Actually, the future we live in is stranger than sf predicted. (Note that the examples I'm using are older than 20 years ago.) Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man has newspapers with hourly editions; Google News is updated much more frequently than that. (And I get much of my news from Twitter.)
The Soviet Union was usually supposed to last at least through the 21st century -- and the writers who saw it falling apart sooner didn't expect Russia to secede from the USSR. Or for the fall to come with comparatively little bloodshed.
I think that's true of life in general - I often find my self commenting that I would make a writer change X and Y if they submitted something like that (stories like how people meet or bizarre coincidences etc) in a story to me.
So, what we’re looking for this month are the novels in the next wave of Science Fiction. They might be literary, cross-genre or based in other genres altogether. They are likely to be set in the present. They will hinge on one simple but important change in the way things are. They will be less about ideas and more about people.
Not the being set here, but part of the paradigm shift kinda has to be more about people, I think.
Yeah, I agree. I also got from reading those guidelines that:
1/ The future is depressing and we're all going to die and who wants to think about it much less buy a book about it (see: Your Environmental Despair Post)
and
2/ Before we got such things as direct footage from the Hubble telescope to our mobile phones, outer space seemed really exciting, but now that the most likely life forms we're going to encounter are dead bacteria from Mars and we can't go anywhere without breaking laws of physics, it turns out outer space is actually boring and there's no aliens so any "science fiction" book with space colonies or aliens from now on is actually fantasy.
I adore hard sf but have never read it for the what-next factor; it's always, I think, been more about the interactions with tech than the tech itself, for me. I've certainly never read it for predictions. I cannot imagine doing so and don't understand the people who do! It should be about commenting on the present, and present possibilities... if you want *my money, anyway :)
I like the "what if" factor or the "what would would happen if" or "how would it work if".
What do you like about the interactions with tech? I find it fascinating since I really do like hard science in my fiction, and I am interested in how I think you are a harder SF reader than me, like I let the engineering team down.
I think I have an advantage in *not* having the engineering background, tbh. I know enough science that stuff doesn't completely throw me- and I (usually!) know when things are totally made up and can figure out whether I approve of that or not - but I'm not hampered by getting cross when things aren't exactly right, which I know happens for some sciencey friends (and happens to me with historical fiction).
I do enjoy the what-if factor, because of the way it comments on society as it is now. I think that's where I like the interactions with technology, actually: what if people lived in an enormous spaceship? what if AIs were a reality of life? what if artificial uteruses became the norm? - stories that deal with that sort of tech and how society works as a consequence are cool.
To me the most interesting science fiction was about how people behave, and how they might potentially behave differently under different circumstances to the ones we are comfortable with. Which is also the most interesting fantasy and historical fiction!
I've already read works which feel like science fiction despite using current technology (like Gibson's Pattern Recognition). I think you're absolutely right that science fiction is in an identity crisis.
I think, though, that the best writers have actually seen this collision coming, and have been working around and through some of the complexities for some time already. As one would expect from SF writers!
The dying breed are perhaps those who have a far more old-fashioned view of what science fiction is.
(Raeli heard us talking about living in the future recently and got really cross. 'who's living in the future? what?")
She's so cute! Would she rather we lived in the past?! She's 5, what would she know!
The dying breed are perhaps those who have a far more old-fashioned view of what science fiction is.
yeah, which I see hand in hand with the reluctance for even discussion of gender diversity for example. Because to look at how we might behave in other circumstances we have to look at power dynamics that are different from our own. I think this might in part be my issue with Analog the magazine. Maybe, I was thinking a lot about what Jonathan said on our podcast about it being a magazine about engineering technology and I wondered why I don't like it despite being an engineer.
Alex said the same thing! That this should totally be a magazine she likes, because she likes super hard, tech-based SF... but they're not appealing to her as a reader.
You see though why there might be a bit of defensive wall building, though. Change is threatening & scary to the status quo.
Raeli is totally under the impression that she's living in the present. Such a CHILD. A child who has her own computer desktop, a password, mouse skills, can drive an iPod better than mummy... and can pause the TV any time she wants.
Yeah, I actually find the quality of the writing in Analog sub par and quite amateurish. I think with better writing, the technologically driven plots would be more readable - like say Chiang's Exhalation.
I do understand the defense and even I guess the attacks or so on. But as someone else said somewhere else here, that (to me and I guess to others) only reinforces the point but not to them. It must be very scary for the status quo and default to suddenly not necessarily be so. Exciting and exhiliarating and challenging for me, say, where worlds of opportunity suddenly have opened up.
I've got this sort of continuing conversation in my head particularly about cyberpunk, and how it tried so hard to concentrate on realistic near future tech, and got it so terribly wrong. I think maybe cyberpunk was sort of a last big gasp of SF having serious futurist pretensions, and we've all sort of acknowledged (especially with the whole singularity fiction idea) that we a lot less idea what is going on than we thought, and we may as well just write about stuff that interests us.
I think that if SF is less about realistic technological prediction, that in no way means it is less about ideas, though.
I think that if SF is less about realistic technological prediction, that in no way means it is less about ideas, though.
Absolutely. And I think what I find most interesting is coming up against a conservation viewpoint about the idea of discussing ideas, maybe? In part I see the lack of diversity in the genre such a symptom of the reluctance of some for this, truly.
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The Soviet Union was usually supposed to last at least through the 21st century -- and the writers who saw it falling apart sooner didn't expect Russia to secede from the USSR. Or for the fall to come with comparatively little bloodshed.
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http://www.maassagency.com/thismonth.html
Thoraiya
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So, what we’re looking for this month are the novels in the next wave of Science Fiction. They might be literary, cross-genre or based in other genres altogether. They are likely to be set in the present. They will hinge on one simple but important change in the way things are. They will be less about ideas and more about people.
Not the being set here, but part of the paradigm shift kinda has to be more about people, I think.
Reply
1/ The future is depressing and we're all going to die and who wants to think about it much less buy a book about it (see: Your Environmental Despair Post)
and
2/ Before we got such things as direct footage from the Hubble telescope to our mobile phones, outer space seemed really exciting, but now that the most likely life forms we're going to encounter are dead bacteria from Mars and we can't go anywhere without breaking laws of physics, it turns out outer space is actually boring and there's no aliens so any "science fiction" book with space colonies or aliens from now on is actually fantasy.
Thoraiya
Reply
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What do you like about the interactions with tech? I find it fascinating since I really do like hard science in my fiction, and I am interested in how I think you are a harder SF reader than me, like I let the engineering team down.
Reply
I do enjoy the what-if factor, because of the way it comments on society as it is now. I think that's where I like the interactions with technology, actually: what if people lived in an enormous spaceship? what if AIs were a reality of life? what if artificial uteruses became the norm? - stories that deal with that sort of tech and how society works as a consequence are cool.
Reply
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I've already read works which feel like science fiction despite using current technology (like Gibson's Pattern Recognition). I think you're absolutely right that science fiction is in an identity crisis.
I think, though, that the best writers have actually seen this collision coming, and have been working around and through some of the complexities for some time already. As one would expect from SF writers!
The dying breed are perhaps those who have a far more old-fashioned view of what science fiction is.
(Raeli heard us talking about living in the future recently and got really cross. 'who's living in the future? what?")
Reply
The dying breed are perhaps those who have a far more old-fashioned view of what science fiction is.
yeah, which I see hand in hand with the reluctance for even discussion of gender diversity for example. Because to look at how we might behave in other circumstances we have to look at power dynamics that are different from our own. I think this might in part be my issue with Analog the magazine. Maybe, I was thinking a lot about what Jonathan said on our podcast about it being a magazine about engineering technology and I wondered why I don't like it despite being an engineer.
Reply
You see though why there might be a bit of defensive wall building, though. Change is threatening & scary to the status quo.
Raeli is totally under the impression that she's living in the present. Such a CHILD. A child who has her own computer desktop, a password, mouse skills, can drive an iPod better than mummy... and can pause the TV any time she wants.
Reply
Yeah, I actually find the quality of the writing in Analog sub par and quite amateurish. I think with better writing, the technologically driven plots would be more readable - like say Chiang's Exhalation.
I do understand the defense and even I guess the attacks or so on. But as someone else said somewhere else here, that (to me and I guess to others) only reinforces the point but not to them. It must be very scary for the status quo and default to suddenly not necessarily be so. Exciting and exhiliarating and challenging for me, say, where worlds of opportunity suddenly have opened up.
Reply
I think that if SF is less about realistic technological prediction, that in no way means it is less about ideas, though.
Reply
Absolutely. And I think what I find most interesting is coming up against a conservation viewpoint about the idea of discussing ideas, maybe? In part I see the lack of diversity in the genre such a symptom of the reluctance of some for this, truly.
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