Futuristic technology…
As a sometimes sci-fi writer, I’m always at a quandary about how many gadgets and technologies I should add to my stories. (The “sometimes” is an admission—sci-fi aficionados probably wouldn’t consider me a “purist” because I write mystery, suspense, and thriller novels too, sometimes combining the sci-fi with those genres. Genres are just keywords to describe storytelling, after all.) When author friend John Hohn (he wrote the entertaining novels Deadly Portfolio and Breached) posted on Facebook about his struggle with fixing up things around the house (one of many frustrations we share), the comment suggested this post about futuristic technology.
Ever watch an old Star Trek episode recently? That sixties show tried to make things futuristic with flashing lights and other gimmickry (some flunky would slide open or shut an Enterprise door and a whooshing side would be played, for example). The usual quality of the episodes aside (real sci-fi stories for the most part, not like episodes in the sequel-series written by screenwriters with no sci-fi credits and generally poor writing skills), the Star Trek gimmickry seems laughable today. But there were a few prescient ones, like the communicator, today’s smartphone, essentially a handheld computer that just happens to be a com device too. That said, the laughable part shows the danger of being too futuristic about your imagined devices.
Some months ago I was rereading some Doc Smith stories I’d enjoyed in grade school. That nostalgia trip was almost ruined by the realization that these space-operatic episodes were mostly unreasonable extrapolations of current science at the beginning of the 20th century. Indeed, to excuse the old fellow, so much has happened in science and technology since Doc Smith’s time that it would have been next to impossible for him to predict future advances. There are cases later on—Arthur C. Clarke’s prediction of com satellites and Theodore Sturgeon’s prediction of spread spectrum communications, and, yes, Roddenberry’s communicator are three examples—where sci-fi writers have nailed future advances, but including a lot of imagined technology in your stories is fraught with danger.
My advice to current sci-fi writers? If you don’t want your stories to become out-of-date faster than a Warp 9 trip to the planet Vulcan, minimize the gizmos and what-nots and focus on people. Huh? People? Isn’t that what all literature does? You bet, and it makes sense, especially in the general sense that most ETs are just people too, although some are very strange people. In spite of the plethora of bad B-movies from the fifties, and (horrors!) many Star Trek episodes, both classic and recent, people, including ETs, are far more interesting than futuristic technology. Kids might like to see an old-fashioned firefight with ray guns, and get hooked on the computer games that feature them, but many readers, kids included, are interested in people, even in sci-fi. A good sci-fi story features people—the gimmickry can be minimized.
Consider the Arthur C. Clarke classic Rendezvous with Rama. The later books in the series became sappy philosophical treatises about God as Engineer, good companions for the oriental mysticism in Card’s Enders books following Enders’ Game, but Clarke’s first book was about ETs only peripherally and more about humans invading the ETs’ huge probe of our solar system. “Throw people into a tough situation and see if they can cope” is such a universal theme that Rendezvous could be called a sci-fi psychological mystery/thriller. (I don’t know about Enders’ Game. I reviewed a book that was a collection of analyses by psych people of why there’s more to it, but basically it’s one hell of a YA sci-fi thriller.)
I can’t say I’ve made a conscious effort to minimize futuristic technology in my own fiction. As an ex-scientist, though, I’m fully aware of the dangers in extrapolating data far beyond its validity. In sci-fi, extrapolation is a double-edged sword. You can’t violate current physical laws (as Vinge did in Fire Upon the Deep), but you can work around them. Near-future extrapolations are the most dangerous as well as being the most fun, but far-future ones are less reliable while at the same time being unverifiable, which is a tremendous advantage. (Roddenberry probably thought the communicator was in the latter category, though—technology can outpace imagination sometimes.)
Example: the speed of light as a fundamental limit. Faster-than-light (FTL) travel was done with dilithium crystals powering warp drives in Star Trek—sounded good but chemically and physically incorrect. (“Full stop, Scotty!” even violated Newton’s First Law, so Roddenberry obviously didn’t give a rat’s ass about physics. Ever been on a ferry that docks by just cutting its engines?) Asimov and others just imagined starships making “jumps” through (across?) something sometimes called subspace and got on with stories about people (he didn’t even have ETs, he was so focused on people, but positronic brains for his robots was bad gimmickry soon made silly by current robotics).
I also followed that subspace route by having starships jump around metaverses using superstring FTL drives, but that’s just techno-babble too and not all that different from warp drives if you get past the dilithium. What saves Asimov, Heinlein, and many others, including me, is the focus on “people” (I do have ETs in my stories) and the far-futuristic nature of the extrapolation—we’re nowhere near FTL drives, of course (famous last words?), so whatever we imagine works if it reads well (Vinge fails there).
But I stick in futuristic technologies if they fit just to keep it interesting, almost without thinking and even in near-present stories. Even Detective Castilblanco’s phones have video built in, for example, a near-term extrapolation (consider Skype and Facetime). The NYPD also starts buying small hybrid patrol cars in the detective novels (OK, in real life, they’ve gone to Smartcars instead, but I was rooting for hybrids).
In the “Clones and Mutants Series,” a wee bit farther into the future than my detective series, we have, in addition to hydrogen cars—well, clones and mutants (I wrote Full Medical when Dolly the sheep was still in the news and they were worried about stopping human cloning—the mutant is a GMO- and bioengineered human). Like it or not, this technology is not only possible, it’s probably going to happen.
Of course, ancient ETs can produce all sorts of technologies that current and near-future humans can puzzle over. Hogan’s ancient spacesuit on the Moon in the Giants series and the obelisk in 2001 and 2010 (Arthur C. Clarke again) are but two examples. I’ll throw in a simple ET tool of my own: the various Odri data recorders that go all the way back to the dinosaurs (the Odris—Odri is a family name—are ETs who appear as historically important fellows in several of my novels and short stories)—one of those data recorders creates a bang in Soldiers of God (you didn’t know that was sci-fi?…check it out).
I suppose I’ll get caught by some reader, especially with the technologies in near-future stories, but I hope that focusing on “people” (humans and ETs) will keep my sci-fi fresh for a long time, at least until I’m dead, after which, like Roddenberry, I won’t give a rat’s ass what you think either.
***
The Collector. Most Nazis stole art not out of appreciation but for money—a famous piece can launder many dollars or be used to finance all sorts of things. What they finance here might give you the creeps. Detectives Chen and Castilblanco swim in the dark seas of illegal art in this mystery/suspense/thriller novel. Can they keep from drowning?
In libris libertas!
