== Science fiction in action! ==
Ward Shelley a few years ago artistically charted the history of science fiction and fantasy - from Gilgamesh to Mary Shelley to the year 2000 - via a fantasy "leviathan" beast. It's quirky, fun, and leaves out a lot, e.g. modern non-English SF. Anyway, it's fun to be included, a couple of times.
Okay, so science fiction has conquered the world. It is the engine behind most of the big, money-making successes of Hollywood. It propels much of the political narrative, from dread of Big Brother to obsession with social collapse scenarios. And now, each year, ever more purportedly “literary” authors try their hand at “doing future” – resulting in romances set in space, thinly repurposed westerns and navel-contemplating angst-ridden time travelers.
Ward Shelley a few years ago artistically charted the history of science fiction and fantasy - from Gilgamesh to Mary Shelley to the year 2000 - via a fantasy "leviathan" beast. It's quirky, fun, and leaves out a lot, e.g. modern non-English SF. Anyway, it's fun to be included, a couple of times.
Okay, so science fiction has conquered the world. It is the engine behind most of the big, money-making successes of Hollywood. It propels much of the political narrative, from dread of Big Brother to obsession with social collapse scenarios. And now, each year, ever more purportedly “literary” authors try their hand at “doing future” – resulting in romances set in space, thinly repurposed westerns and navel-contemplating angst-ridden time travelers.
On Slate, Laura Miller appraises some of the most recent forays by artistically approved authors, and finds most of them wanting. Only then, what about Chabon? Bacigalupi? Rajamieni? Okorofor? Sue Burke? We embrace them. Yes, in part because they give a little love back. But also because they bothered to heed some of our history, some of our had-learned craft. Above all, they don't imply: "I just invented all this!".
Still, should we be glad, or miffed by these cultural appropriations?
Paraphrasing Gandhi: “First they ignore you. Then they mock you. Then they fight you. And then they claim to have loved you, all along.” Sigh.
== What's new in SF? ==
Ari Brin's excellent
podcast - Novum - explores many topics related to science fiction and its
influence on other media - and the world. In Episode 14, she begins a two part series reflecting on
"Advertising in Science Fiction." First, how advertising is portrayed in
novels and films about the future, and then in Episode 15 about how advertisers use science fiction - and images of the future -- to sell, sell, sell. And episode 16... about the origins of the "Jungle Gym," is even better! Terrific stuff.
Gregory Benford’s latest - The Berlin Project - explores another What-if about the Second World War, only this time, instead of
maundering about implausible ways the Axis powers might have won, he delves
into a way the struggle might have ended much sooner, if the director of the
Manhattan Project had not made a crucial mistake. Had Leslie Graves listened to
one fellow – who happens to have been Benford’s father-in-law – we might have
had the bomb a year earlier, to use against Hitler’s capital. Like Benford’s classic Timescape, this novel shines
light on the process of science itself in critical times. Only here, most of
the characters – including the incredible Mo Berg – were real-life or even
larger than life. And Benford knew a
great many of them. See Tom Shippey’s review in the Wall Street Journal.
Steve DeGroof, creator of the excellent Tree Lobsters comic strip, has a trio of short story collections: First Lines, Dandelion Seeds, and Scatter Plot -- all going for $1.99 on Kindle. See my review of science-based webcomics.
A lovely and pointed morality tale by Eliot Peper (author of Cumulus - an all-too believable tale of ubiquitous surveillance) is available on Kindle … True Blue… about a future when having blue eyes is the stigma-crushed minority.
The rebooted Omni Media announces that it has partnered with the Museum of Science Fiction to bring back the original full run of Omni Magazine. Every issue ever published, all the way back to the 1970s, is now available online. Explore the iconic science fiction collection today.
== Science Fiction & the Future ==
Global English Editing has created a fascinating web-graphic shows you many aspects from a recent study of literacy and reading in many nations, around the world. The good news is that reading is far from going extinct. More paper and e-books than ever are being consumed.. and yes, in the U.S. as well. Though the graphic also shows reasons for caution. Among tidbits: There are books you can “pre-order” that are scheduled for release a thousand years from now (a stunt). But book publishing is the largest media and entertainment industry.
Wow okay, here’s one for the prediction registry: “A study involving 34-week-old fetuses found they were more likely to
focus on a pattern of lights that resembled a human face than on the same
lights configured to look nothing like a face.” In other words, techies have
started visually showing stuff to fetuses. How long before we get the teaching
units I portrayed in “Dr. Pak’s Preschool”? A chilling story that forecast
future parents giving their unborn off spring a “womb with a view”?
What next? Poor women
renting out their wombs to make advanced bio-mechanical devices, as in
“Piecework”? Find both stories (and much more) in OTHERNESS.
A call for volunteers to update my predictions registry! It's a wiki. There's more, much more!
Wow. A
quantum improvement in hobby drones. Controlled via face and hand gesture
recognition, in addition to the usual remote controls. Put out your hand and it
will land on it. Gymbaled camera, image stabilized. Amazing.
The Problem with Hollywood's visions of Artificial Intelligence - a re-evaluation of Alex Garland's film Ex Machina.
The Problem with Hollywood's visions of Artificial Intelligence - a re-evaluation of Alex Garland's film Ex Machina.
== The Sheep Around us? ==
Using his
WIRED soapbox to promote his new novel, Walkaway, Cory Doctorow takes the occasion also
to fight some of the most hoary and destructive instincts of modern, lazy
storytelling in his essay: Disasters Don't Have to End in Dystopia.
“Here’s how you make a
dystopia: Convince people that when disaster strikes, their neighbors are their
enemies, not their mutual saviors and responsibilities. The belief that when
the lights go out, your neighbors will come over with a shotgun—rather than the
contents of their freezer so you can have a barbecue before it all spoils—isn’t
just a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s a weaponized narrative. The belief in the
barely restrained predatory nature of the people around you is the cause of
dystopia, the belief that turns mere crises into catastrophes.”
This paraphrases the core
point from my novel The Postman, which I wrote as a rebuttal to the Mad
Max genre’s perpetual contempt for the average person. In my novel (and I admit that Kevin Costner
did remain faithful to this notion) all hope for a restored civilization rests
upon the survivors remembering one core fact: “I was once a mighty and noble
being, called a citizen.” And hence, the
great accomplishment of the story’s hero is not to defeat the villains, but to
remind the people of that central fact.
Rebecca Solnit - one of
the finest essayists in America - makes the same point in A Paradise Built in Hell, showing that time and again, our neighbors show pluck and guts, as
when 80 average citizens rebelled, aboard flight UA93. And yet, authors and directors relentlessly
trot forth the banal dystopia that Cory criticizes.
Doctorow distinguishes
this tiresome cliché with his notion of the
guardedly upbeat utopia. Not the boring aftermath of an enlightened and
better civilization — no drama there! That’s why - in the much better tomorrows
of Iain Banks, of Star Trek and my own Kiln People - most of the tales
take place at a fringe or frontier. (The
Federation is decent and good and fair, which is why we almost never look
there.)
Likewise, Doctorow eschews
a preachy utopia in favor of portraying its beginning, in danger and
ferment. The initial problem may be
chaotic and deadly, as in a dystopia, but with a crucial difference.
“Stories of futures in which
disaster strikes and we rise to the occasion are a vaccine against the virus of
mistrust. Our disaster recovery is always fastest and smoothest when we work
together, when every seat on every lifeboat is taken. Stories in which the
breakdown of technology means the breakdown of civilization are a vile libel on
humanity itself.” He asserts that: “ the
best science fiction does something much more interesting than prediction: It
inspires. That science fiction tells us better nations are ours to build and
lets us dream vividly of what it might be like to live in those nations.”
As is very often the case,
Doctorow presents important and thought-provoking notions. Alas, Cory does tend
also to wave signs implying “Look here! I invented this idea!”
And so, only in the interests of fairness, I do urge you also to have a look at my much-earlier missive on “The Idiot Plot,” and compare.
And so, only in the interests of fairness, I do urge you also to have a look at my much-earlier missive on “The Idiot Plot,” and compare.
== The Big Announcement? ==
The hacker group Anonymous claims that NASA has evidence for alien life. I have heard such rumors all my life. This one sounds especially implausible, for several reasons:
1. Given my overlapping sectors of interest in alien life - as an astrophysicist, the SETI scholar who has catalogued "Fermi" hypotheses, a NASA consultant, a known speculator on alternative biology, and as an expert in science fiction scenarios of First Contact, I can pretty much guarantee you that any contact committee that makes no use of me is both stupid and crazy. I say that (obviously) without modesty, and yet bolstered by the simple reason that I do not leap to premature conclusions, unlike almost every other savant in the field.
2. Okay, let's shift from one diagnosably egotistical statement to the worst narcissist in the world... do you actually think that our current president would refrain from seizing such an announcement as his own? Especially as a distraction from current problems? Heck, he might just make something like this up! One third of the country would follow him. The notion that he would leave such a thing to NASA is pure fantasy -- as, blatantly, are most UFO tales.
3. Look, I have written scads of SF about cryptic or suddenly-disclosed alien contact! It makes for great drama. I can entertain the thought. It's just that nearly every publicly bruited scenario I have seen and heard, across half a century, has been so dismally dumb! Tawdry, temporally and sociologically and scientifically illogical blarings of the cheapest Hollywood melodramas, with the added trait of nearly always being stunningly... bo-o-oring. (Zzzzzzzzz.) Wel... with some exceptions.
4. Okay, maybe I over-rate my own value. But I also know many of the scientists and other thinkers who would be called in to consult, in case of something truly dramatic. And I see no sign of any of them scurrying about frantically or disappearing from the map.
5. But just in case, let me add that I can concoct scenarios under which intelligent and sincere public servants might (a) understand what's going on and not need (or believe they don't need) input from a sci fi writer... (who has given many talks at alphabetical security agencies.) (b) have genuine and valid reasons for secrecy (see my story "Senses, Three and Six.") And (c) have compelling reasons not to inform an untrustworthy chief executive. I admit that all of that is possible...
...though down that road lie many rationalizations, deeply rooted in human nature and bad old practices that seldom led to good. If I were on the commission, I would go along with decided policy... but would perpetually be the fellow inside who questions pat assumptions.
I spent more time on this than the rumor was worth. If it comes true, I would win some wagers and lose others. And pray that we are not led by fools.
== Coming events! ==
I'll be keynoting at the coming Interstellar Conference, in Monterrey California on August 7. Headlining along with warp drive inventor (or at least the least implausible version) Miguel Alcubierre.
A few days before, I'll be attending the annual Science Foo camp at the Google Campus.
Recent events! July 13 I gave the dinner keynote at "Realizing the Future: Genome Engineering 2017," in Minneapolis. At San Diego's Comicon International, I was on a July 21 panel about alien civilizations with Jimmy Diggs and Mark O'Bannon and others. The next day I was on a couple of panels at Freedom Fest, in Las Vegas. Then we went see Penn & Teller! (Penn's a sci fi reader and futurist, too.)
August 26 - come by the San Diego Festival of Books.
I'll be keynoting at the coming Interstellar Conference, in Monterrey California on August 7. Headlining along with warp drive inventor (or at least the least implausible version) Miguel Alcubierre.
A few days before, I'll be attending the annual Science Foo camp at the Google Campus.
Recent events! July 13 I gave the dinner keynote at "Realizing the Future: Genome Engineering 2017," in Minneapolis. At San Diego's Comicon International, I was on a July 21 panel about alien civilizations with Jimmy Diggs and Mark O'Bannon and others. The next day I was on a couple of panels at Freedom Fest, in Las Vegas. Then we went see Penn & Teller! (Penn's a sci fi reader and futurist, too.)
August 26 - come by the San Diego Festival of Books.