posted
I am starting to notice a trend in SF that, holisticaly, our fiction set in the near or not-so-near futures fails to incorporate technology which we already have. Take thirty minutes to read Popular Science or any other such magazine and you will find countless applications that SF fails to touch on. I find this especially true in the areas of personal communication. In ten years cell phones will be long gone. I won't do the research for you but, I can tell you for certain the level of communication and its possible applications and interfaces increases exponentially at an alarming rate.
Has anyone else noticed this or agrees with me in anyway?
posted
Cell phones will still be used ten years from now. I guarantee that. There will be other technologies, sure, but there will still be many people using cell phones, just as people today still use CRT monitors or old tube TV's.
Sci-fi that doesn't have cool tech, even if it is only 10 years in the future, is really jipping us of what we want. IMO.
posted
Biohydrogen production from algae on the verge of breakthrough to fuel fuel-cell automobiles and for electricity generation virtually replacing fossil fuels with a sustainable, clean hydrogen economy.
The Nuclear Ignition Facility only a matter of a year or so away from full start up and probable breakthrough in fusion power generation technology.
Nanotechnology already applied in consumer goods and more breakthroughs on the horizon.
Demographic population trends indicating a reduction of half within the Twenty-first Century, noticeable declines as early as 2050.
Warfare trending toward more and more unmanned technology, land, sea, and air.
Return to the Moon initiatives in startup phase recently with NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotic Program LCROSS and LRO mission vanguards.
And on and on in every facet of research and implementation. The science world isn't stagnating.
Science fiction in the Golden Age did reach forward. Along about the dawn of the Internet and cell phones, fantastical science fiction themes and premises started recycling, as media technology coverage started looking back and not as much futureward, both attributable to a cultural technology shock.
Current-day fiction audiences find fantasy more comforting from a kind of puer aeternus, eternal child, Peter Pan Syndrome fixation on the comforts of the good old times past, né childhood. Science fiction itself has been more oriented on fantasy premises too, themes, tropes, motifs, and metaphors for evading the adult bonds of responsibility and obligation abound.
The pendulum swings, will swing the other way sometime next year or the year after when the Potter pall subsides, about the time the DVD release of the final, seventh movie installment fades out of the limelight. Like Star Wars has, like Lord of the Rings has. It's been a tough couple of decades in the dramatic arts field with three blockbusters commanding the marketplace.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited September 30, 2009).]
posted
I don't read much Scifi, but I do read popular mechanics here and there. Some of their articles seem like scifi settings. One of my favorites was farming the skies where farms are in sky scrappers, way cool.
I don't see why scifi writers wouldn't be all over popular mechanics for world building tools. I certainly would if I ever decide to go scifi.
posted
I think the biggest problem SF has in handling the changing pace of technology is an inability to accurately foresee the repeating cycle of cultural changes resulting from technology, creating new needs and driving new development.
I drafted a couple of lengthy responses to this, but it's too difficult to be brief, so I'll instead share a favourite little video illustrating the point: Someone in 1967 might have (sorta) foreseen the internet, but they didn't foresee how it would change the social structure of society.
posted
Near-future SF is taking the bad side of a bet---it'll be obsolete within only a few years, completely dated by events. Think "1984" or "2001"...think the Eugenics Wars as mentioned on-and-off in "Star Trek"...think anything involving the first landing on the moon.
You can hit the bullseye in these kind of stories...but it's probably be left to the kind-of-disposable technothriller rather than true SF.
(On "hitting the bullseye"...the other year I reread a story by Murray Leinster (you younger people probably won't know who he was, but he was a prominent writer of SF (among other things) from the 1930s to his death in the 1970s)...but I digress. Anyway, his story, "A Logic Named Joe," turns on computers and describes something that is clearly a search engine---not described in those terms, of course---a pretty-detailed prediction of how one uses computers, when you get right down to it.)
posted
Being accurate and relevent in the near future is hard. One could write a story about what will happen tomorrow, but by the time it got into general publication, it would be months old. One has to write farther into the future and accuracy drops. Funding problems can cause a science project to shut down permanantly. There goes several predictions involving that science. Political trends and popular tastes can kill social trends very quickly.
One of the big problems with the Star Trek show, was that we were gaining their technologies already. Consider their communicators and our flip phones. When you think about how futuristic Star Trek was, The only technologies we don't have are the teleporter and star drives.
old science fiction used to look at a new line of study, or a new trend in society, and explore the effects.
Of course, they do get them wrong, but they tend to be good reading. I read a book where they wired a sewing machine backwards and it went flying. they then made a space ship using that drive and it crashed, sending the main character into another world. it had gathered so much energy. It turned out that this book was written in the early 40s!!! I enjoyed the book in spite the small technical problems.
I read MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Heinlein. This was after I had a personal computer. The story was excellent, though the technology was so primaative in comparison to what we actually created.
The technology catching up with us is one of the reasons many of us write about FAR, FAR AWAY, AND LONG, LONG TIME FROM HOW. We don't keep up with common trends in science and society, so writing near future stories are harder to write. It is also one reason why many of our old masters were said to have predicted new technologies.
Unless they're coming out with telepathy chips in the next few years cell phones will still be around. In fact, they're likely to be even more widespread than they are now. A more likely prediction is that regular lan lines will be gone or nearly so.
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posted
The human experience of personal communication has changed significantly in the last three decades. Many other things have hardly changed at all.
Automobiles, for instance.
Take a citizen of 1965, hand him an iPhone, and tell him to find the nearest Italian restaurant. He would probably fail.
Then take a citizen of 1965, hand her the keys to a new Toyota Prius and tell her to drive to Florida. She would probably succeed.
As a species, we have invested a lot in information technology. We have not put as much into jet packs or robotic butlers or other things that science fiction predicted for the 21st century. That's not to say these inventions are impossible, only that our society moved in a different direction.
There were huge changes in automobile technology from 1910 to 1940. That's just three decades.
What happened was automobiles reached a point where drastic sweeping changes were no longer needed. So drastic sweeping changes stopped happening.
I think what's happening with communication technology is following the same pattern, just lagging behind. Now that cell phones are becoming more available and coverage is increasing everywhere, it's only natural that the infrastructure we're building will only become more useful not less.
People aren't going throw away their cell phones unless something better comes along.
Replacing a car that can't go in reverse with one that can makes sense. Now that cars can do pretty much everything we want them to, we don't have as many changes to make.
So unless there is some kind of obvious and meaningful utility that phones just don't provide, they're not going away. Especially not in 10 years.
posted
Bent Tree - I'm curious what specifically you're reacting to, any set of technologies that are depicted poorly in the books you're reading? I write near-term future sci-fi and would love to avoid the pitfalls. I try to do so, but it'd be good to have some more examples.
As for cell-phone trends, I would expect some personal technology integration in the future...think of it as the collision of cosmetic surgery and technology. The Uglies/Pretties/Specials series by Scott Westerfeld covers some of this pretty well, with people getting "surge" to do cool tattoos that move in pace with your heart rate. He doesn't get too into communications technology, though. Some, but not as much as I might have liked. Maybe he was avoiding this fear that he'd write something that would be obsolete/not future sounding.
posted
Another thing to keep in mind when writing near-future technology is that just because the science exists and is proven in lab scale doesn't necessarily mean it will be ready for commercial application in 10 or 20 years.
This is especially true in industries that are highly regulated or require large capitol costs. A drug that is developped today has many years of clinical trials before FDA approval. And to build a new mine or refinery typically takes 10 years. If it is an unproven technology it will take another 10 years to get it running to design specs.
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I saw a write-up (I think in Locus) discussing A. E. Van Vogt's Slan, a famous SF novel of 1941 or so. Ostensibly it was set some fifteen thousand years in the future (I think). But, the article pointed out, detail-by-detail, that it was really the world of 1941. Newspapers were the main source of news and they still had evening editions...elevators still had operators...
A citizen of 1965 might deduce what an iPhone is for, though not necessarily how to operate it. (I'd be at a loss---my cellphone is several years old and doesn't do any of the things iPhones are pitched for.)
As for Popular Science / Popular Mechanics technology...I'm still waiting for my ChillCan. I saw it in Popular Science back in the seventies...you opened a warm can of beer or soda, and it chilled itself before you raised it to your lips. The technology exists...but the will to use it is often not there.
posted
Like historical narrative, futureward fiction relates to the values and ideals of present-day times. How many past classics have faded in popularity due to portraying outdated, outmoded values and ideals. I can name more than a few from barely fifty years ago. The isms of capital, imperium, society, race, gender, age, colonizing, the phobias and philes of the past expire. New cultural paradigms replace them. It's one of fiction's missions to change them for the betterment of the greater good. Like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle changed meat packing standards and led to the Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act in 1906.
One of the biggest cultural practices changes in the U.S. dealing with child rearing emerged in the middle Twentieth Century. A shift in discipline practices led to increased self-esteem in children, but less disciplined behavior. I wonder if novels like the Potter series have messages that children will take away from reading the novels or watching the movies. The paramount message that I interpret from that; adults don't have all the answers, it's up to young people to find their own best answers. As a consequence, might future generations be more self-sufficient, more prosperous, healthier, happier and have better self-esteem and behaviors.
History holds ripe fodder for science, technology, and cultures gone awry, weapons as tools, tools as weapons, science and technology and cultural declines or progresses as avenues for futureward fiction. Not prescient fortune tellers, science fiction writers take a futureward what if and interpret its implications as they mean to today's cultures, ideally timelessly. The Cold War or global warming outcomes as dystopia, utopia, or the indominatable will of the get-'er-done outlook that elevates the greater good of the human condition. It's not about whether science and technology destroy culture, but how humanity deals with science and technology and what that means to present-day audiences.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited September 30, 2009).]
posted
If I read today a book written by someone like Bent Tree in 2003, it would likely feature the Segway PT prominantly. That's an invention that many people believed would revolutionize the world. As such, it's likely that said book would examine societal shifts that wide-spread use of such a technology would cause.
Unfortunately for such an author, this premise is so laughable today (just six years later) that I would probably stop reading the book within the first few chapters.
This is example illustrates the problem with attempting to write mass-market technologies into near-future sci-fi.
[This message has been edited by Fooglmog (edited September 29, 2009).]
quote:Bent Tree - I'm curious what specifically you're reacting to, any set of technologies that are depicted poorly in the books you're reading? I write near-term future sci-fi and would love to avoid the pitfalls. I try to do so, but it'd be good to have some more examples
There is not a blatant instance. I just feel like in general there are many instances. One I recall is a story written this year about a person who had a mind alteration to prevent him from breaking the law, yet he stopped to put a quarter in a pay phone after getting out of his gas guzzler. The proceedure wasn't an oldie like a lobotomy either it was something along the lines of "Total Recall"
I see alot of interesting points here and I would like to clarify that I don't think cell phones will be obsolete in a decade. I just think they will be far more advanced. More like a personal computer. They already have 3d viewers, etc... but as i said I won't do the research for everyone. I just though I would make this point for us to perhaps be more mindful. Our readership surely watches the discovery channel and would like to see some modern tech become more widespread even if only in our fiction for the time being.
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited September 29, 2009).]
posted
Here are a few instances of a day in the life writing excercise I did for a character I developed MANY years ago which encompassed what I believed to be possible future technologies. This was for the first and Worsts story I ever wrote. But I had fun inventing the daily routine for this hollywood character set in a "two-hundred-years-from-now" setting .
quote:At the vanity began his intricate morning routine. Removing a mouthpiece from its Ion solution canister and putting it in his mouth, the enzymes began their duty sterilizing his mouth and polishing his flawless teeth to a most unnatural shade of white. He replaced the mouth piece to it's canister and then stepped into powder shower and sealed the door. A push of the stainless steel button released the cloud of bacteria that quickly consumed all the dead skin and impurities from his hairless body. The second cloud a pure oxygen burst that killed the bacteria was followed by vacuum which removed the residue. The final step was a spray of pheremones and glitter
quote:He removed the clear contact lenses from the incubator that produced them daily and inserted them into his eyes which enabled him to view incoming data from his P.A.B's and Selena his network computer. The lenses also made it possible for him to see without opening his ornately tattooed and decorated eyelids. The prioritized data appeared in the lower left hand corner of his vision. Ahh yes he whispered to himself as the news that he so eagerly awaited for appeared. Yesterday he had received news of an antiquities dealer down in the valley that had a mint condition Ipod. He now had the location of this dealer.
I don't typically write fiction set less than a hundred years from now unless it is considered a near current time frame. They definately won't use anything resembling our cell phones then.
Thanks you, Extrinsic. You said alot of things and pointed out alot of points that I was begining to contemplate and I see that you have taken the effort to give them more thought than I have as of yet and put into words alot of ideas I share.
posted
Thank you, extrinsic, for your comments about the cultural relativity of science fiction. I see this as the big picture, not whether a technology is outdated. Equally, I don't think old technology should be such a stumbling block. My response is "who cares?". It is great to see budding technology in stories, but I'm not worried if someone gets it wrong.
The Time Machine, 1984, and 2001: A Space Odyssey are all great stories, even though they might have either faulty or untimely technology. As for Star Trek, those writers accounted for all inconsistencies by throwing in alternate timelines. Also, consider Brazil, of which I have seen the movie and not read. It is basically a story set in a future based on wires and tubes, and it was made well after transisters and even computers were greatly available.
posted
The problem with movie SF (or TV SF) is that they like the "look" but they don't like to go into any of the underpinnings that make SF work. You like a future with wires and tubes and all that sticking out of the walls? Put it in...so what if, in the present, they've already moved on from that kind of technology?
With "Star Trek," they said one of the reasons they did this new "reset" in the latest version (which I haven't seen and probably won't), is that they got so paralyzed by their continuity that they couldn't move beyond it.
(They say Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle to dramatize how poorly labor was treated in the US...but people focused in on what went on in the meat packing plants and ignored the main message...)
posted
"This broadcast is brought to you by Soylent Green...Yes, Soylent Green is people...Soylent Green is made from the best thing on Earth...the people!"
[edited 'cause I misspelled "Soylent" the first time out.]
[This message has been edited by Robert Nowall (edited September 30, 2009).]
posted
Of course, Upton Sinclair intended reform, only he shot for the minds of his audience and instead hit them in the stomach. He'd had little publishing success until The Jungle, outside of low-circulation Socialist rags.
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