Personally I think Sci-fi lacks a sense of humor. Unfortunately, I share the guilt. My books generally have a little humor in them, but as a whole they are more concerned with aliens, battles, technology, politics, love, honor, hate, etc.
I don’t know if a good science fiction story needs humor, although I wonder. There are many excellent fiction books which are entertaining and humorous. Why hasn’t science fiction found a niche where readers laugh while they experience an alien world or alien culture?
I know there is a genre of science fiction spoofs that are based on humor, but that isn’t what I’m talking about. Humor is an inherent part of our make-up, so why isn’t it part of some alien race? I can’t imagine an alien race without some kind of humor unless we assume that we are the only creatures that laugh.
I know some of you will point out Ja Ja from Star Wars. If you think that is humor, then we need to have a serious discussion. In my opinion that character was an embarrassment to the series. They created the character to have humor, but they missed it entirely and I think it was a little insulting to those of us that take science fiction seriously.
I have a couple of follow-on books to my series, SIMPOC, Virus and Gemini in work and I’m going to inject more humor. I might even find a way for an insect alien to tell a joke and have a good belly laugh, or would it be a thorax laugh? I’ll have to work on that one.