Where to next when science fiction becomes science fact?
This post has been bouncing around in my head for a while now and it still might not yet be fully formed.
We have a phrase amongst my friends - isn't the future awesome?! - and we tend to use it to refer to things that 20 years ago science fiction imagined and 20 years later we expect as part of daily life. I see it all around me. Like when I tweeted in Dymocks that I had preordered my copy of Tansy's forthcoming book and they told me they would text me when it comes in. Or when I call the RAC for roadside assistance and instead of the endless, unknown wait of ye olden days, they text you just before they arrive. Or today when my mother (!!) received a referral for me to visit my gastroenterologist for my 5 yearly check up because my GP now has everything computerised and I can no longer dodge such things with shoddy paper record keeping. Or like being able to check my email and read slush for TPP whilst waiting for my takeaway to be ready. Or like being able to talk to my friends in distant cities and record it and upload it onto the internet for anyone in the world to listen to (this one I love - I was watching Dawson's Creek and the students were trying to get out a story from their side to the media and I was thinking, "why don't they just upload an interview onto YouTube?" and then realised that was 1999!). Or ... watching my counsellor swipe cards on a teeny tiny little machine that really barely has a keypad - just numbers - and yet she managed to bill me and reimburse me my claim from my private healthcare in 5 short minutes. Or the ipad - I always wondered what the hell would be useful about those pads on Star Trek TNG - no keyboard, how would they write their reports etc?
Anyway, you get my point. We live in a world where science fiction is becoming fact in ever increasing rates. This week scientists created the first completely artifical cell - life, in other words.
What intrigues me is ... where does science fiction as a genre go? And what do science fiction readers want from the genre. And I see these as related.
Fantasy has seen a big boom in both writing and reading and it is steadily producing a large variety of works spread across a large variety of subgenres spanning dark fantasy/horror through to romance fantasy and big fat fantasy and everything and anything in between. As a publisher, I find that I am submitted far more fantasy than science fiction and have made a shift in the themes for my annual anthology because I felt that there were more writers writing quality short stories in Australia in fantasy compared to science fiction. And that there was a criticism that local small press was not catering to the fantasy short story reader. Sprawl will be a very different book to 2012 and New Ceres Nights, though it would be hard to argue that theme/genre was the only reason for that.
But I actually think that science fiction is in a quiet identity crisis. I often come across readers who are getting frustrated with where science fiction is going - that it is less technologically plot driven and less focussed on predicting the next Thing that will change the world as we know it. Though I adore hard science fiction, I find that viewpoint a bit problematic. We live now in a world where things dramatically change in ever decreasing timespans. For example, it blows my mind to think how different indie press publishing is compared to even 5 years ago. The landscape has completely changed. So too the way media operates. The interconnectedness that we now share due to the change to communications networks. But none of that really is new to science fiction. And to write science fiction to guess what is the next big thing to change the way we live, whilst interesting, to me is sort of missing the opportunity presented to us now.
I think what is needed is a change in paradigm. We can read science fiction to predict what will come after the ipad or the complete breakdown of media empires or we can go online and read the same kind of article presented as news on a news website. In other words, I see that kind of science fiction blending so closely into science reality that it almost is no longer what the genre of science fiction was all about, say 100 years ago. It's too close to the future, maybe? Too easy.
Science fiction to me is about visionary commentators looking far out into sometime that we can hardly grasp and using that setting to explore who we are, who might become or who we might want to become. To dream of where we might go and what we might do. To use ideas of the alien to speak about the outsiders in our own time and space. To dream. Of the future.
That's just me anyway.
We have a phrase amongst my friends - isn't the future awesome?! - and we tend to use it to refer to things that 20 years ago science fiction imagined and 20 years later we expect as part of daily life. I see it all around me. Like when I tweeted in Dymocks that I had preordered my copy of Tansy's forthcoming book and they told me they would text me when it comes in. Or when I call the RAC for roadside assistance and instead of the endless, unknown wait of ye olden days, they text you just before they arrive. Or today when my mother (!!) received a referral for me to visit my gastroenterologist for my 5 yearly check up because my GP now has everything computerised and I can no longer dodge such things with shoddy paper record keeping. Or like being able to check my email and read slush for TPP whilst waiting for my takeaway to be ready. Or like being able to talk to my friends in distant cities and record it and upload it onto the internet for anyone in the world to listen to (this one I love - I was watching Dawson's Creek and the students were trying to get out a story from their side to the media and I was thinking, "why don't they just upload an interview onto YouTube?" and then realised that was 1999!). Or ... watching my counsellor swipe cards on a teeny tiny little machine that really barely has a keypad - just numbers - and yet she managed to bill me and reimburse me my claim from my private healthcare in 5 short minutes. Or the ipad - I always wondered what the hell would be useful about those pads on Star Trek TNG - no keyboard, how would they write their reports etc?
Anyway, you get my point. We live in a world where science fiction is becoming fact in ever increasing rates. This week scientists created the first completely artifical cell - life, in other words.
What intrigues me is ... where does science fiction as a genre go? And what do science fiction readers want from the genre. And I see these as related.
Fantasy has seen a big boom in both writing and reading and it is steadily producing a large variety of works spread across a large variety of subgenres spanning dark fantasy/horror through to romance fantasy and big fat fantasy and everything and anything in between. As a publisher, I find that I am submitted far more fantasy than science fiction and have made a shift in the themes for my annual anthology because I felt that there were more writers writing quality short stories in Australia in fantasy compared to science fiction. And that there was a criticism that local small press was not catering to the fantasy short story reader. Sprawl will be a very different book to 2012 and New Ceres Nights, though it would be hard to argue that theme/genre was the only reason for that.
But I actually think that science fiction is in a quiet identity crisis. I often come across readers who are getting frustrated with where science fiction is going - that it is less technologically plot driven and less focussed on predicting the next Thing that will change the world as we know it. Though I adore hard science fiction, I find that viewpoint a bit problematic. We live now in a world where things dramatically change in ever decreasing timespans. For example, it blows my mind to think how different indie press publishing is compared to even 5 years ago. The landscape has completely changed. So too the way media operates. The interconnectedness that we now share due to the change to communications networks. But none of that really is new to science fiction. And to write science fiction to guess what is the next big thing to change the way we live, whilst interesting, to me is sort of missing the opportunity presented to us now.
I think what is needed is a change in paradigm. We can read science fiction to predict what will come after the ipad or the complete breakdown of media empires or we can go online and read the same kind of article presented as news on a news website. In other words, I see that kind of science fiction blending so closely into science reality that it almost is no longer what the genre of science fiction was all about, say 100 years ago. It's too close to the future, maybe? Too easy.
Science fiction to me is about visionary commentators looking far out into sometime that we can hardly grasp and using that setting to explore who we are, who might become or who we might want to become. To dream of where we might go and what we might do. To use ideas of the alien to speak about the outsiders in our own time and space. To dream. Of the future.
That's just me anyway.