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Agena magazine2/25/2023 ![]() ![]() ''The lines are crossing,'' says Berkley's Rena Wolner. We've just begun to take the first step, and we can say, 'Look, it goes for a zillion miles out there!' ''Īlong with the surge in science fiction, fairy-tale formulas and enchantment motifs have been showing up in other kinds of popular books, which are sometimes set in the past, sometimes in the future. ''But there is a bigger, mysterious world in space. ![]() What accounted for its appeal? ''We've lost all the fairy-tale lands on this planet,'' he says. ''I had no idea 'Star Wars' was going to be as big as it was,'' says George Lucas of his first space-age blockbuster. They are still breaking every box-office record. With ''Star Wars'' and ''Close Encounters of the Third Kind'' a new generation of science-fiction film was born, with a budget in the tens of millions of dollars and awesome special effects. Science-fiction films were once low-budget affairs, few and far between. This year science-fiction books have accounted for up to half of the top 10 best sellers on industry listings and for about one- fifth of the selections of the major book clubs.Īt the movies, a similar revolution has occurred. According to Rena Wolner, the publisher, those figures have more than doubled. ''Today, it's a very serious business.''Īt the Berkley Publishing Group, science fiction represented 3 percent to 5 percent of total sales 10 years ago. ''You used to have to buy it off racks in the local candy store,'' says Judy-Lynn del Rey, vice president of Ballantine Books and publisher of their science-fiction line, Del Rey Books. In the late 1960's, science fiction appeared mainly in a handful of pulp magazines and paperbacks. Consider the surge in the popularity of space-age fairy tales. The dimensions of the phenomenon are striking. The trend, she says, presents ''danger signals'' in its social and political implications. Diane Waldman, deputy director of the Guggenheim Museum, concurs. By and large, the books, paintings, movies and the like reflect undemocratic, medieval attitudes - even such films as ''Star Wars'' have their autocratic emperors and willing vassals. Heilbroner likens our condition to a chronic illness: ''The expressions of fantasy that we're seeing in the culture are arising like antibodies to fight the disease of sterile rationality that prevails in our society.'' But there is some concern that the new popularity of enchantment may have its ominous side, including a drift toward authoritarianism. ![]() With the demise of our world view, technology now seems senseless and frightening. And our dilemma has been worsened by the rush of technology, which seems to dwarf the significance of the individual. Our centuries-old belief in a rational, mechanistic world view - and in the vision of inevitable progress - is being shattered. Discussions with a broad range of authorities, from artists to historians to psychologists, and an analysis of past cultural changes suggest that it is a symptom of a profound crisis in Western thought. In fact, there is evidence that the return of enchantment has a larger meaning. Yet in a modern era shaped by science and technology, it is startling to see this fascination with mystical symbols and motifs that hark back to notions of an enchanted universe and to the hierarchical social order of the Middle Ages. On the surface, the phenomenon might be dismissed as mere escapism, part of the nostalgia craze of re- cent years. They emerge in books like Norman Mailer's Egyptian saga, ''Ancient Evenings,'' and John Irving's allegorical ''Hotel New Hampshire.'' They inform paintings like Anselm Kiefer's mythic ''Landscape With Wing'' and musical works like David Del Tredici's fantastical ''Final Alice.'' What's more, our serious artists have started to turn to similar themes. Books like ''God Emperor of Dune'' and ''White Gold Wielder'' leap to the top of the best-seller lists. ''E.T.,'' ''Return of the Jedi'' and ''Superman'' pack the movie houses. Within the space of a few years, we have filled our popular books, films and television shows with fairy tales and science fiction. They felt helpless, and they began to long for the old gods and ancient mysteries.įor many decades, a world of enchantment, of mystical beliefs and symbols, has been lurking in the shadows of our secular, advanced-technology culture. But then, one day, the people began to worry that their machines and their weapons were getting out of control, and they began to ask questions their reason could not answer. In fact, the country became so strong, with its machines and its awesome weapons, that the people felt they could abandon their gods and temples and rely altogether on their wealth and their reason. NCE UPON A TIME, THERE WAS a land across the seas that grew rich and mighty because its people were hard-working and ingenious. ![]()
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