SF Trajectories

Thanks to my friend, Chris, I was able to see one of my heroes, Sir Arthur C Clark reflect on his life and the world.

On the first day of my literature class, Crisis in Civilization, the professor, Monsieur Boyer said, “What is Science Fiction? It’s how we try to understand the continuous technological crises in our civilization. We don’t know where we’re going, and that is why we have SF.” If we are always going to have technology, we will always have Science Fiction.

Yet why, every blue moon, does someone shout, “Science Fiction is Dead!” Recently, several articles have appeared on both the web and in print. Here are two examples: Article One & Article Two I also remembers a smattering of premature eulogies in the early eighties for the giants of the genre. Authors like Heinlein, Herbert, and Asimov had, the critics cried, long passed their prime and were cranking out mediocre novels. Out of date publishers were writing moribund works that spoke of an antiquated future instead of one that addressed the new problems of the eighties. No one cared anymore. Science Fiction was irrelevant. It was the end of Science Fiction.

Then a new style stormed across the SF landscape with an in-your-face attitude reeking of the gutter and tainted with pop cultural imagery. (I’m told that the word cyberpunk was coined by Gardner Dozois as he reeled in horror at the new style.) Science Fiction was not dead after all. It was reborn into a dark, but strange and wondrous future.

Why does this happen? How can people proclaim that SF is dead? Perhaps we should examine first the time before it is dead, when it has purpose. That purpose is the vision that it creates of the future. It’s a map. It is, to paraphrase William Gibson, an illustration of the future. Why cyberpunk struck so many readers in the early eighties was that readers could “see that future”. Gibson, Sterling, et. al’s future was grim, but possible, and in many ways, inspiring. It was new. In the words of Professor Boyer, it showed the Crisis in our culture created by the computer, genetic manipulation and a number of other technologies. The old SF style had indeed faded away, but SF wasn’t dead. It had simply lacked a vision that matched the current situation. And now cyberpunk is a style that has lost touch with the future. It’s cliche to speak of console cowboys and mirrorshades. Has anything replaced it? I don’t see anything…yet.

With every generation the genre loses its Vision. It ceases to offer us strange landscapes that capture our imagination. Instead it tells us stories in a well-worn time about as comfortable and as interesting as Grandma’s living room. Its only hope of entertainment is to give us melodramas set in the already antiquated future. We no longer see the Vision, we only see a scenario.

Who is the person that declares the genre is dead? Most are older, with a history behind them that can compare the past with the present. They use SF novels, TV, or movies of their youth and say: You see, what was predicted back then has come into being. The world is so different from the past that it can’t get any more different. Look! We have tricorders, genetically designed babies, satellites and rockets…there is no more future. For these people, the genre has lost its Vision. Their heads are stuffed with the detritus of unrealized futures. Where are the robots? The flying cars? The food capsules? Oh, SF is dead! These people don’t have the Vision to create a new map of the future. They, like most of us, can, at best, only can make a scenario or hide behind the veil of denial, dismissing the entire genre as passe. But that is why they are not A Science Fiction Great.

So Science Fiction must rely on the next generation. For those just coming into this world, the future is not here. For them, our future is their present. It is now. They have absorbed the future and made it their every day existence; they have nothing to which they can compare it. To them, the future is not here. What has taken an adult a lifetime to absorb is everyday experience to them. From what they absorb and begin to extrapolate, a new Vision will emerge.

Just like Professor Boyer said, we don’t know where we’re going. We still need to map out what’s around the corner. And for that reason, we will still have Science Fiction.

I won’t review Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. I will only make one critique: the entire story is a narration. There is no immediate drama and no dialogue. If you are like me, you will trudge through the first several chapters because you aren’t used to the writing style. But be patient. This book is a classic and you will learn why.

Star Maker, written in 1937, should make every science fiction writer proud and frustrated at their craft. Stapledon’s vision is infinite. His books are a testament to the ideas that the genre can produce. And we writers will always be frustrated at coming in second to his ideas.

But not only writers. Physicists must also tip their hats to him. In the 50th Anniversary Edition of Star Maker, on page 243, we read:

In one inconceivable complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.

Wow. That’s a mouthful. And that is just one paragraph. Now look closely at what he is saying at the end of the paragraph: an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos. That is the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. In the book, the creature consciously takes all of the possible paths. In the Many-Worlds interpretation, it is a quantum mechanical process that occurs. Despite the difference, it is prescient.

Writers, remember this. Ideas are important. Star Maker is now 70 years old. Its ideas are just as important today as they were then. They are timeless. Yes, other elements of storytelling are important too. But ideas are the stuff that makes science fiction unique. Characterization, the oft-touted requirement of good storytelling, is important. But it is not the raison d’etre of science fiction. If it were, we’d all be writing Jane Eyre In Space.

I doubt that would ever be a science fiction classic.

Okay, not quite.  In fact, it’s a while before we see any of this.  But it’s fascinating.  The Casimir force works because the vacuum is bubbling with exotic particles that flitter in and out of existence.  (See the wiki definition:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_force) If two plates are close enough together, the force from the particles that push the plates from the outside pushes against the force from the inside.  The force then pushes the plates together.  This is because there is almost no space between the plates to push back.  Now, if something called a perfect lens is used, which can bend the pressure from the inside outwards, then it can use the exotic energy to keep the plates apart.  In theory, this can work over larger and larger distances.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/30670