Singularity Shmingularity
Over at Deep Genre deep thinker David Louis Edelman brings up the interesting idea that science fiction is going to end some day. I've got no argument with that, and since I also write techno thrillers I won't lose much sleep over it either. But the comment thread led me to this little piece of wisdom arguing that hard SF is done because of the Singularity. Which I am not buying. At all.
For the uninitiated, and for the initiated who are working from a different definition than I am, here is the Singularity in a nutshell. It's a future event when technological progress is no longer derived from the work of the unaugmented human brain. The idea, as I understand it, is that once that happens, the unaugmented human brain will no longer be able to keep up, and thus the unaugmented science fiction writer's brain will no longer be able to write about it. As Charlie Stross put it "The Singularity is this enormous turd that Vernor Vinge crapped into the punchbowl of SF writing, and now nobody wanting to take a drink can ignore it."
Now, I don't know about you, but when I find a turd in my punchbowl I look around for another punchbowl. Lucky for me, I write science fiction, so the punchbowls are limited only by my imagination. And believe me, I can imagine a hell of a lot of punchbowls. And I write hard SF, so my punchbowls are finite. For Jeff Ford it looks like punchbowls all the way down.
As anyone might be expected to do in a party where unlimited punchbowls exist, I tend to gravitate towards the turd-free ones. If the Singularity comes along and changes all the rules, my stories will have turned out to be wrong. Oh, crap, you mean I was here busy making up stories all this time and it turns out they were just made up? Wait a minute...
I agree that science fiction writers will not be able to predict the future accurately past the Singularity. I also think that science fiction writers won't be able to accurately predict the future if the Singularity doesn't happen, and they can't even accurately predict the singularity itself. "Well," you might say, "you science fiction writers are doing a piss poor job of predicting the future, aren't you?"
Yes. Yes we are. I am not in the future predicting business. I'm in the story telling business. If you want future predicting you're better off cutting open a goat and looking at the entrails. No, scratch that, looking at goat entrails is disgusting. Reading science fiction is fun.
Hey, there's a thought. Reading science fiction is fun. Yeah, let's go with that.
To make matters worse, the punchbowl that Vinge crapped in is full of Kool-Aid. So when you drink the Kool-Aid, you're getting a double whammy.
A little defensive aren't we? Cognitive dissonance got you by the tongue?
So what if the Singularity essentially turns all traditional SF into alternate universe *fantasy* where slow bio-humans still reign supreme. Since most humans want to read stories they can relate to, the easy job of writing conventional SF is safe -- the Singularity isn't easily anthropomorphized.
I can't argue that reading SF is fun. Hell, writing it can be fun as well...
But despite the fact you dismissed my argument the Hard SF is pretty much done as a sub-genre (at least in the sense of being 'serious' SF), you then prove my point by saying you can write other forms of Speculative Fiction anyway.
Well, yeah... That's kind of my point, isn't it?
Hell, you can even continue to write 'Hard-Style' SF (with spaceships and lasers and everything). What you can't do is claim that it is serious speculation. Being as you specifically eschew that, I would say you are safe. Hell, I would even go so far as to say you are probably going to have no problem finding plenty of readers.
But then there is that other point I made. The one that reads: "The best Science Fiction (that other ten percent Sturgeon's Law mentions in passing) make us think about the consequences if we continue down this path, or that. Science Fiction helped us to plan for the future by imagining the best and the worst the future had to offer!"
What about that, if you accept the Singularity as a real possibility?
I guess I just take exception to the whole premise that science fiction ever did any serious speculating. Anyone who claims that it is collapses under his own self-importance and fails to produce stories worth reading. The good stories are and always were about the present, using the future as a funhouse mirror to highlight some part of the human condition that isn't clear when you look straight at it. Cory Doctrow has a whole big thing about this in Locus, just the latest in a long tradition of explaining why science fiction isn't the same as futurism.
Ah... But the *mythology* of SF is that it does do serious speculation; that is what a significant portion of the readers believe even if the practitioners know differently. And, to some extent, we are our myths. Always have been.
Besides, when it comes to 'Hard SF', the point is to seriously speculate on the *science* part of the equation, along with the technology it engenders. My contention is this: When the science results in technology that, quite literally, changes what it means to be human you have to take it into account. Otherwise you can't claim it is 'Hard SF'.
That doesn't mean you can't write stuff that isn't 'Hard SF'. And it doesn't mean you can't write stuff that reads like the 'Hard SF' of ten and twenty years ago. You just can't write 'Hard SF' today and not take the Singularity and Transhumanism into account, even if you only do so by explaining them away...
As always, Cory Doctorow is on the spot. Read today's feature article on Locus Online: http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/07/cory-doctorow-progressive-apocalypse.html
I guess I just have a different idea of what Hard SF is. It's worth a blog post all its own. I also note that both of us used Cory's essay in Locus to bolster our side of the argument. That suggests our opinions aren't all that far apart, or that one or both of us needs lessons in reading comprehension.
Why look for a different punchbowl?
The singularity is, to me and quite a few others, the most fascinating idea that a science fiction writer can tackle.
Lets keep in mind what was meant by Stross's turd analogy: that extrapolating realistically is tremendously difficult if one thinks that Singularity is going to happen.
Which also means that hard SF writers who "look for another punch bowl" to avoid the "turd" are looking for easier, less challenging subject matter.
When it comes to the end of science fiction the real question is: what happens to SF after the singularity actually occurs?
And, of course:
how likely is it really that the singularity really WILL occur?
My take is that its very likely---though probably not nearly so soon as some enthusiasts would like to think.
David, I completely agree that extrapolating realistically past the Singluarity is hard (impossible by my definition). I have my work cut out for me coming up with likable characters, interesting situations, plots that hold together and enough humor to keep it fun. I'm glad there are other writers out there willing to deal with the turd. Good luck to them, I say.
Matt: How did I wind up in this punch bowl?
The punchbowl is a product of your own mind, Jeff. I had to come up with the name of the most imaginative writer I could on the fly and your name bubbled up there. Be complimented.
Matt: I wasn't offended. I was just surprised to see myself mentioned in a discussion of the Singularity. Enjoy a turdless cup of punch, on me.
As a writer of post-singularity science fiction, let me just say: bravo. We are not in the future-prediction business; that is for stockbrokers, and even they go broke doing it.
The "singularity" may or may not happen, and it certainly will not happen in the fashion current writers, with our current understanding of the universe, will understand. So far there is not one bit of evidence, not one, that even suggests augmentation of human intelligence is possible by any means, much less as inevitable as a moon based.
Hm. Maybe a moon base is not a good example of inevitable future progress.
Two of the best SF writers it has ever been my pleasure to encounter are Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe. To total number of words in the collected oeuvre of both these gentlemen is immense. The number of words they spent dealing with The Singularity: zero.
I think there are certain ideas introduced by Mr. Vinge that writers in other subgenres can ignore.
But Mr. Stross is correct that no one can ignore the concept of the Singularity in writing far future fiction. This is based on audience expectation. If there is no singularity, the audience will need some sort of explanation: the idea has entered the standard assumptions of the readership.
When I was doing the panel on near future political scenarios in SF at Readercon another point I tried to make that didn't go over well was about the consensus future. We all seem to have the same idea about what technological advances we can expect in 50, 500 and 5000 years. Mary Robinette Kowal and Walter Hunt disagreed, saying that the Sigularity has put paid to any consensus future and now anything goes. Interesting to hear you suggest that the Singularity is now part of the consensus future.
But I'm thinking back to the last four far future SF novels I've read: Blindsight, Sun of Suns, Old Man's War and Crystal Rain (which I'm still reading). (Yes, they're all Tor books. What can I say, I'm a company man.) Of those, two had an explicit reference to a Singularity and the other two didn't (so far, anyway). In Sun of Suns Virga is a preserve for baseline humans, protected from incursion by the post-humans outside by the technology dampening field of Candace. In Blindsight many people have uploaded and others have modified themselves beyond recognition, and some of these people had motivations that are very different from ours.
And therein lies one potential disconnect in this discussion, because I would only consider a story post-singularity if some of the people have completely moved beyond human motivations. They are post-scarcity, post-mortality, post-reproduction. They don't desire sex, work for food or fear death. Their motivations are as understandable to us as ours are to an amoeba. If your definition of post-singularity is less extreme than mine then I guess you are right that most books have some measure of human augmentation in the future.
So far there is not one bit of evidence, not one, that even suggests augmentation of human intelligence is possible by any means, much less as inevitable as a moon based.
Hate to disagree with the writer of one of my favorite examples of post-singularity SF (and yet I so often do) but we DO have ample evidence of the augmentation of human intelligence. The best possible evidence:
we've already done it.
What, after all, is a computer (or pocket calculator, for that matter) but a means of amplifying effective human intellectual ability?
And don't forget Google. After all, Google">http://jackwilliambell.livejournal.com/113471.html">Google makes us smarter.
You fellas present some interesting arguments. Now get back to work....
I hate to break it to you but one simple fact about the future blows all of your theories and punch bowls into space (btw, great analogy): the inevitable conclusion is humans will no longer write - at all. A real book will likely become an expensive decoration. Humans might still create stories - probably with no more "heft" than the average YouTube skit - but the heavy lifting will be done by software. To some extent it is already happening. Take a genre, blend together the best examples of that genre, mix together with market trends, add flourishes for the "human touch" and feed into a digital stream. Hollywood writing has already largely succumbed to software that tells you what to do at every turn, leaving the writer to simply choose between options.
He who controls the future controls today, and he who controls today controls which tellings of which stories reach mass attention. I realize this off the point a little.
Personally, the idea that human / technology fusion is going to somehow render my mind's eye useless for accurately envisioning the future is preposterous - for me or anyone else. However, modify that idea to say that technology is going to atrophy the creative function to the point that expertly crafted, well-thought and eerily accurate SciFi is no longer distinguishable from mouse bait. I think I just predicted the future....
That's my two cents, worth 1.5 in Europe....
Maybe it will be a combination of software and wetware that does the storytelling. After all, brains can do a trick or two that computers might never get good at. I think Zager and Evans had the right idea.
"In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today
Whoa..."
Oh Matthew, nice quote about the pill. Let's hope that scary vision of the future - already coming true - is averted and we go back as a species to a simpler way of living. You've read of course that deep mystical experiences and out-of-body sensations can be produced by stimulating areas of the brain. Doctors no longer remove the skull or even insert electrode, it's all controlled with a helmet using electromagnetic force. Put on your VR glasses, hook up to the Matrix and you can send your mind anywhere....
Any aspiring Sci Fi writer who opts to use more or less "old Human" characters must confront the notion of the "Singularity". He must explain why it hasn't happened and Humans are still more or less Human and not some bizarre hybrid of machine/man or disembodied consciousness entirely. The market for post Singularity Sci Fi writing is tiny. Not many people want to read a story from the perspective of a being that they share almost nothing in common with- from perhaps even breathing, eating, or existing in physical form.
Even Sci Fi readers who are not aware of the Singularity controversy they instinctively ask themselves the question it presents. It must be addressed.
I find Jonathan Huebner's view of an approaching technological "Dark Age" can aid many writers in overcoming the "Singularity" concept. His idea that the rate of drastic human innovation (technology that fundamentally changed human lives and culture) peaked in the late 1800's and is actually declining. That all the great technology changes we see today are actually just refinements rather than new discoveries or inventions.
Also the rate of specialization among humans is slowing technological developments and that AI cannot and will not change this since so much of Human innovation is driven by human desires and motivations that AI will never understand no matter how fast or powerful the processor.
Quite simply, human technology will reach a point of "diminishing returns" so to speak. A point at which most technologies will be so complicated that substantial improvement or innovation of them will be all but impossible for one mind to come up with and that human organizational inertia and self interest will even block or actively discourage innovation (software writers of the future evolving into such specialized subsets, castes, and guilds- jealously guarding and protecting their codes and languages like Mayan priests carefully kept the "secrets" to their astronomical predictions tight to the chest.)
This isn't a "dark age" as in Human knowledge will be lost. It will be a period of stagnation will little to no innovation at all. A period much like the ancient world- where thousands of years separated the rise and fall of empires - with virtually no substantial technology change at all. An Ancient Pharoh from 1000 BC would find nothing much had changed if he were raised from the dead in Rome in the year 1AD for example. That is the future Huebner sees for humanity and it makes the job of any Sci Fi writer that much easier.