Why Modern Fantasy and Sci-Fi Are Dead on Arrival

Modern fantasy and sci-fi lack wonder, recycling tropes and predictable plots, per Baldbookgeek’s 2025 critique. This dulls our psyche’s connection to symbolic wisdom, stifling the Transcendent Function and Instinctual Consciousness. Once windows to the Soul, these genres now mirror despair, disconnecting us from healing potential explored in Jungian and affective neuroscience frameworks.

I’m excited to share the full transcript of the YouTube video Why Modern Fantasy and Sci-Fi Are Dead on Arrival by Baldbookgeek (2025) here on my blog. This piece is nothing short of brilliant. It’s a sharp, insightful critique born from over two years of research and insider conversations within the publishing and marketing industries.

I’ve chosen to present it in its entirety because it resonates deeply with the work I do. My focus is on exploring how the Soul speaks through the language of symbolism. Fantasy, at its best, has the power to connect us to our instinctual wisdom and humanity’s healing potential.

Yet, as this video powerfully argues, the current state of the genre is stifled by recycled tropes, predictable formulas, and a loss of wonder. This may be dulling that vital connection. This transcript offers a compelling lens through which to examine how modern fantasy’s shortcomings impact our ability to engage with the transformative depths of our own psyches.

—Michael Walker

If you also want to listen to the You Tube video here is the reference and link:

Baldbookgeek. (2025, March 31). Why modern fantasy and sci-fi are dead on arrival [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJMZkPji8LY&t=312s

Introduction

This video is based on over two years of research, hard work, talking to people within the industry—publishers, marketing, and so on. This video is not an opinion piece; this has come from the inside.

Why I Stopped Reading Modern Fantasy and Sci-Fi

I've stopped reading most modern fantasy and science fiction. I stopped because mostly it’s all the same. The names change, the setting shifts, but the bones, the bones are old, cracked, and weathered. Every new release feels like a reheated meal served on a different plate: lukewarm style and ultimately unsatisfying. We’re drowning in a sea of recycled tropes, predictable plots, and protagonists who all read like the same archetype with a different haircut. Before we get started, don’t forget to like, share, and comment on this video. If you find the discussion here interesting, it really helps spread the word... Now let’s get into it.

The Lost Magic of Fantasy

Fantasy once conjured worlds where gods bled into the Earth and men were swallowed whole by their own ambitions. These stories had teeth. They showed us the beauty of wonder and the terror of the unknown. Magic was unpredictable, dangerous, and awe-inspiring. Kingdoms crumbled simply because of one man. Heroes didn’t always win, and sometimes they didn’t even survive. But now we get neatly packaged worlds with clearly defined magic systems that feel more like math homework than storytelling. Magic is no longer mysterious or dangerous, it’s quantifiable, charted, reduced to a set of predictable rules that drain the wonder out of it. The magic in many of these novels has become science, and in the process, it’s lost its soul.

Bland Characters and Hollow Villains

And the characters are even worse. Protagonists of modern fantasy seem to be cut from the same bland, trauma-ridden, morally ambiguous, anti-hero cardboard cutout. They wander through these grim worlds with permanent scowls and a penchant for monologues about how broken and alone they are. Their trauma is their entire personality. There’s nothing left. Their brooding is a substitute for depth. They’re not interesting; they’re not even flawed in a compelling way. They’re just there.

And the villains? We’re in an era where antagonists are so desperate to be complex and relatable they’ve become hollow: a misunderstood revolutionary, a product of a broken system, an evil that just wants to be loved, who happens to be very good-looking. BookTok people will make videos about them and how they’re their book crush, “how they can fix them?” There’s no danger anymore, no genuine threat, just endless shades of gray that all blend into this monochromatic sludge.

The Decline of Science Fiction

Science fiction, once the genre of imagination and possibilities, isn’t faring any better. It used to be about pushing the boundaries of what humanity could become. It was about peering into the unknown and asking, “What if?” But modern sci-fi has traded wonder for, well… There’re a few words that I’m thinking of that I can’t say on YouTube.

Every version of the future now feels like a dystopian echo chamber where humanity is doomed by its own flaws. Technology is always an instrument of oppression, AI inevitably rebels, and corporations control everything. The genre that once dared to dream of utopias as well as darkness now wallows in despair, a mirror of their own lives in 2025. And they’re content to remind us that everything ends badly.

Even when science fiction tries to be innovative, it falls back on tired ideas: AI becomes self-aware and turns on humanity, space colonization leads to imperialism, and time travel is a mess of paradoxes and moral dilemmas worthy of an episode of Days of Our Lives. We’ve seen it all before, and we’ll see it again.

The Industry’s Role in Repetition

Let’s not pretend this isn’t by accident. This is a result of an industry that is currently built on trends, algorithms, and marketability. Publishers aren’t looking for originality—they’re looking for what sells. And what sells is repetitive: the same tropes, the same character arcs, the same worlds dressed up in a slightly different shade of gray. Every attempt to subvert these tropes falls flat.

Subversion has become a gimmick. Killing off the protagonist halfway through the book isn’t clever anymore if it doesn’t serve the story. Making the villain sympathetic isn’t revolutionary when every villain is a tragic figure with a sob story and bangs.

Deconstructing the hero’s journey isn’t insightful when it leaves nothing behind but ashes and nihilism. George R.R. Martin, we’re looking at you, you started this. Subversion has become predictable, and when subversion becomes predictable, it no longer subverts, it’s just a new brand of the same old formula.

A Soulless Landscape

We see these subversions constantly as a result. A landscape where fantasy and science fiction have lost their soul. There’s no risk, no wonder, no genuine exploration of the human condition, just an endless parade of bleakness, nihilism, formulaic storytelling, overly dramatic subplots, and a “will they, won’t they” love story that leaves readers feeling emptier than when they started. And maybe that’s the biggest betrayal.

Science fiction and fantasy were never meant to be mirrors, they were meant to be windows. Windows into worlds where anything was possible, where humanity’s flaws could be confronted, yes, but also where hope could bloom in unexpected places, where the unknown wasn’t something to fear but something to be explored. But now all we get are mirrors reflecting a world that’s already broken.

The Loss of Dreams

What’s the point of dreaming if we’re all shut in this inevitability of failure? It’s boring. Maybe that’s why I stopped reading most of it, because somewhere along the way, fantasy and science fiction forgot how to dream. But if the genres that once showed us new worlds… we can’t imagine anything beyond the darkness, then maybe they’re just not worth reading anyway.