A Question

[Malika9]

What sort of role do you see for science fiction in exploring environmental issues and solutions?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Welcome to 1km1kt.net.

One of the descriptions of Science Fiction has been "Considering the problems of tomorrow, Today". Many good works don't look at the technology as simply set dressing to explain why everything looks weird. Instead, they take a concept or social change and look at how it might really change the world.

For example, Jurassic Park asks "what is the proper level of personal staffing and control schema when dealing with creating new life (or recreating old ones)?" The dinosaurs themselves, nor the technology that made them can be classified as evil, despite the mayhem that eventually resulted. Rather the problem was a very human tendency to not plan for the worst case scenario. Computer security was lax, allowing one person to sabotage the park, the back-up power supply was insufficient and didn't properly warn of low fuel states, and there were simply too few people on hand to keep things orderly in an emergency.

We may not be cloning dinosaurs yet, but insufficient back-ups combined with a beyond design basis accident are the same problems expedience at the Fukishima Nuclear power plant several months ago.

Global Warming does not seem to be mere fiction, and it is a problem for today, not later.

That disclaimer out of the way, yes, SF does grant us a good number of ways to consider the problem. We could build space colonies and move industrial processes there - which removes the pollution sources from our bio-sphere and allows for very concentrated solar energy collection meaning cheap power. Megastructure arcologies centralize living and working areas thus eliminating the need for many transportation sources, and in turn the pollution they cause. Nanotechnology may present ways of making more efficient power sources, or microrobots that can actively break down harmful chemicals in the environment.

This look to the future may also illustrate how our society can change based on our choices. On one hand, this could be showing the fall of Western Civilization due to peak oil and crop failures. On the other, books can show what life would be like after a series of modest changes to our ways to reassure people it will be alright.

Ben Bova has a series of novels that look at lunar and asteroid mining as a way to get resources without Earthly environmental impact. Robert Zubrin has written a book demonstrating how current technology will let us send people to Mars in the very near future, and colonize not long after that.

As we've seen with the space race, the other great power of fiction is to get people interested, and excited to work on a project. Everyone as loves to see fiction dreams become reality. When Stephen Hawking got a chance to tour the engine room set for "Star Trek the Next Generation", he was quoted saying: "I'm working on that!"

[SheikhJahbooty]

What a great answer. It's so cool having someone so literary in the forums.

Can I ask a follow up question?

I've heard some critics hypothesize that the genre of science fiction may be ending, because we live in such a science fiction world. Many of the assumptions of classic science fiction seem antiquated. Readers have seen movies like Deep Impact, so when they see Babylon 5 where the Narns are bombarding the Centauri capital, they feel like... To borrow a term from the Turkey City Lexicon, it's a Second-order Idiot Plot. Every Narn would have to be unforgivably stupid to bombard a planet with bombs, and everybody knows this because we've all seen shows on how the dinosaurs became extinct.

Even extremely well respected authors fall into this trap of creating Second-order Idiot Plots. In Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, he postulates a society that grows clones to harvest their organs for citizens that require organ donors. He published the novel 4 years after doctors had proven that individual organs could be grown from stem cells that would genetically match the recipient. The novel was made into a movie in 2010, but that was 2 years after . Ishiguro probably had the idea for this novel before 2001, but by the time he got around to writing it and by the time it was made into a movie it was already very clearly and painfully a Second-order Idiot Plot. In order for this novel to happen at all, the entire society it is set in would have to be unforgivably idiotic.

So the question is:

Do you think science fiction will be a relevant literary genre in the future, or has it kind of run its course? Does science advance too rapidly for us to write relevant literature about human problems?

(I am kind of loathe to call our problems environmental problems. Humans pump poisons into our air and water, the poisons kill us off. From the environment's point of view, that problem solves itself.)

Should we all just give up and play , because whether we like it or not, all of our science fiction will eventually end up there? Or do you think it is just more difficult, but still possible and will continue to be possible in the foreseeable future, to write about imagined social and technological solutions to issues that we humans are facing or will surely face?

I'm sure speculative fiction will always have a place, but included in speculative fiction is fantasy, alternate history, steampunk, Rocket Ranger-type stuff, etc. And of course one day Star Wars and Star Trek and Babylon 5 will be grouped into the Rocket Ranger-type stuff, but this was a process that used to take decades. Nowadays, does the process by which science fiction becomes irrelevant just happen too fast?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Thanks for the compliment and making my literature degree seem useful.

The short answer is, there will always be a tomorrow. Five Billion years from now (mark your calendars) Earth won't have much of one, but other planets will. Hopefully some fiction inspired genius has seeded our species to the stars or helped us transcend the need for bodies and planet by then...

More to the point, you need inspiration to innovate, and things don't always pan out so predictably. Tech may change quickly, but human nature less so - leading to situations that should probably be considered with some foresight.

Not many people saw computers as a big thing, even into the eighties and early nineties they were seen as over-glorified typewriters. You can argue, however, that the microchip is the worst thing to ever happen to space exploration. From the 1930s to the 60's, people thought there would be a need for a man in space for weather observation or military ones. (The USAF Blue Gemini program and Russian Almaz stations are examples of the later.) But computers meant we could just use satellites rather than build the infrastructure for a station.

Note how I said "Not many people" above? Murray Leinster wrote a short story called "" that predicted the internet. In 1946! Digital computers like Colossus were still mostly classified back then.

Another thing to consider, is that the technology may advance quickly, but for the people behind it, change comes a bit slower. Much like the play within the play of Hamlet (to expose the uncle's guilt) fiction is a way to hold up our failings. Much of Babylon Five was showing aliens acting in rather human if strange ways - even the old ones have hubris and questionable conduct.

As to the point about orbital bombardment - there are times when you want a half way point between non-lethal and KT event. Its a bit easier to extract materials from a planet if there is still a biosphere present for your workers to breath and to cool the machines. Given Narn history, they were also trying to be vindictive and let the enemy survive but suffer. Furthermore, going all out to kill 99.9% of life on a world - kind of makes your neighbors dislike you, and consider attacking your planets before you try it again. The joys of nuclear brinkmanship with relativistic kill vehicles - if you see it coming, you're years too late...

That isn't just an aside - that is the political and ethical problems of dealing with aliens. Problem is aliens are, well - you know, alien. There are enough problems just getting along with human beings. We are at a point in history, where the people in charge of our nuclear arsenal are too young to have actually witnessed a nuclear test - some frank discussion about a future major war might be very important for them.

Or consider the issues in Avatar, and why so many people seem to prefer the mercenaries over the blue cats. Right now, we have the issue of conflict diamonds and people killing fellow human beings for shiny rocks. If there really was "unobtanium" that let us use FTL travel to escape a degraded planet and a native race like the Navi cut off our supply, we would not go quite as peaceably as James Cameron thinks. We would nuke them from orbit (just to be sure) and take the stuff - its them or us, and a war trillions of miles away doesn't meant much real to the average person.

Wandering back to a more general issue, sometimes the books illustrate what could have been, or another alternative. Sometimes its just fun to see other worlds, and SF gives a good set dressing. Its also a focus on issues that might not otherwise come up until later.

Good SF looks at what happens when slow to change human nature meets quickly transfigured environments.

Tying this to role-playing, I can think of a number of games that go into the environmental issues. (And not just Werewolf the Apocalypse "Greenpeace with Fangs") "Blue Planet" - like Avatar - deals with a special mineral (Longevity Ore) and the boom town exploitation of it, complete with natives vs megacorporations, ruined Earth vs unspoiled Poseidon. (Note: Copyright: 1997, well before Avatar) "Eclipse Phase" is post-technological singularity, and how do you deal with a world where death is only a minor inconvenience since your consciousness can be backed up? "Cyberpunk 2020" - society suffering economic collapse and technology control, "Cybergeneration" moves on to nano-augmentation and young people becoming unrecognizable technology due to technology (a bit akin to Deus Ex). My own "Anarchy Zones" has arcologies to deal with environmental hazards, and the question of how do you restart to social machine after a major break down and alien invasion.

[kylesgames]

Aww, man, I was hoping to bring up Eclipse Phase as a great example of a tabletop game touching on this.

Definitely check it out, it talks about the influences as to why society doesn't change as well as the consequences of it not changing. Plus it's awesome.

[Rob Lang]

[misterecho]

Science fiction is a great medium for exploring our society and extrapolating ideas, often to the most extreme. But for me I love the escapism. In my opinion when the political/social message is too heavy/not subtle enough I get REALLY turned off.

Avatar sucks.

[SheikhJahbooty]

Ugh, my problem with sci-fi is I write it in my head as I'm watching it.

I don't know what happened to Bab 5 but it was super impressive at first, had ship to ship battles that obeyed physics, like blew me away. I don't know if it was too much network notes or Straczynski just got fatigued writing everything, but imagine if a Narn ambassador was talking to a human diplomat about the occupation of Centauri system, under a statue of Zeus. "Narn vengence will rain down on them like the wrath of your Zeus." and then we cut to . That crazy weapon drops tungsten telephone poles on people. This is how we do things from orbit, bee-atsh!

And for the first few minutes, I thought Avatar was going to be a sci-fi version of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, like he's going to get an alien body, love being able to walk, hook up with an alien girl, and she helps him arrange for the humans to get the unobtanium, etc. Nope! Instead he decides to insult indigenous people everywhere by saying they can't think for themselves, all do what the chief wants, and he insults the last 10,000 years of human history by saying that we've accomplished nothing that would at all be attractive to these hunter-gatherers. So I watch almost the whole movie nearly crying, "But he was supposed to get with a girl who was nobody special in their society and she was supposed to help him introduce human advances to their people, and the unpopular, disenfranchised among their society were supposed to rise up and even though he did everything to help them, everything to ensure peace for everyone it would still erupt into corruption and civil war, and at the end he has to chose between doing what's right and what's best for his girl who is benefiting under the new regime, and for his continued use of his awesome new body, but what's right isn't even clear. Why am I watching this mindless garbage?"

I like escapism too, but pure escapism is fantasy. It can be science fantasy, but its fantasy. Science fiction that takes a step back from reality, that says, let's escape not just from our daily lives, but from our everyday preconceptions for a moment and look at this, that really get's me excited, Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness, MiKe Resnick's Paradise. But I have to agree on the political agenda sentiment of Mr. Echo. The strength of both examples I mentioned is that they seem almost agenda-less. Gender and sex are contentious issues, but how would you feel about it faced with aliens? African history and politics are contentious, but if we step back and look at it through this metaphor maybe you'll see something you missed before. Or maybe you'll just enjoy alien safari. That's cool too.

I think it's the difference between Terra Nova, and Falling Skies. You kind of know what's going on with Terra Nova, and you can watch it and it's fun, but Falling Skies is fascinating. Half the show is the characters trying to figure out what analogy they're in. Is it like the Americans defending themselves against the British? Is it the American Indians defending themselves against the colonists? Maybe the aliens didn't even get that humans were sentient when they arrived. Termites build cities with huge towers. If the aliens get it that we are sentient, will they care? We are learning how intelligent many animals are, like crows and ravens, and there are relatively few of us interested in extending them much in the way of rights. And there was that one human whom the aliens cured even though they made him a... pet, slave, extension, what? I don't know. And he was on their side after that. Maybe this is my sci-fi version of a Chinua Achebe novel.

And for me to bring it back to RPGs to close out, let's not forget , which you can get right here. It's more of a narrative dice game than a classic RPG, but it definitely deals with environmental consequences of new technologies. Degradation of the environment as humans struggle to regulate dangerous technological advances is built into the game mechanics.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]