Sticking the Landing...

[Independent George]

Is it me, or do quite a lot of works in SF have a lot of trouble drawing to a satisfying conclusion? Is it worse for SF than in other genres? In books, television, video games, comic books - SF seems especially prone to either overstaying their welcome, or creators having too many ideas to explore & wrap up, or just way too much build up and too little resolution.

Some of it seems to be a natural hazard for the genre - besides trying to explore wilder ideas which may not pan out, there's also the fact that if you run long enough, you end up need to find increasingly ludicrous levels of threat to match the heroes leveling up. A PI is always outmatched by the machinations of those more powerful than he; a cowboy's era is always about to come to a close. With SF, though... when you build a huge ecosystem of galactic politics/multiverse-ending threat/eldritch horror, writers seem to have a tough time closing out the narrative threads while following the rules of their worlds to the logical conclusion.

It also seems to me that when SF fails, it fails hard. They seem to fall into one of two patterns of failure: either try to cobble an ending together out of too many disparate, contradictary elements (Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Mass Effect 3), or just gradually lose direction over time and gradually fade before abruptly ending in unsatisfactory fashion (The Dark Tower novels, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Wheel of Time, Heroes, Planet of the Apes, Dune, freaking everything ever written by Neal Stephenson).

I'm leaving out abrupt cancellations like Farscape, because it's clearly not their fault.

[SlackerinDeNile]

This really depends on the skill and creativity of the writers in charge. Star Trek TNG ended beautifully in my opinion, DS9 ended okay, it could have been a lot worse, Voyager ended in dumb but expected way. These shows were all written by professional and experienced writers, but many of the shows you have brought up were written by writers who were given a lot of creative freedom by whatever studio allowed them to write the show. JMS was given a lot of creative freedom to write Babylon 5 and most people, including myself, think that ended really well but he planned that story and ending years in advanced. BSG and Lost on the other hand, whilst allowing the writers a large degree of freedom, also limited the writers from time to time based on budget estimates and what executives thought the intended audience would want, so the writers usually did whatever they wanted, within those limitations. This would eventually lead to a half-assed ending that attempted to fit in the the themes of the show but still felt like it came out of nowhere. I haven't watched much of Lost, but I know the ending and whilst I did watch the entirety of BSG, the ending of that show is one of its flaws that annoyed me the least.

To be honest I don't think it's a problem specific to science fiction, there's plenty of realistic or fantasy stories that end poorly, simply because the writers either give up, run out of time or don't know how to end a story well. A good ending should be lead up to, it should be something anticipated by the reader and made memorable, it doesn't have to be happy either, but it should attempt to fit the intended audience's expectations in my opinion.

In regards to your criticism against Neal Stephenson, I recently read Snow Crash for the first time and my main problem with the ending to that story is that it's too abrupt. I'm not a fan of how he decided to heroically portray the Italian mob at the last minute either. I think if he focused on drawing Hiro's, Raven's and Y.T's storylines to a satisfying conclusion instead of that 80's action movie crap with Enzo more people, including myself, would have fonder memories of the book. For example, Hiro's story should have ended with him and Juanita deciding what to do with their old friend David, Y.T's story should have ended with her finding her Mom barely coherent from her Snow Crash injection and Raven's should have ended with him contemplating on whether or not to detonate the nuclear bomb in L.A. The sad thing is all the material setting up to such an epilogue was all there throughout the story. I don't think it's a bad book in general, for the most part it's awesome, I think he's a good character writer and I love his creativity and the staggering amount of research he put into the themes and subject matter of the story.

[Independent George]

I love roughly 80% of Neal Stephenson's work. What I mean is that I absolutely love about 80% of each of his books. The remaining 20% are inevitably self-indulgent tangents. Sometimes the tangents work (like the Cap'n Crunch scene in Cryptonomicon), other times, it just feels like he cares more about exploring this awesome idea he had than about finishing the story & characters. It's like he forgets that he's supposed to be writing a novel. His endings are just the worst.

Granted, I fully realize that while many would agree with me on general principal, we would likely disagree strongly on what parts constitute the 80% vs 20%. I guess that's brilliance.

After re-reading my post, I started to think about endings that I really liked. I just adored the ending of Glen Cook's The Black Company. It was a long, hard journey, and we bid farewell to a lot of friends along the way, but it felt done. It was sad, but also satisfying. Complete. "Soldiers live. And wonder why."

[SlackerinDeNile]

Most writers tend to fall into the trap of self-indulgence, I haven't read the rest of Stephenson's work and whilst I definately noticed it a lot in Snow Crash, I thought he handled it okay. Personally I thought the stuff about Abrahamic religion, human history and ancient Middle Eastern myth and legend was incredibly fascinating but the way he wove it into the story was a bit clunky. The chapters with Hiro and the Librarian reminded me of Goldstein's book from 1984 in how they felt like discussions and essays slightly separate from the rest of the story. I thought that 1984 did a better job of weaving its core idea and concept into its story, world and characters though and whilst I thought Raven was a great antagonist, Bob Rife was a generic evil businessman who wanted to take over the world, the interview where he spoke about his ideas on the media was the only good material he got. Having Raven or Juanita turn out to be the main antagonists would have been more interesting.

You're right that we might have different views on the 80:20 good:bad ratio.

As far as endings I actually like go, I liked the way the original Deus Ex game ended, all three endings felt like satisfying and relevant closures to the story.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

A few reasons I can think of-

1. The book/movie/tv series goes past its ideal, or intended, endpoint. The original Planet of the Apes had a classic ending, but it didn't call for sequels. In my opinion The X-Files actually had a coherent mythology up until mid season six when it ended its storyline, but the episodes after that were both derivative and dismissive of the show's early days and made the entire mythology a complete, ultimately unsalvageable mess.

2. Creators/writers try too hard to avoid cliche endings. Writers might want to do something more meaningful or original than a stereotypical happy ending, but too often subversion or twist ending just doesn't make a lot of sense. Critics might love risk-taking, but sometimes going with the proven, classic story structure might be the right call.

3. The narrative freedom of sci-fi and fantasy makes it especially easy for people to write themselves into a corner, because you're often dealing with world ending and/or almost omnipotent threats. Coming up with a hard situation and making things progressively darker until the audience can't see a way out is a great way to build anticipation. The problem is the writer needs to come up with a solution that a) lives up to the hype and b) fits with the narrative up to that point. Writers fail to meet both those conditions all the time, especially if they don't have a planned ending. Infinity War was a happy recent exception.

[phantom000]

I am not exactly an anime fan but every now and then I find one that peaks my interest and one reason is because they conclude the story; rather then just dragging it on season after season until it has lost all meaning. I think this is what happened to the Terminator franchise. Judgement Day
was supposed to be the end, it was suppose to end on a question mark because the theme of the story is how our own technology could destroy us which is still a big possibility. But the movies made money so the suits wanted more so they basically had to undo the second movie so they could make a third. So now they only story left is the final victory of Skynet but they did not want to do that so no one cares anymore.

I can't think of an anime, an anime i like anyway, that has this problem. Gundam Wing, Turn-A Gundam, Outlaw Star, even the ending of Big O was not that bad in at least they showed what happened. This is one complaint I have with Legend of Korra is that it doesn't end so much as stops. I like that you see what happens to everyone but it feels like they could easily have done a season 5. The Last Airbender at least you feel like they could not be a season 4 simply because too much has changed.

[Independent George]

I can't think of an anime, an anime i like anyway, that has this problem.

Anime is notorious for dragging on interminably so long as a property is popular. You're probably already eliminating the ones that do exhibit this trait. *cough* InuYasha *cough*

[Karha of Honor]

I can't think of an anime, an anime i like anyway, that has this problem.

Anime is notorious for dragging on interminably so long as a property is popular. You're probably already eliminating the ones that do exhibit this trait. *cough* InuYasha *cough*

Doesn't that come from popular mangas they are based going on forever?

[GloatingSwine]

I can't think of an anime, an anime i like anyway, that has this problem.

Anime is notorious for dragging on interminably so long as a property is popular. You're probably already eliminating the ones that do exhibit this trait. *cough* InuYasha *cough*

Doesn't that come from popular mangas they are based going on forever?

Sometimes. Popular series have been known to burst forth chestburster like from a completed manga and take on life of their own, like Dragonball GT and Super.

More often though the manga will drag on interminably and the (more expensive to make) anime will stop when the wave of popularity ends.

[cilantro]

Personally, I think that it comes down to not only the skills in planning, writing, story crafting/show crafting (all of the other work that goes into making a show that doesn't 100% involve writing the actual show itself), etc... and also a clear understanding of where things have went, where it's going and also when it's going to end.

Looking back BSG (2004) comes to mind on how a great show ended with such a flat finale. It felt like the showrunners ran out of steam a long time ago and fans were kind of ready for the show to go by then (at least I was). Not to mentioned that by that point I remember Moore talking about how he wanted the move on from the show (and I do think that both him and Ick both left the show at one point, well each of them at different points, and they both came back to the show at some point as well) and that Moore was feeling like they ran out of story ideas and that the show should end by the 4th Season. The finale was like decent up a certain point (clearly I haven't seen it in a while but what I remember was that it was fine for like maybe the first 20 or 30 minutes before it started to veer off for me) and then it went downhill from there.

But looking back to All Good Things and man, that was a perfect ending. I felt like it ended on a good place for the characters and also for the story/show in general.