Will SciFi be hiddiously transformed if we actually encounter aliens? Or will human creativity keep on chugging and just incorperate them like modern humanity is: bent to the will fo the creator?
Do you think Hollywood would make films about warring with peaceful aliens or, if we run into some war mongers, the reverse, peace with the enemy?
Would lines between SciFi and other genres be blurred or would the aliens we encounter be an exception to the rule?
Probably about the same thing that happened to Tom Clancy novels when the Berlin Wall came down.
I expect the special effects really will be amazing!
Interestingly, I remember a short story wehich I think was published in a 1980 issue of Analog about WorldCon 2080, after a hugely devastating nuclear war. The scifi geeks were glad they could resume making up stories based on unprovable ideas instead of being constantly dated by actual scientsts and their icky relentlessly advancing technology.
I’d guess that if aliens showed up, a lot of New Age-y stuff would get retroactively rewritten to conform to the new information and thirty years later proponents would be talking about how cosmically aligned their belief system has always been while skeptic clear their throats and try to politely point out that the so-called “alignment” is actually relatively recent.
What do you mean WHEN??? :eek:
[Sub]Hey, someone had to do it.[/Sub]
Actually, I don’t think that there will be all that much of a change in the SF field. The addiction for writing stories that are based on ‘what if?’ will continue.
It’s mainstream fiction and TV that will be radically changed. And, maybe, the TV and movie people will realize that SF doesn’t need spaceships and lasers to be good.
It will put an end to the genre, just like the moon landing did.
Have you read the New Weird? It wouldn’t even notice.
Isn’t this kind of like worrying what happens to sunglasses when the sun goes out? :eek:
A whole new market opens up.
Cos aliens won’t have thought of sci-fi and they’ll be really sick of romance novels.
It depends a lot on what sort of “aliens arrive” scenerio you mean.
If you mean UFO/ Alien Abduction/ Government conspiracy type aliens, then we go through a period of major paradigm shift as the scientists toss out everything they ever thought was plausible and start over.
If you mean an extraterrestrial civilization recognizably like us- social, tech using biologicals- then it depends on what information we gain from them about what the galaxy is like. Whether FTL in any form is possible. Whether life and sentience is common or rare. What technologies they have that might change the rules of what we can expect the future to be like.
If they’re so far beyond the Singularity that we can only stare in dumbfoundedment at what they can do, then the future of science fiction would be the least of our concerns.
Of course, if they’re hostile and intelligent(unlike the aliens in SIGNS), then we’re screwed anyway and it doesn’t matter.
It all depends upon the type of aliens.
If they’re kanamits, we won’t be around to watch or read SciFi anymore.