On the Origins of Head in the Sand SF
Steve Carper posted an eloquent essay at the Tanget Online newsgroup at SFF.net about the state of SF. Mostly on how we got here.
His take? According to the genre, impending technological advances will redender humanity obsolete. Naturally, this has sent both readers and writers scurrying for the covers…The result? A genre that wants to avoid depressing stories of the future, so it endlessly recycles the stories of the past or a happy, “Jetson’s” style, future.
Sorry, you Gen X’ers. You’ll just have to wait your turn. Go off and do something and stop bugging us. Hey, I know! Why don’t you go build the future while us old farts contemplate our navels and try to summon up the courage to confront the disaster of a planet we’re going leave to you as our legacy.
Oops! Overstepped my bounds. Steve’s a nice guy and didn’t say anything like that. Instead he sees some hope, at least for SF as a literature, if not for the future of mankind. He sees this as a period of retrenchment, spawning new directions, new forms and new intensity.
Me? I’m worried the field is going to try and drive around the train wreck up ahead: discovering new toys but neglecting to come to terms with its attitudes towards both the future and technology as we slide into literary territory where we’re nothing but an extension of fantasy.