UNCG is not a Top 50 school, and our club SF^3 has only put on one StellarCon since I've been there (not this year). It still exists, but it's insular. https://linktr.ee/stellarcon.nc
What I'm seeing is that fantasy is way more popular than science fiction. Every one of the critters my Alien Ecosystems came up with had magic powers, and most of them were labeled 'good' or 'evil'. We had a whole discussion about amoral evolved biological creatures, just trying to feed their babies however they can, vs created cultural monsters that exist solely to be killed by heroes. They were just more interested in monsters.
As an educator and SF author myself I am very definitely interested in science as a way of life. But I am in the minority. Most of the authors I meet at cons were English majors.
I'm glad to hear that there are still some active SF clubs out there! I really had no idea that the landscape was so empty. I assumed that my university had some kind of SF club that I just wasn't privy to.
And yes, fantasy is booming like crazy. Obv it has become a plurality if not an outright majority of "SFF", but it has taken over other genres too! Romance for example is rapidly losing ground to romantasy, and even mystery increasingly features fantastical elements. But this might just be a return to the status quo— haven't most of civilization's popular stories throughout history technically been "fantasy" of some sort? I'm guessing that in the future we'll be less interested in classifying things as fantasy and more just expect fantastical elements in basically every genre.
UNCG is not a Top 50 school, and our club SF^3 has only put on one StellarCon since I've been there (not this year). It still exists, but it's insular. https://linktr.ee/stellarcon.nc
What I'm seeing is that fantasy is way more popular than science fiction. Every one of the critters my Alien Ecosystems came up with had magic powers, and most of them were labeled 'good' or 'evil'. We had a whole discussion about amoral evolved biological creatures, just trying to feed their babies however they can, vs created cultural monsters that exist solely to be killed by heroes. They were just more interested in monsters.
As an educator and SF author myself I am very definitely interested in science as a way of life. But I am in the minority. Most of the authors I meet at cons were English majors.
I'm glad to hear that there are still some active SF clubs out there! I really had no idea that the landscape was so empty. I assumed that my university had some kind of SF club that I just wasn't privy to.
And yes, fantasy is booming like crazy. Obv it has become a plurality if not an outright majority of "SFF", but it has taken over other genres too! Romance for example is rapidly losing ground to romantasy, and even mystery increasingly features fantastical elements. But this might just be a return to the status quo— haven't most of civilization's popular stories throughout history technically been "fantasy" of some sort? I'm guessing that in the future we'll be less interested in classifying things as fantasy and more just expect fantastical elements in basically every genre.