Science Fiction of the Future

Slate asked science fiction authors to name what books they would recommend to the 2016 presidential candidates. 

Their list offers up Science Fiction That Can Change Our Future -- serious novels that explore changes in our world or civilization and ponder either opportunities or mistakes to avoid.  Included are authors like Usula LeGuin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Margaret Atwood, Bruce Sterling, China Mieville, Nnedi Okorafor… oh and yours truly.  And no, we aren't all identical, politically.  The authors on that list want readers who argue and who are willing to entertain a fresh idea, even when the author is 80% wrong.

How might the future of Earth -- and humanity -- be impacted by climate change? Enter ASU’s Climate Fiction Short Story Contest (deadline January 2016) to be judged by the great Kim Stanley Robinson! 

Want to send your name to Mars? On four successive spacecraft?  NASA can arrange it via the InSight program! Only beware. My short story “Mars Opposition” suggests a (highly unlikely but vivid) way that there could be a price to pay. Heh. But what are, you, chicken? 

This list of the 120 most helpful websites for writers in 2015 features Contrary Brin as one of those sites.  Probably of more value to writers than my blog would be this popular page of advice - A Long, Lonely Road - that I have long put up.  It has my best practical suggestions... and the sidebar contains other links. See also this entire Scoopit of advice compilations!

== Recent Books == 

See this cool, brief update on the state of Science Fiction in Africa.

Follow that up with this NPR review of of a new novel, Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor, a leader in the African SF renaissance.  “Lagos (Nigeria) is introduced to aliens who can shift their shape, heal wounds, resist death and change the bodies of the things around them — and claim to want to change human lives for the better.”     

Ring of Fire IV, due for release in May 2016. This will be another major anthology in Eric Flint's 1632 alternate history series. The lead story in that volume will be a novelette... by David Brin. Okay, okay. I couldn't help myself.  It's just so much fun.

A look back at a Sci Fi Classic: The Last Question by Isaac Asimov is now in webcomic format.  Some of the plot premises (if there is a plot) are silly… but the ultimate question is still… ultimate. 

Why haven’t we been visited by tourists from the future? One possibility is that time travelers keep a low profile in order to avoid changing the past. But if they can’t change history, why would they even want to come here? Well, maybe they’re stealing our stuff.  It’s an idea Wesley Chu explores in his new novel Time Salvager — currently being adapted into a film by Michael Bay — about time travelers who visit the scenes of famous disasters and salvage materials that are destined to be destroyed anyway.

This is a blatant homage -- to John Varley's story "Air Raid" which became the 1989 movie Millennium, where time agents pop into airliners that are about to crash, yank out the passengers and replace them with crude clones, because they cannot visibly change the past. 

In fact, my very first attempt at a novel, during my freshman year at Caltech (pre 'Air Raid'), took an interesting variation on this theme!  Someday, if I get that copy-yourself-to-get-more-done machine from Universal Kilns...

How is the military envisioning the warship of the future? Lasers and railguns and microwave-spitters... and a tethered drone instead of a mast? Zowee.  

See more in August Cole's well-researched techno thriller written with Peter Singer -- Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War -- where the United States, China and Russia face off in a chilling, frightening version of the Cold War... which rapidly turns dangerously hot. Conflict plays out across the high-tech battlefields of the near future -- over land and sea, cyberspace and outer space -- with all-too-believable complications involving robotic drones, cyberwarfare, artificial intelligence, skilled hackers and more...

A brilliant debut from Jason M. Hough (pronounced Huff), The Darwin Elevator is a compelling read. The first of Hough's Dire Earth Cycle, the novel is set in a post-apocalyptic 23rd century Earth, which has been ravaged and almost completely depopulated (or turned into savage sub-humans) by a virulent plague. The epidemic is held at bay only in the isolated community at Darwin, Australia, where a mysterious 'gift', a high-tech space elevator was planted by aliens known as 'The Builders'. Only a few immune adventurers are able to leave Darwin to scavenge for valuables... and to seek answers when the alien technology begins to fail. If you like this, Hough's most recent sci fi thriller is Zero World.

Have any of you read the post-apocalyptic novel One Second After by William R. Forstchen? The sequel, One Year After was recently released. My own "The Postman" received kind of an honorable mention in the first chapter: “I used to be an official employee of the United States Postal Service, and by heaven, I was proud of that. Remember that book some years back and the wretched movie made afterwards about how the postal service reunites America after a disaster like the one we had for real?”

Carl Gutiérrez-Jones, a professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara, suggests that tales in which science fictional characters face existential or even suicidal choices may play a kind of therapeutic role as they help audiences imagine adaptation in times of terribly traumatic upheaval. See this analyzed in his recent book: Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction.

Take a look at this: A young smuggler raised on the star lanes must rescue his crew, and save the galaxy from demons... See this crowdfunding project aiming at good old fashioned space opera with some cool concept art already in hand: The Magnificient Raiders of Dimension War 1, by author Dante D'Anthony.

Brin-News

Okay, this one is all about... your humble host. And first, an encomium for which I literally bled, eighty times...

A ten gallon hat! That's what you get for donating 10 gallons of blood! (Across the span of some years...) And a nice little plaque. Match that! Schedule an appointment through your local Red Cross or Blood Bank. 

My short story The Giving Plague explored a creepy-hopeful-scary scenario wherein blood donation changes the future of humanity... (it's free on Kindle or my website). 

== Recent and upcoming honors ==


The Potomac Institute’s Navigator Awards recognize individuals who have sought bold solutions to national challenges.  I am honored to be one of this year’s three recipients, along with Congressman Mac Thornberry and Alan Shaffer, Director of the office at NATO that coordinate R&D toward defense and civilian progress. Past recipients include leaders in government service as well as science & technology pioneers like Elon Musk. My citation is for shaking up assumptions by constructing “unconventional settings and raise serious questions about the nature of humanity, the fate of Earth, and other cosmic considerations.”  A big gala event in DC. I'll have pictures soon.


Also in October 2015 I’ll be the first annual National Endowment for the Humanities/Hannah Arendt Center Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Bard College, and keynoter at Bard’s October 15-16 conference: What do we lose when we lose our privacy? with a Skyped appearance by Edward Snowden.

== Insightful gab or hot air? ==

The Future Seen Through the Eyes of a Writer: I was onstage with epic Sci Fi novelist and AI theoretician Ramez Naam (author of the chilling near-future Nexus), as well as Peter Schwartz (author of The Art of the Long View) discussing possibilities about what lies beyond tomorrow, at the huge Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco, September 2015. Here's a clip of the video from the event.

Join me in New York City: Is Science Fiction the Science of the Future? An evening meet-up with the Philip K. Dick Festival in Manhattan on October 12 at 7 pm. 

Where you can find me next month: My travels include New York, Washington DC, Seattle, Amsterdam, and Dallas... Check my website for updates ... or follow me on Twitter.

== Brin Sampler == 

I frequently answer questions on Quora. Join the often thought-provoking discussions over there, with queries like: Why hasn't there been a coup d'etat in the United States.

Trekspertise released a nicely edited, image-rich video of a talk I gave exploring: What is Science Fiction?  See more articles and Speculations on Science Fiction.

At the borderlands between science and science fiction are the highly elevated interviews of Robert Lawrence Kuhn’s “Closer to Truth” television series. I was honored to be included along with mavens like Francisco Ayala, Paul Davies Max Tegmark, Alan Guth and so on.  In this mashup, Kuhn alternates some of my excerpts with those of Nick Bostrom, Martin Rees, Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil, creating in effect a debate over whether or not we are currently living in a simulation. See Is Our Universe a Fake? nicely repackaged by Space.com. Or browse the list of insightful topics at the show’s main site. 

== Samples!  Free samples! (heh heh)

Warning, you’ll be hooked! Do not read this sampler from Brightness Reef!  About Alvin and Huck and their pals, in the lost colony of Jijo.  Where refugees from six races hide from the sky… but a set of alien teenagers make a weird discovery…

How would you like to be able to make a temporary duplicate of yourself, any day? Kiln People is almost universally called the “most fun” Brin novel. (Some hold out for The Practice Effect.) Try chapter one, here. You decide if it’s hilarious or just the strangest sci fi premise you ever saw.

"The most light-hearted serious science fiction novel I've read." -- Vernor Vinge.

I’ve got a weakness for mind-jarring opening lines. Here’s the starter sentence in GLORY SEASON.  “Twenty-six months before her second birthday, Maia learned the true difference between winter and summer.” Adventure. Pirates. Sea voyages and dark mysteries and fun and thought-provoking speculations about human reproduction.  Read chapter one here.  And watch the vivid one-minute trailer!  

Sample the final adventure of Hari Seldon, in Foundation's Triumph -- wrapping up Isaac Asimov's Foundation universe. (And yes, this is the "official"  final word... for now.)

My short story collection, Otherness, recently re-released in paperback and ebook. Here you'll find some of my best stories, such as The Giving Plague, Dr. Pak's Preschool, Detritus Affected, and others. 

== Miscellaneous News ==

Contrary Space: Listen to my episode on Robot Overlords.

Arte Mudou o Mundo: the article is in Portuguese, but my video interviews are in English. 

Here's the complete set of Uplift-related schwag that Cafe Press offers! 

Both the Chinese translation of my story "The Warm Space" and the accompanying interview have been published.  

Is there more?  Sure?  Browse davidbrin.com for freebies galore. Thrive! Enjoy!

Orwell and Writing

You would be writers out there, of both fiction and nonfiction! Have a look at George Orwell's wonderful advice to writers of English prose -- Politics and the English Language. It is 95% spot on — valuable for those who want to communicate, instead of being pompous!

Still, as you read this excellent (if somewhat elderly) article, note that I have a few slight disagreements.  He begins by offering  five examples of bad prose, then follows with this:

“Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision.”

Huh.  What I found objectionable in all five was something else entirely — a clear lack of empathy with the hurried reader.  

In each example, the writer seemed to demand that the reader scan his words slowly, carefully and several times, in order to parse a sentence-meaning!  When, in fact, that multiple re-read and care is the duty of the writer, not the reader. In each of the five examples, long sentences could have been broken into several, allowing the reader to build comprehension in digestible bites, instead of pedantic lumps.

Yes, Orwell does much better. His subsequent paragraph is well-crafted and easy to read/understand.  His points are well-taken and persuasive… and he appears to miss the very trait that his paragraph displays! The trait that marks this article as different from his benighted examples.

Distilling it: Orwell (or any good writer) views the reader as a collaborator in the goal and process of comprehensible communication.  You can even skim Orwell and get a gist of his intent, something a bad writer hates and makes deliberately difficult, but that a good writer like Orwell doesn't mind… much.

The writers of those five examples appear to view the reader as an adversary, to be pummeled into submission.

I agree with Orwell's comment about metaphors… though only as a general warning.  In fact, most of the “old” metaphors he mentions are still fine for use in 2015! Just with some care.

The rest is vivid and persuasive. Indeed, I would add several more categories! I used to demand that my students write a story with No Adjectives or Adverbs!  To see if they could still create a vivid scene.  Then to know that you can add adjectival description like frosting, but you never use it as a crutch.

So here’s the trick.  Go minimize all the faults Orwell describes - as a habit of spare and direct writing…

… then choose to break any rule on a case-by-case basis, for some color here.  For a little appropriately pretentious prose there!  You learn from his rules good habits.  Then - when you have used them to become skilled -- break 'em whenever you see fit!


Follow-up: Various authors offer... Advice for Writers