The New Yorker just released its first special issue devoted to science fiction, including contributions from genre giants like Ursula K. Le Guin and Ray Bradbury as well as rising "literary fiction" stars like Junot Díaz and Karen Russell. As writers at Wired and io9 have noted, the issue marks a new level of mainstream interest in science fiction, giving a whole cadre of New-Yorker-obsessed "serious readers" license to take genre fiction, well, seriously. But what about science fiction in universities? In her contribution to the new issue, Ursula K. Le Guin argues that in the past "quite a few science-fiction writers accepted exile from the Republic of Letters to the ghetto of genre, perhaps because ghettos, like all gated communities, give the illusion of safety."
In fact, science fiction has been sneaking into all sorts of new neighborhoods. The U.K.-based New Scientist has launched Arc, "a new magazine about the future," while the venerable MIT Technology Review released a special issue of science fiction featuring Cory Doctorow, Joe Haldeman, and others. Ridley Scott's television series Prophets of Science Fiction explores the power of fiction to both advance and complicate our ideas about the future, and Stephen Hawking is hosting the Science Channel's Stephen Hawking's Sci-Fi Masters.
What's remarkable about these items is not that science fiction is suddenly entering the mainstream (presumably every human on the planet has now received at least one transmission from the Star Trek universe). The surprising shift is that public figures who traditionally kept a safe distance between their work and the flying saucers -- scientists, highbrow writers, and serious journalists -- are now embracing science fiction not as a form of escapism but as a tool for learning things about the real world.
As it turns out, science fiction is a great educational tool for getting people to think seriously about the future. It's easy to dream up press releases about the future with no people in them, no problems, no trash in the streets or religious discord -- politicians do it all the time! But when you actually write stories with characters, you are confronted with all the difficult questions. Imagining a world with actual people in it forces you to create not just the technologies of the future but societies with blind spots and ethical challenges. A narrative requires tensions and problems, which forces you to consider a spectrum of potential futures and the role of human agency in making the world better or worse.
Here at Arizona State University we are investing in the role of science fiction to create positive change in a number of ways. This past March we hosted a remarkable three-day event, Emerge, built on the idea of "design fiction" -- using science fiction, prototyping, and collaborative storytelling to answer the question, "What kind of future do we want?" Emerge brought together writers and thinkers from many fields, including luminaries Stewart Brand, Bruce Mau, Sherry Turkle, Neal Stephenson, and Bruce Sterling. Participants created visions of the future ranging from the corner convenience store to an interactive performance combining live digital music and dance. As a whole, Emerge prompted some startling encounters with the future through the mechanisms of science fiction, combining the spell of a good story with the tactile appeal of physical objects.
We aim to make Emerge an annual event, but that's just the beginning of how we plan to use science fiction to teach in new ways. I am co-editing a project called Hieroglyph, which will bring writers, scientists, and others into collaboration on ambitious, near-term projects. For example, Neal Stephenson is working with Keith Hjelmstad, an ASU structural engineer, on an idea for a 20-kilometer-tall tower. Their collaboration might become the starting point for a module on structural engineering, a semester project in an urban planning seminar, or a prompt for creative writing in a science communication class. These projects explore "what" and "how," but they also prompt students to ask "why."
"Why" is the engine that drives good science fiction, and good stories in general. The ability to project ourselves into future worlds is a powerful tool for asking why this world is the way it is and how we can make it better. It's time to break science fiction out of its ghetto and use it as a common language to connect the arts, humanities, and sciences.
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And Asimov's robot stories, for instance, don't come even close to Lem's treatment of the subject. You may want to check out his "Mortal Engines" to see what a real master of the genre can do when he sets his mind to explore machine humanity.
As for fantastic exploration of humanity, itself, Lem and the brothers Strugatsky are far deeper than almost any other "famous" author of the genre, although I do understand that their writings do not appeal to Americans (and it is easy to see why... a book like "Solaris" is not easy afternoon reading material, let alone "Summa Technologiae"...).
"Just tell the story and tell it as well as you can.The rest will follow."
So,all you budding Bradburys,Azimovs, PJFarmers and Vonneguts out there,just tell the story and tell it well.
You're needed now more than ever,if you don't believe me just turn on the sci-fi channel for ten minutes and you'll see what I mean.If you think your writing is crap just give"Big Bang theory" a few minutes of your life and you'll feel like Joseph Conrad.
Just tell it and tell it well-goodbye Ray,I'll miss you almost as much as my dog.
Noted science fiction author: Ninety percent of everything, sir, is crap.
It postulates the "what if" of people, places, times, technologies and situations.
It explores what might rationally and logically happen as a result.
It can be a valuable way of thinking, preparing for and shaping our future.
Science fiction has often predicted and warned us of things to come.
- Mary Shelly : Frankenstein - The dangers of scientific or technological overreach without due caution
- George Orwell : 1984 - Big Brother and omniscient government surveillance
- Jules Verne - Submarines, Space Travel
- HG Wells - First Contact, Air War, Energy Weapons
- Arthur C Clark - Earth orbiting communications sattelites
- Gene Roddenberry : Star Trek - Peaceful interracial and inter-species coexistence, Personal communicators, moral and ethical questions.
There are so many others and many lessons to be learned.
I think everyone should be exposed to the concepts and lessons of good Science Fiction.
In terms of predictive power... Jules Verne's story came decades after the first real submarines. Orwell was writing about the political reality of his time. HG Wells was not a visionary by much, his ideas predated reality only by a few years or they are really far out (into the fantastic, rather than the scientific).
HG Wells : War of the Worlds, From the Earth to the Moon, Shape of Things to Come , The Sleeper, and The Time Machine are all pretty hardcore Science Fiction, postulating aliens, future technologies and societies.
Orwell extended the existing notions of State control and surveillance into:
the Ministries of Peace, Plenty, Love and Truth, perpetual war, doublethink, thought crime, Newspeak and others.
He postulated mass electronic surveillance by governments to keep the population under control.
He also postulated total dominance by the Inner Party of 2% of the population.
I'd say he was pretty damn close in his estimate.
Unfortunately most of Orwell's musings have come to pass to greater or lesser extents, so I think he merits a place in Science or at least Future Speculative Fiction.
“From birth in its modern genre form in the pages of 1926’s Amazing Stories, through its nurturing and refinement by a small coterie of true believers through the middle of the twentieth century, and on to its gradual world domination starting … science fiction has offered a cognitive toolkit in easy-to-assimilate, entertaining form that allows us to get mentally comfortable with the notion of change and its most radical effects before we are hit with the reality of it upside the collective head. Science fiction is the one type of literature that promotes, to use the phrase pioneered by the bloggers at Boing-Boing … the creation of “happy mutants.” It’s the literature of cultural Darwinism, the sieve through which we pan for ideational gold.”
Little glimpses - In "Fahrenheit 451", police operations become TV spectacles. That seemed like a wild idea at the time.
Or the ramifications of "slow glass" in Bob Shaw's novel "Other Days, Other Eyes." A material that can trap light means that past actions are all recorded and privacy dies. We still don't have slow glass, but the ever present surveillance cameras and electronic monitoring of everyone's movements and communications are having the same effect.
Or John Bruner's "Stand on Zanzibar." Although Bruner didn't foresee the computer revolution, nor did he foresee the degree to which firearms would become universal in the US. But he did foresee the epidemic of mass murder. His picture of life during our current time period was eerily prescient.
"We still don't have slow glass"
Sure we do. It's called polycarbonate and is used to make DVD-ROMs. With modern image and video compression and dirt cheap storage media we could perfectly afford to record even every single person's private life 24/7. And we do... there is a genre of reality tv that does just that. And millions of people are fascinated... for whatever reason, about "Snooky" and "friends".
Universal firearm possession is what characterizes the "Wild West", which, on some level, was a reality of cattle farmers during the 19th century, but on the other has given rise to the genre of the "Western", which, of course, can be found in many science fiction novels as a sub-genre, just like "Star Wars" picks up on the Japanese Samurai movie genre (according to George Lucas, it was heavily influenced by "Hidden Fortress", Kurosawa's masterpiece).
If you look at Jules Verne's interpretation of science fiction, it was actually meant to be "science reality". All the depicted inventions, vehicles etc. in his books, with very few exceptions into the realm of science magic (e.g. in "Chase of the Golden Meteor") were interpreted as actually possible implementations of science principles and technology of the late 19th and early 20th century.
http://sites.google.com/site/zscslaughterhousefive/reading-plan/week-4-science-fiction
But the producers of Star Wars admitted that it was not science fiction in 1977. They called it Space Fantasy. It is more like Lord of the Rings than Star Trek if you focus on more than the superficial. Real sci-fi has depth to it and often Star Trek did not.
This is quintessential sci-fi: Omnilingual (1957) by H. Beam Piper
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/03/scientific-language-h-beam-pipers-qomnilingualq
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual
http://librivox.org/omnilingual-by-h-beam-piper/
That is more informative than all of the Harry Potter books.
Sadly, most works of science fiction also do not dare to leave the intellectual level of their reader after assuming that he likes being treated as if he was 13 years old and/or has not graduated from high school.
That, by the way, is the same problem as can be identified in the Harry Potter books. They never grow past their own model of their audience and that, unfortunately, is very restrictive.
There is good science fiction (one should rather call it utopian literature), that speaks to adults with intellectual standards. But it is rare and it is virtually unknown among friends of science fiction.
Good science fiction can project what is to be done with the technology. Even bad science fiction was investigated by the FBI during World War II. Joanna Russ said that sci-fi needed to be evaluated differently in 1975.
http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/6/russ6art.htm
It compares two sci-fi franchises. Star Trek and Star Wars and the overall literary impact of sci-fi on modern literature. It really is the only modern fiction genre that breaks away from the literary rote.
http://www.salon.com/1999/06/15/brin_main/singleton/
If you can read and understand what's presented there I think you'll see Star Wars is not that great to begin with, Jar Jar Binks just gives more reason not to like it.