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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."
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)
Science Fiction has changed the world. Many people, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, engineers, and inventors have been inspired by sci-fi. Many things we have now were first the fanciful writings of authors, until somebody (usually a lot of somebodies) decided to make it real.
Does all sci-fi inspire these advancements? No, but more than enough do, it has a definite effect on our world.
Do the warnings that exist in some sci-fi work? Sometimes, but it's a lot harder to identify when something was changed because of the literature someone read, rather than inventions which are concrete and tangible. Although I'm sure you can recall at least a few cases where some form of governmental snooping was fought with the rallying cries of Big Brother and 1984.
So yes, sci-fi can transform the world, but like everything else, it's a slow process and often invisible. Not to mention, like so many other things that might alter the human society, fraught with more misses than successes. Of course, just because sci-fi has the possibility to sway mankind, or a portion of it, most of it was written for entertainment, not political ambitions. It's not "burdened with unnecessary baggage", rather it is recognized for the influence it occasionally has.
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.
Has the world changed because of _any_ novel?
Has the world changed because of any works of fiction? Let's think.. the Bible, the Quran, Xenu's Big Book Of Fun (or whatever Scientologists' scriptures are called), etc..
which is totally what she said
"...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
Sadly, I think the effect may be offset completely by the "Twilight" "novels".
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