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Home , 2015 in science fiction, Aliette de Bodard, Future, Future history, Lauren Beukes

BOOKS & COMMENT ILLUSTRATIONS ILLUSTRATIONS SEÑOR SALME BY WRITING when the is now Six authors parse the implications of our unhinged for their craft.

lphaGo, fake news, cyberwar: 2017 With technological change cranked up to — Lauren Beukes, Kim Stanley Robinson, has felt science-fictional in the here warp and -to-day life smacking of Hannu Rajaniemi, , Alastair and now. settlement and dystopia, where does go? Has Reynolds and Aliette de Bodard — to reflect Asea-steading seem just around the bend; mainstream fiction taken up the baton? on what the genre has to offer at the end of so, at , do nuclear war and pandemic. asked six prominent sci-fi writers an extraordinary .

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disruption and decolonization are happen- future will actually happen is radically ing across the continent now. uncertain. It could be a good life for future LAUREN BEUKES The 1997 democratic constitution of humans in a shared and interdependent was based on the African biosphere. It could be extreme climate The power of philosophical principle of ubuntu: a per- change, a mass-extinction , agricul- son is a person because of other people. It’s tural collapse and intense deadly conflicts the rational humanist that we are all among desperate human groups, including Lauren Beukes’s latest volume is interconnected and interdependent. The nuclear war. Slipping, a collection of short stories most interesting science fiction examines To grapple with this bizarre breadth of and essays. what it means to be human through the lens possible , I tend to take it one story not only of what does to us, but at a . And I deploy a of organizing Is science fiction relevant in an of also of what we do with it. And in South ideas. catastrophic climate change, the refugee Africa, with our unique challenges and lack Science fiction is the realism of our crisis and the rise of the far right? Yes: not of resources, we make a plan, we hustle. In time. It describes the in the way a for what it predicts about the future of the Xhosa, the is vuku’nzenzele — get up skeet shooter targets a clay pigeon, aiming world, but for how it unpacks who we are and do it for yourself. a bit ahead of the moment to reveal what in it. Innovation in Africa is a do-it-yourself is not yet present but is already having In her 1973 short story ‘The Ones Who magpie: we steal the an impact. This gives us metaphors and Walk Away From Omelas’, novelist Ursula “The stories we best bits from dif- meaning-systems to help conceptualize K. Le Guin wrote about a fictional utopia tell ourselves ferent disciplines our moment. So, as with any other realist that came at a terrible cost everyone knew and traditions to , you pluck just one strand out of the about: a single child tortured in a room about ourselves create interven- fabric of the total situation, and follow underneath the city, in the filth and the dark, shape who we tions that work for where it leads. to pay for their happiness. are — and who our unique circum- Because a novel is not a world. Even if it For me, Omelas is a compelling way of we can be.” stances. Indigenous is about a world. It’s just one story among understanding the world I grew up in, as and social knowl- millions that could be told, so it doesn’t have a white South African under apartheid. edge has to sit alongside conventional sci- to describe everything. White people make up only around 9% of ence and medicine. Examples range from We read fiction to have two science- the population, but, until 1994, they held developing pioneering smartphone pay- fictional experiences: and tele­ the rest of the country hostage under a ment apps such as Mpesa to building kites pathy. Fiction takes us to other times and racist, inhumane and violent regime that to use as camera drones for geographi- places (Regency England, the Ice Age, the forced people of colour into indentured cal surveys, and sending text-message moons of Jupiter), and it takes us inside labour and inferior schools, and responded reminders to people on tuberculosis and people’s heads, where we hear their thoughts to resistance with tear gas and shootings, hit HIV medication. The Vimba app connects and feel their feelings. squads and torture farms. rape survivors with crisis organizations; And science fiction can describe any Science fiction allows us the distance researchers at Stellenbosch University near time, from to billions of to circumvent issue fatigue in our very have developed nanofibre tea hence. That’s a big spread, and it creates troubled times. We can play out ideas bags to filter water in rural areas. a number of subgenres, each with its own and scenarios because we are creatures of But our uniqueness also lies in how we qualities. Space operas set in the distant parable and myth and allegory, TED talks tell our stories. That includes the discovery future use the whole Universe as a story and ethical trolley problems. Fiction is how of the 250,000-year-old hominin Homo space, sometimes to spectacular effect. we grapple with ourselves. By imagining the naledi. An all-women team of “under- Near-future science fiction is the proleptic unimaginable, it’s possible to make ground astronauts” descended into the realism I describe above. In between these, more bearable. “cave of stars” near to say from about one to three centuries from Afrofuturism is an artistic, aesthetic exhume the remains, using the language of now, there exists a less-populated story and philosophical movement that com- astronomy to break away from a of zone that I find interesting. You could call bines science fiction, magic, traditional human palaeontology that had been used it . Stories set in this zone beliefs, black history and culture. Take, to prop up racism. resemble nineteenth-century social novels: for instance, Nigerian-American novelist All of this is why we need science fiction the characters interact not just with each Nnedi Okorafor’s genre-straddling works; in Africa. The stories we tell ourselves about other, but with their societies and even Senegalese director Selly Raby Kane’s 2017 ourselves shape who we are — and who we their planets. Possibly, confronted with virtual-reality film The Other Dakar; Kenyan can be. the -boggling complexity of our pre- director Wanuri Kahiu’s “AfroBubbleGum” sent, describing events a century from now art; Malawian writer Shadreck Chikoti’s allows us to de-strand chosen elements for sinister utopia, Azotus the Kingdom (Malawi KIM STANLEY ROBINSON closer examination. Writers Union, 2015). All these are pre­ Here’s how I think science fiction works occupied with the unique social issues of 3D glasses on aesthetically. It’s not . It has, developing countries and the creative, alter- rather, a double action, like the lenses of native and unexpected ways in which people reality 3D glasses. Through one lens, we make living in them respond. a serious attempt to portray a possible The most exciting aspect of Afrofuturism Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest book is future. Through the other, we see our pre- is perhaps how it dares to imagine a future New York 2140. sent metaphorically, in a kind of heroic for what has been historically, abhorrently simile that says, “It is as if our world is like dismissed as ‘the dark continent’. It’s not We are now living in a science-fiction novel this.” When these two visions merge, the necessarily about imagined alternative that we are all writing together. The pre- artificial third dimension that pops into cities, but about the real ways in which sent feels dangerous and volatile, and which being is simply history. We see ourselves

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We humans are trapped by the narrative fallacy. The physical world may be irreduc- ibly random, but our have evolved to assign causation to correlation, to see pat- terns in noise, to comprehend history not as one damned thing after another, but as the unfolding of some grand plan — perhaps the work of an Author. The pace of invention seems to be speeding up, and advancing technology amplifies the power of every individual in our complex world, for good and ill. It’s possible now for a single person to bring the world to its knees with a well-designed bit of computer code; soon, someone may engineer a biological virus and slaughter millions. The world has grown only more random and unpredictable. Science fiction has reacted with ever more imaginative . Will genetic engineering allow us to live for hundreds of years? Will we be uploaded into the cloud to live as digital ? Will a super artificial intelligence enslave us? Or will we devise a post-scarcity creative economy so that aliens will finally show up to welcome us to the Galactic Republic? Chances are, none of these futures will transpire. They are too easily derived from the trajectory of the present. Reality doesn’t follow a constructed plot or fulfil character arcs: the future we experience will be both stranger and more mundane than these visions. Although science fiction isn’t much use for knowing the future, it’s underrated as a way of remaining human in the face of ceaseless change. The real world of mass and our society and our planet “like giants the idea of ‘futurology’ seriously, hasn’t surveillance and corporate propaganda plunged into the years”, as Marcel Proust been very good at predicting reality. may be much more sinister and compli- put it. So really it’s the fourth dimension Look around: where are the moon colo- cated than the worlds imagined by George that leaps into view: , and our nies or cranial ports for wandering the Orwell in 1984 and Aldous Huxley in Brave place in it. Matrix? New World. But these novels’ heroes turned Some readers can’t make that merger I spent a considerable part of my to our in search of core humanistic happen, so they don’t like science fiction; it career as a sort of historian of technology values as a bulwark against overwhelming shimmers irreally, it gives them a headache. (primarily for the benefit of litigants in technological oppression and the opiate But relax your eyes, and the results can be patent and trade-secret disputes). My own of distraction. That remains timeless. startling in their clarity. diagnosis is that our attempts to imagine may not have predicted much the future are thwarted by the fact that the of our world of always-on mobile network of technology is dominated by connections or augmented reality realized KEN LIU false starts, chance encounters and path through smartphones instead of goggles and dependence. No one who saw the first implants. It did, however, give us a vocabu- Staying human in HTML page by World Wide Web inven- lary for thinking about virtual presence as tor Tim Berners-Lee could have predicted an essential part of technology-mediated the cataclysm Tumblr and Twitter, or have imagined that human relationships. Through social applying filters to selfies would become a media and rich chat platforms, I can now Ken Liu’s latest book is The Wall multibillion-dollar business. ‘Black swans’ maintain meaningful friendships in cyber- of Storms, the entry in his interrupt every smooth extrapolation space, although I rarely embody an avatar as critically acclaimed silkpunk series curve. envisioned by cyberpunk writers. Dandelion Dynasty. Yet we cannot accept our essential The science fiction that ages well has fallibility in the face of the unpredict- always centred on constructing humanistic Watching Blade Runner 2049, it struck me able future. We must devise unverifiable narratives — or , if you want to use that that this was a future that — just as in the and tell just-so stories that retro­ word — in the face of cataclysmic change. film’s 1982 precursor, Blade Runner, set actively construct a sensible narrative; this I sense, although I cannot predict, that this in 2019 — was dominated by flying cars. then makes the path that we did take seem is one skill we’ll increasingly need in the Science fiction, even the sort that takes ordained. coming .

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HANNU RAJANIEMI Making stranger worlds

Hannu Rajaniemi’s next book will be the alternative-history thriller Summerland.

In the Netflix programme Stranger Things, a nostalgia-tinged small town in 1980s America is attacked by forces. To make sense of what is happening, the preteen protagonists turn to the classic game Dungeons & Dragons and name the invading monsters after creatures from it. Our world, too, is undergoing an invasion of the strange. An algorithm became capa- ble of defeating the best human players of 2,500-year-old board game Go after three days of playing itself. Gene drives may soon spread population-suppressing genes to malaria-carrying mosquitoes. And at least one Silicon Valley plutocrat has a good chance of being buried on Mars. It’s not sur- prising that the media calls on iconic sci‑fi figures to describe these developments — a recurring cast that includes the Terminator, Frankenstein and Iron Man. Working scientists scoff at such comparisons, knowing how fragile early experiments and nascent can be. Some scientists I’ve come to know in both my academic and biotechnology start- up careers develop a gag reflex to science fiction, weary of trying to describe their work against a backdrop of preconceived social paralysis in the face of overwhelming obsessively checked every technical detail. notions. Yet science fiction can help both change — future shock, as coined by author Keeping sci-fi relevant is also changing how scientists and non-scientists to comprehend Alvin Toffler in the 1970s — science fiction we write it. each other and make sense of our topsy- can shield us. What ultimately allows the heroes of turvy era. So the genre must now work harder to Stranger Things to triumph is not Dungeons To understand how, we must look beyond make its worlds stranger. Its recent embrace & Dragons’ static lore, but the lessons learnt sci-fi’s worn tropes, to how we read it. In sci- of diverse voices across the globe helps. from playing it: working together to map the ence fiction, as in all fiction, you get to be And to craft scientific and technological unknown, avoid its traps and bring treasure someone else — but the imaginary world metaphors for our complex era, we must home. When we return from the journey, around you is also unfamiliar, inviting you turn to of complexity. Biology, the world may not be any less strange or to learn its rules from the inside. The reader neuro­science and economics are still woe- shocking. But it may just be more wondrous. has to engage in active sense-making, with fully underused in modern science fiction the author’s implicit assurance that there — although the work of authors such as is a discoverable underlying order. When Johanna Sinisalo and Nancy Kress, among that happens, there is often a transcend- others, shows their power and wonder. ent, goosebumpy moment that opens still These novels teach us empathy for characters The bards of greater vistas beyond the page, in the reader’s caught in the unravelling of intricate human, imagination. technological and ecological systems: one turbulence This sense of wonder is the closest you can might call it systems fiction. get to the joy of scientific discovery without Just as research is starting to embrace Alastair Reynolds’s most recent novel actually doing science. That is of immense openness and citizen scientists, some is Revenger. His next, Elysium Fire, value to the public understanding of science. creators are experimenting with collabora- will be published in January 2018. Teaching researchers to imagine a new tive science-fictional world-building. Mark technology’s impact from a first-person per- Watney, hero of The Martian (2011) would In a science-fictional present, thinking spective is a more powerful way to give them not have been able to “science the shit out of” about futures can feel difficult. This year, a sense of responsibility than is any consul- his predicament on Mars without the help of when the AlphaGo algorithm designed tancy report or statistic. As we contemplate author Andy Weir’s online beta readers, who by Google’s DeepMind beat the world’s

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best human Go player — something long Science fiction is not in the business both writing and real life. assumed to be beyond the capabilities of of re­assurance. It is instead dedicated Science fiction can tell us what research artificial intelligence — it was hard not to to turbulence, transformation and will lead to. It can tell us what kind of feel that a corner had been turned. And unpredictability. In these turbulent times, societies, what kind of lives, we are shap- so much else has become normalized: we need it more than ever. ing. It can tell us about the use of science, human–pig hybrid embryos, commercial about conscience and ethics and the larger spaceflight, neuroprosthetics, cyber­warfare. purpose and vision behind discoveries, Not far off loom wild cards from global ALIETTE DE BODARD which are important incentives in making pandemics to head transplants, hyperloops such discoveries. It also tells us about the and sea-steading. Our need for the vast inequities between those who benefit With a present this intractable, some from scientific advances and wealth, and might say that science fiction as a serious stories of science those left behind. speculative enterprise has had its day. Science fiction can deliver cautionary Consider, however, the science-fiction Aliette de Bodard’s latest book is The tales. Malka Older’s Infomocracy (Tor, writer of a century ago, surveying her House of Binding Thorns. 2016), for instance, takes apart democracy world at the cusp of 1918 and trying to and gives us ideas on how to make it think cogently about the coming era. The This year, I saw world order upended. stronger. ’s preceding decades would have felt to her Political upheavals and mass migration, (Orbit, 2013) shows us applications of like an ever-accelerating stampede of newly politicized social networks, drones artificial intelligence and what sense of scientific, technological and sociological smuggling drugs, robotoid factory work- self would mean for upheavals. forces. A similar age of turmoil, however, “Science a distributed AI. Within living memory, steam power had spawned modern science fiction — and ’s Raven vanquished the ‘age of fighting sail’. Elec- vast socio-economic change, for good or ill. fiction can Stratagem (Solaris, tricity had begun to supplant gas as the The nineteenth century in the West risk losing its 2017) tells us about means of lighting cities. Cars and trucks saw successive upheavals, from major outlandish the malleability and were displacing horses; mechanized war- improvements in global health to indus- feel, even as subjectivity of the fare was taking over on the battlefield (the trialization. Many of the scientific and other fictional passage of time in tank first saw service in 1916). A trans­ technological advances were achieved at forms borrow different environ- atlantic telegraph system — the first piece great cost, as the gargantuan scale of emi- its tropes.” ments — even how it of global telecommunications infrastruc- gration and inequality showed; the poor, can be weaponized in ture — had existed since 1858. But it was the oppressed and the colonized largely certain temporal configurations. already looking old-fashioned next to failed to benefit. Science fiction has moved into the the wireless telegraphy and radio devel- Today, science is pervasive, from new mainstream in step with the infusion of oped by Guglielmo Marconi and others, vaccines against papillomavirus to omni- science into the every­day; thus, it can risk including Reginald Fessenden, who first present smartphones serving as personal losing its outlandish feel, even as other demonstrated wireless voice transmission assistants and payment terminals. And fictional forms borrow its tropes. Televi- in 1900. ’s general theory science fiction, now as in the past, con- sion series such as The Expanse, adapted by of relativity would shortly pass its first stitutes the stories of science. Stories, in Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby from James experimental test, even as the quantum turn, shape the rules of reality: they are S. A. Corey’s sci-fi novels, are now hugely revolution gathered pace. our baseline for making sense of the world, popular with viewers who might not read The writer would have been aware of and making it change. So at a time of great the genre regularly. That, I feel, is a sign other discoveries with daunting ramifica- challenges, they give us strategies for of the ever-greater relevance and vitality tions. Among these were subatomic struc- meeting them. For those of us who write of science fiction. As the pace of scientific ture, evidence of 500-million-year-old science fiction, daunting challenges can discovery accelerates and its impact on us ecosystems in the Canadian Burgess Shale also be stimulating — a call to arms in deepens, I see sci-fi and mainstream fiction fossils, and chemist Fritz Haber’s experi- becoming ever more entangled, borrowing ments in nitrogen fixation — as well as tropes, images and ideas from one another. Thomas Hunt Morgan’s explorations of Whether they play out in literary fiction, genes as unique units of inheritance in fruit sci-fi or both, we’ll need the stories of flies, and Alfred Wegener’s revelation of science more than ever. continental drift. News on each emerged in That is because, then and now, science dizzying succession. can benefit society selectively or be mis- The future could hardly have looked less used as often as used for good. Cheap, assured, the present less tractable. Yet it is high-powered laser pointers, for instance, precisely this period of change and uncer- have been repurposed as weapons with tainty that gave birth to science fiction as a which to blind pilots. We need to remem- mass cultural phenomenon. ber what science can do, from horrors to Science fiction is at its least useful and wonders — and to show this writ large in least interesting when the pathway to the the stories we consume. future is uncontroversial. For that, we have As I raise my children, wondering about think tanks and institutes of futurology, the world they will inherit, I think of the plying a low-risk trade in respectable, sober- scale of change over time. I choose to see this minded projection and extrapolation. They year not as a definitive upheaval, but rather will generally be proved wrong, but they do as a turn of the wheel. And I hope that the at least provide some reassurance to govern- future, shaped from the stories of today, will ments and businesses. bring better things. ■

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