Roundtable: SF vs. The Future
We don’t live today in Gernsback’s hoped-for future in part because Gernsback’s mindset was shaped by then-unrealized “dream” technologies, some of which lost their luster or were demoted to secondary significance once their feasibility and importance could be assessed. We do have space travel today, it just isn’t as central to our civilization as Gernsback dreamed it would become. Given Gernsback’s passion for electronics, he probably would be completely blown away by our advances in computer technology and the internet; also by the rapid pace of technological evolution and change. Given the degree to which technology and gadgetry have percolated into all levels of contemporary society and shaped it, I feel like we’re living in one of John W. Campbell’s “lived-in” futures.
Not to oversimplify, but the vision that drove science fiction at the start of the twentieth century was macroscopic and outward looking. The reality of technology at the start of the twenty-first century is that it’s application is, if not more microscopic, at least focused more inwardly, on refinements of existing systems and their hitherto unexplored possibilities. We’re all like Matheson’s Shrinking Man, discovering a world of wonderful in the subatomic universe.
As Ceclia Holland says, “Whatever happens next, it won’t be anything we’re prepared for.” The future is unpredictable by definition. If science fiction can be said to be predictive surely it is the broken-clock-showing-the-right-time sort of blind luck. Being predictive is a story we tell ourselves about science fiction after the one of the blind luck ideas becomes real.
The future arrives in fits and starts, one halting step at a time, and when we glance backward we see that “the past is another country” and that we are transformed. The science fiction community goes through periods where it narrows its view of tomorrow and is susceptible to groupthink, before eventually breaking out in new directions. Always, writers need to shrug off yesterday’s tomorrows and find their own way. Never mind prediction. Offer a vision of a possibility and readers will gather like moths to a flame.
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With regards to the previous comments as to the future being unpredictable (which is true in the science sense) it is possible to make assumptions about trends etc. (And so for example we have the UN global population forcast for the 21st century.) Meanwhile SF is a bit like a blunderbus that sometimes points at a target called the future but with many shots missing but a few hitting the target.
As a bit of fun we (a team of mainly scientists and engineers who run a website) make some predictions for the near and medium term future at the beginning of every other year. We have done this for the best part of a decade. Our latest New Year prediction snippet is here (and we do seem to have quite a few hits).
See http://www.concatenation.org/news/news1~11.html#predictions
And the gamey lovers e’er rest in a quandary on how to have the unloose minecraft accounts.
It also features some interesting caves and rock formations, so if those are your thing then check this out.
You would possibly be wondering, Random Mobile phone industry’s.
As Ceclia Holland says, “Whatever happens next, it won’t be anything we’re prepared for.” The future is unpredictable by definition. If science fiction can be said to be predictive surely it is the broken-clock-showing-the-right-time sort of blind luck. Being predictive is a story we tell ourselves about science fiction after the one of the blind luck ideas becomes real.