I've just returned from DC where I gave a talk at the White House (the EOB) and a panel at the AIAA and then performed my duties as a member of the advisory External Council of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts Group. Busy stuff! But it left me hungry to get back to ... science fiction! And so, let's do a roundup!
Elon Musk avows we’re likely in a simulation, not the "base" reality - terminology much like my levels-of-reality story “Stones of Significance.” Elon writes, “I'm fine with being in a video game, but could I have cooler abilities next time?” Come, Elon. In this one you have world-changing superpowers. In a game, your player may be accused of cheating!
Consider... "How SF split off from 'competence porn'." The latter genre - like The Martian - thrills fans with a can-do spirit that used to be core to science fiction, both on-page and on-screen. And yes, when sci fi was overly fizzy-optimistic, the New Wave and cyberpunk and dystopias were necessary corrections. Now? Guess which is the cliché? Can-do is now the rare rebel.
In io9, Charlie Jane Anders writes: "This shift coincides with the decline in space opera on television, and the rise of apocalypses and "disaster porn," which are at least partly a wish-fulfillment fantasy about life becoming simpler and less confusing again. We have "competence porn" in the present day, but when we imagine the near future, we reach for "disaster porn."" I revere Charlie Jane for (among other things) clearly citing the current, largely dismal mood in SF as dull, unimaginative and unhelpful, contributing to decayed confidence in real life problem solving.
Elon Musk avows we’re likely in a simulation, not the "base" reality - terminology much like my levels-of-reality story “Stones of Significance.” Elon writes, “I'm fine with being in a video game, but could I have cooler abilities next time?” Come, Elon. In this one you have world-changing superpowers. In a game, your player may be accused of cheating!
Consider... "How SF split off from 'competence porn'." The latter genre - like The Martian - thrills fans with a can-do spirit that used to be core to science fiction, both on-page and on-screen. And yes, when sci fi was overly fizzy-optimistic, the New Wave and cyberpunk and dystopias were necessary corrections. Now? Guess which is the cliché? Can-do is now the rare rebel.
In io9, Charlie Jane Anders writes: "This shift coincides with the decline in space opera on television, and the rise of apocalypses and "disaster porn," which are at least partly a wish-fulfillment fantasy about life becoming simpler and less confusing again. We have "competence porn" in the present day, but when we imagine the near future, we reach for "disaster porn."" I revere Charlie Jane for (among other things) clearly citing the current, largely dismal mood in SF as dull, unimaginative and unhelpful, contributing to decayed confidence in real life problem solving.
Where I part company is over why. This is not a matter of near-future vs far. Competence and hope - set amid thrilling danger and good writing - can be found in SF set amid all kinds of futures -- near, middle and far -- as evoked by rare works like Stargate and Firefly, by the works of Banks and Vinge. (And some of the rest of us try, as well.)
No, the plague of zombies and apocalypses and illogically red-eyed dystopias has one central cause -- laziness. Plotting is vastly easier when there are no helpful institutions or professionals, when power is automatically and simplistically evil, when there's no citizenship and the hero's neighbors are all bleating sheep. Relax any of those clichés? Then suddenly an author or director has to put down the joint (s)he's smoking and think. That is why "competence porn" - about folks taking on tomorrow's problems with energy, focus and good will - is so rare. It is also why a cliche-fatigued public is starting to turn eyes, raising them from fields of undead, looking not toward demigods, but toward engineers. See this explicated in my article, The Idiot Plot.
No, the plague of zombies and apocalypses and illogically red-eyed dystopias has one central cause -- laziness. Plotting is vastly easier when there are no helpful institutions or professionals, when power is automatically and simplistically evil, when there's no citizenship and the hero's neighbors are all bleating sheep. Relax any of those clichés? Then suddenly an author or director has to put down the joint (s)he's smoking and think. That is why "competence porn" - about folks taking on tomorrow's problems with energy, focus and good will - is so rare. It is also why a cliche-fatigued public is starting to turn eyes, raising them from fields of undead, looking not toward demigods, but toward engineers. See this explicated in my article, The Idiot Plot.
Railing away at our modern obsession with feudalism stories, I’ve felt quite the lonely Jeremiah. Take my appraisals of both Star Wars and JRR Tolkien’s Ring Cycle, both of them Wagnerian in their truly palpable loathing of modernity and such blatant mistakes as democracy and empowerment of common citizenship. But at least those two mega works have compensating qualities. Most feudalism-loving fantasies are simply ingrate-trash, written by dreamy folks who would not last five minutes under the cruel way of life that oppressed 99% of our ancestors.
But folks are starting to wise up. They are forced to, confronted by six seasons of George R.R. Martin’s GAME OF THRONES series, in which my dear friend and colleague George has pulled out the stops, asking again and again: “There. Are you disgusted with lords and magicians and other nasty, nasty-awful oppressors yet?”
At last, some folks like Si Sheppard, in Salon, are finally catching on. He remarks: “Amidst all the bloodshed, backstabbing, and bare breasts, what fans don’t expect, wouldn’t want, and won’t get is the winner to assume executive power through representing the will of the people by winning the majority of their votes in a free and fair election, and then determining policy through an ongoing process of negotiation with a separately elected legislative branch in a power-sharing arrangement demarcated by a constitution. You know, like they’re supposed to.”
Citing how some SF authors like China Miéville, David Brin and Michael Moorcock have spoken up against this reflex, Sheppard continues: “We cherish our democracy, but this fundamental right is defined by its almost total absence in literary high fantasy, which has achieved its apotheosis in “Game of Thrones.” The mercantile Free Cities of Essos each fall somewhere on the spectrum of oligarchy/plutocracy/timocracy/thalassocracy.” And “In fantasy, the rule is always, “the [usurper] king is dead, long live the [legitimate] king,” never “the king is dead, long live the republic.”
He goes on to appraise how we hearken back to fairy tales and legends that come down to us from the millennia of darkness, and how alluring it seems (to some) to envision simpler loyalties that could not be questioned, as to a sacred king. Though I believe it goes even deeper, to genetic reflex, since we are all descended from the harems of human males who seized reproductive advantage in the old, feudal way.
He goes on to appraise how we hearken back to fairy tales and legends that come down to us from the millennia of darkness, and how alluring it seems (to some) to envision simpler loyalties that could not be questioned, as to a sacred king. Though I believe it goes even deeper, to genetic reflex, since we are all descended from the harems of human males who seized reproductive advantage in the old, feudal way.
Sheppard concludes, “The innate human desire to surrender the burden of power to an anointed individual, a chosen one, has marked the downfall of democratic polities throughout history. Despite the powerful warning against surrendering sovereignty to a monarch in the earliest scripture, as Benjamin Franklin observed, “there is a natural inclination in mankind to kingly government.” From Octavian Caesar in Rome to Napoleon Bonaparte in France to Sheev Palpatine in the Galactic Republic, ambitious men were presented with supreme authority “to compensate for the fact that the elected representatives can’t agree on anything and are corrupt,” George Lucas explains.”
== Sci Fi: predicting -- or anticipating the future? ==
Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact, combines an extensive series of articles by journalist Steve Kotler about fantastic, Science Fictional visions that later became reality -- discussing how fiction imagined many of the technologies that are shaping our daily lives. On IEET, the author discusses how, in the future, we may upload our minds into silicon (as I portray in Existence!)
Thoth Technology Inc has been granted both US and UK patents for a space elevator designed to take astronauts up into the stratosphere, so they can then be propelled into space. The tower, will be an inflatable, freestanding structure complete with an electrical elevator and will reach from its ground ancho to 20km (12.5 miles) height. In other words in all ways precisely the design that I described in my novel Sundiver. (Anyone remember the Vanilla Needle?)
70 years ago, Murray Leinster’s story “A Logic Named Joe” set the bar for predictive vision, forecasting a future when private citizens would have personal computers that speak to them and seek information via a world spanning network. No other author followed Leinster’s lead for decades. The OC Register celebrates this milestone:
“It's important to note the state of science and technology at this point [1946]. The United States had only recently come out of World War II, having dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union would not test its atomic bomb to kick off the Cold War for another three years, and computers only existed as massive projects like the Colossus, Harvard Mark I and ENIAC. The transistor computer would not be built until 1953, and ARPANET would not go online for another 23 years.
“Technology in the home, meanwhile, was only beginning to emerge with electric appliances and television was still in its infancy (the BBC had only begun broadcasting TV 10 years prior.) Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was lauded for seeing a market for home computers in the late 1970s. Murray Leinster predicted it nearly a decade before Jobs was even born.” The story itself is on Google Books or available on Amazon.
Another novel about the integration of technology into our daily lives: Speak, by Louisa Hall, is a
multi-faceted reflection on Artificial Intelligence, exploring relationships between humans and machines, as well as the isolation and alienation of her
human characters. The novel speaks through five different narrators across
time, from a researcher imprisoned for making robots (babybots) deemed illegal
because they were excessively lifelike -- to a troubled and lonely girl seeking consolation from a computer after her babybot was confiscated. Other voices
include computer scientist Alan Turing, speaking through his letters, a 17th
century Puritan young woman speculating about the soul of her dog while traveling to the New World, and a Holocaust survivor
increasingly unable to communicate with her spouse - who creates AI that speaks but doesn't remember. Through these voices, Speak delves into the essence of identity, language and memory.
Another novel about the integration of technology into our daily lives: Speak, by Louisa Hall, is a
multi-faceted reflection on Artificial Intelligence, exploring relationships between humans and machines, as well as the isolation and alienation of her
human characters. The novel speaks through five different narrators across
time, from a researcher imprisoned for making robots (babybots) deemed illegal
because they were excessively lifelike -- to a troubled and lonely girl seeking consolation from a computer after her babybot was confiscated. Other voices
include computer scientist Alan Turing, speaking through his letters, a 17th
century Puritan young woman speculating about the soul of her dog while traveling to the New World, and a Holocaust survivor
increasingly unable to communicate with her spouse - who creates AI that speaks but doesn't remember. Through these voices, Speak delves into the essence of identity, language and memory.
Finally...
Here's a cool bit of Sci Fi prophecy, foreshadowing SpaceX’s recent impressive ocean landing. The 1959 Soviet film, The Sky Calls -- shows a rocket landing on a barge in the ocean.
Way to go Elon!
Here's a cool bit of Sci Fi prophecy, foreshadowing SpaceX’s recent impressive ocean landing. The 1959 Soviet film, The Sky Calls -- shows a rocket landing on a barge in the ocean.
Way to go Elon!
