The Love-Hate Relationship Between Science Fiction and Technology

Via Longreads, here’s this great (and not very long) piece at Smithsonian Mag, about science fiction as (in the words of Ursula LeGuin) a “safe, sterile laboratory for trying out ideas.”

For every author who meticulously examines the latest developments in physics or computing, there are other authors who invent “impossible” technology to serve as a plot device (like Le Guin’s faster-than-light communicator, the ansible) or to enable social commentary, the way H. G. Wells uses his time machine to take the reader to the far future to witness the calamitous destiny of the human race. Sometimes it’s the seemingly weird ideas that come true — thanks, in part, to science fiction’s capacity to spark an imaginative fire in readers who have the technical knowledge to help realize its visions. Jules Verne proposed the idea of light-propelled spaceships in his 1865 novel, From the Earth to the Moon. Today, technologists all over the world are actively working on solar sails.

Buried within the article is a potential dream job:

Microsoft, Google, Apple and other firms have sponsored lecture series in which science fiction writers give talks to employees and then meet privately with developers and research departments. Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the close tie between science fiction and technology today than what is called “design fiction” — imaginative works commissioned by tech companies to model new ideas. Some corporations hire authors to create what-if stories about potentially marketable products. […] “There is nothing weird about a company doing this — commissioning a story about people using a technology to decide if the technology is worth following through on,” [says Cory Doctorow.] “It’s like an architect creating a virtual fly-through of a building.”

Does anyone watch Black Mirror? That show is a virtual fly-through of tech hell; may we never, except of course we will. Eileen Gunn’s piece talks about how pre-Manhattan Project science fiction tended towards hope, and how today’s trends sharply towards dystopia and class warfare, as seen in the Hunger Games, etc. [Smithsonian]