Perspectives from Science Fiction: Hugos and other marvels

Best of the year in science fiction & fantasy: Congratulations to the many fine winners of the 2017 Hugo Award -- especially N. K. Jemison for best novel (The Obelisk Gate), sequel to her award-winning novel The Fifth Season, Seanan McGuire for best novella (Every Heart a Doorway), Ursula Vernon for best novelette (The Tomato Thief), Amal El-Mohtar for best short story (Seasons of Glass and Iron). 

Let’s settle one thing: I defend an author's right to win a best novel Hugo for a sequel to a novel that won a Hugo! Um... I'd be a hypocrite to do otherwise! ;-) 

Oh and also, let’s celebrate that science fiction has always – and yes always, ever since it was founded by our revered grandmother of SF, Mary Wollstonecraft (Shelley) – been the genre of literature most welcoming to bold ideas about human and non-human diversity, and brashly exploratory authors. Yes, SF was always “better than its times” when it came to such things, though every decade deserved the reproof of later decades, for its own myopic misdeeds. Leaving our self-critical movement always looking for the next cause for self-improvement!

So what are we doing now, that will cause later generations of brave questioners and boundary-pushers to reprove? What terrible habit will reformers tell us to break next, when we get the upper hand on racism, sexism and cultural conformity? I think I know what it will be! (Hint: what is the most harmful and nasty thing that even good people now routinely do to each other, with barely a thought to fairness or consequences? And I include people as good as you envision yourself to be. Discuss in comments, below.)

Still, let's get back to the latest generation of marvelous new authors. Two impressive ones to watch, in my opinion?  

Ada Palmer, author of the dense and intellectually rich thought experiments Too Like The Lightning and its sequel Seven Surrenders… And Sue Burke, who impressed me with her novel Semiosis, a less-dense and quicker-moving, episodic tale about humans colonizing a planet and awakening dormant super-intelligent plant life.

== SF'nal methods applied! ==

Prototyping a better tomorrow: An extensive article by Kevin Bankston on “science fiction prototyping” reveals how many companies, NGOs and agencies are now building up their suites of consultants who are expert at crafting SF “what-if” scenarios. Examples include the 64 writers and creators assembled by the XPrize Foundation.

For example, Bankston writes, “Mozilla commissioned stories from big-name writers like Cory Doctorow, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Daniel Suarez for its conference on the future of the open internet, while the Data and Society Research Institute similarly used science fiction as a scenarios tool for driving a conference discussion, which ultimately led to a published set of four stories about the future of A.I. and automation. 

A new online community and content portal called Scout is explicitly focused on using science fiction to understand the present and plan for tomorrow. Ari popper's endeavor SciFutures contracts with companies to build imaginative scenarios, on-demand. And Future Tense on Slate is publishing original science fiction by Emily St. John Mandel and Paulo Bacigalupi "accompanied by expert commentary to help readers grapple with new technologies.”

Another good example that's available for free download: Stories in the Stratosphere, a collection of near-future stories collected ASU: Center for Science and Imagination, edited by Ed Finn – with stories by Karl Schroeder, Brenda Cooper, plus one I collaborated on with Tobias Buckell. “Each story presents a snapshot of a possible future where the stratosphere is a key space for solving problems, exploring opportunities or playing out conflicts unfolding on the Earth’s surface.” It was sponsored by one of the new strato-balloon companies - World View - founded by Pluto pioneer Alan Stern.

== The harder, bigger questions ==

Is it possible to portray a human civilization that is post-singularity?  Of course it’s easy, if the advanced machines are malevolent toward our descendants, who scramble for survival like rats underfoot, as portrayed in Gregory Benford’s Galactic Center series and many works of cyberpunk. Assume all that and the plot-peril comes easily. The story almost writes itself. (See this secret decrypted.) 

But what if the coming singularity goes better than expected? Might we find the wondrously desired “soft landing” when humanity and our creations learn to prosper together? Iain Banks - in his Culture Novels - proposed that bio-humans and their civilization would be cherished, guided and cared-for by super-AI minds — machines of loving grace — who thereupon incorporate the best of us into their matrices, in order to “stay human-based.” They also find important work for those men and women who feel ambitious, adventurous and creative.

And yes, it’s much harder to portray a positive post-singularity humanity. How do you depict descendants who happen also to be (in effect) omniscient gods?  I made my own efforts to take on this challenge in tales like “Stones of Significance” and "Reality Check." But how much easier (and lazier) it is to throw your characters into hardscrabble peril, dodging the stomping heels of meanie skynets and terminators?

Still, you can find positive post-singularity stories in the oddest places. By Cordwainer Smith, for example, or Philip José Farmer, or Roger Zelazny… 

... and by my former teacher, Ursula LeGuin, who presents us with a future humanity that has the leisure and instrumentalities and passion to study the languages of animals — even ants — for the sake of vastly expanded empathy and art. 

Go read “The Author of the Acacia Seeds And Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolinguistics,” (from Le Guin's collection, The Compass Rose) and tell me how the trio of little vignettes can be set anywhere/when other than in a fine posterity that’s spectacularly wealthier and also richer in “otherness” than even our own. These are tasty little tales, in their own right.  But it is the author’s implicit confidence in humanity that I find most endearing… that we will keep expanding our circles of inclusion and eagerly spending our new plenty on frenetically, eagerly getting to know.

Ah, but will there be others to know, as we embark on a perilous journey into the Anthropocene, a new geological era — crafted (for worse (or better) by man — we know we’re causing a wave of extinctions that will certainly match that of the late Pleistocene, and conceivably the dire one at the end of the Cretaceous? There are even those speaking of Permian levels of annihilation, in which case you can be sure that humanity will end amid the rubble and heat and poisoned atmosphere, the effluents of our woefully incomplete sapience.

In both Earth and Existence I took a balanced view, that we still have a chance to steer this vessel. After all, suppose you had been around in the 1980s and were asked to bet on the number of surviving whale species, in 2017. Who would have wagered that all of them would still be around, and rising in numbers?

As a 50 year Sierra Club and Greenpeace member, I know we must agitate and spread awareness of the dark potential costs of human negligence. I am beating drums and knocking heads!  And yet…

…and yet, as Captain Kirk said, there remain “possibilities.”  

Hence see this book Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature is Thriving in an Age of Extinction - on “The sixth mass genesis? New species are coming into existence faster than ever thanks to humans.”  And yes, there is a danger that this argument may be misused by the enemies of the Earth, of civilization and of our children.  Those rationalizing haters of science and responsibility abound.

And yet… for those of you who can nurse complex thoughts and nuance, there is grist here for some pondering.

== News and Updates == 

In Seat 14C: The XPrize Foundation – in collaboration with ANA Airlines – has issued on online anthology based on a fun conceit.  A dozen top science fiction authors were asked to write stories about passengers aboard ANA flight 008, landing in San Francisco of the year 2037, two decades later than they expected to arrive.  Stories by Kevin Anderson, James Morrow, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Gregory Benford, Bruce Sterling and many other luminaries. Way-fun stuff.  Not much consistency except… here’s your monthly dose of optimism!

Speaking of XPrize… they FB-posted a well-produced video of me explaining the concept of the self-preventing prophecy, and how we gird ourselves through science fiction to face tomorrow's perils. 

While we're at it, here are more Ted-style talks about our future!

(1) The “Neo” Project aims to create a vividly beautiful film, combining science and art with optimism. They feature my blather about peering into the future. Vivid imagery and remarkable sound editing.

(2) Video of my talk on the future of A.I. to a packed house at IBM's World of Watson congress in Las Vegas, October 2016. A punchy tour of big perspectives on Intelligence, as well as both artificial and human augmentation.

(3) At the Smithsonian - "Will we diversify into many types of humanity?"

Okay, I'm almost done with this Science Fiction roundup... but hold on...

Last chance to get The Practice Effect on Kindle for only $1.99!

== Alternate Worlds Abound! ==

HBO’s new parallel world sci fi show called “Confederate” seems a timely, provocative riff on our re-ignited American Civil War.  “The series takes place in an alternate timeline, where the Southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. The story follows a broad swath of characters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone — freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists, the executives of a slave-holding conglomerate and the families of people in their thrall.”  I'll comment more on this, later. But note that I have long said we're in phase 8 of the American Civil War...

... and so here's your costume for Halloween. I mean it. Demand may exceed supply, so act now!

Another alternate history drama series, which has been in the works at Amazon for over a year, also paints a reality where southern states have left the Union but takes a very different approach. Titled Black America, the drama hails from top feature producer Will Packer (Ride Along, Think Like A Man franchises, Straight Outta Compton) and Peabody-winning The Boondocks creator and Black Jesus co-creator Aaron McGruder. It envisions an alternate history where newly freed African Americans have secured the Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama post-Reconstruction as reparations for slavery, and with that land, the freedom to shape their own destiny. The sovereign nation they formed, New Colonia, has had a tumultuous and sometimes violent relationship with its looming “Big Neighbor,” both ally and foe, the United States.

And finally.... Aw… RIP Gonzilla!