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Throwback Thursdays: Why the Future Never Gets the SF Right

Welcome to Throwback Thursdays on the Tor/Forge blog! Every other week, we’re delving into our newsletter archives and sharing some of our favorite posts.

In the January 2012 Tor Newsletter, author Michael Flynn examined the problem of science and technology in far-future sci-fi. He decided, in his own words, “to put a banana in the tailpipe of the engine of progress,” in order to make the world he created more recognizable to those of us here in the present. He explains how the world of his Spiral Arm series works in this blast from the past. Be sure to check back in every other week for more!

In the Lion's Mouth by Michael FlynnBy Michael Flynn

The problem with near-future science fiction is that the fiction is over-taken by events. My novel Firestar, recently re-issued by Tor, concerns the near “future” of 1999-2010 and the hot scoop is that things didn’t work out that way. Some of it, sure, including, alas, the predicted recession. But Serbia is no longer the Bad Boy of the Balkans (nor are the Balkans the Place to Keep an Eye On) and we don’t have regularly-scheduled ballistic transport or single-stage to orbit or… However, anyone who thinks the main basic function of SF is to commit journalism on the future will be perennially disappointed.

The problem with far-future science fiction, like the Spiral Arm series (In the Lion’s Mouth, Jan 2012) is different. We can no more imagine the world of seven thousand years to come than Sumerian peasants could imagine Manhattan. But we need to keep it intelligible. What we imagine of the far future is no more likely to be accurate than Sumerian tales of crossing the sky in flaming chariots. Rockets, maybe; but not flaming chariots.

Yet “the accelerating pace of change” is such a cliché that we might ask, “What if it isn’t? After all, for most of human history, change has been minimal. Our Sumerian peasant would find life among the today’s Marsh Arabs full of wonders—iron tools!—but not incomprehensible.

So to keep the Spiral Arm intelligible to modern “Sumerians,” I decided to put a banana in the tailpipe of the engine of progress. There is precedent.

Science and technology need not go hand in hand. China achieved a high technology without developing natural science. And scattered individuals in ancient Hellas and medieval Islam pursued a personal interest in natural philosophy without applying it to “base mechanics.” Only in the Latin West did a passion for technological innovation develop alongside an institutionalized interest in investigating Nature.

The Scientific Revolution combined them. No more was Nature to be studied simply to grasp and appreciate its Beauty. Its purpose would henceforth be to invent Useful Stuff and extend man’s Dominion over Nature. Science, in short, changed from Art Appreciation to Engineering.

Nothing like this happened in China, thought Joseph Needham, because the Chinese lacked a concept of the universe as a created artifact, and therefore had no expectation of a rational order waiting to be discovered. Other historians have linked the stillbirths of science to a persistent belief in the Great Year and “eternal returns.” The ancients—Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs, Mayans, Hindus, et al.—extrapolated from the cycles of the sun, the seasons, the heavens to an endlessly repeating universe, destroyed and reborn whenever the planets returned to some “original” configuration.

But this belief proved fatal to science. If an eternal and uncreated universe repeats itself endlessly, then whatever can happen has happened, again and again, and the natural laws we discover are only transient configurations of particles eternally in motion. Wait a while. They’ll change.

This is the outlook I superimposed on Spiral Arm society. Scientific progress stopped long ago. Techs apply “the Wisdom of the Ancients” by rote, recite the prayers (formulas) to be followed, but have lost all sense that these things are ordered by deeper principles.

Can it happen? The endless universe has been making a comeback courtesy of Hegel and his disciples: Schelling, Engels, Nietzsche, et al. Even scientists imagine multiverses and endlessly repeated Big Bangs. And—OMG!!!—the Mayan Long Count is ending!!!!

This article is originally from the January 2012 Tor newsletter. Sign up for the Tor newsletter now, and get similar content in your inbox every month!

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Seamless Garments

On the Razor's Edge by Michael Flynn

Written by Michael Flynn

Exempting fables and other surrealisms, a novel is an artifact constructed from bits and pieces of the author’s experience and research that seeks to emulate nature. (And the Latin term for a construction is fictio.) We praise a novel when we say it is “true to life” (and note the distinction between truth and fact).

But some constructions are better than others. You ought not see the seams and the fasteners where disparate parts were put together.

On the Razor’s Edge, the fourth book in the Spiral Arm, features two rival interstellar combines: the United League of the Periphery and the Confederation of Central Worlds. Neither is an “empire” because the distances between stars require weeks, sometimes months, of travel, and weaken the effectiveness of government-from-the-center. Each world tends to go its own way.

The governing class of the Confederation (“the Names”) is more committed to centralized rule than the more far-flung and anarchic League and over the centuries it has developed a special institution of highly skilled troubleshooters called The Shadows of the Names. Here is where some construction work comes in, so put on your hard hats. We don’t want a future too much like the present or recent past. That’s like aliens being humans in rubber suits. One way of handling this is to bolt together bits and pieces of different cultures.

Organizationally, the Shadows are based on the tu ch’a yüan (the Censoriate) of Ming China, whose job was to shadow and censure government officials for improper public and private behavior. In a centralizing milieu like Ming China, the Censoriate helped ensure that every village mayor in the far flung empire toed the line. The Names likewise need something like the Censoriate to keep reins on their governors and generals and pull them toward the center.

But the Shadows are less a bureaucracy than the Ming Censoriate, (and more organized than the Frankish “eyes and ears of the king”). They are also warriors of exceptional skill. Psychologically, the Shadows are based on the decadent Franco-Burgundian knighthood of the 15th century, who wore gauds of honor and pageantry over underwear of grim pragmatism. To ensure the loyalty of the Shadows themselves, Shadows are indoctrinated from an early age in a quasi-knightly order packed in a fluffy cotton of tradition and ceremony. (Also, they are sent out in pairs. The second is unknown to the first and tasked with slaying the first should his loyalty waver.)

So if we imagine Frankish “eyes and ears” with the skills of Japanese ninjas organized like the Ming shadow bureaucracy and trained to devotion like the Knights Templar, we get something very like the Shadows of the Names.

One problem: A culture unfolds from within, and its various facets have a sort of organic unity. It’s difficult to take institutions from various cultures, bolt them together, and expect the assemblage to seem realistic. Ming shadows and Burgundian knights arose within particular cultural contexts with particular histories. We ought to wonder if the seams show.

Seven millennia of future history in the Spiral Arm has dissolved everything into a thoroughly blended historical soup. There is no longer any sense that this is Chinese and that is European. The historical soup has been poured into very different bowls in a series of renaissances over the course of time. The Shadows are not knights, and are not commissioners of the tu ch’a yüan. They are Shadows of the Names.

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From the Tor/Forge July 8th newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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More from the July 8th Tor/Forge newsletter:

Starred Review: On the Razor’s Edge by Michael Flynn

Starred Review: On the Razor’s Edge by Michael Flynn

Image Place holder  of - 43On The Razor’s Edge is a magnificent and satisfyingly open-ended conclusion to the tale of the civil war between the Shadows of the Names…It is a beautifully told story with colorful characters out of epic tradition, a tight and complex plot, and solid pacing.”

Michael Flynn’s On the Razor’s Edge gets a starred review in Booklist!*

Here’s the full review, from the May 15th issue:

starred-review-gif On The Razor’s Edge is a magnificent and satisfyingly open-ended conclusion to the tale of the civil war between the Shadows of the Names. The Harper, Mearana, is kidnapped by Ravn Olafsdotter or, more accurately, manipulated into venturing to Terra to rescue her father, and Bridget ban, as Ravn and Mearana know, follows with a pack of Hounds. Gidula, one of the rebels, holds Donovan, demanding that he retrieve the secrets held between the fractured personalities of his mind. Flynn’s epic style, applied to a semimedieval culture in a space-opera backdrop, continues to be greatly compelling. There are layers of conspiracy and secrets, both because of history so ancient it has passed beyond legend and as a result of the complex duplicity involved in the dealings of Those of Name. There is a spectacular showdown at the end, a battle quite worthy of all that has gone before, and a fascinating narrative of regime change and rebellion. It is a beautifully told story with colorful characters out of epic tradition, a tight and complex plot, and solid pacing.

On the Razor’s Edge will be published on July 2nd.

Booklist is a subscription-only website.

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Why the Future Never Gets the SF Right

In the Lion's Mouth by Michael FlynnBy Michael Flynn

The problem with near-future science fiction is that the fiction is over-taken by events.  My novel Firestar, recently re-issued by Tor, concerns the near “future” of 1999-2010 and the hot scoop is that things didn’t work out that way.  Some of it, sure, including, alas, the predicted recession.  But Serbia is no longer the Bad Boy of the Balkans (nor are the Balkans the Place to Keep an Eye On) and we don’t have regularly-scheduled ballistic transport or single-stage to orbit or…  However, anyone who thinks the main basic function of SF is to commit journalism on the future will be perennially disappointed.

The problem with far-future science fiction, like the Spiral Arm series (In the Lion’s Mouth, Jan 2012) is different.  We can no more imagine the world of seven thousand years to come than Sumerian peasants could imagine Manhattan.  But we need to keep it intelligible.  What we imagine of the far future is no more likely to be accurate than Sumerian tales of crossing the sky in flaming chariots.  Rockets, maybe; but not flaming chariots.

Yet “the accelerating pace of change” is such a cliché that we might ask, “What if it isn’t?  After all, for most of human history, change has been minimal.  Our Sumerian peasant would find life among the today’s Marsh Arabs full of wonders—iron tools!—but not incomprehensible.

So to keep the Spiral Arm intelligible to modern “Sumerians,” I decided to put a banana in the tailpipe of the engine of progress.  There is precedent.

Science and technology need not go hand in hand.  China achieved a high technology without developing natural science.  And scattered individuals in ancient Hellas and medieval Islam pursued a personal interest in natural philosophy without applying it to “base mechanics.”  Only in the Latin West did a passion for technological innovation develop alongside an institutionalized interest in investigating Nature.

The Scientific Revolution combined them.  No more was Nature to be studied simply to grasp and appreciate its Beauty.  Its purpose would henceforth be to invent Useful Stuff and extend man’s Dominion over Nature.  Science, in short, changed from Art Appreciation to Engineering.

Nothing like this happened in China, thought Joseph Needham, because the Chinese lacked a concept of the universe as a created artifact, and therefore had no expectation of a rational order waiting to be discovered.  Other historians have linked the stillbirths of science to a persistent belief in the Great Year and “eternal returns.”  The ancients—Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Aztecs, Mayans, Hindus, et al.—extrapolated from the cycles of the sun, the seasons, the heavens to an endlessly repeating universe, destroyed and reborn whenever the planets returned to some “original” configuration.

But this belief proved fatal to science.  If an eternal and uncreated universe repeats itself endlessly, then whatever can happen has happened, again and again, and the natural laws we discover are only transient configurations of particles eternally in motion.  Wait a while.  They’ll change.

This is the outlook I superimposed on Spiral Arm society.  Scientific progress stopped long ago.  Techs apply “the Wisdom of the Ancients” by rote, recite the prayers (formulas) to be followed, but have lost all sense that these things are ordered by deeper principles.

Can it happen?  The endless universe has been making a comeback courtesy of Hegel and his disciples: Schelling, Engels, Nietzsche, et al.  Even scientists imagine multiverses and endlessly repeated Big Bangs.  And—OMG!!!—the Mayan Long Count is ending!!!!

…………………………

From the Tor/Forge January newsletter. Sign up to receive our newsletter via email.

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More from our January newsletter:

News: Prometheus Finalists are Announced!

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow, The January Dancer by Michael Flynn and Half a Crown by Jo Walton, have been chosen as three of the six finalists in this year’s Prometheus Award for Best Novel.

Here are all six finalists for the Best Novel category of this year’s Prometheus Award, which honors the best pro-freedom or anti-authoritarian novel of the previous year:

The Best Novel winner will receive a one-ounce gold coin and a personalized plaque. Winners in several Prometheus Award categories, including the Hall of Fame (Best Classic Fiction), will be announced during the 67th World Science Fiction Convention August 6-10, 2009 in Montréal, Quebec, Canada.

Congratulations to all involved!

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