In doing research for my Amazing Stories Project business plan, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the theories I am basing the plan on has been proven to be largely correct.
What is that theory? In grandiose terms, it is the concept that science fiction has been used as a vehicle to introduce and gain acceptance for virtually every form of media currently known to mankind – and will no doubt be used in a similar manner to introduce and gain acceptance for any new forms that may be coming in the future.
How this is important to the business plan can’t be easily summarized, so you will have to be content with this less than perfect description: Science fiction is directly responsible for generating billions of dollars of sales in our economy and indirectly responsible for generating HUNDREDS of billions more.
But you all don’t come here for dry business subjects nor the dirty art of convincing people with money to give you some so you can make them even more, so I’ll dispense with that and return to the main theory.
We can’t know what the environment was way back when Lucien was penning his tale, nor what was going on around the campfire when the “Tale of Gilgamesh” was being recounted, but considering that both works have survived for thousands of years, it’s a pretty good bet that they made a large impression. It might not be too far off the mark to suppose that both tales – considered at a minimum to be progenitors of the scientifiction story – were useful in getting the idea of storytelling to catch on.
Jump forward a few hundred years and we find Gutenberg staining his fingers with ink. It is interesting to note that – despite the contemporary expense of printing at the time, numerous precursor works of science fiction were published – Cyrano’s adventures among them.
Move forward another half-millennia and we arrive at the era of the mass-market magazine, a concept that originated in France and Britain in the late 1800s, where we find titles like the All Story and Munseys – featuring tall tales of a proto-SF variety. Less than 30 years later, Amazing Stories would arrive on the scene and largely give rise not only to science fiction but the success of the genre fiction magazine.
But – a short decade before we find moving pictures arriving on the scene and what do we find? George Melies’s A Trip To The Moon, closely followed by other short features featuring – science fiction concepts. In fact, a few years following Melies’s experiment with special effects and fantastic story lines, we find Metropolis, perhaps the most revered epic silent film of all time.
Moving on through the years we arrive at the introduction of comic books and comic strips: Superman and Flash Gordon are still with us and going strong.
Broadcast radio comes into play and what do we hear presented as some of the first regularly scheduled dramas? Science Fiction, fantasy and horror based radio plays, Flash Gordon still there plugging along, accompanied by other familiar names like The Shadow, Thriller, not to mention the most epic radio play of all time – Welles’ presentation of War of the Worlds.
A few years later and television comes onto the scene. How did the broadcasters decide to hook kids on this new medium? Captain Video, that’s how.
Role Playing Games are introduced by – Dungeons & Dragons. Massive Multi-player games of our era are largely given success through the introduction of World of Warcraft.
Video games enter the picture and, once we move beyond pong, what do we see? SF & fantasy title after SF & Fantasy title.
Finally, the internet era. Who created the internet & the web? SF geeks, that’s who. What was the world’s first email list server devoted to? The SFLovers mailing list out of Rutgers University. Who was one of the first, if not the first bloggers? One of our own – Jerry Pournelle.
Of course one could easily say that making a connection here is largely the result of circumstance, and you might be correct in some regards, but I see a different picture. I see a situation in which time and time again, those who were looking for appropriate fare for their new media introduction turned to the only place they could reasonably go – the fantastic, stories and iconography that embodied the concepts of new, the future, the whiz-bang: it seems to be a natural pairing, combining stories about the future and the fantastical with new forms of entertainment. (What films did they roll 3D out for?)
One has to begin to wonder how well the ‘new’ media would have caught on if other subjects had been used to introduce them. Would TV be the medium it is today if they’d started with Julia Child cooking shows? Something tells me they wouldn’t have captured the children’s audience with that….
The big question however, (the same question asked in my business plan) is this: what would happen if the genre itself were to receive the kind of recognition and respect it deserves if it was, in fact, largely responsible for helping to introduce these media and, perhaps more importantly: what if, knowing this history, we consciously enlist it to aid in the introduction of something new?
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Excellent post and so true. I once worked at a hospital with sliding doors, new technology at the time. A young man walked through the main entrance, looked up, walked out and in again and said. “Whoa, Star Trek.”
Now we have these doors everywhere.
Nancy
N. R. – thank you so much!
[...] Grasping for the Wind (Steve Davidson) on Science Fiction is Bigger Than You Think! [...]
The questions at the end are pretty interesting–I agree that in general, SF and genre fiction have been useful in pushing the boundaries of what people can imagine being possible.
It reminds me of a statement I’ve read about literature and politics–that novels are useful for both demonstrating the whole range of possible outcomes (not just probable or expected) and for understanding different points of view. Breadth and depth. Science fiction adds another layer onto that by forecasting into the future; so it’s not just people and outcomes but also what if. That’s pretty much why I love sci-fi and why I write sci-fi; literature is interesting but at the end of the day it feels too rigid, stuck within dated or brittle ideas. Lit asks “what are our lives like now?” SF asks “how can we change our lives?”
Sam, I came at this from a relatively ‘different’ point of view. The Amazing Stories Project attempt to raise the investment dollars necessary to implementing the envisaged plan – which in broad outline incorporates funding that leads to sustainability (no folding of the mag this time around), professional pay rates, adequate staffing and the need to purchase content that will appeal to the wide range of different media expressions of SF. (Going after “it all” is a necessary component of demonstrating that there will be a decent return on the investment: basically, readers of SF are not a large enough or “wealthy” enough demographic to support what needs to be done; therefore, other constituencies must be sought and in order to engage them, content that appeals to them must be present).
What I am trying to do with the business plan is show two things: first, that the markets Amazing will engage with are large enough, popular enough and generate enough dollars to justify the whole thing and secondly (which is the distilled focus of the article here) – that SCIENCE FICTION has an absolutely AWESOME track record of success. In one way or another it has been used by (or helped give rise to) virtually every single medium there is to be had – and has established LOOOOONG tails in each one of them. Talk about franchises! Flash Gordon first appeared in newspapers in the early 30s! John Carter (of Mars) has been going strong for a CENTURY! So, my hope is that by demonstrating that SF MAKES markets, establishes new media (or is used as the vehicle to gain acceptance of new media), generates sales in the billions AND establishes centuries long franchises, I hope to convince a few folks that investing in making that dynamic a sustainable, marketable vehicle is really not a risk at all.
steve: one case study you might use would be that of george lucas and his student film THX1138. once he learned how to make films, he started writing star wars and look where that has gone.
not just in terms of $$ that the films themselves have made, but take a look at: http://visual.ly/how-star-wars-changed-world all the NEW BUSINESSES that have been created, all the new technologies that were developed, all the new patents that were issued, etc. etc.
just look at every film that skywalker sound has worked with. …in fact it’s hard to find a blockbuster in the last 20 years that has not been through their studio.
Thanks for that. (What about all the sound systems as well? lol)