Monday, July 23, 2007

Is Science Fiction Obsolete?

Last week Discover posted an article that claims "sci-fi helped make the present; now it's obsolete." The author, Bruno Maddox, bases his argument on the assumption that the primary purpose of science fiction is to predict future technological development. I'm reluctant to take an article on science fiction too seriously when it uses notoriously anti-science author Michael Crichton as its primary example.*
See, the thing is that Jurassic Park isn't very good prognostication either. Filling in the gaps in the recovered dinosaur DNA sequences with frog DNA is not a very likely scenario.

Of course Maddox's real point appears to be that fiction itself is dead.


The sense I get is that Maddox isn't much of a science fiction reader. If he was, he would realize that science fiction isn't just about predicting the future of technology. There's also social commentary - all the way back to H.G. Wells - and simply entertaining stories. And if you read science fiction by author's other than Crichton you would know that there is many a tale out there that is on the cutting edge of science. Certainly that's true in biology based sci fi - cloning, genetic engineering, uploading of memories to silicon and other biological wonders abound. We can only know in retrospect whether today's tales predict the future or are flights of fantasy.

* It also wastes a whole paragraph that on a slightly bizarre bean dip analogy.

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DoubleW said...

It doesn't help that quite a few sci-fi authors have bragged in the past about predicting this or that technology, as if that was the most important part of their stories. And let's face it, sometimes that's all "hard sci-fi" stories are really about -- new high-tech gadgetry (i.e. "boys and their toys").

But overall, you're right: The author of that essay obviously doesn't read much science fiction. The best of the genre also is about social commentary, or at least telling an entertaining story that leaves you thinking a little deeper about some aspect of the world.

Anonymous said...

Another thing that Maddox leaves out is the philosophical (for lack of a better word) aspects of some science fiction. Karl Schroeder is a good example in writing about how the way we approach life will influence the kinds of technologies we use. Permanence, for example, is a big ideas book that uses future technology as a jumping off point to speculate about the kinds of society we might create.

Arvind Mishra said...

Its just an unthoughtful sweeping remark-how it could be dead as many of imaginative feats depicted in our mythologies such as shape changing aircrafts ready ever to accommodate any last time passenger like one of Hindu mythology named Puspak Viman and traveling in one's energy form ,some sort of virtual existence also depicted in INDIAN MYTHOLOGY as Parkaya prakash , are still remain to be realized.The end of sf would be the end of humanity itself.
