Quote: why is sf written?

[coalescent]

David Moles picks up on a suggestion in Judith Berman's essay 'Science Fiction Without the Future', that there may be a connection between people's feelings of alienation from the modern world and the popularity of backwards-looking sf, and runs with it:

Science fiction’s traditional core obsession is with the idea of social change driven by technological advancement over time. A lot of us in the SF world tend to take that as a given—even as an eternal verity. But it isn’t—for most of the world today technological change is spacelike, not timelike (advanced technology comes to Africa not from the future, but from the US or Europe; to the US not from the future but—increasingly—from Asia and, for some reason, Finland); for most of human history, technological change has been so slow as to be imperceptible. The idea of Progress began with the Enlightenment and (even if little-p progress has kept going) was over, as a Big Idea, by the end of the “short 20th century” in the 90s, if not by the late 60s.

Isn’t it possible—likely, even—that science fiction’s traditional forward-looking orientation is as much a product of the forward-looking Zeitgeist in which it originated as nostalgic SF is a reaction to a Zeitgeist of millenial alienation? That science fiction used to imagine the future because society used to imagine the future, and not the other way around?

Well, yes, sf reflects the concerns of the present, and the concerns of the people writing it, and Moles' suggestion that those are changing is as good an explanation for Pattern Recognition et al as any, I guess.

But though I love the phrase 'for most of the world today technological change is spacelike, not timelike' I have a slight problem with it, which is: hasn't it always been that way? Maybe we're more aware of that sort of technological colonialism these days, maybe it's faster these days (and I like those stories: obAir), but I think it's been around for quite a while.

Comments

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

hasn't it always been that way?

Yes. I think perhaps what Moles has done is implicitly view sf as a uniquely American literature. When he writes "to the US not from the future but—increasingly—from Asia and, for some reason, Finland" I think it reflects this; it's not new, it's just the first time it has happened to America. My problem with the essay is not really with its contents rather that its directed towards a particular, narrow tradition within sf which makes it ratehr irrelevant.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

it's not new, it's just the first time it has happened to America

Oh, that's a good point. Thanks.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

To be pedantic, it's the first time it has happened to America in living memory - in the 19th century "progress" involved two way traffic across the Atlantic in different spheres of activity, and before that of course...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Or to put it another way, the first time it has happened to America since the rise of sf as a commercial form.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Yes, this is what I meant to say.

US and SF

[sofvckinghot.livejournal.com]

it's the first time it has happened to America in living memory

The US has such a myopic worldview, it thinks anything and everything new of any real worth was created in the Gddang U S of A. And if anything happens anywhere else in the world, it's not as important...

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

The phrase makes me want to scream "Of course it's not spacelike! If it were, it would be faster than light!" but you should probably ignore me...

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, technology doesn't really come from the future either, but I can forgive them both in the name of poetic license. :)

Ah, spacetime distribution of technology...

[applez.livejournal.com]

Sure, all technology that carries through space has a factor of time associated with it and vica versa (e.g. Britain bringing the steamtrain to India), and some places in space will always be nodes of creation (Britain, Germany, US, Finland, Japan, etc.) ... but that doesn't take from the essence of creation and invention - that there is technological progress.

On the whole, I think I have to agree with Niall and say that perhaps what we are witnessing now is more the speed of spatial distribution, which creates a sense of slowing overall technological progress ... which I feel is erroneous if you consider just how quickly SMS-enabled mobiles have become de riguer in virtually all the world - in a mere 5 years' time!