Roundtable: SF vs. The Future
Actually, we DO have several of those, we just don’t pay much attention to them. Surgical robots are a working part of everyday reality in many hospitals, and surgical nano-bots can’t be far behind. The early experiments in teleportation are underway right now. We could have human clones if we wanted them–it’s social factors, not technology, that keeps us from having them. And we’ve had genetic engineering for tens of thousands of years; every time you see a different breed of dog, or eat an ear of corn, or pass a cow near the highway, you’re seeing the results of practical genetic engineering. (Or, for that matter, what about a human ear or a replacement organ grown on a pig. This isn’t genetic engineering?).
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.