My future can kick your future's ass
You're Mundane
I'll bet you think the future is boring
You're Mundane
You probably think the future is boring, don't you, don't you?
[That's sung to the tune of the Carly Simon song. No, you don't want me to sing. Trust me.]I'll bet you think the future is boring
You're Mundane
You probably think the future is boring, don't you, don't you?
My work is about a hair's thickness away from Mundane, so you'd think I'd be right in there. No FTL? Check. No psi, no brain downloading, no nanotech? Check, check, and check. No time travel? Oh, you better believe that's a check. No computer conciousness? Yeah, that's where I get off the bus, guys. I can't live without my AI.
I was ready to chuck the whole idea and never speak of it again until I happened across this blog post from Andy Hedge at Interzone. And damned if it didn't get me thinking. The whole point of the Mundane thing is not to write about this particular dull future because that's what's going to happen. As I've said here before, I don't think SF is supposed to predict the future any more than Dilbert cartoons are supposed to show us how to conduct ourselves in the office. According to Andy, the point is to imagine a future where nothing comes along to fix our problems, and yet we survive and maintain a decent standard of living.
I hate to bring up Jared Diamond again after the last fiasco with James Nicoll, but for a good listing of the problems we face as a people, you can just check Chapter 16 of his book Collapse.
- Destruction of natural habitats
- Depletion of wild food stocks
- Loss of species diversity
- Soil erosion
- Depletion of energy sources
- Loss of fresh water availability
- Maxing out of world's capacity to grow plants
- Pollution (putting harmful substances into the ecosystem)
- Alien species introductions
- Ozone layer depletion and greenhouse gas emissions
- Human population increase
- Increase in per capita impact of humans on the environment
What isn't easy is to imagine we'll get beyond these problems not by introducing a new gadget or settling a pristine new planet but by carving out a new niche in the world. I have imagined that new niche for years, but I can't think how to build a ripping good yarn about it. I know Ursula K. LeGuin could write the story, and has, but I'm not Ursula K. LeGuin. If I tried to write it I'd stick in all kinds of pirates and killer robots and flying cars full of killer pirate robots.
But here is the best possible future I can imagine: All food is local, all travel is slow, all medicine is preventative, death is respected, life is precious.
But we still have science and art and literature. Communication is still global. We can still make machines, just ones that use minimal energy. We can still study life, we just don't have the wherewithal to bend it to our every whim. We can still study physics, just not quite so spectacularly.
This is the best possible future I see. I can see a lot of ways, even beyond Diamond's list, where it can all go to hell, but it hasn't gone to hell yet. We still have time. We can use the vast resources still available to us to secure that best possible future. We can work out how to make circuit boards and solar panels without a huge industrial infrastructure. We can hold on to what we can keep while slowly letting go of what we can't.
It's my own failing that I can't see a story in that. But then again, when has a story ever changed the world? Maybe this is just something I should talk about, every once in a while, when the conversation at a party dies down and inhibitions are lowered. Maybe it will sink in, gradually.
But in order to get people to listen I'll have to liven it up with flying cars full of killer pirate robots.
On the plus side, at least people know who you are. Obscurity is the number one problem writers have.
They think you're a lefty? That's amusing. But they are probably American and so the subtle differences between, say, a Jack Layton and a Sandra Smith will probably be lost on them.
I've got no use for one dimensional politics. I live in a 3D world. I want a cubic model. "I'm an upper back quandrant on the left side, just a shade off the center."
Looking over this blog post I can see that I would have avoided misunderstanding with just one extra phrase: "But here is the best possible future I can imagine given the Mundane premise." That's what editors are for.
You need to find an old book called The Challenge of Man's Future. It's somewhat dated by when it was written (It's based on pre-1950 research for the most part) but not as much as one might think. There's a nice bit in it where he reasons out how the Pill will work from first principles, since he is unfamiliar with the then-ongoing research in hormonal birth control, and gets it surprisingly correct.
I have a three axis political model that I find useful without claiming that it is universal:
dirigiste <-> laise fair
Redistributive <-> Anti-redistributive
High Feedback <-> Low Feedback
The Soviets, for example, were low feed back and towards the dirigiste end of things. This ran into the problem that if you have no idea what the results of your commands really are, your orders may become increasingly disconnected to reality. One sees much the same process at some corporations but there's less ruin in a company and the processes can't run for as long.
"But here is the best possible future I can imagine: All food is local, all travel is slow, all medicine is preventative, death is respected, life is precious."
See, this is where we part ways. Even with a future largely limited to Earth (and given the economic realities of space flight, in particular the price elasticity or lack of some, I don't expect cheap rockets in my lifetime), we could support a global civilization as rich as the US on the radioactive materials dissolved in river water. We don't because at the moment we have cheaper alternatives.
"I know Ursula K. LeGuin could write the story, and has, but I'm not Ursula K. LeGuin."
I have to say that I've never read a UKLG where the economics seemed compelling. In fact, in general SF fails to give me the economic zing I so obviously deserve. What, for example, could possibly have been worth hauling light-years at sublight speeds in the backstory to Cherryh's Downbelow Station? Why is it that the term "compartive advantage" never appears in H. Beam Piper's fiction? Is it asking so much for space ships of the future to have a lower crew mass/cargo ration than 19th clipper ships?
Admittedly in the last case, current crewed ships have a support team on the order of one highly educated person per two kilograms, which is why space travel is expensive. The fuel is so cheap that even if it was free, the difference would be lost in the uncertainties of the accounting system.
"But then again, when has a story ever changed the world?"
Have you heard of a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin?
In future posts, please include a disclaimer not to drink anything while reading your blog -- I just about choked to death on my water. Now that I'm done dealing with that, I can tell you that you're hilarious. And you have interesting points. I'll definitely be reading regularly.
Welcome to the blog, Jennifer. Sorry about the choking. Maybe a free book would make it up to you. I still have a few open contests for Free Book Month. You could suggest a contest, or you could pull books off your shelf that you think might have influence me and take a picture of them. Take a look around, make yourself at home.