Going from sci-fi to sci-fact…
It happens. Companies competing to monetize space? Yeah, that’s Boeing vs. Space-X at least, with the latter winning now, but don’t forget European, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and other companies. Star Trek communicators? Smart phones can do almost everything Captain Kirk’s device could, although he never had AI on it and you can. (In fact, it will soon be on new iPhones whether you want it or not!) Comsats? Arthur C. Clarke predicted them, but he couldn’t have imagined Elon Musk littering valuable real estate in Earth’s orbital space with his clouds of tiny comsats. Worldwide pandemics? Michael Crichton imagined an alien one in the Andromeda Strain, but Covid proved that human beings can manage to create that without any help from aliens. (And Covid was even bioengineered if you believe it came from that lab in Wuhan, China.)
Surviving a worldwide plague was the theme of The Last Humans, the first novel in my trilogy, “The Last Humans.” It’s yet another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact, as discussed in the NY Times (9/10/2024) article “10,000 Feet Up, Scientists Found Hundreds of Airborne Microbes,” with the subtitle “Hints that winds may help spread diseases around the world.” That novel’s prediction that a US enemy’s bioengineered virus now unfortunately seems entirely possible. It also means that even the short propagation time it took for Covid to infect the planet can even be shortened quite a bit as the contagion rides in the prevailing winds…like in the novel! Who knows what contagions our enemies are cooking up right now? I made an extrapolation from current science to create a story…and a warning, but we might not be lucky enough to be saved by new vaccine technology (mRNA) in the future. Or will anti-vaxers come to power and ban all vaccines like Robert Kennedy Jr. wants, giving humanity a death sentence if any future contagion is unleashed?
Of course, warnings from sci-fi don’t need to become sci-fact to be useful. Another warning in that first novel of my trilogy (with repercussions there and in the two following novels) was about water management and how massive fires make it even more difficult. 2024 is beginning to look like it will be the worst year in Earth’s history for climate problems, but it was already bad in 2019 when the first novel was published…bad enough for me to make some bold predictions!
Another example of sci-fi becoming sci-fact: I generally treat AI as a technology that’s helpful for humans in my sci-fi tales, but not always. Current AI might be artificial, but it’s not intelligence. True AI can be damn scary (just consider HAL in 2001 and the machines’ takeover in the Terminator series). In combination with other technologies, it might become even scarier. (A. B. Carolan’s Mind Games considers androids with ESP. Now that’s scary!)
Sci-fi plots often are extrapolations of current science…or even the same current science used in an evil manner. The threat of nuclear war, an old one, is often a theme. It’s considered in the third novel of my trilogy, Menace from Moscow. Perhaps we should pay more attention to these warnings from sci-fi authors?
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“The Last Humans” trilogy. A bioengineered virus spreads around Earth and kills billions. An ex-USN SAR and LA County Sheriff’s forensics diver survives and creates a future for her blended family after many adventures in what’s left of the US and two countries overseas. These three post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels The Last Humans, A New Dawn, and Menace from Moscow, blend together warnings about global warming, biological and nuclear warfare, and failed political systems like fascism that will make you wonder about humanity’s future. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold. (The first novel is also available in print format.)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!