SF-TH Inc A History of the Future: Notes for an Archive Author(s): Veronica Hollinger Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 2010), pp. 23-33 Published by: SF-TH Inc Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40649583 . Accessed: 30/01/2014 13:05 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. SF-TH Inc is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science Fiction Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:05:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A HISTORY OF THE FUTURE 23 VeronicaHollinger A Historyof the Future: Notesfor an Archive A Historyof SF's Futures Onceagain, now that we knowwe aredifferently futured, we canlearn from sf. - JohnClute, Lookat theEvidence (278) Fromthe expansive anxieties of H.G. Wells's late-nineteenth-centuryTheTime Machine (1895) to the expansiveoptimism of the early-twentieth-century Americanpulps; from post-World-War-II nuclear apocalypticism to cyberpunk's self-styledboredom with the apocalypse; fromthe wild swings between contemporarynear-future realism and far-future hard-sf space opera to the crisis ofrepresentation ofthe Vingean Singularity - one historyof sciencefiction that I'd like to read is a historyof sciencefiction's futures, especially its literary futures.In lieuof putting it together myself, what I'll do todayis outline,in very broadstrokes, some of the things I'd liketo see in thiskind of project. As Roger Luckhursthas alreadymentioned, it is somethingof a luxuryfor the sf historian to be able to reflecton method,and so I'm gratefulfor the opportunity provided bytoday's symposium. It mightbe thecase thatan entirevolume would be requiredjust to outlinea historyof the future beginning at the dramatically appealing date of 1984- since thepublication of WilliamGibson's cyberpunkclassic Neuromancerand the near-simultaneousproblematizations of time and historyassociated with postmodernity,and with postmodern theorists such as Jamesonand Baudrillard. For example,the idea of the "collapsed"future - "the 'bound to be' of the ideologyof progress," as Zoë Sofiaputs it (57)- is a versionof the postmodern disenchantmentnarrative that began to circulate in critical writing about the same timeas thenoirish near-futures of cyberpunkappeared.1 I'm notat all surewhat the appropriate scope shouldbe of a historyof the futurein sciencefiction, not just chronologicallybut also conceptually,but the intriguinglycomplicated intersections ofpast and future with the post- millennial presentsuggest the timeliness of thinking about such a project.It wouldhave to include- at least in my ideal version- some attentionto how sf storiesself- consciouslyrepresent the future in relation to the present and/or the past: as is so oftenthe case, The TimeMachine is exemplaryhere. Robert Charles Wilson's recentnovel, The Chronoliths (2001), is similarlystructured by tensions between destinyand human agency, by questions about inevitability and contingency. In contrast,Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore's grimstory, "Vintage Season" (1946), turnsthe tragedies of the past into the future's entertainment. I take it for grantedthat a historyof sf s futureswould be a cultural history- muchlike Roger's Science Fiction and De Witt'sAstrofuturism. That thereis complexand ongoingfeedback between present and futureis a very familiaridea - representationsofthe future in sciencefiction, whatever else they This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:05:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 37 (2010) are,are significantresponses to thepolitical, social, and culturalconditions of theirproduction; to borrowa phrasefrom Elizabeth Grosz, sf s futuresare "readablepictures of thepresent that produced them" ("Histories of a Feminist Future" 1017). At the same time, "visions of the future,especially in technologicallyadvanced eras, can dramatically affect present developments," as N. KatherineHay les has notedof the dialecticalinterplay - movementsof reflexivityand feedback - betweenpresent and imagined futures ("Computing the Human" 131). JacquesDerrida has addressedthis in his thinkingabout the supplement;some sf writershave addressedthis in theirattempts to imagine futuresof significantdifference.2 Formany people - atleast in the technologically driven west - thefuture feels muchcloser than it used to. In a reviewof Gibson's Pattern Recognition (2003), an sf novelset in thepresent, John Clute memorably writes: "Sf is no longer aboutthe future as such,because 'we have no future'that we can do thought experimentsabout, only futures,which bleed all over the page, soakingthe present"("The Case of theWorld, Two" 403). This in turnsuggests to me the continuedusefulness of theoverused but usefully multivalent phrase "future- present."3It's insidethe framework of the "future-present" ofpostmodernity that I see myhistory of the future taking shape. ScienceFiction as theFuture Notall of [sf],to be sure,is or needbe setin thefuture.... But without that possibility as a formalresource, and withoutan audiencedisposed to look ahead ratherthan to thepast, sciencefiction could neverhave achievedanything like itsfull powers. - Paul K. Alkon, ScienceFiction Before 1900 (20) Sciencefiction is conventionallyunderstood to be a future-orientedgenre; in DavidHarvey's terms, it is a modernliterature of becoming (359). Harveyquotes approvinglyfrom Renato Poggioli's Theoryof the Avant-Garde:"for the moderns,the present is validonly by virtue of the potentialities of the future, as the matrixof the future,insofar as it is the forgeof historyin continued metamorphosis"(qtd Harvey 359). Mosthistorians associate the emergence of science fiction with the emergence of a sense of history,past and future,that gradually developed during the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies. In his Originsof Futuristic Fiction, Alkon pointsout that"It was extrapolationto a geologicaland evolutionarypast envisionedas evermore remote from the present that by the nineteenth century had widenedtemporal perspectives in a way talesof the future no less 4 favoring thanhistorical novels" (46). FredricJameson has referredto sciencefiction "as a symptomof a mutationin our relationship to historical time" ("Progress Versus Utopia" 149). In his 2006 acceptanceof theSFRA's PilgrimAward, Jameson notedthat "SF marksthe moment in whicha societyrealizes that it has a future, and thatit is itselfin its verynature and structurebecoming, a vastbeing in perpetualcontinual change and transformation" (15).5 Butwriting about the future has itsrisks. If we takeH.G. Wells at his word, sf has alwaysstruggled with the future, even thoughthat struggle might seem morecritical in our own presentof radicaltechnocultural metamorphosis. In This content downloaded from 131.111.184.22 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 13:05:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A HISTORYOF THE FUTURE 25 1938,as if he werepreparing to writea versionof Gibson's "The Gernsback Continuum"(1981), Wells notedthe sheer impossibility of tryingto tellstories aboutthe future: Maybeno literature is perfect and enduring, but there is somethingspecially and incurablytopical about all these prophetic books; the more you go ahead, the more youseem to get entangled with the burning questions of your own time. And all thewhile events are overtaking you. ("Fiction about the Future" 246) "And all the while eventsare overtakingyou." In 2001 sf writerJudith Bermandiagnosed a kindof exhaustionwith the future in somerecent short sf. Thetitle of Wells' s 1938essay is "Fictionabout the Future"; the title of Berman' s 2001 essayis "ScienceFiction without the Future." In it,Berman discusses her surveyof some recentAmerican sf storiespublished around the turnof the millennium.6"As a group,"she concludes, "the stories are full of nostalgia, regret, fearof aging and death, fear of the future in general, and the experience of change as disorientingand bad" (Berman).Her articleraises a hostof questionsabout genericexhaustion, generational fatigue, technoscientific acceleration, sf s "proper"relationship to the future- and so on. "Science Fictionwithout the Future"won the SFRA's PioneerAward for best critical essay of 2001. "The FutureIs AlwaysHistory" The futureis always history.- Darren Tofts and AnnamarieJonson, "Futuropolis: PostmillennialSpeculations" (210) Myepigraph for this section is takenfrom the editorial introduction toa group ofessays on "PostmillennialSpeculations" in a verylarge and valuable collection titledPrefiguring Cyberculture: An IntellectualHistory (2002). The editors remindreaders that "The future is alwayshistory" because speculations about the futurecan only ever be evaluatedonce the future has arrived (as withkey "future" momentssuch as 1984and 2001 - "whenthe present caught up withand became theimage or relicof a projectedfuture" [210]). In addition,they note Marshall McLuhan'saphorism: "We look at thepresent through a rear-viewmirror. We marchbackwards into the future." The futureis inevitablyimagined within the frameworkof past