Science Fiction Writers Discuss The Future 250
An Anonymous Reader writes "Locus Magazine asks prominent science fiction writers Bruce Sterling, Kim Stanley Robinson, Cory Doctorow, Pat Murphy, Norman Spinrad, and Ken Wharton to extrapolate the future from current trends in the environment, copyright, terrorism, war, world government, and the upcoming Presidential election. How do large groups make decisions on single issues? Are centralized global systems of governance the way to go? Are stateless diasporas the driving force behind the economic development of India and China? Will there always be war? The answer to these questions and more in a round-table conducted by legendary science fiction writer John Shirley."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Does anyone know of... (Score:4, Interesting)
On economic issues, sci-fi writers seem to run the gamut.
Of course, if you want to read some nutty religious-whackjob fantasy stuff, I'm sure you can find that really popular Revelations-inspired fantasy series at Walmart or your favorite local Christian bookstore, if pseudo-religious drivel is up your alley. I guess that's close to being "right wing" sci-fi.
As for what this is doing in politics.slashdot.org, that truly beats the hell out of me.
The Past-Future (Score:4, Interesting)
I've found myself liking what I call the "past-future" more. Things like Sky Captain or that animated feature that will come out later this year about a world powered entirely by steam. These kinds of things seem very interesting to me. If you want to make a movie or book about the question on whether or not replacing people's jobs with robots is good or bad, why set it in the distant future? The robots could be powered by nukes, sure, but you could also power them with steam! Or hampsters! Or SOMETHING other than some kind of atomic battery.
The future has been done. It's time to lay off the true future for a while, and look at the alternate futures that won't be. Use what people thought the future would look like in the 1880s, or the 1920s, or something like that. I've seen enough "future of the 1990s/2000s". Show me something different.
Just a thought.
I've been reading science fiction all of my life (Score:2, Interesting)
Guess I've been living under a rock!
Meanwhile, when Vernor Vinge talks about the future, I sit up and listen. Er, read. Whatever.
Legendary? (Score:3, Interesting)
Great point (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the historic forms of colonialism appearing "gentle and beneficent", but I think this is a particularly insidious way the developed world can extort from and suppress the developing. Eventually the developed world's fundamentally impalpable IP and financial management of the rest of the world will burst. What will matter in the end is that the manufacturing capacity is in Asia, the cheap farmland and farm labour spread across the third world and the IT solutions in India. Britain lost its position as "workshop of the world" after the 1870s (already happened in the U.S.) and it took only one major war to make it lose its financial centrality (all the U.S. really has left). How long can the developed world as it currently is really hold on to its unnatural domination? Kudus to Doctorow to his very apt parallels between the old and new colonialisms.
Science fiction is about the present (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, science fiction writers have a unique perspective not only on what may happen in the future but what is actually happening right now. So it is very interesting to see what they have to say about a present that is quickly becoming more and more like a science fiction scenario with AIDS, SARS, 9/11, RFID, TIA, ubiquitous computing and ecommunication, etc, etc... Our culture is obsessed with these things so why hasn't Locus done a roundtable like this until now?
best quote on global government (Score:4, Interesting)
"Then I heard Lenny Bruce say: 'If you want to imagine a world government, think of the whole world run by the phone company and nowhere else to go.' "
A-MEN!
Re:Does anyone know of... (Score:1, Interesting)
I actually found this kind of reassuring (Score:5, Interesting)
Bruce Sterling has been pushing the end of US innovation and the collapse of the economy for most of that time.
I know most of those people, more or less, and while I love much of their fiction, I can't think of any one of them that I would consider other than a negative predictor.
If they are all that worried, we must be in pretty good shape.
Re:Does anyone know of... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Legendary? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All worried about global warming?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
All that may be an early sign of global warming trends, which would imply it's going to keep changing. and likely in the same direction. My house isn't really built for a rain forest, and it's already costing me and other people to adjust to what increasingly looks to be a solid trend. I'm very glad to be 800 feet above the local flood plain, and to have at least a few grocery stores up here with me. I'm glad I'm not a farmer, trying to figure out what to plant next year.
Some global warming models predict more and bigger hurricanes, and the arguements there look both backed up by some specific facts and pretty logical even to an average joe lay-meteorologist like me. How would everyone in Florida vote this November if they thought those models were definitely true? Just at a guess, Global Warming would suddenly become the biggest issue they would be considering in casting their votes, and for many of them, the only one.
Some other models suggest a big southward shift in the Atlantic current is coming. If those are true, the world gets warmer on average, but at least the eastern part of those Canadian territories gets colder, against the general trend. So does Europe, and the Russians probably don't want them all moving east 3,000 miles to get to the warmer parts of Siberia, because that's where the Russians are moving, and the Overheated Chinese.
In this worst case scenario, the European population can go southeast instead, right after the newly depopulated middle east stops glowing. As these last two situations show, Global Warming is frequently considered to have strong potential to destabilize the international situation, (that's UN'ese for "someone uses nukes."). Hope this explains why some of us are at least a trifle concerned.
The 'right' side of fiction (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I want the budget of Lucas' next movie put into his books just for the epic fleet engagements alone. My favorite author to date.
Re:The Past-Future (Score:3, Interesting)
That I [imdb.com] agree [imdb.com] completely [imdb.com] with [imdb.com].
So this guy clearly reads Slashdot... (Score:2, Interesting)
On psychohistory (Score:5, Interesting)
At the risk of jumping on him for what might be a comment that has been taken out of context:
That's an interesting way to envision how the unpredictable actions of huge collectives could be predicted: just assume that they will be manipulated by demagogues, and that the demagogues' aims will be obvious from their (necessarily public) rhetoric.
Still, I don't buy it, except over such short timespans that no particular skill is required to make predictions. For example, "bin Ladin Determined to Strike within the United States." What was their first clue? His declaration of war on the US in 1998?
The lessons of the post-Cold-War period are that history is driven as much by chaotic regions like Afghanistan as by tightly controlled ones like North Korea. By definition, events in chaotic regions cannot be predicted.
Another source of chaos is diseases like SARS and AIDS. Just as Chernobyl hastened the end of the USSR, poor government responses to such diseases could result in the collapse (or reform) of those governments. We could quibble about whether a disaster like Chernobyl was or was not predictable in the decaying USSR. We can also debate about whether it's all that important in the grand march of history -- maybe it sped up the collapseof the USSR but not by much. OK, but (for those who credit Reagan for ending the Cold War by playing chicken with the USSR) consider how different history might be, had John Hinckley's aim been a little different.
Control, and predictability, are illusions. At least, to the degree proposed in Foundation. I seem to recall however that Foundation acknowledged the difficulties posed by unruly leaders coming from out of nowhere.
Re:Does anyone know of... (Score:4, Interesting)
You might try L. E. Modesitt Jr.; he held a (very minor) post during the Reagan adminstration. Like much of the right (and like Dubya), his characters largely have no qualms about the ruthless use of military force when the solution requires it. In particular, you might consider "The Parafaith War", and moreover it's sequel "The Ethos Effect"-- which can easily be read as simultaneously as strong support for the recent invasion/demolition/whatever of Iraq, and a thorough damnation of the US administration that did it.
On the other hand, while his characters will use force, they tend to make sure it is the absolute last resort, and will accept the consequences if the guess wrong. As an example, were Dubya a major secondary hero in a Modesitt novel, he would indeed have struck unilaterally on the suspicion of WMDs... but when the evidence turned up so thoroughly negative, would have resigned, and agreed to extradition for a trial at the Hague on charges of Conspiracy to Wage an Agressive War.
Also, his characters largely have a respect for the environment that makes a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship look like the crew of the Exxon Valdez; I suspect "Club of Rome" leanings. He also seems to have a distinct bias against religious fanatics of all sorts, exhibited in his Ghost of the Revelator and Parafaith War series, as well as his newest.
On yet another the other hand, his characters seems to have the "most people are morons" attitude I get from the few conservatives I associate with.
On the last limb of this octupoid, I should note that it's may be a mistake to assign the views of a character to an author. He may just be taking an interesting position, not one he agrees with.
Re:1984 is the future (Score:1, Interesting)
"Only the dead have seen the end of war"
Plato
it is a bit more haunting when you hear a guy who lived 2500 years ago say it then some early 20th centry novelist say it
stendec@gmail.com
John Titor (Score:4, Interesting)
http://johntitor.strategicbrains.com/ [strategicbrains.com]
Apparently he is a time traveller from 30 years in the future who got lost in our time and foretold that in this year, there will be a civil war starting in the states, which would escalate to WW3 until 2011
Well, I don't know what to make of it, but look at today's headlines, so korea set of a nuke. I can see that there are many in the US who are sick of GWB, but without any doubt, through weird 'election policies' and 'political contributions' who can you see as president of the US of A?
John Kerry? Come on, don't kid yourself. We all know the outcome now, what with E-voting and such.
This year is gonna be a fun year if that guy is for real
They should have asked me instead (Score:4, Interesting)
1. I have learned a lot more different viewpoints, and I have learned to appreciate the insight they give.
2. My heart say no to stronger government, but my brain say that it does help against terrorism. Countries with a strong government are much better at preventing terrorism than weak governments. Even though US and EU are they main enemies as defined by the islamic world revolution, after 9/11 most "successful" terrorist actions are done in third world countries.
However, the strength of the government is more closely linked to how free of corruption it is, than to how many secret agents it has. This is why Russian government is weak. Thus, cultivating a free press (to combat corruption) is more important than giving more powers to the secret police. Giving up to much liberty will lead to a weaker government.
3. I hope we in the future will have better models for describing social changes, and that we in the future rather than blaming the past for making mistakes, understand why these mistakes were made.
4. We, in the rich part of the world, are in no serious environmental danger. The climatic changes will not be more catastrophic than we can deal with them. At the local level, the environment has become steadily more healthy in the "rich west" for decades. In the "booming east" the same will start happing soon, as material wealth will lead to a larger concern for the environment. Africa is screwed, environmentally, as in any other way.
5. The current trend is a strong religious and national backslash to the globalisation project, which threatens modernism (civil liberties, democracy, secularity...) as well. Of course, the tide will turn again. Look at Iran for an example, where the teocracy is increasingly out of touch with the young population.
6. I believe stronger international organisations and global wealth will eventually make war an exception. Look at Europe, a continent which has been at war with itself for all of written history. Today, war between the EU members seem impossible, and EU is expanding in a way that is pacifying rather than aggrevating its neighbours. The EU rules for joining requires appicants to settle border conflicts, and to treat minorities within the borders respectfully.
7. In a sense, we already have a world government. It is called WTO. I do not believe we will have a world government in the sense of the national governments, there are too much cultural difference for that. But I can see a pressure for WTO to become more transparent, more democratic, and to take on non-economic considerations affecting trade, such as global enironment. This could lead to a convergence with other transnational organizations, such as UN and the international court.
8. I'm not sure the gap between rich an poor is widening, on a global scale. The biggest economic growth are in China and India, with more than a third of the world population, and both comparable poor countries. I see this trend continuing, and eventually even reach AFrica, which is currently left behind. On a local geographical scala and scort time scale, I see a widening in the rich countries, as the middle and lower classes are pressured by the developing countries, and a scrinking in the developing countries, as the new jobs create a new middle class, which need to be serviced thus improving conditions for the lower class. As long as we manage to handle the population growth (and it can be done), I see the living condition growing for most people, which is more important than the size of the gap.
9. You should have asked about the population growth, how to handle it, and what changes it will cause.
I have no idea who will win the US election. In a sense, it is a small version of the battle mentioned in point 5. Kerry representing modernism, and Bush the religious and natinalist backslash.
OSC homophobic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
Ken Wharton - interesting and intelligent ideas. He is optimisting about our ability to handle the climate change (though he [stupidly] thinks we should have stabilised the population long ago). He seems to understand future technology the most.
Kim Stanley - pretty confused guy
Norman Spinrad - left-winger, hates Bush and the American hegemony, hates Christian fundies
Pat Murphy - panic-monger, less government is good
Cory Doctorow - anti-copyright guy, against more government too, doesn't like high American debt
Bruce Sterling - fascinated by other countries and cultures (as always)
So if you want good SF, I suggest you check out Divine Intervention by Ken Wharton (haven't read it, but it must be good), if you want to have an anti-RIAA circle-jerk*, invite Cory. If you want to whine about Bush*, do it with Norman Spinrad. And if you want to watch some anime or eat sushi, call Bruce.
Some things that the authors agree on:
- More government is probably bad
- too bad we wrecked the environment
- we'll have to deal with the global warming
- war will change shape in the future
- and they don't know who will win the elections.
* - not that I am pro-Bush, pro-copyright or anything, but I don't need a science fiction author for that.
P.S. I just hated the "The world seems dangerously chaotic" comment in the beginning. Yeah, as if it never was. Heck, Toffler wrote about it 25 years ago - everyone in the 21st century will be affected by a desease called "Future shock". Too bad, noone (besides him) realises that it is a desease and that it's irrational and harmful to think this way.
Re:They should have asked me instead (Score:3, Interesting)
"However, catastrophic is just hyperbole. The best case scenarios are hardly noticeable in the natural variation, and the worst case scenarious are no longer on a threat to civilization scale."
As I said, go talk to some environmental scientists. Catastrophic is not hyperbole, it is an accurate extrapolation of what the data tells us. And that is data corrected for the obvious, with the errorbars in no way allowing for a 'doomsday scenario'. Really, this is not spin, or green-tree-hugger-rhetoric. It is the way scientists now look at the problem. Go talk to people who know. Go to a university and ask a number of professors, or just go to the local climatological institute and inform yourself.
As for the EU...again, keep yourself informed. If you can't hear the rumblings going on...you really aren't listening. Start by having a look at how decisions are made at the European level (the different councils etc), and have a look at the mayor decisions which have been made (or more to the point, the ones which haven't!). If you think that Yugoslavia was the tragic exception, you don't know nearly enough. Just have a look at how Poland is funded now and how being part of the EU has changed it's income. Also keep in mind that 1 out of 5
As for C. You really have no clue. You didn't even bother to look up any UN reports. This:
"the global trend is increasing wealth for both poor and rich, and even narrowing the gap between countries" is just not true. The global trend (as supported by the UN and many, many other independant studies) is that wealth is being concentrated (consoledated)in a smaller and smaller group. Furthermore, more and more people hyave no direct access to something as basic as potable water. Read that again: the number of people who can't drink plain water is increasing. The fact that there is a UN NGO which deals only with water should tell you enough.