Kids These Days.

[Thanos]

This was sparked by the "Gateway" thread.

A lot of us are apparently old. Guess the 60’s were a good time to get hooked on SF.

Some of you have mentioned things that weren't at the fore front of my thoughts but were certainly an influence.

Major Matt Mason. Danny Dunn. Other things.

With the current crop of SF movies, TV shows and toys do you think kids today are getting the same impulse? Is it turning them on to SF books? Is it having the same effect? Is it inspiring them to be scientists, engineers, and astronaugts? Is it leading them to deeper, I wanna say truths but I don't think that's right?

 

[aramis]

This was sparked by the "Gateway" thread.

A lot of us are apparently old. Guess the 60’s were a good time to get hooked on SF.

Some of you have mentioned things that weren't at the fore front of my thoughts but were certainly an influence.

Major Matt Mason. Danny Dunn. Other things.

With the current crop of SF movies, TV shows and toys do you think kids today are getting the same impulse? Is it turning them on to SF books? Is it having the same effect? Is it inspiring them to be scientists, engineers, and astronaugts? Is it leading them to deeper, I wanna say truths but I don't think that's right?

My eldest definitely has the sci-fi bug, but I've no idea what she wants to do with her life (she's 14). I'm reasonably certain she doesn't know, either.

She saw the movie previews for Ender's game, and then read the novel. Then, we went and saw the movie. (Very faithful to the book. VERY.)

Fantasy reading is very common in the 4-6th graders' I've taught. SciFi, not so much, but lots of them read space-fantasy like the Star Wars novels. Trek is almost a non-influence. I think a lot of that boils down to curricular reading includes a LOT of fantasy (by 6th grade, most will have read a fantasy novel or two), but little sci-fi.

The local high schools have extensive sci-fi collections, and they rotate a LOT (my daughter had to get waitlisted for Ender's Game and Xenocide). Her syllabus for her english class, however, includes no sci-fi in the literature elements, but does include fantasy.

 

[DaveChase]

High school to recent college level students I do not think have the SciFi bug. They enjoy the movies but are not really into it. More Cosplay, steam punk, post war/disaster yes.

But the elementary that I have seen seem to have the Sci-Fi bug. Going to Mars, Ender's game movie, and such. Many of the have seen Lord of the Rings, but I do not hear them talk about that genre as much as a I about robots, cool tech that was in the movies last year that you can now buy.


Of course, I am limited to a small rural area and over the last year, I do not get around as much in the public.

Dave Chase

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

My soon to be 12yo daughter is very much at home with Fantasy. As I have introduced her to gaming over the last few years I have been unable to convince her to try scifi (I don't have much luck with my regular players either).

She was in a Star Wars phase many years ago but that has fallen to the wayside recently as Harry Potter, Hunger Games etc take up much of her time.

 

[Shonner]

Once you get a kid off the Star Wars, maybe they can begin to see what else there is and become interested in that and/or create something of their own.

 

[cym0k]

My eldest (8 yrs) is "into" space now, she dropped fairies recently. She had a telescope for Christmas and I hope to keep her engaged long enough to get a bug for the sciences.

As for sci-fi? Hmm. Working on that one.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

My 17 year old daughter has been impacted anime, new Star Trek shows (her mom loves all of them except for TOS and Enterprise) and modern sci fi movies which has led to her real life interest in astronomy and she wants to get into aerospace engineering. She however is primarily into fantasy and I have trouble getting her to watch "the Classics" like pre '90s movies, except for Star Wars.

 

[Timerover51]

For those growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, science was far more prominent, with the Sputnik launch and space race, the first astronauts, and the first manned landing on the Moon in 1969. What had been science fiction in the 1930s was fast becoming science fact. As such, far more young people, myself included, were reading science fiction and dreaming of journeys to the Moon and Mars and beyond. NASA was expecting further Lunar landing and settlements. Then came the cutbacks, the delay of the Shuttle, and the sense of adventure and wonder dropped drastically. Also, what I would call young adult science fiction, some of the early Heinlein, A. C. Clarke, Piper, and Andre Norton faded out. Heinlein went strange, Clarke went to more adult fiction, Piper suicided, and Norton went much more to fantasy. At the same time, Tolkien became very widely read in schools, and as far as a know, still is, and then Harry Potter hit the shelves. Fantasy became the "in" thing. Now, I really love Tolkien, and Lewis's Narnia series, but Harry Potter never really caught my attention to the degree of Tolkien or Lewis, or my favorite science fiction authors.

 

[ShapeShifter]

I really think that if a film industry out there (preferably not H'wood) were to do one or more very well-done, 'hard scifi' films where space travel, astronomy, etc. are represented plausibly and combine that with an optimistic outlook, that may have more of a positive impact on the 'recruitment' of the youths into the genre and, hopefully, away from the now-tired 'superhero craze', or 'young-adult-flavoured urban fantasy' or 'supernatural-flavoured chicklit romance novels' which the publishing industry (and visual entertainment sector) pretty much exclusively demands now.

When and where I was a lad, scifi and fantasy were basically forbidden in schools. I do have a faint memory of a book of mine being confiscated by the teacher solely because it was scifi or fantasy (it might have been a book by A.C. Clarke, or even LotR). I remember my classmates in junior high, high school and even college being very distainful of my love of JRRT, for example. On the other hand, I remember fantasy-bashing was very much in vogue (Dallas Egbert incident, et al.).

 

[Shonner]

I remember my classmates in junior high, high school and even college being very distainful of my love of JRRT

I had a teacher in 10th grade that made us read dystopian sci-fi novels. But that was the name of the class I signed up for. We read 1984 and Kurt Vonnegut and Shirley Jackson and Bradbury and many others. Dhalgren was a huge book for me at the time.

 

[cym0k]

I really think that if a film industry out there (preferably not H'wood) were to do one or more very well-done, 'hard scifi' films where space travel, astronomy, etc. are represented plausibly and combine that with an optimistic outlook, that may have more of a positive impact on the 'recruitment' of the youths into the genre.

I have been throwing youtube videos at my eldest (do not click if you are allergic to annoying pop music parodies). They are not exactly big or clever, but it's a start. Raising awareness, that sort of thing.

 

[Riik O'Shae]

I introduced some young adolescents to D&D last year and am about to do the same with Traveller using the T20 System and CT data.

Looking forward to their reactions!



Riik