A Dark Future
As an avid science fiction fan, I have read about many different possible futures. Some of them seem more plausible then others and some are about as absurd as you can get. I love that most of the fiction written in the 50’s was about how man will conquer everything and live a peaceful and tranquil co-existence with whatever we find out there. In the 60’s, it was about how we were destroying the world and the consequences of dealing with the nuclear devastation, environmental deterioration, or gulag style rule by an all seeing government. It is that dark period that most interests me.
I had a chance to think about Soylent Green over the weekend. That is an excellent
example of how to combine two of the three 60’s futures together. You have a world that has polluted itself into massive environmental destruction. The land is sterile, the oceans are dead, and man has begun restricting freedom to maintain some semblance of order. You end up with a government that has been reduced to cannibalism to feed the starving masses. “Soylent green is people,” and nobody cared. Another Charlton Heston great is the 
Omega Man in which we release a plague that kills everyone. 
Or Planet of the Apes in which we cause our own destruction by replacing our pets with apes and then through some freak of evolution, allows them to become our masters (a little far fetched).
With the release of Star Wars, the science fiction world changed from thinking about the future to role playing. We had Hans Solo to win the girl, the battle and the day. Science fiction changed from its role as predicting the future to being little more than space westerns. The entire genre switched from being about what may happen to wizards and demons, or divergent history, or just Star Wars or Star Trek sequels. There has been very little original science fiction written in the last 20 years. What is there has been sporadic and mostly disappointing. A few bright spots like John Varley have limited their releases and disappointed through their scarcity. With the masters, Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov all long gone, we are awaiting the next trio of artistic thinkers to rise up and challenge our view of the future. That is true science fiction.
Icool
Cobb
I had a chance to think about Soylent Green over the weekend. That is an excellent
example of how to combine two of the three 60’s futures together. You have a world that has polluted itself into massive environmental destruction. The land is sterile, the oceans are dead, and man has begun restricting freedom to maintain some semblance of order. You end up with a government that has been reduced to cannibalism to feed the starving masses. “Soylent green is people,” and nobody cared. Another Charlton Heston great is the 
Omega Man in which we release a plague that kills everyone. 
Or Planet of the Apes in which we cause our own destruction by replacing our pets with apes and then through some freak of evolution, allows them to become our masters (a little far fetched).With the release of Star Wars, the science fiction world changed from thinking about the future to role playing. We had Hans Solo to win the girl, the battle and the day. Science fiction changed from its role as predicting the future to being little more than space westerns. The entire genre switched from being about what may happen to wizards and demons, or divergent history, or just Star Wars or Star Trek sequels. There has been very little original science fiction written in the last 20 years. What is there has been sporadic and mostly disappointing. A few bright spots like John Varley have limited their releases and disappointed through their scarcity. With the masters, Herbert, Heinlein, and Asimov all long gone, we are awaiting the next trio of artistic thinkers to rise up and challenge our view of the future. That is true science fiction.
Icool
Cobb
posted by Cobb at
6:23 AM
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