Re: Latency

On May 6, 3:00 pm, jdnic...@xxxxxxxxx (James Nicoll) wrote:
In article <1178478817.373537.123...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <sigidu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I don't know what the answer is. I have one or two ideas, but they're
depressing.

I'll throw one out: SF is losing interest in the future. By which I
mean, plausible futures we, or at most our kids, might actually end up
living in. The trend is towards either far-future stuff -- which
segues easily into tennis without a net -- or towards alternate
history, alternate futures, and stuff that is really fantasy with the
serial numbers filed off. (Ooh, what about a series of novels where
Venus really WAS covered with jungle!)

As usual, I blame the Boomers. As their demographic Event Horizon
draws closer, they're suddenly losing interest.

I don't see the younger generations being that interested
in the future, either. Of course, they have been given no reason to
think that they personally have one.

Well, as one poster as already alluded to, the current thinking is
that 2100 is going to look a lot more like 2000 than 2000 looked like
1900. So there's not that sense of immanence we used to live with,
the stuff you used to get with books like "You Will go to the Moon".
I read that at the age of six and thought that by the time I was
really old, say, 20, that I would be doing just what that young lad in
the book did. Ditto for the whole 60's space program thing, the space
station in Kubricks "2001" etc. No one really thinks that now,
barring some miracle development like tabletop fusion, so the subject
has tended to lose relevance with a lot of people.

Also, it's been my very vivid impression that sf fans as a group have
gotten a whole lot more conservative. A lot more. Which, I think,
limits the kind of stories you can tell, and further, limits them to a
small set that has already been told many times. Cyberpunk (or, if
you want to be testy, it's lineal descendants)? Space Opera?
Military Sf/Libertarian Sf? Small subgenres like detective or
comedies of manners? Comfortable. But not exactly new.

Finally, but far from the least signicifant ingredient, is that there
seems to be a definite undercurrent that the immediate future, however
it may turn out, is going to be darker in a multitude of ways big and
small - global warming, ceaseless small brushfire wars, the continuing
squeeze of the middle class and the consolidation of a hereditary
plutocracy that squanders its wealth and influence on recreating a
pointless court of Versailles, etc.

I mean, sheesh, back in the day, if you were an enterpising buck like
young Pausert, you took out a loan or otherwise acquired a tramp
starship, went into business as a free trader, trusted to guts and
luck, and proceeded to have adventures.

Now the wave of the future seems to be (however wrong it is) the
Chicago school of Economics, business models, IPO's, sponserships,
leveraged buyouts, greenmail, etc.

Not the optimisitic fare of yesteryear.

.

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