Well, I was speaking broadly. I think TV CAN do revolutionary fiction and revolutionary speculative fiction. The original Star Trek and Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, Farscape...they all pushed a lot of boundaries. But the organizational structure is against it. And I think that's gotten worse over time, as power and money accretes and things turn more conservative.
But I think writing will always have the edge, because of the lower cost of investment, and because of the amount of space you can take to tell a story (a novel's worth of story is an entire season of television), and also because of the freedom of creativity writing affords. Animation allows for a wide range too, but we'll never be able to climb into a character's life through visual media the way we can with a book.
When it comes to robots vs. genetic stuff vs...whatever else, that's just a question of the themes the author is tackling in the story. I suggest looking into literary analysis on the concept of the 'other' in fiction--how storytellers often use the 'strange creature' or the 'monster' or the 'alien' or whatever to represent the unconventional, socially unacceptable or otherwise frightening elements of humanity and society: LGBT, POC, disability... The dynamic between the human and the 'other' in a story, and how the tension between them is resolved, is where the morality of the story lies. Does the story tell us to make peace? To try to understand? To fight and kill?
So I don't think what sort of...creature? is involved in the story necessarily dictates the shape of the story. After all, Frankenstein is a story on the same themes as Asimov's Robots series--although each is telling a different story on that theme. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale of the monsters we create if we let our fear shape our relationship with our children/creations, and Robots is a tale of humanity creating a child that is greater than its parent...but that we can love and co-exist with that creation and honor what we gave to help make it.
There's also a whole bunch of analysis on 'others' in speculative fiction, and how some people actually associate more strongly with the 'other' than the hero because we see ourselves reflected so seldom in the hero (who is usually so painfully conventional) and recognize elements of our own ostracization or alienation in the 'other'. Which, again, is heightened because in point of fact those creatures actually are intended to reflect marginalized people and their experiences.
no subject
But I think writing will always have the edge, because of the lower cost of investment, and because of the amount of space you can take to tell a story (a novel's worth of story is an entire season of television), and also because of the freedom of creativity writing affords. Animation allows for a wide range too, but we'll never be able to climb into a character's life through visual media the way we can with a book.
When it comes to robots vs. genetic stuff vs...whatever else, that's just a question of the themes the author is tackling in the story. I suggest looking into literary analysis on the concept of the 'other' in fiction--how storytellers often use the 'strange creature' or the 'monster' or the 'alien' or whatever to represent the unconventional, socially unacceptable or otherwise frightening elements of humanity and society: LGBT, POC, disability... The dynamic between the human and the 'other' in a story, and how the tension between them is resolved, is where the morality of the story lies. Does the story tell us to make peace? To try to understand? To fight and kill?
So I don't think what sort of...creature? is involved in the story necessarily dictates the shape of the story. After all, Frankenstein is a story on the same themes as Asimov's Robots series--although each is telling a different story on that theme. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale of the monsters we create if we let our fear shape our relationship with our children/creations, and Robots is a tale of humanity creating a child that is greater than its parent...but that we can love and co-exist with that creation and honor what we gave to help make it.
There's also a whole bunch of analysis on 'others' in speculative fiction, and how some people actually associate more strongly with the 'other' than the hero because we see ourselves reflected so seldom in the hero (who is usually so painfully conventional) and recognize elements of our own ostracization or alienation in the 'other'. Which, again, is heightened because in point of fact those creatures actually are intended to reflect marginalized people and their experiences.