The Purpose of Science Fiction by Robert J Sawyer..

[Fumesucker]

http://www.slate.com/id/2282651/

Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, is generally considered the first work of science fiction. It explores, in scientific terms, the notion of synthetic life: Dr. Victor Frankenstein studies the chemical breakdown that occurs after death so he can reverse it to animate nonliving matter. Like so many other works of science fiction that followed, Shelley's story is a cautionary tale: It raises profound questions about who should have the right to create living things and what responsibility the creators should have to their creations and to society.
T
hink about that: Mary Shelley put these questions on the table almost two centuries ago—41 years before Darwin published The Origin of Species and 135 years before Crick and Watson figured out the structure of DNA. Is it any wonder that Alvin Toffler, one of the first futurists, called reading science fiction the only preventive medicine for future shock?

Isaac Asimov, the great American science fiction writer, defined the genre thus: "Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the responses of human beings to changes in science and technology." The societal impact of what is being cooked up in labs is always foremost in the science fiction writer's mind. H.G. Wells grappled with creating chimera life forms in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Aldous Huxley gave us a heads-up on modified humans in Brave New World (1932), and Michael Crichton's final science-fiction novel, Next (2006), brought the issues of gene splicing and recombinant DNA to a mass audience.

What's valuable about this for societies is that science-fiction writers explore these issues in ways that working scientists simply can't. Some years ago, for a documentary for Discovery Channel Canada, I interviewed neurobiologist Joe Tsien, who had created superintelligent mice in his lab at Princeton—something he freely spoke about when the cameras were off. But as soon as we started rolling, and I asked him about the creation of smarter mice, he made a "cut" gesture. "We can talk about the mice having better memories but not about them being smarter. The public will be all over me if they think we're making animals more intelligent."

<more at the link>

[Orrex]

1. Sorry, Sawyer. You lost me at Toffler

A very nice man, Toffler was also very much a product of his shell-shocked age, stragging the pre- and post-bomb eras in a way all but guaranteed to kindle a fear of the future.

Anyone read Future Shock lately? At best, it's quaint. At worst, it's farcical. A sincere effort, but too devoted to spoons and greeting cards to be much of a defense against the dangers it warned us about.


And frankly I'm disgusted that Michael Crichton would be cited in the same paragraph as Asimov, Wells, and Huxley. Crichton, whose last big "warning" came in the form of a petty screed against the global warming conspiracy.

[Fumesucker]

2. It's been a damn long time since I read Future Shock..

But I don't recall it claiming to be a "defense" against any dangers.

I think Sawyer was trying to stick with authors that the general public would recognize, that's why Crichton was used as an example. I'm someone who rather enjoys dystopian SF and most of the authors I enjoy are unknown to the vast majority of people.

And the modern up-to-the-minute world is pretty damn "shell shocked" too, things are sliding downhill quickly on a lot of fronts, economic, political, environmental. We all are at least somewhat products of our age, Toffler no more so than anyone else.

[Orrex]

3. We are all absolutely products of our age, I agree

The error re: Toffler is the thinking that subsequent generations are products of his age. I don't particularly blame him for that part, but--as you say--he's one whom the general public would recognize.

Future Shock itself wasn't proposed as a defense, but it put forth several strategies--the saving of greeting cards among them--that seem trite and simplistic. Heck, when I first encountered the book a quarter century ago, it already seemed trite and simplistic.


You're probably right about the inclusion of Crichton, though. It's just that he was such a hack and a political whore that I can't choke down the bile long enough to ponder his deeper associations...

[Fumesucker]

4. It's basically impossible to really put yourself in the mind of someone in a different culture..

Especially when that culture doesn't even exist yet and not a single person alive knows what that culture will be.

How many of us saw WoW or GTA coming when PacMan was introduced?

Quibbles about the author's literary choices aside, what did you think of the thesis of the article?

[friendly_iconoclast]

7. It was good, but a rehash of something Poul Anderson(?) wrote years ago:

which specifically referenced Toffler: "Science finction is the only antidote for future shock."

I'm going to try and chase that down.

[phantom power]

5. Another definition I've read is "SF is the literature of ideas"

Which is perhaps somewhat more general and inclusive. It also reminds me of a comment that Neal Stephenson made (paraphrase): "Anybody who is interested in science fiction will eventually evolve an interest in history"

[Fumesucker]

6. So much of SF is about history..

Both future and past.

Everything from "Hawksbill Station" to "The Boat of a Million Years" to "In the Bottomlands", the past created the present and the present is creating the future.