The Future is Now Past, or why sci-fi sucks lately
On the deck of Gary’s patio, enjoying grilled burgers and beer in beautiful, if slightly rainy, Toronto, I had a shared epiphany with Piet and Martijn: where are the visionary science fiction authors and filmmakers? Why hasn’t there been any really socially inspiring sci-fi since the 60’s?!
A possible solution to this riddle presented itself while at a reading by Neal Stephenson for his latest work ‘Anathem’ which involves a society of intellectuals isolated within the walls of a 10,000 year clock with doors that open only at long timed intervals. The Long Now Foundation is actually building this clock (for real!) and one of the engineers, Danny Hills, shared the following thought (loosely paraphrased):
“When I was a kid, growing up in the 60’s, the future was the year 2000. We had Clarke’s and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example. Some time later on in the 80’s I realized that “the future” was still the year 2000. Each year of my life, my sense of future was shrinking. And it wasn’t just me, of course. By the 90’s people became obsessed with what 2000 would bring: some predicted apocalypse, social unrest, nukes, y2k bug, etc.”
What does it do to a society when they are not challenged to think long term, when even “the future” is a short time away. And now, of course, the future is behind us (see Conan O’Brien’s “In the year 2000” skits and The Flight of the Conchords “Robot” song). There may be larger, indirect social consequences to a shrinking and inverting sense of future. But one simple connection is that it may be a reasonable explanation for the lack of good, visionary scifi in popular culture for the past few decades… How long before we reset our sense of future and begin to peer once again into the distance?
