El Nadir de la Ciencia Ficción

Abstract

Literary genres evolve according to a cycle: they are born, grow up, reproduce and eventually die, but it is not easy to see, in advance, whether a genre is in its death throes or not. However, looking just at the perceived state, science-fiction currently does not look too good. Its Golden Age was way back in the Fifties (of the last century, no less) and even if so-calle sci-fi movies are popular, these are mostly super-hero or space-opera rather than true, science-fact based, science-fiction.

This perception does not imply it is not going to hold. But there are further problems: there are good, but not great science-fiction authors. Many of the most popular have progressively quit sci-fi; William Gibson, harbinger of the cyberpunk genre, is lately a post-modern techno-thriller writer and Neal Stephenson does mainly historical novels. There is even a counter-genre, mundane science-fiction which totally eliminates fake scientific tropes such as faster than light travel or telepathy.

In this article, finally, we will try to revise the state of current science-fiction and estimate the probability of it being in its lowest point, its nadir, and, eventually, about to disappear as a literary genre.