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Neal Stephenson On Fiction, Games, and Saving the World
An anonymous reader points out an interview with Neal Stephenson at The Verge in which he talks a bit about his upcoming "research-heavy" novel, his Mongoliad project to reinvent the fiction novel as an app, what he thinks about saving the world with sci-fi. He says,
"It would be saying a lot to say that SF can save the world, but I do think that we've fallen into a habitual state of being depressed and pessimistic about the future. We are extremely conservative and fearful about how we deploy our resources. It contrasts pretty vividly with the way we worked in the first half of the 20th century. We are looking at a lot of challenges now that I do not think can be solved as long as we stay in that mindset. This is more of an 'if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail' kind of thing. My hammer is that I can write science fiction, so that's the thing I'm going to try to do. If I had billions of dollars sitting around, I could try to put my money where my mouth is and invest it. If I did something else for a living, I would be using my skills – whatever they were – to solve this problem, but since I'm a science fiction writer, I'm going to try to address it through the medium of science fiction."
Through campaigns like global warming, excess population, excess resource consumption, threatened species, etc., we've been labelled as a cancer on the planet and the only proper solution is our elimination. Yes, there was the belief that we'd grow and spread through space finding new resources as needed but since that would now just be seen as a tumour in the process of metastasising. It won't be allowed to happen.
Give us a few more years and we'll be gleefully throwing ourselves into suicide booths secure in the knowledge that as each one of us dies the universe becomes a better place.
I vividly remember Heinlein's "For us the living" and the obviousness and simplicity of the ideas it presented, and why I wondered "why don't we do it that way".
you can do a (metric) shit-ton with a hammer as long as you know how to wield it. yea you can drive nails, but you can also do so much more as well, IE take a flat sheet of metal and craft it into a work of art.
Maybe thats the problem, a hammer is for driving nails, and we go out and buy a stupid expensive hand press that performs the same act as someone who is skilled with a hammer to do the same thing.
2 cents
I wonder if our ever-declining real wage is connected to our pessimism?
If I thought that my life was going to be Better In The Future For Sure then I'd be much more likely to take risks, try stuff that might not work, and generally be more optimistic. When I'm confident that my life will be as-good-or-better than now then I could always say "well, that was a nice experiment, too bad it didn't work, thank goodness it will not substantially impact the remainder of my life"
And, just because I feel like I ought to provide a citation:
http://www.workinglife.org/wiki/Wages+and+Benefits%3A+Real+Wages+(1964-2004)
They've been doing this for quite some time. Although, from what I understand their updates are brief, sometimes only a few hundred words, as they are delivered via a sort of extended text message. I think an app is a much better way to deliver it. Pay 99 cents for the app, get a chapter a month until the story is done, and then pay $7.99 for a complete version off Amazon or *gasp* from the bookstore.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
The Harry Porter novels were very very hot, so hot that the Harry Porter series became absolute blockbusters when turned into movie
After the fad is over, what's remain of Harry Porter?
Has the world changed because of Harry Porter?
Has the world changed because of James Bond, 007?
Has the world changed because of _any_ novel?
SciFi novels are novels, SciFi novels are no different from other genre of novels - and just like other novels, SciFi's basic aim is to provide the readers something to occupy their free time - and by reading the novel - the readers are transported by the writing into an imaginary realm
Many famous books had been written. Books like "Animal Farm", "World and Peace", "1984" did have their effects on their readers - unfortunately they too, have failed to change the world
Saying that SciFi can "transform" the world is to burden SciFi with unnecessary baggages
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Kewl bro!
many already have and are still having a hard time. Take me for example, I can't even afford a slashdot account.
Many of the early SF writers and editors were trying to change the world, and said so. Asimov. Heinlein, Clarke, Gernsback, and Campbell were all trying to help invent a better future.
Stephenson mostly cranks out dystopias.
Neal certianly has a ironic sense of humor endorsing this scheme.
Books that watch us read them will not lead to anything of value
Cory Doctorow has a much better understanding of SF in this regard as his stuff is literally from the future since it has 0-DRM and doesn't exist in ecosystems which deprive users/readers of their privacy & anonymity.
I'm not a Luddite by any stretch of the imagination. But the shear amount of mass murder conducted in the name of "science" and "progress" in the 20th century was mind boggling.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
"...we've fallen into a habitual state of being depressed and pessimistic about the future...."
Don't you fellows remember the 1950s? The science fiction from that era was extremely pessimistic.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I watched the future die with Kennedy, and that ugly old man Johnson started stealing our future to fund his war.
You! Yes YOU! I want you to save the world. No, seriously. Darkness has befallen your brethren, and all of the lands are at war. You're the only one that can change the world for the better. You'll play this amazing game or read an awesome story, the protagonist will accomplish amazing feats and your reward will be: A CREDITS ROLL! HELL YEAH! How many times have you defeated the most bastardly bastard, and that's it?! No more story? You don't get to reap any real reward after all that hard work mashing buttons, or turning hundreds of pages. Yet, that's the norm. It's what's economically advantageous.
True, the cost of high quality game assets is so much more expensive today, but I'm a game developer and story architect, not an accountant at all! In my stories I don't hang the carrot of climax over your head, promising you a brave new world you'll never live to see. Instead, you vanquish the great enemy, and keep right on playing exploring and interacting with the new world that you've actually just changed. Oh sure, it does get boring once everything is all sunshine and dandelions; In a single player game you might actually just throw in the towel then, and that's a fine conclusion.... However, with a multiplayer game there's always someone else stirring up the pot, awakening ancient evils and generally being a thorn in your side or an ever adventuring partner.
I come from a time before graphics, where asset creation was as easy as spilling words onto the screen, where we could actually live out the world of Peter Molyneux's dreams! I played and created highly immersive and open ended of games during the BBS era. My games were so vast and the world lore so rich that players were always trading details of the new areas quests they had discovered where none had ever ventured before. Unlike today's RPGs where you're spoon fed quests and skill trees, when you kill my Dragon it stays dead.... until some Necromechanic player discovers the secret to revive it.
The trick is to Love your game world -- No, really LOVE it, with both hands. Get down into every crevice and detail the scent of the dead Cyber Knight's Skull's Eye Socket, just in case some fool decides to "sniff" at it. To do that you've got to realise something that's lost to today's game designers and story tellers: Pride is the Enemy. You have to NOT say, "Look at all the beautiful and clever crap I made!", and shove every bit of delicious content down each and every player's throat to be sure they don't miss any awesomely detailed texture or architecture. No, instead you have to truly craft the world as best you can knowing full well that much of what is made will never be seen by anyone! That's what gives a true sense of depth and vastness to a world, that's what makes players/readers keep coming back for more. You have to set the stage, fill it with a rich and interesting past and tangled web of subplots galore waiting to unfold, then set aside your desire to tell some amazing single narrative arc and instead turn the players loose to explore and forge a unique story of their own making.
IMO, Neal Stephenson hasn't got what it takes, yet. He's never been there. He doesn't know how shitty his "app" book is in comparison to a living, breathing story that's never the same twice. He's never crafted a dynamic world out of text where NPCs and Players alike roam freely seeking adventure. He's never seen the logs full of players trading gossip, giddy with wonder while others retell epic adventures that no one could have ever pre-imagined in a billion years. I have. The MUD makers of old have. Neil may tell a single story with his great work, but to me that's nothing compared to telling thousands of tales with a single massive work. THIS is where I'd like to see some ebooks go -- Not all ebooks, mind you, but at least a few?! Maybe even a MUD? You could do it without the real time component, even. Now the time is ripe again, it's foolish to be makin
"...It contrasts pretty vividly with the way we worked in the first half of the 20th century...."
Well, yeah - the outlook on where technology would take us - rarely even considered before the 20th century (or the latter decades of the 19th) has always had its dystopians, but indeed was largely optimistic.
When your life was nasty and brutish and little different than that of your ancestors 300 years before, technology solved a TON of your basic discomforts - health, food, housing, communication, travel, etc - all were very low-hanging fruit and relatively small tech solutions made great improvements in quality of life.
However, the global catastrophe of the World Wars (100 million dead), the resulting Cold War and danger of global annihilation for nearly 50 years, as well as ever-higher expectations of what life "should be like"* climbing faster than technology could provide, means that the latter half of the 20th century was largely overshadowed by the dangers presented by that same technology.
*reading primary sources in medieval literature suggests that sleeping in an insect-free bed, having your teeth for most of your life, not being starving, and at least half your children surviving to adulthood were all pretty critical to "being happy"...even for the "1%". Compare this to 21st century American "poor" who battle obesity, most have air-conditioning, cable tv, and at least one car.
-Styopa
Telling people we are 'extremely conservative with our resources' with nothing to site seems like a newbie mistake.
If you find yourself spending vast sums of resources, you better be ready to bear the responsibility of those actions.
It's easy to write books...apps too. It's not easy to go in front of the world and put your billions where your mouth is.
I do believe we have the resources available because of conservative notions regarding those resources.
Okay, read the article, doesn't actually say what he means by "app". Seems to me he is throwing a buzz word there.
A book is a book. Unless it's get made into a movie, then it's a script.
An app is a program. A book isn't a program, but an ebook needs a program. So, is this app the book with it's own reader? How fucking novel. (notice the play on the word novel).
Look, I'm a fan, but seriously, "app"? Fuck off.
Be seeing you...
The man worked for a patent troll (Intellectual Ventures). Does he really have the credibility to talk about "saving the world"?