starship-design: Grumpy Old Men: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be (Sequel to come)

["L. Clayton Parker" <lparker@cacaphony.net>]

OPINION SPACE

Grumpy Old Men: The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
The Spacefaring Web 3.17
by John Carter McKnight
Scottsdale - Sep 17, 2003

This gripe began as ironic nostalgia when 21st Century reality paled in
comparison to the projections of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lately
that claim has devolved into a favored lament of grumpy old men in the space
community, whose stubborn refusal to acknowledge society's priorities
threatens any real effort to advance our presence in space.

A full-bore cranky-geezer rant was delivered recently by science fiction
writer Spider (not to be confused with Kim Stanley) Robinson at the World
Science Fiction Convention, and adapted as an op-ed article in the Toronto
Globe and Mail

The article gives voice to those in the space community who long for a
future that never was. Whether in fiction or in policy, many are selling the
unwanted solutions of a failed past. They find themselves baffled by their
loss of market share, but rather than identifying society's concerns and
offering credible solutions, they blame us for our crass refusal to buy
their old whine in new bottles.

Robinson argues that science fiction is in a critical and financial decline
because "[i]ncredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting.
They no longer find science admirable. They no longer instinctively lust to
go to space…. SF's central metaphor and brightest vision, lovingly polished
and presented as entertainingly as we know how to make it, has been largely
rejected by the world we meant to save."

He is indisputably right about our rejection of the mid-20th Century view of
the future. Contemporary culture cannot be understood without a firm grasp
of this key truth. But by no means does it follow that a rejection of 1950s
"conquest of space" visions means a rejection of science fiction, or a
closing of the door to space.

Science fiction has long been what the Western once was: adventures
idealizing the values and technologies at the forefront of the newest, most
interesting realms. In the Fifties, that meant space, and engineering, and
the customs of the technocrat and megaproject engineer.

What typical Cold War-era sci fi produced was a linear extrapolation of
technological development while assuming culture as a constant. For all its
intentional silliness, the epitome of this view was the cartoon series The
Jetsons, with its 1950s nuclear family living in a world of flying cars and
talking robots.

That was what the world was supposed to be: mid-century middle-class America
reproducing itself endlessly, just with better gadgets. The destruction of
that vision, the rejection of that future, is what Robinson laments.

The future we chose, while keeping us planetbound longer than anticipated,
has been much more complex. Technology branched into unexpected directions,
stifling heavy engineering while innovating in communications at lightspeed.
And, most profoundly, culture itself transformed just as rapidly.

Even as a visitor from 1903 would be baffled by the gadgetry of 1953, 1953's
citizen would find the customs and values of 2003 much more alien than the
prospect of little green men (as milked wonderfully for laughs in the movie
Back To The Future).

Those unexpected changes in culture and technology shaped each other. The
end of the 1960s saw a rejection of technocracy, for many valid reasons.

Industrial-age organizational methods - standardization, hierarchy,
bureaucracy, mass movements - were rejected as dehumanizing and immoral.
They were supplanted by better methods - networks, customization, niche
marketing - made practicable by technological revolutions in communications
and production.

Industrial age attitudes - seeing the environment as a storehouse of
resources rather than as our home, nature as a thing to be conquered rather
than protected, body-count approaches to warfare - were rejected as well.

Industrial age politics - governmental control of industry, the choice of
state-glorifying megaprojects over the health and welfare of the country's
citizens - also met with rejection. Nuclear testing near civilian areas
ended. Construction projects that poisoned the air and water were
successfully opposed.

And space projects with no real goal other than the glorification of the
state came to a similar end. Thus, von Braun's state-dominated, heavy
engineering dominated future never came to pass.

Would anyone be surprised that stories glorifying these rejected
technologies, these rejected politics, these rejected values, declined
dramatically in market share?

Yet science fiction has not withered into irrelevant yarns about a long-lost
frontier the way the Western did. As technology and culture changed, science
fiction transformed along with it.

When human spaceflight stopped being the newest, most interesting realm,
science fiction stopped telling so many stories about it. When computer
science and communications technology became the new frontier, science
fiction developed a new sub-genre, cyberpunk, that took its information
technology as seriously as space opera ever took thrust-to-weight ratios.

When cultural change became at least as interesting as technological change,
science fiction discovered that engineering and physics weren't the only
disciplines about which stories could be told: sociology, psychology and
political science found a home in the literature.

Robinson couldn't be farther from the mark in condemning science fiction
readers for rejecting the "real future." The "real future" of the Jetsons
era died a generation ago, along with Camelot and the Baby Boomers' lost
youth. Even the cyberpunk "real future" is now our present, and its great
authors are showing gray in their goatees.

Yet there's no Next Big Thing, no hot trend in science fiction, no vision of
the future spreading like a virus through the zeitgeist.

And what else would anyone expect? We're finding it hard enough to
comprehend our present. Real change is outpacing our imaginations. We
haven't really begun to live in the post- 9/11 world. Our future is changing
between the morning news and the late-night roundup. Who can envision the
technologies and values of twenty years out when we don't even understand
what's going on right now?

But the popular imagination has in fact found stories answering its
concerns. What is selling, and speaking to contemporary audiences in a way
that science fiction is not, is epic fantasy. Rather than speculating on a
technological future, fantasy often imagines a preindustrial past, with
technology replaced by magic as the means of effecting change. People who
have never read a science fiction novel avidly devour the Harry Potter books
and line up for the Lord Of The Rings movies.

For Robinson, this turn to fantasy, besides being a rejection of the values
of his youth, is a sign of civilization's collapse, of anti-intellectualism,
of contempt for reason. While there are shadings of those views in
contemporary culture, the truth lies elsewhere.

The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Buffy The Vampire Slayer touch a
cultural nerve that little science fiction of late has managed to do. All
three are about individual power and responsibility: in each, small,
seemingly ordinary people find themselves not just with the power to change
their worlds, but with accountability for their actions in doing so.

We long for that sense that we can make a difference, that we are not just
mere ants in the hill, that we, rather than the impersonal forces of
terrorism, globalism and recession, can shape our lives. We long for
responsibility, both in ourselves and in others.

If science fiction has declined in popularity, it's not because authors are
only writing tripe, as Robinson alleges. Nor is it because we in the
audience are a bunch of superstitious savages. It is because no storyteller
has convinced us that our pressing problems have a near-term echnological
solution.
Most open-minded storytellers and advocates who can read the needs of the
audience and respond with fresh solutions are, in fact, talking about
something other than a near-term, large-scale movement into space. Many are
looking backward, yes. "Where did we go wrong?" Is a much more honest
response right now than "here's my military-industrial technological
panacea."

Few are preaching the old-time space religion, either in fiction or in
advocacy, right now. There are some in both media still writing for the tiny
niche market of believers, but we're not drawing crowds because we're not
making a widely convincing case.

Some argue that a robust American space program will demonstrate our
strength in the world and 'show them dang terrorists.' Show them precisely
what is unclear. Robinson himself says that "inconceivable wealth and
limitless energy lie right over our heads, within easy reach, and we're too
dumb to get them."

Yes: legions of engineers at NASA and entrepreneurial rocket companies are
simply "too dumb" to get launch costs down to the point where mining an
asteroid is cheaper than mining Kentucky. Kids these days and their liberal
educations, no doubt.

Space does provide answers to many social challenges. Just not to the ones
at the top of the list. This is why, despite everybody's call for
Presidential leadership of the faltering NASA human space program, the White
House has issued only bland generalities, and is unlikely ever to do
otherwise. Space simply isn't the priority of anyone today other than a tiny
hardcore of true believers.

Likewise, space fiction's market share is miniscule, and the Star Trek
television franchise, long a touchstone of cultural concerns, is now every
bit as lost as the Shuttle program. Let's just be deeply thankful that
nobody at JSC has thought to solve the problem with a little orbital T&A.

For those who believe that space is a viable solution to contemporary
problems, what can we do?

The answer's very simple: prove it.

For engineers, prove it: build affordable civilian space transportation.
However small a start, however humble an effort, prove the concept.

For advocates, prove it: make the case without assuming we're all suddenly
transported back to the Fifties, or supplied with zillion-dollar budgets or
barrels of unobtanium. Leaders don't whine about how lame their troops are:
they train them, educate them, inspire them, and lead.

For storytellers, Spider Robinson included, prove it: if nobody else is
writing space fiction that that reaches us where we are, write some. Tell a
better story than the fantasists are doing. Show us how a movement into
space can give us back our liberty, individuality and power. Make us believe
space is the answer.

Or just take your rocking chair out onto the porch and complain there. The
rest of us have work to do.

The Spacefaring Web is a biweekly column © 2003 by John Carter McKnight, an
Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation Views expressed herein are
strictly the author's and do not necessarily represent Foundation policy.
Contact the author at kaseido@earthlink.net