People's ideas about the future used to be dominated by science-fiction novels and movies. But in the nineties, something funny happened to science-fiction: authors got more and more scared of writing stories in the near future, it all became tales of the distant future that merged seamlessly into fantasy. If something was about the near future, it would be either highly improbable, or bleak in the extreme, or both. Never again the shiny happy family-friendly near future we used to have.
And most people stopped altogether thinking about the future. Enough complications today, people said. I will cross the bridge of tomorrow when I arrive there. Being a huge science-fiction fan and a little science-fiction writer, I wondered why. What the hell happened to the future? Where did the future go?
Gradually, an answer emerged from the mists of time. Nobody wanted to think about the future, because as soon as you did, you realized that the future is a very scary time. There are plenty of things to be afraid of: climate change and ecological disaster, economic chaos coming to a household very close to you, the world hitting the limits on the number of human beings it can sustain, fundamental shifts in geopolitical power, depletion of energy sources, which are the fundamental resource everything else hangs on to. Few wanted to think about these things, and those who did, developed a secondary layer of denial: Yes, we have all these problems, but it all will be all right in the end, because we will live in this lovely hippy community in touch with the Earth where everybody will share everything and be happy. Or: Human ingenuity is infinite, and the market forces will bring the wonderful fruits of human ingenuity to all, and all problems will be solved. Or: Every problem can be solved by computers, just give me the processing power and the bandwidth. Or something else.
This week has been for me a constant confrontation with other people's views of the future. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were three hectic days with the Transition group, where a sub-group of people put into question whether there should be an Action Plan at all to prepare for the future. The reason? We need to do a lot more community work first. And why haven't you been doing that community work, if you want it so badly? You've had as much time as Obama had to convince millions using funding from individual donors, surely enough time to convince thousands. Silence. I think I know what's the problem, then. You guys are on the second layer of denial, and you don't want to discover what would actually happen if you actually tried to reach "the community". You don't want to discover that your pretty dream of a hippy community ain't gonna happen. The future ain't what 'twas supposed to be. The future is still too scary to contemplate, isn't it?
Thursday I went to the Uni to speak with five architecture students about their own version of an Action Plan. Lots of great graphics, some good research... no number crunching. Technologies were chosen according to the appeal of the idea, rather than on sound engineering principles. Ah, the days when you could pick and choose any tech for your sci-fi stories. Today you have to think about the energy use of everything, the energy return on energy invested for everything. The future ain't what 'twas supposed to be. Still, good work, there's something for the Plan there.
Thursday evening I was supposed to go to an award for digital media, but I fell on the way there and broke my front tooth. Still, I know what kind of thing I was going to see there. Shiny happy faces talking about sexy tech, many still hoping that somehow the Mondo 2000 world will come to pass, in spite of all the evidence that geeks will never rule the world, and sexy tech just becomes unexciting and mundane as soon as the common people have it in their hands. (I don't personally have a problem with that. I just loved the battered robots in Star Wars.) But I don't think there was any talk about how to keep all this virtual world going through the power cuts. We may still get the darker side of cyberpunk without as much of the bright techie side as we hoped. The future ain't what 'twas supposed to be.
On Friday I went to the science-fiction writers meeting, closing the circle. The story to critique was about the near future for a change, about a space war between China and the US. No hint that maybe neither China nor the US will be able to engage in something as energy-costly as a space war, not while their own children are starved for energy. One of the writers talked about the market for books printed and bound by hand, where she has some innings. Not even sci-fi writers want to contemplate the future. Let's assume business as usual, with small variations on the theme of today. But that isn't what we see out there. The future ain't what 'twas supposed to be.
1 comment:
It's not true that SF these days doesn't address the dark future. Look at something like Wall-E for instance, or the end of Happy Feet. They get into some pretty heavy topics for presumably kids movies.
Something like the Dark Knight also reflects a growing cynicism about the world and human nature.
Day the Earth Stood Still remake is about to come out which looks even more overtly apocalyptic than the original.
Optimistic stories of the brave new frontier like Star Trek are out, though. I'm not sure how well the new JJ Trek will go down.
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