Writing the semi-near future looks hard

[sunnyskywalker]

My most recent book club book got me thinking about the difficulties of writing science fiction set only about twenty years in the future. If it's set "five minutes from now, with one wild card invention," you can write the world pretty much as it is. If it's set fifty or more years in the future, it's far enough out that any number of changes in

Comments

[mary_j_59]

The sort of thing where you would HOPE to be wrong--oh, yes. But, when we saw the documentary on DS9, the showrunner said, when they were developing the episode, a California politician was actually talking about putting homeless people in some sort of sanctuary district. He said it was eerie, to be writing something that was already so close to the truth.

Which could give one hope about the main question, couldn't it? If you're dealing with human beings, you'll also be dealing with human truths, and they are more important that the tech. And also something the book you didn't name seems to have gotten wrong. I mean, ecological catastrophes might well mean more work, not less. And surely skills are transferable, at least some of the time?

That said, I don't actually write hard SF (tech based), and I would never dare try a near-future scenario. My friend Mike Mullin did (I think I can fairly call him a friend, though I've only met him two or three times.) I think Mike may be a bit too cynical about human nature, but his scientific research is amazing, and he knows his politics. The books are Ashfall and Surface Tension.

[sunnyskywalker]

It sounds like the premise for a different kind of story. The "wait, did we actually make this happen through writing-magic somehow?" kind of horror story.

(It was Timescape by Gregory Benford.) There were brief mentions of people doing...something?...about all the catastrophes, but not about who was actually doing the (apparently unsuccessful) work. (Not the hands-on parts, anyway. We heard a lot about the creepy administrator guy.) And then I think there was something about a program where spouses could share jobs, because there wasn't enough work. Maybe just white-collar work? I don't know, it was unclear. I got the feeling the author didn't care that much. But the university office politics were spot-on (based on what some of my academia-affiliated acquaintances said) thanks to his experience with them, so there's that! And I did like how it portrayed doing science as actual work, not just waiting around for inspiration to strike. You fiddle with the machinery and run experiments, get weird results, try to fix the machinery, run the experiments again, wonder what the hell is going on with the results... The good parts were really interesting, which made the rest even more frustrating.