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I give up on cautionary Science Fiction.
I was having a discussion with my good friend and author Serdar about cautionary SF. The more we discussed it the more I realized we haven’t listened to it, and have become numb to it.
We’re heading towards not-AI-but-close in control of techbros while everyone has our data. The Forbin Project and assorted Cyberpunk novels warned us, and no one paid attention.
Ecological disaster? Been done. What, am I going to read another book or watch another movie, maybe get depressed at a rewatch of Silent Running? I can just look outside, I mean I’m in California?
Political meltdown? Been done, albeit crappily many times, over and over again. No one listened, and a few people think social collapse means we all wear more leather and ride motorcycles.
People sounded the alarm in fiction over and over again and it’s gotten old. The old messages are still relevant in all the classics anyway. We’ve become numb because everyone said what had to be said, and they keep saying it, and worse not in new ways.
Besides, for a cautionary tale I can just read the news. We’re in a constant life lesson we’re pretty bad at learning.
So you want to save the world, change the world, protect the world. Good, someone has to because too many politicians are ignoring the world burning down and would-be geniuses are creating cell phones for hamsters. You’re probably not doing it with cautionary SF as, well, it didn’t work and the messages are oversaturated. That’s if people even listened as opposed to deciding your Hellish Futurescape is cool.
Maybe try a vision instead.
Give me fiction of a better world and the struggle to get there.
Give me a dream of better, of kinder, of smarter, of what we deserve. Give me something to fire my feelings and my imagination and my soul. Kindle a flame with your words and your images and your dream – and let me share that dream.
Give me a blueprint, something, to get there. A signpost might be all I need, or a compass, or a basic map. Set me off, I’ll figure the specifics on the way there.
Yes, maybe give me caution. But do it in a way that keeps me on the path and heading for that future.
We heard all the alarms. They’re still going off. We can’t hear them very well.
But show me where to walk to a place worth going to, and maybe I’ll hear them again, warnings on my journey to something worth traveling to.
Steven Savage