Singularity, here we come
When
I was a teen, I read and enjoyed the major classics of science fiction
such as the works of Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury and Lem, as
translations of course. These days, I don't read science fiction or any
other type of fiction pretty much at all. I think the last science
fiction novels I read were the William Gibson cyberpunk books, but am
not even aware of anything else that came out after that. I know there
are Honor Harrington books since my wife really seems to like them.
(Maybe they'll one day turn them to a movie, starring Angelina Jolie.)
My wife is the science fiction nut of this family, constantly reading
the new sci-fi and fantasy novels that the library acquires, especially
if it has space princesses with talking cats and other such creatures.
She would know much better what the current situation in the
speculative fantasy field is.
It's been said that science fiction explores all possible ideas and futures except the one that actually happens. (All right, you know who said this.) It's very easy for me to believe this to be the case. Space travel and all that other stuff was a total dud, for reasons that I briefly discussed in "Beyond the beyond". Even the masters of the Golden Age could only dream up a future that was essentially the same as the Fifties, just with bigger tailfins and more blinkenlights. For all their supposed libertarianism, the science fiction community embraced mostly militarism and big science. Later, the much-vaunted cyberpunk genre failed to predict anything nontrivial about the present-day world and the Internet, and everything that it foresaw about how the Internet works it only got hilariously wrong.
I don't think that any science fiction book that I ever read really predicted anything useful about the world that I currently live in, and the way that I live my life. I would actually be curious to know if any science fiction book written up to ten years ago predicted with any reasonable accuracy any of the social or technological phenomena that emerged from World Wide Web and that we take for granted today. I asked my wife about this, and after thinking about it a while she mentioned a book called "The Net" or something like that, where people lose access to their vast information network and various big problems ensue. Indeed, if the Internet permanently collapsed today, the results would be significantly more severe than just the few nerds being deprived of their porn and flamewars. (I wonder when was the last time that Internet could have ceased to exist overnight without disastrous consequences.)
These days, all science fiction is probably pretty much redundant anyways, since the world changes so quickly in such totally unpredictable and chaotic ways. It's funny to think that my teenage dream of living in the city that was depicted in the movie "Bladerunner" now seems almost quaint. On the other hand, at least David Brin's blog keeps constantly being useful and providing important information.
It's been said that science fiction explores all possible ideas and futures except the one that actually happens. (All right, you know who said this.) It's very easy for me to believe this to be the case. Space travel and all that other stuff was a total dud, for reasons that I briefly discussed in "Beyond the beyond". Even the masters of the Golden Age could only dream up a future that was essentially the same as the Fifties, just with bigger tailfins and more blinkenlights. For all their supposed libertarianism, the science fiction community embraced mostly militarism and big science. Later, the much-vaunted cyberpunk genre failed to predict anything nontrivial about the present-day world and the Internet, and everything that it foresaw about how the Internet works it only got hilariously wrong.
I don't think that any science fiction book that I ever read really predicted anything useful about the world that I currently live in, and the way that I live my life. I would actually be curious to know if any science fiction book written up to ten years ago predicted with any reasonable accuracy any of the social or technological phenomena that emerged from World Wide Web and that we take for granted today. I asked my wife about this, and after thinking about it a while she mentioned a book called "The Net" or something like that, where people lose access to their vast information network and various big problems ensue. Indeed, if the Internet permanently collapsed today, the results would be significantly more severe than just the few nerds being deprived of their porn and flamewars. (I wonder when was the last time that Internet could have ceased to exist overnight without disastrous consequences.)
These days, all science fiction is probably pretty much redundant anyways, since the world changes so quickly in such totally unpredictable and chaotic ways. It's funny to think that my teenage dream of living in the city that was depicted in the movie "Bladerunner" now seems almost quaint. On the other hand, at least David Brin's blog keeps constantly being useful and providing important information.
In _real_ near future, people just consume more entertainment, plays playstation, eat junkfood and surf in web. There is no interesting stories to tell from that.
Posted by Peter | 11:59 PM
Dude, you've got it all wrong. Science fiction writers have never even tried to predict the future. That's why they call it fiction, you know. It's more about life at the time of writing, only set in a "future" or some other place so as to underline the similarities to the writers own time and place.
Posted by Tiedemies | 1:04 AM
I love Heinlein because I like his era -- mid 20th Century America -- more than I like my own.
Posted by Steve Sailer | 7:34 AM
I've started to read Heinlein's book about this quasi-immortal know-it-all Lazarus Long (Time enough for love?) a few times, but always got bored/pissed off before page 200.
Posted by Anonymous | 9:02 AM
I find it perfectly obvious that in serious science fiction, the topic of which is the future of the world, technological singularity cannot be ignored.
I wonder what the next generation of computer hardware will be based on after photolitography will have run it's course (according to industry roadmaps, Moore's Law can stay on track using silicon semiconductors for the next 10-20 years). Carbon nanotubes are a pretty good candidate. The transition is likely to be gradual.
Posted by Markku | 9:26 AM
Convey my congratulations to your wife for her literary taste. I'm currently reading 'The Shadow of Saganami'.
In any case, trying to predict the future is hopeless. Heinlein once tried in 1950 to predict what the world would be like in 2000. I would say that he wasn't very close. One thing that he did predict was the microwave oven, but I believe he cheated on that one by inventing it himself ;-)
The job of science fiction isn't to predict the future but to entertain. David Weber has obviously realized that. His works are very far from anything that seems likely to come true, but they are splendid entertainment.
Posted by Frej Wasastjerna | 4:47 AM