Why We Need Big, Bold Science Fiction

The future isn't what it used to be. And neither is science fiction. While books about space exploration and robots once inspired young people to become scientists and engineers?and inspired grownup engineers and scientists to do big things?in recent decades the field has become dominated by escapist fantasies and depressing dystopias. That could be contributing to something that I see as a problem. It seems that too many technically savvy people, engineers in particular, are going to work for Web startups or investment firms. There's nothing wrong with such companies, but we also need engineers to design bold new things for use in the physical world: space colonies instead of social media.

If I'm right, that's bad for all of us. But are we really losing the will to do big things or are the big things just different than they used to be? I asked around and, on this subject, found science-fiction writers to be pessimistic.

One of today's best SF authors is Neal Stephenson, whose books include Cryptonomicon and The Diamond Age. In a recent article in the World Policy Journal, he writes that during science fiction's so-called golden age?roughly the late 1930s to the late 1960s?the stories being published were about big things and big breakthroughs: moon rockets, Mars bases, robots, and teleportation. Perhaps by coincidence, those were times when the United States was actually doing big things and making big breakthroughs. Now, writes Stephenson, "[s]peaking ?broadly, the techno-optimism of the Golden Age of SF has given way to fiction written in a darker, more skeptical, and ambiguous tone."

Those stories can be good?some credit Stephenson's own 1992 book, Snow Crash, with anticipating the social media revolution?but are they good for us? Or have we been focusing our imagination and efforts on things that are amusing but unimportant? Stephenson recently told The New York Times, "We can't Facebook our way out of the current economic status quo." He is calling for new ways to expand civilization, not new forums for gossip.

I called Stephenson and asked him to elaborate. "There was some moment in the late '60s and '70s when people thought we had enough tech," he says. "Technology was too dangerous, and people became reflexively skeptical of new ideas. If you stay that way for a couple of decades, it can come back to bite you. There's also a less obvious danger, which is that if science and technology stop wowing us, people start to develop skepticism about the scientific method."

That's a good point. In the 1950s and 1960s, scientists could cite antibiotics, nuclear energy, and moon flights as evidence that science just plain worked. This gave them credibility on a range of issues.

Facebook doesn't have the same impact?it's fun, but even its users don't see it as an achievement on par with Apollo. Stephenson worries about that: "We've had a lost generation of space geeks, who never really got the full brainwash."

But are things really that bad? I asked another eminent science-fiction author, Vernor Vinge (A Fire Upon the Deep, The Children of the Sky), to weigh in and, alas, he agreed. Science fiction, Vinge says, has become more escapist but less inspiring. He believes the real problem isn't to be found in science fiction, but in society. In particular, he argues that we've lost "speed of implementation." We went from experimental jets to the F-104 in a decade, and to outer space in just 10 more years. Nowa?days, we're not so fast, at least with high-visibility projects. (Just look at the bureaucratic inertia around replacing the space shuttle.)

In my day job as a law professor, I tell my administrative law students the same thing. Not far from our campus in Knoxville is Norris Dam. The first dam built by the Tennessee Valley Authority, it was generating electricity three years after the TVA Act passed Congress. If the TVA were created today, three years wouldn't even be enough time to produce the environmental impact statement. Sure, you can roll out a new social media platform or an iPhone app in a hurry, but do Twitter and Angry Birds improve lives the way rural electrification did?

There is one solution on the horizon. If, as Vinge expects, we reach the Singularity?a moment when artificial intelligences become more powerful than human brains?in a few decades, "we'll have far more imaginative creatures around," he says. So long as they're not Skynet.

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