A common theme in many of today’s scifi stories is one of desolation, typically a planet ruined by human activity, or a population which cannot be properly fed or sustained.
Where is the creative thinking which gave birth to our precious genre? Where are the hero scientists who learn to feed a million people per square meter of farmland ? Where are the solar power plants which operate at 100% efficiency, or the nanotech waste recyclers which generate a nearly lossless society?
It appears most science fiction writers have been brainwashed by the “common wisdom” of today’s society, they are no longer capable of imagining a greater good. Will there be any more big thinkers writing scifi for us all?
Perhaps I’m one of the last real science fiction writers, someone who imagines that today’s “terrible” problems will be so easily solved that one day we will laugh at how serious we were. I can hear my grandchildren’s voices echoing down from a distant future where they ask me in all seriousness “Grandpa, did people once really believe that Earth would get so warm the ice caps would melt? Didn’t you have any scientists back then?”
The truth is that soon we will be able to feed 100 billion people without any significant change in the amount of farmland, we will have clean drinking water for them all from desalination and nanotech recycling, global warming will be a distant joke even if the sunspots do return. Resistant bacteria will be easily killed with phages, avian flu will be erased by targeted anti-viral agents, and cancer will be in the same category as today’s tooth decay (which will have been eradicated). I see a day where rain forests can be created in a few years using ultra-fast growing bioengineered plants. Old growth forests will be established in time capsules orbiting the moon, then transplanted where ever we want to see one. Abortion will become transplant surgery where a 1-day old fetus can be safely transplanted into the womb of a woman who will love and care for her.
Are any big thinkers out there? Please contact me and we’ll try to move science fiction to a more optimistic footing.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Sharon // Aug 17, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I think the reason many of these things aren’t happening in real life is that politics and political agendas get in the way of scientific achievement. While science shouldn’t necessarily just “jump forward in leaps and bounds” for science’s sake, we also shouldn’t allow the politicians (and others who hold the purse strings) to so thoroughly muddy up the waters of what should and should not be pursued. While, in general, I’m not for cloning humans or creating and destoying embryos for stem cells (too much like playing God), I think that other avenues like alternate energy research (or even possibly drilling in Alaska) have become so political and PC motivated that they are now being decided by people who have no real knowledge of the subject. Look at the debate over deciding whether or not polar bears are endangered! I could go on, but I won’t!
2 Michael L // Aug 17, 2008 at 2:31 pm
I would like to think that that direction is where we are headed, but I’m afraid history says otherwise. Yes, we as a species, have taken great steps to eradicate some of the ills that have plagued us for centuries. But, we are still very far away from the Utopian world in which you describe. I really, really want to believe that what you say will come to pass, but, as I look around today, I still see the scourge of extreme poverty, the scourge of AIDS and other diseases, the scourge of war and it’s consequences upon society, with thousands left dead, and millions displaced in its wake.
I agree with you. Let’s band together to see what we can do to put an end to these things, so that we can make this planet a better place for our kids and grandchildren!
Thanks!
3 Sean // Aug 18, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I was only asking about scifi stories, not about real life. Scifi used to be overwhelmingly optimistic.
4 Jeffrey // Sep 17, 2008 at 7:54 pm
To be fair, you did say “The truth is…” – seemed to be assuming that the optimistic possibilities of science fiction would take place in the real world. While I certainly agree that it’s quite possible technology will solve many of our problems, I also think it’s possible that it won’t. I doubt either of us can say for sure.
Science fiction, as a genre which describes our world and perhaps examines possible future, has to make a choice among the possibilities. To put it simply, better safe than sorry. If the truth really is that a given problem has no easy technological solution, it’s perhaps more responsible for science fiction to encourage us to see the problem and its ultimate consequences. Optimistic science fiction carries with it the danger of becoming escapist, assuring us that everything will be okay when no one really knows.
Perhaps the genre should seek a balance including more optimism. However, as the genre which can examine these issues, science fiction has a responsibility to keep asking the tough questions.
5 Colum Paget // Mar 2, 2010 at 9:16 pm
> I see a day where rain forests can be
> created in a few years using ultra-fast
> growing bioengineered plants.
You read my mind! Or you’ve read a time-slipped version of my future novel “The War against the Monster Trees”
Colum
6 Colum Paget // Mar 2, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Speaking as an ardent pessimist, I think one of the reasons for this, attitude, which may have swung the pendulumn too far, is that those of us who lived through the recent singularity feel betrayed by it. I grew up in a world where predictions like the ones you make were routine. Soon we would all be living in O’Neil cylinders in orbit, huge orbitting solar arrays would provide limitless power, or if not those, then fusion. Artificial intelligence would solve many of the world’s tricky problems. Soon we would be hit by ‘the leisure shock’ where we would all be free from daily drudge to take up fulfilling intellectual activties. Antibiotics would wipe out disease, and hydroponics would make the deserts bloom. In this world of plenty and better communications, war would be unthinkable.
I remember the pictures. You should have seen the pictures. I was quite sure that I’d be living like a god by the time I was 30. Our parents said to us “We had a rough time of it, growing up, there was a war on, and rationing, and stuff. But the world you’re going to see, it’s going to be fantastic.”
It never happened.
NONE OF IT.
Not one single thing. Instead, things that no-one saw coming happened instead, and most of those were bad. (Before you say ‘Well, mobile phones happened!’ those come under ‘bad’).
People writing now are pessimistic because they’ve been through all this once already, and it was a massive let-down. We’re still stuck on earth, most of us are still poor. Most of us are still starving. There are still wars. There is still disease.
However, it could be that this time is going to be different. But it might not be. If it’s not different, if we get fooled again, then how are we going to manage? Human civilisation is betting it’s near-term future on the hope that ‘something will turn up’.
What if it doesn’t?
Ultimately though, so what? Yes, in the near term future there is going to be a massive mash-up and we are going to lose an awful number of people. But two generations after that, no-one will care. So the ozone layer goes, and white folks go extinct. So what? Two generations later, no one will care. So whales and bears go extinct. So what? No one will care. So western society collapses and is replaced with a different model. Those who come after us will be used to that model, and will like it just fine. So we lose the war against the monster trees. So what? Centuries from now hyperintelligent trees will be no more bothered about that than we are that cro-magnon man went extinct.
So, in the longer term, one can say ‘don’t worry, be happy’.
Colum
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