9, 2013 by W_L

[Sasha Distan]

I am going to reply to the original question.

 

No, I do not think that stories or universes have creativity limits. I genuinely believe that with the right mind or set of minds and the correct parameters a universe can carry on forever.

 

My case in point would be The Discworld. If it was not for the terrible disease that will take Sir Pratchett from us, I really do think that the end of that universe would come, unfortunately as it will, when he is no longer able to speak the words. I can see no reasonable end to the series. 

[Palantir]

Yes,I think that there are limits, set by our current world paradigms, and changing as those paradigms develop.

I also think that within those limits, a bit like Zeno's paradoxes, there is infinite variety and capability of expression.

[KaninZ]

  There's no limit to our imagination, but there are limits on originality. Describe one modern story to a group of power-readers and you'll get all sorts of "Oh, that reminds me of a book/story by Blah...."

 

  There are several recurring themes out there, love, war, betrayal, redemption, etc. that are recycled endlessly in our storytelling throughout the ages and that does show when the creative ether is flooded with stories of a similar theme. Authors are human beings (hotly debated at times by editors, I know) and they tend to emulate what they like. Don't believe me, watch for the upswing in BDSM themes in the Romance genre now that 50 Shades is out.

 

  Some emulation is even healthy for our storytelling in that it allows for different views, different takes on a theme. An example that comes to mind is "High Noon" a venerable Gary Cooper movie about honor, duty, cowardice, courage and a man facing overwhelming odds to triumph in the end, great themes that resonate through the entire story. Now go watch "Outland" with Sean Connery, a movie that was pitched with the sentence "It's High Noon in space" and produced with that in mind. Same themes, same resonance and another good film.

 

  All it took was some writer looking at something that had already been done and asking "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if...?"

Edited March 18, 2015 by KaninZ