Debate: Does Science Fiction need to be grim?

[roseembolism]

It all started with an article in the Guardian "Science fiction doesn’t have to be gloomy, does it?", where the writer Damien G. Walter took modern SF to task for being excessively grim, pessimistic and well, "doommongering".  Kathryn Cramer responded to this with the argument that SF was a way to reflect on what was going on in the world, and if SF was dark, that's what the readership wanted.  At that the debate was on, with people ranging from James Nicoll to Lou Anders arguing whether or not dystopic worldviews are actually matching the way the real world is going.

As for me, I just wonder whether people actually do want to see SF that tries to be relevant by being grim and pessimistic.  After all, the period where the SF magazines went heavily for grim doommongering seems to coincide with the period where readership drastically fell off.  Could the editors fo these magazines have been clinging to "relevant gloomiess" to the point of going out of business? 

So: DO people want to read "relevant" SF, even if it is pessimistic or despairing? 

Comments

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that out of emotional self-defense I've been limiting my SF reading to Stross and Bujold recently. So I am used to characters that are arrogant, self-involved, and often jerks...but they have a lot of other qualities to recommend them.