Science Friction

John Quiggin at Crooked Timber posts his Hugo Awards preview special. (For those not in the know, the Hugo Awards are the most prestigious science fiction literary awards. Yes, there is such a thing as prestigious science-fiction. Oh, and the winner was Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.) I confess I haven't read (or heard of) most of the nominees--but then many haven't been published in the U.S. yet. I remember when Jonathan Strange came out; it was all over the local Borders and I was turned off by the hype--perhaps I was wrong.)

Quiggin muses on the writing of science-fiction in this day and age--when just basic living seems like something out of science-fiction. (Think about this: once upon a time, lasers were the ultimate in sci-fi cool, but now, looking around this office and spying a CD player and two DVD writers, I find that lasers are everywhere. True, I'm not taking them out and zapping the neighbors with them--would that I could--but still...) And as someone who tries to write sci-fi (and I don't mean silly things like Virus! but real, honest-to-god sci-fi) I can say that what inevitably happens in trying to envision the future 20, 30, even 50 years out is that it ends up looking like now, only more so. The Internet, e-paper, iPods, wireless networks, cellphones...let's face it, compared with what I grew up with in the 1970s, this is all pretty futuristic. Thus, it takes an extra effort to take one's imagination beyond that, which isn't always easy. But my suspicion--looking back on the sci-fi Golden Age--is that this has always been the case. Much of the envisioning of the future by writers in the 40s, 50s, and 60s really is just an extrapolation of technologies that were just starting to bubble up to the surface--space travel, computers, robotics, etc. Sci-fi back then was just taking those nascent technologies and taking them to their logical conclusions, some of which became reality, some of which didn't. (I still think flying cars are a staggeringly bad idea and am happy that sci-fi writers were wrong about that one. People drive idiotically enough in two dimensions; let's not give them a third.) So maybe I'm not in bad company.

Still, it's hard to convey a sense of wonder anymore, given what we're all used to on a daily basis--and how cynical we've become as a society. Where are the places we can look for wonder? According to Quiggin, taking computer science to the nth degree is the common route. Oh, I don't know. That was kind of the idea behind Virus!, that technology is really more annoying than wondrous--but only because it has insinuated itself into all our lives and thus makes our lives irritating. Computers were sources of wonder back when no one had any; now they just make me want to throw them out the window half the time. But I kid Microsoft Word...

Space travel remains the best source of sci-fi material--if only because it hasn't become quite so prosaic yet. (Which is interesting: I was enraptured by Cassini's arrival at Saturn last year, and yet I have a hard time getting too excited about the space shuttle, which just kind of reminds me of an old, beat-up car I had in high school.)

Maybe going in the other direction is an idea: the whole idea of nanotechnology may have some sci-fi "applications." Hmm.

Cloning? Nah. Korean scientists announced they've cloned a dog. I can see why that's necessary; it's just so incredibly difficult to get dogs to mate with each other.