The Future is ?

Yesterday I talked about the future of the writing industry. So today it seems appropriate to talk about the future described by the writing industry. Over at Locus Online is an interesting piece titled: Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future by Gary Westfahl. It's an interesting read that looks at some of the basic fallacies often made when predicting the future. I would like to note that it's not only Science Fiction authors that fall into these traps, plenty others predict the future and get it wrong. We just seem to expect the SciFi doods to get it right, perhaps unfairly.

Seriously, Science Fiction is about story telling, and while science has a role in shaping a plausible scenario, few stories can stand alone with just science. It's in the human interactions that Science Fiction excels. In the relationships and decisions that are shaped and forced by the backdrop of the (science) fictional reality. This is why I use the term Speculative Fiction. It frees me from having to defend the science (real or imaginary) in my stories.

The reality is that most of the best science fiction ever written has zero chance of ever being plausible. Hyperdrive? Alien Warfare? Robots using Humans as Batteries? If you look at the science behind those ideas it doesn't make sense. I don't know if there are aliens out there, but it really doesn't matter because the science is pretty clear on extra solar travel. It's SLOW. Lightspeed is a great speed limit, but it's also irrelevant. The energy requirements alone to bring a manned vessel to a fraction of the speed of light (1 or 2 percent) are high enough as to render it effectively impossible. So science tells us that we aren't going anywhere, and it's unlikely we're going to meet others along the way. The human battery thing just falls because it's a dumb idea, you don't really need to understand science to get that one. But Hyperdrive and Aliens and Human Batteries all make great backdrops to compelling stories.

Here is a great Mind Meld from SF Signal that looks at the predictions from Science Fiction and what has occurred and what has not. As with all Mind Melds a lot of the value is in the discussion by the participating authors as they present their own take on the question. James Gunn, Adam Roberts, and others being some of the participants.