Science fiction will never run out of ideas - the only limiting factor is human imagination. Do you agree?

I read a lot of horribly repetitive science fiction. It’s no more, or less, likely to run out of ideas than any other genre.

Some would argue that science fiction is more properly a part of fantasy, not the other way around. Still others would say that ftl travel breaks the known laws of the universe, and thus puts the work into fantasy.

I’m not really sure what your question is about. You say the only limiting factor is human imagination. Is there any other kind of imagination? Sure, science fiction will die only when humankind is wiped out, and even then, who knows, maybe some other alien species will keep it alive.

So really, there’s not much to disagree with in your question. You are merely stating the obvious. What are you really after?

Yes, sci fi is limited only by the creativity of those writing it. Funny thing, story ideas, I wrote a very long, very complicated (for me) sci fi novella about a future incidednt, and after I was nearly finished, I discovered through a friend that it was almost exactly the same story line of a different book written by a published author. Funny thing is, I never read that guy’s work, so I wasn’t plagairizing his work, at least not intentionally.

This has happened a couple of different times, so either I am not as creative as I think, or the number of ideas possible in the genre are finite.

I was working on creating a race of wheeled beings on a planet that orbited a sun, and was the sole planet in the system. Turns out that the single planet concept has been covered many times by others, including my favorite author, Arthur C. Clarke.

And the wheeled creatures, yeah, that’s been done, too.

Sci-Fi has often been a surprisingly ambiguous genre, and often misunderstood. Just because something is science fiction, doesn’t mean it is confined to all things other-worldly or futuristic.

I don’t think Sci-Fi is limited by anything but human ideas. But I feel strongly that the same can be said for every genre.

Science fiction is only limited by human imagination and science.
I’ve read a lot of “science fiction” that stepped all over science. That’s fantasy and not my thing.

I feel I’m coming from a similar outlook as @evelyns_pet_zebra on this one. I also think that your question, mattbrowne, is actually pertaining to something broader than science fiction.

Sure, I guess you can say that people, in general, will never run out of ideas, but ideas come in many forms—ideas for themes, concepts, premises, characters, settings, scenes, etc… And an idea may not even be entirely original and may just turn out to be an overly-used idea approached from a fresh (new) angle, or ideas put into an entirely different context. Perspective, and context, can mean all the difference in the world. This will be true for any genre.

I have a similar real-life story to Mr. Zebra :P. It’s not sci-fi, but still. I’m working on a (rather long) story that I, at first, thought was fairly original. (But what do I know? I can’t even finish it!) Then, when I explained to my friend the philosophies behind my concept and main characters he started comparing them to all these crazy existential philosophers I’d never even heard of—Dostoevsky and Nietzsche were the two he said. What do you mean my stuff sounds like Christian Existentialism with elemental magic?! Well, that was pretty…um, eye-opening? Haha. (I found this realization so mind-blowing that I subsequently suffered a mid-story crisis and started over, again.)

But, my friend told me, the “perspective” that I was approaching my story with through my characters in the context of my created world seemed, to him, original.

I think ideas can be used and reused endlessly, but I’m not so sure that ideas themselves are infinite. (I mean if they were, we probably wouldn’t have to worry about originality as much.) Whether or not people actually do something new with their ideas, though—take them to new places and heights…now that’s a totally different issue.

…But yeah, aside from that, I don’t really get the point of this question either, lol. I tried!

I agree with @cwilbur in that there is a lot of horrible sci fi out there. But there are some absolute gems as well. Matt, I haven’t read your book yet, but I’m told it’s good. My current favorite author is Eric Nylund, but I like many others.

@mattbrowne- How come only the second book of your trilogy is the only one available on Amazon? I’d like to read it but I don’t want to start in the middle.

Whoa…I didn’t even know you were a published author before they said anything. >_> Haha! That’s so awesome.

@daloon – Human imagination refers to the combined imagination of all human beings. The expression is a frequent term, but “imagination” will do fine too.

Hard science fiction doesn’t break the physical laws and is based on current knowledge but uses realistic projections about scientific and technological development of the (near) future. An example is the artifical womb.

Science fiction is more radical about the projections, but comes up with reasonable good explanations about the science and technology. An example is the travel through a wormhole.

Fantasy creates a set of consistent rules, but doesn’t have to explain them them from a science and technology point of view. An example are Harry Potter’s magic powers.

What am I really after? Well, many people think science fiction is just the rehashing of existing futuristic ideas. When looking at many of the television series this seems to be the care, however my point is there’s an infinite set of potential ideas. Human imagination can be far more powerful if we make full use of it. This would have consequences for real life as well. At the moment it seems that little can be done about the impending resource-energy and climate crisis. The politics part is really tough. But if we foster a climate of good education and innovation I think that the limitless human imagination can come up with new ideas solving the crisis. This still means we should promote the good stuff we already have like fuel-efficient cars or photovoltaics.

@evelyns_pet_zebra – Arthur C. Clarke is also one of my favorite authors, but I don’t think there’s a finite amount of ideas.

@AstroChuck – See my comment above about hard science fiction vs. science fiction vs. fantasy

@Introverted_Leo – Well, I think Dostoevsky and Nietzsche are great minds and it’s quite likely that a supposedly new idea occurred to them first. This still doesn’t mean the number of possible ideas is finite, see my comment above.

@Benny – Somebody recommended ‘Signal to Noise’ to me.

@mattbrowne: yes that delineation of sf types reminds me of an article in Asimov’s of F&SF a few years ago that said pretty much the same thing. It makes sense to me.

So, you are suggesting that humankind does not use it’s imagination nearly to the extent that it could, and further, that if we did, we’d solve more problems more quickly?

I guess I can agree with that. However, if this is the case, it is important to understand why it is the case, so we can figure out what to do about it.

My personal villain is parents and schools and employers. There are folks within all these types of organizations that actively (though not necessarily consciously) squash imagination all the time. They do it because they are too tired to answer all those “why” questions, or because they need order in the classroom, or because there is a huge bureacracy and it just isn’t set up to deal with new ideas. These are all simplistic descriptions of what are much more complex processes.

The solution, as usual, is education. Teach parents how to encourage children’s curiousity instead of squashing it. Teach educators how to handle “disorder” and to understand that it can be and often is a vibrant learning atmosphere. Show employers how they are reducing profits by not listening to employees.

It’s all pretty practical and doable stuff. In fact, a lot of people are working on these things even as we “speak.”

However, you’re talking about science fiction and you point the finger at the visual media. Movie and television producers are not exactly science whizzes, and what they don’t understand, they tend to leave on the editing room floor. Visual media with high production values are such huge operations, that they become quite bureacratic and, as already noted, tend to squash imagination.

Written media, and more specifically, novels, are the place where innovation and imagination are shown most often. These are generally created primarily by one person (although a lot are shopped though a writing group—and Scott Card seems to put his up on the web for critique and suggestions by the ravening hordes), and thus can give free reign to the imagination. Though, of course, once again, that can get chopped out by the publishing house and it’s minions.

The most useful imaginative science fiction, I believe, comes from writer/scientists working in the field. They know the most current research, and even the unpublished research, and have the best idea of how to project forward.

Writers could conduct this research, and some do, but the scientific jargon can be daunting and I just don’t think laypeople, no matter how smart they are, can get as much out of the material as those who have been steeped in it for decades.

I’ve done futures research. And no, we don’t have any crystal balls. What we do is look, in depth, at current trends, and then extrapolate. We extroplate four different scenarios: 1) the best possible; 2) the likely good one; 3) the one if things keep on going just as they are; and 4) what might happen if things go desperately wrong (bad weather event, limited nuclear war, comet landing—that sort of thing).

In this process, it helps to have a good imagination, but I don’t think it’s terribly necessary. I think you only need a lot of curiousity. When you know a lot about something, you can’t help but try to look into your scrying pool of choice. Science fiction writers, as all of us, get things right sometimes, and they can become famous based on that. But far more often, they get it wrong. No biggie, but people tend to forget that when enshrining our great visionaries.

@mattbrowne Signal to noise was good. My favorite book by Nylund is the one that’s out now, Mortal Coils.

Is your book part of a trilogy? I’m confused now.

@Benny – Yes, but only the first book in the triology in available. Finishing the second will take a few more years.

@daloon – Yes, I’m exactly suggesting that. Yes, humankind does not use it’s imagination nearly to the extent that it could. As you said, if we did, we’d solve more problems more quickly. There’s more potential than we realize. People are especially good in a crisis situation. So when the barrel of oil will cost $200 or more, it’s a good thing. It will make people think.

Bad parenting is indeed a major cause of the troubles in our societies. Yes, we need better concepts to teach parents. We need innovative incentive systems that will make parents want to take those lessons. It’s not easy, but we haven’t really tried hard enough yet.

There’s also the potential of accelerated change. Maybe you know the term as it is defined here: In futures studies and the history of technology, accelerating change is an increase in the rate of technological (and sometimes social and cultural) progress throughout history, which may suggest faster and more profound change in the future. While many have suggested accelerating change, its popularity in modern times is closely associated with the ideas and writings of Raymond Kurzweil, especially in relation to his theories about the technological singularity.

I’m not sure about the last part, but the acceleration as such makes total sense to me. It’s not only about processing power What’s happening on the web is accelerating. Web 1.0 took decades to appear after the invention of the internet. Web 3.0 will replace Web 2.0 much sooner than most people think.

The best scientists in the world stay connected. They keep exchanging the best ideas there are. Einstein had to send letters to have a discussion with other great minds of his time.

I’m very optimistic about the future and we should not underestimate the power of human imagination. The climate crisis is real, but it’s totally wrong to tell our kids we are doomed. There are thousands of ideas already being circled around. And there are millions of ideas no one has thought about yet. That’s my whole point.

@mattbrowne Actually, it’s not a trilogy. It’s going to be a five book series. He’s just finishing the second book.

@mattbrowne—damn, I looked it up just a couple days ago, and I’ve forgotten already—the author who wrote about the information singularity, when every bit of mass in the solar system is devoted to computing. In the story, after some weird adventures with cosmological lobsters, the hero comes back to find that the inner four planets have been consumed to create a 360 degree wall around the sun that captures the energy to run the systemic computer. Of course, by this time, flesh is sort of a farm thing. Your personality is stored in the computer, and you can download into any flesh you want. You can change sexes, ages, races, etc.

Kurzweil had some pretty cool ideas, but I know him best for his synthesizers. The guy is a musician, too!

As to solving problems—I do agree with you. The main concern I have with climate change is that it will cause enormous shifts in population. I think Kim Robinson wrote about that fairly effectively in that series where the Tibetan Buddhists had to leave their island because of rising sea levels, and they ended up in Washington DC of all places. Anyway, I always think of that image when I think of what will happen to Bangladesh within a couple hundred years.

The population will move, but where? We ought to be planning for those population shifts now. I think we focus too much on remediation, which is important, but it’s too late to prevent the consequences of our carbon diet. So we’ve got to plan for those as we learn how to reduce our carbon gluttony.

But I agree: it shouldn’t be doom and gloom. Scary is important. It gets folks off their asses. We shouldn’t be sanguine that we will solve problems. We will, but it will take a lot of work, and we can’t all sit around waiting for someone else to do it. But I am optimistic about that. We are moving, and that’s a start.

Can human beings imagine something unimaginable? Aren’t all of our imaginings conglomerations of varying degrees from sources we already know?
As far as stories are concerned, George Lucas once said (and I’ve heard it elsewhere) that thematically there are only about 12 different kinds of stories, and that all stories are merely variations of these.
On the other hand, I think there are certain stories and concepts that have not been thoroughly explored and would prove intriguing to read. As far as sci fi, I like the classics from Bova, Heinlen, etc.

@daloon – Yes, Kurzweil is a genius in many areas, but he might still be wrong about the timing of the singularity.

@TheKNYHT – Can human beings imagine something unimaginable? Sounds like a paradox to me ;-) Yes, Heinlein is great.