Near-future science fiction: a cop out or cutting edge?
by robertjsawyer on Jul.06, 2009, under Robert J. Sawyer
Time has a way of catching up with you. My novel FlashForward was first published in 1999, and was set in the then-distant year of 2009 — starting in April, to be precise.
Well, now the future is here: reality has caught up with what I had to say. Some things I got right (the new pope did take the name Benedict XVI!) and some things I got wrong. Was it gutsy, or foolhardy, to set a book so close to the present day?
What about my current novel, WWW: Wake? That one is set only three years from now — surely I’m courting disaster with such a near-future setting? (And other books, such as my Hugo Award-winning Hominids, were set in the year they were published — 2002, in that case.)
I’ve heard some other writers say it’s impossible to write near-future SF anymore — because science and technology (not to mention the political and social landscape) change so quickly, you’re bound to be proven wrong. Those writers seem to prefer the far-future.
But I find that most modern far-future SF doesn’t interest me. When you wave nanotech like a magic wand, when you invoke the technological singularity as an excuse for anything-goes, when it’s all just a simulation (or a dream), I find I just don’t care.
I think science fiction’s greatest strength is its ability to comment on the here-and-now, and, well, for that, there’s no time — or setting! — like the present.
Okay, that’s where I’m coming from on this. What do you all think? Would you rather read about A.D. 2010 or A.D. 2100 — or maybe A.D. 21,000?
Rob
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July 6th, 2009 on 9:28 pm
I suppose it really isn’t necessary to set a book into the near future to comment on the here and now. Like Sawyer has said before, Star Trek has done fine at just this very job over the years.
I do think science and technology (and political and social landscapes) change fast enough that authors often are proven wrong. I remember reading a George R. R. Martin story in high school (about 10 years ago) that predicted just about everyone would own a helicopter in the 90s. I was surprised by the almost unanimous eye rolling and chuckling that came from this. I rather suspected the author didn’t intend this to be a prediction, rather a plot device. The same goes for Mindscan by Sawyer. Who would want to make an exact mind-duplicate of themselves? It’s just fun to imagine.
I remember Joss Whedon said that “Firefly” was inspired from history, and noticing how it repeats itself. I certainly agree that when it comes to human nature there’s nothing new under the sun. Regardless of how far in the future we go we’re still left with the same package.
Anyway, those are just some thoughts. I guess ultimately I have no real preference on the when of a novel’s setting.
July 7th, 2009 on 12:38 am
Thanks for the comments, Snake!
Interesting point about classic STAR TREK: of course, although the setting is futuristic, the characters behaved very much like 1960s people; there was no real attempt to make them behave in a futuristic fashion.
But you’re right, of course, that either a futuristic or a contemporary setting can be used for social comment: H.G. Wells used the former in THE TIME MACHINE (to talk about Britain’s class system) and the latter in THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (to talk about British colonialism).
July 7th, 2009 on 11:21 am
All I’m looking for is an interesting story, it doesn’t matter much to me ~when~ a story is set. If the author gives me enough information so I can visualize where the events are happening, my imagine can set up the rest.
As for technology changing too quickly, well, I wouldn’t disparage an author just because he got it wrong 5/10 years ago. If they are writing good stories, that transcends a few technological errors.
July 7th, 2009 on 11:31 am
Rob, you can say whatever you want about the future: we won’t be around to find out if “On The Surface” comes true or not.
One of my favourite things about reading old (50s, 60s, 70s) sci-fi books is their predictions about the future: the moon bases by 2000, the flying cars. I love this element. Like Y2K, it (the future) was all so far away to the writters back then. Maybe they thought their books would fade into obsolescence, and they wouldn’t still be read in the years in which they were set, (and decades after they were written.) Maybe they believed we’d have these great jumps in technology.
Like Bova’s “Cyberbooks”, I also like the predictions that do come true.
For current written fiction, it doesn’t matter whether it is set in the near or far future. If it is a compelling story, people will read and enjoy it.
Stephanie
July 7th, 2009 on 11:32 am
I think that SF writers worry too much about being “correct” about the future, as if events that make the story obviously wrong somehow invalidate the story. Read old SF by Arthur C. Clarke whose stories were set sometime in the C20th - they obviously didn’t come to pass, but remain charming stories for all that (e.g. “Venture to the Moon” a set of related stories about the first moon landings). I think if a story is good, it will remain so, even if events or the science turn out to be very different from history. At absolute worst, doesn’t this make these stories just a weaker form of the “alternate history” genre as history passes them by? 1984 was a seminal SF novel, and despite it’s setting, remains a good, thought provoking novel, still relevant even in the C21st.
As regards the near term setting for “Wake”, isn’t the point of the novel to ask the classic “what if?” of SF, in this case, if part of the internet does become self aware. What is interesting is the idea and the ramifications, in other words how the story explores the premise.
Note to the anxious. The Terminator series is still successful even though Skynet never became self aware in 1999. No nuclear devastation either. I still like Star Trek’s “Space Seed”, even though we clearly never had the “Eugenics Wars” and Khan Noonian Singh never escaped in a sleeper ship in 1996!
Robert, just keep writing good stories with engaging ideas and don’t worry about whether events will make either the setting or the premise invalid.
July 7th, 2009 on 11:38 am
Thanks, Alex, Silver Fish, and Jillian. I very much appreciate your comments!
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is a very interesting case. There’s only one date mentioned in the film — January 12, 1992, the date HAL became operational — and, of course, that bit of trivia could have easily been left out. It’s interesting to see in the later books in the series that Clarke snuck the timeline forward (Frank Poole is shown in the novel 3001 as having been a toddler in the year 2001). I wonder if Kubrick and Clarke had it to do over whether they would have left the date off the title? (And yet, of course, we all still read 1984 in school!)
July 7th, 2009 on 11:39 am
I went through a period (most of the past fifteen years) where I pretty much read exclusively near-future SF, which I categorize as anything that takes place in the next 50-odd years, and hence sort of connects with my life (as in “this is my future - the sort of things I might live though.”)
I get the point of those who say it’s becoming near-impossible to write near-future, because the rate of change on a bunch of different fronts (not just tech) is increasing exponentially, but I also take it with a grain of salt - Charlie Stross wrote a great essay about this very subject (google: “Living through Interesting Times” stross) but notes that he just finished a near-future book and is starting another. I do think that any writer that gets hung up on “predictions” will always have a hard time of it, as that tends to manifest as a gee-whiz “this sort of gadget will be so cool” situation that is always embarrassing a few years later (I recall a scene in James P. Hogan’s excellent “Inherit the Stars” where the main character proudly shows off his portable-computer-in-a-briefcase that is nowhere near as cool as my Macbook.) Heinlein always avoided this by not describing anything particularly gadget-y: 1948’s “Space Cadet” has a character with a mobile phone, simply describes as “his phone” - nothing else was necessary, so it still works today (alas, most of the rest of the novel doesn’t!) On the other hand, near-future writers (such as yourself) who focus on more of the big picture and people’s reactions to change must have fewer problems in this area. It was certainly bad luck for the writers in the 80s who figured that the Soviets would be around a couple of decades later - a not unreasonable assumption at the time - but in contrast, the idea of a person or society dealing with the concept of radical longevity (to use your “Rollback” as an example) is not going to have an expiry date that’s so clear-cut.
Actually, the only real near-future SF dividing line for me is the existence of the Internet as a permanent fixture - any SF novel that doesn’t deal with a heavily networked world is pretty unreadable to me now; the Sterling-Gibson-Cadigan-Shirley-type Cyberpunks aside, even early examples of the net (such as in Card’s “Enders Game”, Brin’s “Earth”, and Kress’ “Beggars in Spain”) give those books far more longevity for me than books from the 70s, 80s, and early 90s that don’t take this into account.
BUT… while overall I’m still a near-future sort of guy, I have to admit that lately I’ve been reading a lot more modern far-future SF, and finding that the good stuff (Sturgeon’s ten percent!) does just as well at social commentary and reflecting the world we live in now. I think that the extra “remove” afforded by setting a story in an environment hundreds (or thousands) of years in the future gives a writer enough distance from a theme to allow them to play with it without getting caught up with distracting (present-day) details.
Ken MacLeod (whose last two books have in fact been near-future, and they’re brilliant) wrote a bunch of far-future post-singularity-esqe books that shine a pretty bright light on current political and economic themes, Ian Banks’ “Look to Windward” is probably the most poignant meditation on war (and those who survive it) that I’ve ever read in ANY genre - it also explores big human issues like the nature of truth, ethics, death, and religion, and does it beautifully and with no small amount of humour. Alastair Reynolds’ “Revelation Space” novels explore more typical SFnal “big ideas” (with real and/or plausible science) but are no less compelling. I also recently went back and re-read Vinge’s “Fire Upon the Deep” (where he takes the idea of the technological singularity and pretty much turns it on its side, making it a spatial issue rather than a temporal one) and got more out of it than I did when it was first released (I also went on the read the prequel “A Deepness in the Sky” and loved it as well.) Richard K. Morgan (who does both near- and far- , and now is playing with High Fantasy) writes books that are positively loaded with relevant social commentary - from gender, race, and identity, to politics and power. Bottom line, there are lots of really great far-future novels out there that go beyond the standard Space Opera Star Wars-type “magic”.
So, I guess I’d have to answer your prompt with “That’s easy, Rob: Both!”
July 7th, 2009 on 11:40 am
Fergus Heywood: what a great, thoughtful post! Thank you!
July 7th, 2009 on 1:53 pm
I think the problem with a franchise sci-fi like Star Trek is that they try to comment on past (current) events with little or no success. They’re constantly trying to inject real history into that universe, and it doesn’t always have the effect they’re looking for. I have thoroughly enjoyed all of Robert J Sawyers’ books, he made me like current setting sci-fi. The problem with the far flung future stuff is that it becomes fantasy at that point and is no longer about the science. I love the exposition where the science is explained to me, sometimes in great detail. Then he makes the leap into sci-fi o’so subtly. You really think it’s possible!
July 7th, 2009 on 5:01 pm
Erik, thanks! I think, if I may be so bold, that another reason authors (myself included) sometimes prefer to set their science fiction in the present day or very near future is because people who don’t normally read science fiction might still be willing to give it a try, while people who do read science fiction seem (as other commenters have said here) indifferent about whether the setting is present, near future, or far future.
I think one of the best science-fiction novels of the last decade is Audrey Niffenegger’s THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE; I love it as a science-fiction reader (she pays due attention to all the issues, and actually talks a fair bit about the science behind the premise), but it’s been embraced by scads of readers who would never admit that it was a science-fiction novel.
For my own part, I get the best of both worlds. I’m published throughout North America by Penguin, but in the US my latest book, WAKE, is under Penguin’s Ace Science Fiction imprint, whereas in Canada it’s under Penguin’s mainstream Viking imprint. There’s no doubt that, per capita, I have way more readers in Canada than I do in the US for WAKE, whereas for my earlier far-future, off-Earth SF — GOLDEN FLEECE, FAR-SEER and its sequels, STARPLEX — the readership was almost entirely limited to habitual, admitted in-category science-fiction readers.
Rob
July 8th, 2009 on 10:59 pm
While I don’t necessarily mind when a novel is set in terms of time period, I prefer having something set a little further in the future than something I’ll see in my lifetime.
Sure, it’s a movie reference, but we’re 6 years away from 2015 (the main year in Back to the Future 2) and I don’t see us any closer to hover boards.
I know it’s sci-fi. I know it’s fantasy, but setting something too close in the future allows for the work to feel dated as we get closer to the time period in the book.
July 12th, 2009 on 8:38 am
Rob, I feel your pain; I’ve just had the second plot I lined up for my next novel obsoleted by current events (described here). But at the same time, the far-future SF tropes look more and more … fantastical: FTL space drives and galactic empires no more believable than dragons and wizards. So I’m back at the coal face again, this time working on the third plot line for my next novel — hopefully one that’s tightly enough focussed to be bulletproof against economic/political black swans!
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