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Science Fiction Writers Discuss The Future
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."
...if you look at it one way, it's easy. In the simplest sense, the left is about change, the right is about preserving the status quo. Science fiction writers are preoccupied with change because they speculate about the future. Then again, I think that vastly oversimplifies the libertarian tone and anti-fascism of much science fiction. Science fiction authors tend to look into the future and expect the consolidation of powers, which scares them. Because they think more than the average person about the negative side of the current course of humankind, they are more inclined to want to change it.
No,no,no. Heinlein lived in a different era. He was definitely anti-Communist, but he was also very anti-authoritarian as well. His books have lots of sometimes kinky sex stuff, promote racial and (sometimes) gender equality. He was, again, more-or-less libertarian and anti-authoritarian (which if you remember was embodied to many of that age by Stalinism) in many ways, though I think his economic views drifted over the course of the spectrum during his life, becoming more conservative with time.
...and based on that, I'm completely disinclined to listen to anything else he has to say. They marketed the talk around the idea that it would be based on his vision of what the world will be like when manufacturing processes catch up with simulation technology, but it was really just one big self-indulgent orgy of buzzwords and vapid counterculture. I'm a pretty intelligent guy, I love science fiction, and I'm perfectly willing to listen to smart people propound off-the-wall viewpoints, but I also have a pretty good bullshit detector, and Bruce literally didn't say anything the entire evening. I don't know how he got away with it: I guess you make up enough weird terms like "spime wrangling" and people just assume you must be cool.
The highlight of his address was when he claimed that Steve Jobs has cancer because the air isn't clean enough. After that, I basically stopped listening.