Where is the new age of Science Fiction Literature?

[Cli-Fi]

I follow tech news very closely but it looks like science fiction writers are stuck in the past! Oftentimes they tend to stay away from new tech and focus solely on what's safe. Spaceships, space travel, robots, etc... or they make up their own fantastical crap with a baseline in classic sci-fi. Holograms, teleportation, virtual reality etc.. But now that that stuff is becoming reality more and more every day, and all the classics are being redone for the golden age of television. Is it time to think of new things?

Are writers hesitant to incorporate new and emerging markets like 3D printing or social media or driverless cars and beyond into their writings? I understand that they may not want to give favor to brands or corporations but if you look at things like the TV Show the Black Mirror. It's pretty remarkable how Charlie Brooker wrote it without giving homage to any of the known brands that we see today. Even though his stuff takes place in the now or the near future. I think whether he realizes it or not, that is the new blueprint for science fiction. It has to be. Otherwise I don't see how it can have a future, because most of that stuff is not science fiction anymore, just fiction.

 

[Serendipity]

The problem isn't that there aren't writers out there doing the stuff... it's difficult getting publishers interested in these kind of stories. I've even seen some well respected science-leaning science fiction writers veer towards fantasy because of this kind of pressure.

I have known there is a whole slew of innovations coming our way for quite some time... one snippet here - car batteries that absorb carbon dioxide are being developed... and it scares me (read rude word here) that science fiction is not producing this science based stuff to help prepare people for what is coming for the future. Before you ask, yes I was putting some of these inventions into my science fiction stories before they were twinkle in any mad boffin's eye.

The longer science fiction keeps hiding from real future tech stuff, the ruder the awakening it will have when people realise that the science fiction they've been seeing in films and reading in books is now considered laughable by the tech-savie. And yes, I do mean laughable - a sad reflection of the times.

Anyway, rant over...

 

[Cli-Fi]

The problem isn't that there aren't writers out there doing the stuff... it's difficult getting publishers interested in these kind of stories. I've even seen some well respected science-leaning science fiction writers veer towards fantasy because of this kind of pressure.

I have known there is a whole slew of innovations coming our way for quite some time... one snippet here - car batteries that absorb carbon dioxide are being developed... and it scares me (read rude word here) that science fiction is not producing this science based stuff to help prepare people for what is coming for the future. Before you ask, yes I was putting some of these inventions into my science fiction stories before they were twinkle in any mad boffin's eye.

The longer science fiction keeps hiding from real future tech stuff, the ruder the awakening it will have when people realise that the science fiction they've been seeing in films and reading in books is now considered laughable by the tech-savie. And yes, I do mean laughable - a sad reflection of the times.

Anyway, rant over...

I completely understand and wouldn't even consider your post a rant. It's a just a rude awakening as you put it. I was on a forum with a bunch of futurists and they never even bothered to do anything with driverless cars in the decades that they were running the site. Now, it seems like the cars will be rolling off of the robotically engineered conveyor belts before a good story about driverless cars ever hits the market! A bunch of futurists completely missed an exciting market and opportunity for untold stories! This really bothers me.

That or a scifi show or novel comes up with a really cool concept for time travel or something and it ends up being a crappy soap opera or love story...
I mean I don't really think most people who read sci-fi main goal is "to get the girl, or boy" but of course they have to make it sell-able to more than just geeks. I sometimes wish it just wasn't so obviously done.

 

[J-Sun]

I might dispute that SF has to follow science and that things like spaceships and robots are "past." If spaceships are past, then so is the whole human race. And if SF had followed what was "current" at the time we might have a lot more stories on phrenology and mesmerism and radio and eugenics and less on spaceships and, without SF's lead in that department, maybe we wouldn't have the worldwide communications and GPS and whatnot that we have.

But, leaving all that aside, I wouldn't be surprised if you're mostly reading novels. Short fiction is always where SF's cutting edge is and there have been plenty of 3D printing stories, for instance. Bruce Sterling wrote the excellent "Kiosk" in 2007 and I'm sure that wasn't the first, and there've been many since.

My problem is not so much the tried-and-true such as robots (where excellent cutting-edge work is still being done) or on the very current - it's rather all the people stuck in the middle - the New New Wave or the Post-post-humanist stuff or whatever - like your Leckie's and Rajaniemi's. They don't have the core eternal verities of SF or the fluxing futuristic vision but just repeat the very dated middling stuff that should have fluxed off long ago.

Anyway - end on a happy note : despite some same-ol, there's plenty of neat stuff going on in short fiction and it will percolate to the novels in several years and maybe even TV and film several years (decades) after that.

 

[Cli-Fi]

I might dispute that SF has to follow science and that things like spaceships and robots are "past." If spaceships are past, then so is the whole human race. And if SF had followed what was "current" at the time we might have a lot more stories on phrenology and mesmerism and radio and eugenics and less on spaceships and, without SF's lead in that department, maybe we wouldn't have the worldwide communications and GPS and whatnot that we have.

But, leaving all that aside, I wouldn't be surprised if you're mostly reading novels. Short fiction is always where SF's cutting edge is and there have been plenty of 3D printing stories, for instance. Bruce Sterling wrote the excellent "Kiosk" in 2007 and I'm sure that wasn't the first, and there've been many since.

My problem is not so much the tried-and-true such as robots (where excellent cutting-edge work is still being done) or on the very current - it's rather all the people stuck in the middle - the New New Wave or the Post-post-humanist stuff or whatever - like your Leckie's and Rajaniemi's. They don't have the core eternal verities of SF or the fluxing futuristic vision but just repeat the very dated middling stuff that should have fluxed off long ago.

Anyway - end on a happy note : despite some same-ol, there's plenty of neat stuff going on in short fiction and it will percolate to the novels in several years and maybe even TV and film several years (decades) after that.

You are right! I'm beginning to watch a lot more anthologies or very creative mini series' and as for novels. I just picked up collection of H.G. Welles shorts that I've always wanted to read.

Shorts have always been one step ahead but they seem to be written by already established authors who might have already sold a normal-esque classic-like SciFi novel that people noticed for some reason or another.

 

[Brian G Turner]

it looks like science fiction writers are stuck in the past!

Totally agree - I've complained before about the difficulty of finding a science fiction authors who are seriously attempting to envision the future, let alone work with science, rather than simply rewriting 1950's space adventures.

One of the reasons I've really enjoyed Ralph Kern's novels:
Review: Endeavour by Ralph Kern
Review: Erebus by Ralph Kern

 

[Dan Jones]

The problem isn't that there aren't writers out there doing the stuff... it's difficult getting publishers interested in these kind of stories. I've even seen some well respected science-leaning science fiction writers veer towards fantasy because of this kind of pressure.

I'm just about to finish my near-future sci-fi novel set in London and Nigeria, incorporating many new aspects of tech that I'm familiar with through my work close to R&D sectors in space, robotics, autonomous systems etc - so pace, but I do hope you're completely wrong!

Part of the difficulty in envisioning a near-future world is to decide exactly how much wholesale change society will undergo. Personally (and this is reflected in the novel's near-future settings & geography) I don't think the world will look - in a high-level sense - much different in, say, 100 years from now. Assuming that the world isn't seismically changed and Islamic State don't somehow conquer western Europe, or that North Korea develop a nuclear bomb that actually works and they set it off somewhere... things in most first world democracies probably won't have shifted that much.

You've got to think that with the advent of regulation, things take a very long time to change, especially in areas concerning public safety. Henceforth the aviation sector will be largely similar, save for incremental changes in aircraft design, efficiency, interconnectivity and speed. We'll still have roads, and cars, though they again will be highly interconnected and intelligent, and many aspects of today's infrastructure won't have changed that much. The geography of cities will be largely the same. Historical buildings will most likely still be intact. There will be greater numbers of robots - and intelligent robots - doing certain tasks, especially in sectors requiring dangerous, dull or dirty work (mining, excavation, nuclear etc). Clothes won't be that different (we won't be twaddling around in Bacofoil, for example, though some clothing may be comms/internet enabled - but IMO there will always be demand for a well-cut, traditional suit). If you go too wacky in near-future scenarios then the work quickly appears dated. Humans may have slightly/considerably longer lifespans owing to major improvements in nutrition and healthcare from the mid-20th century onwards. A person could conceivably work until the age of 100, and live to 150 (on the other hand, emerging diseases may keep life expectancies roughly the same as they've always been - mother nature's funny like that).

Maybe all that just seems a bit boring, and people (publishers included) want to present the future as being full of flying cars and spaceships and faster than light travel - but all that space opera stuff is more akin to secondary world fantasy than sci-fi in my eyes.

Anyway. If publishers don't want it (and I haven't yet done any serious research on this), then as you say, it doesn't necessarily render my work irrelevant - it would just strengthen the case for a good self-publishing strategy. We shall see.

 

[millymollymo]

The main stream publisher path can take anything from two years to five to turn a manuscript to book on the shelf. I've heard a number of authors using near future developments as a cornerstone, have seen their central element become commercially available, or flawed before the book is picked up. Like it's already been said, the small presses are covering this much aspect much better because of their ability to move quicker.

However, the more popular a press becomes, the slower it is forced to churn out good work as it starts to protect it's reputation and deal with the extra subs it brings by adding more cogs to their machine.

 

[Dan Jones]

I've heard a number of authors using near future developments as a cornerstone, have seen their central element become commercially available, or flawed before the book is picked up.

Really good point. I suppose it depends on how near your near-future is. For me, it's roughly 120 years from now, and seeing as I'm only dealing in the fields I know about I'm pretty confident none of it will be commercially available in the next few years!

Having said that, I'm certainly much more open to exploring small press options for the book than I would have been a couple of years ago in order to negate the glacial lead times of trad publishing.

 

[Venusian Broon]

mmmm....

@Brian Turner I come across good works of excellent imaginings of the future all the time. I don't know what you are talking about! Yes there is a lot of SF that is space cowboys and Indians, and other space 'adventures'...but I hate to break it to you, that's been a part of SF since at least the 1930's and is unlikely to go away.

As for SF that tries to tackle the near-near-future...well, there's more to a SF story than the technology and settings that it describes, but I agree with @DG Jones and @millymollymo . If you go off on one tack or vision of the near-future, in the current level of change we're seeing, there is a strong possibility that your story will date horrendously within mere years (or months even!) Just look at all the various monstrosities in all media of the 'future' of the internet. And although all 'proper' SF dates, to be more commercially viable it makes sense for an author to try his or her hardest to write something that can withstand the vagrancies of time. Good plot and characters are usually a start.

In a slightly different example Cli-fi, driverless cars have least turned up in short stories in 1935, although I wouldn't be surprised if the concept was also in 19th Century literature and writing. Plenty of stories have been written with them - you've just missed them by being too young! However now, they have been built, and I'm sure there are plans are to build better ones. They are no longer the future, they are now. I'm not surprised the futurists didn't talk about them

What is more interesting now are the current reactions to driverless cars - probably not even considered by the futurists and authors in the 1930s - that most people want to drive and be in control of a car and there does appear to be a large negative reaction to it all. This is symptomatic, I have to admit, of the biggest thing missing in most SF futures - a plausible humanity. We SF writers assume that our cool idea will of course be taken up wholeheartedly, but we usually get carried away with our inventiveness and squeeze humanity into some daft unlikely society.

 

[Dan Jones]

What is more interesting now are the current reactions to driverless cars - probably not even considered by the futurists and authors in the 1930s - that most people want to drive and be in control of a car and there does appear to be a large negative reaction to it all.

There's a halfway point IMO. I see a reasonable amount of enthusiasm among the general public about autonomous vehicles. Note I'm not using the term "driverless cars" you did, as that implies, er, no driver - which is waaaay off at present, save for closed-circuit vehicles (that is, vehicles not being used in the public space - an example would be robot maintenance vehicles being currently prototyped for the rail sector, so would be confined to out-of-hours use and on rails - no danger to Joe public).

Current leaps in automotive technology still are human-in-the-loop centric, and regulators (see above) wouldn't green-light driverless cars for public use for some time yet. But from what I see (though I may be biased, as I'm in the industry) there is appetite (and, more importantly, a market) for vehicles with autonomous capabilities. By 2150 (roughly my novel's timeframe) I'm still not sure we'd have completely driverless cars, as it would necessitate an entire restructure of infrastructure, legal frameworks, insurance, and ethics. The use of autonomous cars is prevalent in my future world. But there's always at least one person inside them.

Plus, as you say, people like driving!

 

[Venusian Broon]

Note I'm not using the term "driverless cars" you did, as that implies, er, no driver - which is waaaay off at present, save for closed-circuit vehicles (that is, vehicles not being used in the public space - an example would be robot maintenance vehicles being currently prototyped for the rail sector, so would be confined to out-of-hours use and on rails - no danger to Joe public).

I bow to your superior knowledge!

I was thinking that at least four US states have passed laws allowing driverless cars on their roads and Google have been testing a proper driverless car on their public roads since 2011. They do have a 'driver' there to take over in case the software goes a bit crazy in these tests, but the technology is apparently all there. Just needs vigorous testing. (I suppose - no hope ) At least they will have to, as they want to make a car with no steering wheel or pedals to sell by 2020. See Google Self-Driving Car Project for a bit of corporate spiel and boasting. So in my mind we are almost there.

In a similar way, you could now fly an airliner totally by remote/pilotless with decade old technology now (although of course, it's much easier to fully automate a plane, rather than a car). Having been in the cockpit of a plane for a flight, (ahh the old trusting days of pre 9/11) I've seen first hand that they are mostly there as 'technicians' looking after all the various auto-pilots! The pilots still do take-off and landing, but I have been assured that such a thing could easily be done autonomously. However, would you want to go on an airliner with no human pilots out front though??? Just in-case of mechanical/electronic failure I'd like someone who knows the system and could fly the plane with systems down...

 

[Vertigo]

You've got to remember that most of the new generation aircraft cannot be flown if the electronics go down. They are purely fly by wire. For example human reaction time is way too slow to manually fly the Typhoon. And yes pilots do still do take offs and landings but in pretty much all the major international airports of the World that is unnecessary. It can be done by automated systems and as far as I'm aware is done in foggy conditions.

Tesla is promising a completely driverless car within two years. The semi-autonomous test models they already have out there have now apparently done sufficient miles to show that statistically they massively reduce the risk of accidents. We may all be a bit surprised how quickly this technology is adopted, at least on major roads; possibly a bit longer for urban.

 

[Cathbad]

We may all be a bit surprised how quickly this technology is adopted, at least on major roads; possibly a bit longer for urban.

Hmmm... I would have thought urban first, with special lanes/roads.

 

[Dan Jones]

They do have a 'driver' there to take over in case the software goes a bit crazy in these tests, but the technology is apparently all there. Just needs vigorous testing.

The semi-autonomous test models they already have out there have now apparently done sufficient miles to show that statistically they massively reduce the risk of accidents.

All true. I agree that the technology is pretty much there in a controlled environment. Testing is A-OK. In fact the technology is good and I believe in it - and I'll always be an advocate for it. Apart from anything else, the UK has excellent, world-leading tech in this area and we should promote it.

But like I said above, there's a world of difference between having a technology that's functional (that is, it has the capability to deliver specific performance demands) and one that satisfies the regulators, lawyers, insurance companies (who are having a complete nightmare with this stuff when it comes to proving liability and other complex variables), not to mention certain aspects of the unions (not so much in road use, but rail etc).

The real test for this stuff comes not in tightly-monitored test conditions, but when the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle happens. And it will happen, just by law of averages.

 

[Vertigo]

Hmmm... I would have thought urban first, with special lanes/roads.

With urban driving there is far more going on; more stopping and starting, more erratic behaviour, pedestrians stepping out in front etc. On motorways (highways etc) speeds are much higher but there's much less actually happening. Also it would, I think, be of far greater benefit on motorways where one of the biggest dangers is tiredness.

All true. I agree that the technology is pretty much there in a controlled environment. Testing is A-OK. In fact the technology is good and I believe in it - and I'll always be an advocate for it. Apart from anything else, the UK has excellent, world-leading tech in this area and we should promote it.

But like I said above, there's a world of difference between having a technology that's functional (that is, it has the capability to deliver specific performance demands) and one that satisfies the regulators, lawyers, insurance companies (who are having a complete nightmare with this stuff when it comes to proving liability and other complex variables), not to mention certain aspects of the unions (not so much in road use, but rail etc).

The real test for this stuff comes not in tightly-monitored test conditions, but when the first fatality involving an autonomous vehicle happens. And it will happen, just by law of averages.

Agree on the first time there's an accident, deciding blame will be problematic; driver or manufacturer. However that is not unprecedented with cases of malfunctioning cruise control causing accidents.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Autonomous vehicles need separate roadways. Why not automate trains first and trams second?

I'm suspicious of what Google is up to. I agree that once trains are done that motorways should be trialled for a few years before they are allowed at all on other roads.
There are very many issues that are under reported or glossed over.

 

[Vertigo]

I don't understand why they would need separate roadways. They would react to other cars as potential hazards irrespective of whether or not they are autonomous. That's certainly not the way either Google or Tesla see them.

 

[Cathbad]

As I understand it, an automated highway system will be able to plan your best path, and spot traffic problems a hella lot faster.

 

[Serendipity]

Hm... an interesting discussion about driverless cars here... so a few facts to get your minds a-boggling...

Volvos, amongst other makes, can form a convoy on a motorway where only the first car is driven. They can steer a car into a tight parking slot with the only help from the driver being via the gearbox and pedals (and believe me they can suss out and park in darned tight spaces) and they have automatic crash avoidance over-rides.

So we're part way to driverless cars on the UK roads at least.

Furthermore, the buzz is that the Queen's Speech (due this week) will introduce legal measures to enable driverless cars to be deemed roadworthy in the next Transport Bill.

If I remember correctly one of Sylvester Stalone's science fiction film forays (the one with Sandra Bullock) had a driverless car in it.