A rchive Date
[ 26-04-2003 ]
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[ Art & Literature ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/twist.html
Science fiction writers' vision nurtured by fear
By Sean Twist - For the London Free Press
April 26, 2003
One of the problems with science fiction, so I hear, is that it isn't real. That it doesn't deal with real world issues and is only a form of infantile escapism. Nothing but space ships, zap guns and slavering monsters. Nothing of any true, lasting importance.
For proof, take a look at the science fiction novel, The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner. Published back in 1972, Brunner details a world in which people wear masks outside because the air is too dangerous to breathe, herbicides have poisoned the ground, birth rates are plummeting and if that isn't enough, war is raging across the globe. I mean, how can anyone relate to that?
Seeing recent television images of people clad in surgical masks, frantically trying to avoid contracting SARS, brought Brunner's book back to me. Perhaps that's why I don't find the images overly disturbing: reading Brunner had prepared me for it. And it was then I realized that science fiction - or SF - plays a far more important role than geek escapism: it's a shock absorber for the future.
One of the reasons for this is SF writers are worry-warts. With every new technology comes a new ulcer.
If someone invented an automatic pajama folder, a SF writer will begin chewing her fingernails, wondering how it'll destroy the world. What's interesting is how this paranoia often hews very close to the truth.
Take cloning, for example. Surely the future must be here if we can clone, right? A brave new world opened for us after we genetically photocopied Dolly the sheep. We'll all be dressing in one-piece leotards and driving jet cars soon.
But SF writers bent over their word processors . . . and worried.
In L. Timmel Duchamp's How Josiah Taylor Lost His Soul (published in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2000), for example, a wealthy man creates several clones of himself - in order to murder them and harvest their body parts for transplants.
Already, the ethics of such an act has been raised in discussion concerning clones - which usually means someone, somewhere has already tried it. More recently, Steven Popkes' The Ice (Asimov's, January 2003), examined what would happen if someone cloned Gordie Howe. The results, unsurprisingly, are heartbreaking.
So unless you're George Lucas, the idea of clones seems like a tragic horror waiting to happen. As time passes, I'm sure we'll see why for ourselves.
A current trend in SF - not surprisingly - has been fretting over biology. The sleep deprived eyes of SF writers have turned from the stars to now ponder their own immune systems. In The Anomalous Structures of My Dreams, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2003),
M. Shayne Bell tells a story of a horrific infection that is quarantined in a hospital - until a health worker escapes the lockdown, hops on a bus and spreads the infection. The story is chilling, especially in light of a disturbingly similar occurrence last week in Toronto. (In the story, the government considers nuking Salt Lake City to stop the infection once and for all. Let's just hope Chretien doesn't read SF.)
But it's not all doom and gloom. Honest. While SF authors do tend to take a bleaker future view than most Pollyannas would like, they often reinforce the idea of humanity's resiliency. In William Gibson's Virtual Light (1993), the homeless take over the Bay Bridge, turning it into a thriving community. In Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker's Junk DNA, (Asimov's, January 2003 - hey, it was a good issue), the horrors of biotechnology are given an amusing spin: two fast-talking women discover they can make a living selling disgusting novelty pets made out of customers' own DNA. (Imagine the inside of your mouth as a toy. As I said, disgusting.)
Despite how horrid things may get, SF often assumes people will find ways to stick together. And, of course, make a buck.
So what's next, according to the nervous SF writers?
Taking a look at Scott Westerfield's Unsportsmanlike Conduct (Scifi.com), we see an America that has angered the Middle East so much through military occupation that they're forced to get their oil from other planets.
But then, of course, science fiction has nothing to say.
At least, nothing real.
Sean Twist is a London freelance writer. His column appears every Saturday]
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