fictional futures

[asakiyume]

I'm going to be on just one panel at Readercon, but it's a fun one:

Our panelists will discuss the fictional futures they find most appealing and would be happy to live in (maybe with some caveats). Does the work that depicts these futures provide a path or hints as to how humans might get there? What makes these futures worth rooting for and aspiring to?

I have some thoughts on the topic, but what I also have is a question:

What books have you read that are set in appealing futures? What books have you read that are set in unappealing futures? That's the main question: even though I have have thoughts, I want to try to read a few more books so I have more to draw on than my limited stock. Send me titles!

I also have a follow-up question: Are there cases where you'd like to live/wouldn't mind living in an unappealing future? Why? And are there any cases where you wouldn't care to live in an appealing fictional future? Again, why?

Comments

[sartorias]

I don't read much futuristic stuff, and then I tend to only remember images, seldom titles.

I wouldn't mind living in the Changed future if I could have a power! I'd go for most sf universes if they fixed old age and diseases, and let me roam. (Probably unhelpful)

[asakiyume]

It is helpful! Because I think a lot of what makes the future one we'd like to visit has to do with stuff relating either to us or those we interact with. Sure, a cool setting is fun, and being in a war zone or starving is not fun--but those worlds could be tolerable or even desirable if we were with friends, healthy, and had hope for something better.

[randomdreams]

I felt like Isaac Asimov's Daniel Olivaw stories were set in a very interesting future, where there were a bunch of people all jammed together on one planet, interacting all the time, and all the other places humans had gone, people lived in total isolation in houses on vast estates, communicating via electronic means and never meeting another human.

[asakiyume]

Cool; thank you! I will check those out. Interesting his sense that people could end up isolating themselves!

[randomdreams]

He wrote a lot about that universe and that character as he aged. The one I was specifically thinking about is The Naked Sun, where he was extrapolating a society where people had infinite communication bandwidth and chose to use it as their only method for communication.

I'm a big believer in Stanislaw Lem's concept that good science fiction is where you look at society and extrapolate trends you see to their ultimate expression, as a dire warning. Under that mindset, all sci-fi is dystopian.

[randomdreams]

btw Lem's "The Star Diaries" is an absolute delight as regards a whole slew of dystopian futures, which Ijon visits one by one.
It's a lot harder for me to think of any really lovely scifi utopias (for reasons given above) but the universe of CJ Cherryh's Chanur series would at least be interesting and fun.

[asakiyume]

I really need to read some CJ Cherryh at some point.

[randomdreams]

downbelow station or pride of chanur are probably the best starting points.

[mallorys_camera]

The most appealing future I ever ran across in a book was maybe not a future: It's the alternate universe that Consuelo comes into contact with in Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. But, of course, it's presented in such a way that it could also be a psychotic hallucination. :-)

I must tell you, by the way, that the reason I chose economics as my undergraduate major is because I loved Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. UC Berkeley didn't offer a psychohistory major; economics was the closest substitute I could find. :-) I'm not sure I particularly like the future in the Foundation Trilogy, though.

Congratulations on your Readercom panel participation! I mostly loathe conventions, but I've enjoyed Readercon the few times I've gone.

[asakiyume]

The Foundation trilogy has got to be one of the earliest explorations (outside of theology) of predictive analytics versus free will and yeah! I can understand choosing economics because of it.

[rosefox]

When I was growing up I wanted to live in the world of John Varley's Steel Beach because people could change physical sex as easily as going to the salon for a new hairstyle. Now I'd have to reread it to know whether I would want to live in any other aspect of that future, but for that aspect alone, I hugged that book very closely to my heart.

Patricia Kenneally-Morrison's Keltia books are set in the future but also on entirely different worlds, so I don't think they count. I do love the Terran characters' experiences of Keltia, though, and wouldn't mind being in that sort of Earth future, where we can go out into space and randomly run into TREMENDOUSLY AMAZING space cultures that are WAY more advanced than we are both socially and technologically.

[asakiyume]

Excellent! Steel Beach goes on the list. (It's a very aspirational list given how soon Readercon is, BUT STILL).

Thinking about what sartorias said about powers, and about what you've said here, I think one thing that makes a future a place we can imagine being is **agency**. Superpowers and ability to change sex increase our agency. We have more control over ourselves and, possibly, our environment.

And cool, funky things to interact with are always a plus ;-) There's a lot that would be miserable about the world Sue Burke describes in Semiosis, but interacting with an intelligent plant would be very cool. (Though of course if you grew up there, it would seem normal to you... that's another issue.)

[rosefox]

Though of course if you grew up there, it would seem normal to you

I always find this assertion curious because there are many things I grew up with that I still find utterly marvelous, and take time to wonder at.

[asakiyume]

Well, that's true too. I never took beautiful fall foliage for granted, for instance. But I did take wooden houses for granted, and was surprised and bemused when they were a point of interest for people visiting from England.

Some things in my life felt like just background, and other things seemed marvelous--I guess this is true for most people, just where those things fall is different. So maybe it *is* remarkable to the people in Semiosis that they're talking to a plant. When I think about it, I guess I marvel pretty much every day at the fact that cats are domesticated and one lives with us.

In conclusion: point well taken.

[boxofdelights]

I like Iain Banks's Culture. I would love to be some benevolent superhuman AI's pet. Or houseplant.

I think our realworld future is unappealing, but would like to live in it. Because the alternative isn't much.

[asakiyume]

Yes being born and alive is the most addictive thing!

Ian Banks--another author I've made note of: thank you!

[ckd]

James White wrote of a future in which the primary conflict was against disease and injury, such that the crowning glory of the Galactic Federation was the creation of a giant multispecies hospital (Sector General).

[asakiyume]

That's great! I guess I'm curious though: in our current reality, human conflict is just such a big thing, it feels like it'll be with us always, whether it's conflict over ideas or just interpersonal conflict. So does that feature in this future, too?

[ckd]

Definitely! There's lots of conflict between characters to go with the conflict against the environment; it tends to be over means rather than larger-scale ends. There might be a conflict between characters as to the best way to treat a newly-discovered alien's condition, deal with a crisis of some sort, or the like. In one later novel, the protagonist winds up bouncing from position to position because they were doing what they felt to be Right and that led to, shall we say, a few disagreements with their various superiors.

[zyzyly]

One of the most interesting books I read, though the language and many ideas are horribly dated, was called Ecotopia. The premise is that California secedes from the Union, after a brief war, and becomes a model for green living and so on. It was written in the 70s, pretty much at the advent of Earth Day and all that.

My futuristic reading tastes have generally tended toward post-apocalyptic scenarios, where most of the people are gone, and the survivors get a second chance to do it better. Not sure if that falls into the the appealing future column or not.

[asakiyume]

I think I remember seeing that Ecotopia book--though I may have it confused with Dinotopia, LOL.