"I think the rising and falling popularity of areas like hard SF and far-future SF is, to a considerable extent, the same as any other fashion"
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Schmidt’s line is a quiet demotion of genre prestige, and that’s exactly why it bites. Hard SF and far-future SF like to present themselves as the “serious” wings of speculative fiction: disciplined by physics, oriented toward big time-scales, immune to the mood swings of culture. By calling their popularity “the same as any other fashion,” he punctures that self-image. The intent isn’t to insult the work; it’s to strip away the myth that readers flock to these modes purely because they’re intellectually superior or historically inevitable.
The subtext is market-savvy and editor-brained: what gets called a “renaissance” is often just a convergence of publishing incentives, generational taste, and a few breakout works that reframe what feels newly possible. When space programs surge, when tech feels optimistic, hard SF reads like tomorrow’s instruction manual. When the cultural weather turns anxious or inward, readers drift toward near-future dread, climate fiction, fantasy, or character-forward “soft” SF that metabolizes social change faster than orbital mechanics ever could. Schmidt’s phrasing - “to a considerable extent” - is the tell: he’s not denying craft or vision, he’s refusing to pretend craft alone governs attention.
Context matters: Schmidt spent decades inside the SF ecosystem where debates about “hardness” and “purity” can turn into status games. Fashion, here, is a corrective. It reframes genre cycles not as moral judgments about rigor, but as cultural supply-and-demand - a reminder that even the most star-spanning futures are read in the very local present.
The subtext is market-savvy and editor-brained: what gets called a “renaissance” is often just a convergence of publishing incentives, generational taste, and a few breakout works that reframe what feels newly possible. When space programs surge, when tech feels optimistic, hard SF reads like tomorrow’s instruction manual. When the cultural weather turns anxious or inward, readers drift toward near-future dread, climate fiction, fantasy, or character-forward “soft” SF that metabolizes social change faster than orbital mechanics ever could. Schmidt’s phrasing - “to a considerable extent” - is the tell: he’s not denying craft or vision, he’s refusing to pretend craft alone governs attention.
Context matters: Schmidt spent decades inside the SF ecosystem where debates about “hardness” and “purity” can turn into status games. Fashion, here, is a corrective. It reframes genre cycles not as moral judgments about rigor, but as cultural supply-and-demand - a reminder that even the most star-spanning futures are read in the very local present.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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