Will science fiction as a genre ever go the way of the western?

Question

It is a fairly undisputed fact that the genre of western fiction has had a declining audience for decades. The Western Writers Association still exists, but if I had never worked in a Border bookstore I wouldn't even know that the genre was still stocked (on an area spanning maybe 2 shelves?) in bookstores. A magazine which tried to focus on the genre and bring it back into more prominence in the 2000s folded after just two issues. The western's appeal - based in television and the cultural ethos of the time - seems to have faded.

Will the same thing ever happen to science fiction? For example in the United States the space shuttle program has ended. Does this mean the end of space-focused novels? Will the genre change to focus on new developments in science or even fade from the popular consciousness? Or is there something different about science fiction's appeal from the appeal of the western, something that makes it more like romance?

Answer 1

Science fiction has the advantage of being more loosely and broadly defined than the Western. Westerns are limited by definition to a narrow group of settings. But SF? As Nabokov said, "If we start sticking group labels, we'll have to put The Tempest in the SF category".

Now, maybe "space opera" will go away after we've been in space for a while, sure, or some of the other sub-genres. That in my mind is similar to Westerns going away.

We humans have always loved stories that deal with the nature of our world, the forces that control it, the problem of the future, etc. In ancient times the stories were about the Gods - the Iliad, the Odyssey. In later times we have, for example, the Divine Comedy - a work that falls squarely into the definition of modern fantasy! But now that our world is explicated by science and we've become a scientific people, we use science fiction as the fabric with which we weave our myths. I daresay we're always going to need myths.

Answer 2

Westerns are essentially historical fiction, set in a very specific time and place. And there's a mythos associated with that time and place that may be out of step with modern life. Most successful modern westerns of which I'm aware have subverted the western tradition, making it grittier and more realistic. I'm thinking of movies, but also Cormac McCarthy's trilogy, etc. So maybe the traditional western tropes of simple, strong heroes and black and white hats/values no longer resonates with people. I wouldn't necessarily give up on the genre entirely, because there have been some successful recent iterations, but obviously it's in decline.

Will the same happen with Science Fiction? I doubt it, just because it's so much more wide-open. Westerns are linked to one place, one time. Science Fiction is anywhere, and almost any time. Science Fiction doesn't have to be about space, it's anything set in the future of the world. So even if society loses its belief in progress and science, it'll still be interested in figuring out what the world might be like in the future.

Answer 3

It will only go away if interest in/fascination with the future goes away. Even if really bad things happen and science gets demonized (more than it already has been, LOL), it will still be around. I saw a TV show the other day (title was something like the prophets of science fiction) which asserted that the first sci fi work was Mary Shelly's Frankenstein!

Although Sci Fi usually explores new science and technology and its possible impact on humanity, the best works really focus on who we are, where we come from, and "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything" ;) . Mankind will always ask those questions. It's at the core of our beings. Religion won't go away either for the same reasons (and more).

People will always ask, "What if ... ?"