[extropy-chat] Ben Bova: Science fiction can teach us something if we stop to learn

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Ben Bova: Science fiction can teach us something if we stop to learn
By BEN BOVA, Special to the Daily News
October 24, 2004
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_3276900,00.html

A few months ago the once-and-present mayor of Naples wrote an
editorial piece for the Daily News in which he twitted my political
opinions on the grounds that I am a writer of science fiction.

The mayor's implication was clear: science fiction, in his view, is
outlandish, silly stuff, not to be taken seriously.

I disagree. 

In fact, I think that if more people read science fiction we would
have a much clearer understanding of today's world and tomorrow's
possibilities, both for good and ill.

Very likely, Hizzoner hasn't read any serious science fiction. Most
people haven't. Their views of science fiction come from watching
"sci-fi flicks" in movie theaters or watching science fiction shows on
TV. With the exception of Star Trek and a precious few big-screen
movies, Hollywood's "sci fi" bears the same relationship to real
science fiction as Popeye cartoons bear to naval history.

Okay, then, what is real science fiction? And why should people take
it seriously? Real science fiction, in my view, consists of stories in
which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to
the plot that, if you take the scientific part out, the story
collapses. Think of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, for example. Take out
the science and the story evaporates.

Since science and technology are the major driving forces in our
society, this means that science fiction deals with the vital issues
of our day. Take a look at today's news headlines: supersonic
warplanes dropping smart bombs, stem cell research, computer viruses,
robotic probes of deep space and private space launches, nuclear power
and the proliferation of nuclear weapons, dangers of environmental
disasters, global warming — each of these issues (and more) have been
examined in science fiction stories 10, 20, even 50 years ago.

In essence, science fiction stories serve as simulations laboratories
where various visions of the future can be tried out, tested to see
how the might work and what effect they will have on us. Behind the
alien masks are very real concerns about our world and its future.

Science fiction stories have predicted just about everything that's
happened in past century or so, and many things that haven't happened.
The latter is true because some stories are written as warnings,
precautions, pointing out dangers that lie ahead. As Ray Bradbury
famously put it, "I'm not trying to predict the future; I'm trying to
prevent it!"

In my own work I've managed to predict the space race of the 1960s,
solar power satellites, the discovery of organic chemicals in
interstellar space, virtual reality, human cloning, the Strategic
Defense Initiative (Star Wars), the discovery of life on Mars, the
advent of international peacekeeping forces, the discovery of ice on
the Moon, electronic book publishing and zero-gravity sex.

I often tell people that my books are really historical novels, but
the history hasn't happened yet. I've been at this business for so
long, though, that some of my science fiction has indeed turned out to
be history.

If more people read science fiction, and paid attention to it, we
would have realized in 1940 that someone would build nuclear bombs.
And that a global nuclear balance of terror would lock international
politics into a stalemate that lasted until a defense against
nuclear-armed missiles began to take shape. Moreover, we would have
realized decades ago that nuclear weapons could be used by terrorists
to further their own murderous causes.

The sudden collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s took most
pundits and politicians by surprise. But not science fiction readers.

As Alvin Toffler put it in his best-selling book, science fiction is
the antidote to "future shock." The thing is, though, that so many
science fiction stories have presented so many different future
scenarios that you must read widely in the field to get your
anti-shock vaccine. Most of what you read won't happen, but whatever
actually does happen, you'll have read about long before it comes to
pass.

That's because there is no such thing as "the future." There isn't a
single, preordained, immutable future. We build the future for
ourselves. The future is created, minute by minute, by what we do -
and what we fail to do. Reading science fiction can help you to make
informed, intelligent choices about the future that you want to see,
the world of tomorrow that you want to live in.

If you can picture the history of the human race as a vast migration
of people across the landscape of time, then science fiction writers
are the scouts who travel on ahead and bring back reports on what the
territory of tomorrow may be like. They can warn us against badlands
and arid deserts. They can guide us toward sunny, well watered
grasslands and orchards of fruit-laden trees.

That's what I try to do in my fiction. I use the latest scientific
information available to produce a believable background, and then
place realistic human characters with all their strengths and
weaknesses, all their loves and hates, joys and fears, into that
background of the future.

My characters may be walking the rust-red deserts of Mars, or living
in a giant space habitat in orbit around the ringed planet Saturn.
They may be living a century in the future or a millennium in the
past. But wherever they are, whatever time frame there are in, they
are as realistic, as warm-bloodedly alive, as I can make them. Their
conflicts and their passions are the same as yours and mine, even
though they may exist far from here and now.

Science fiction throws strong highlights on today's world by going
beyond the here-and-now to show what the future might hold for us.
Because it deals with the future, which is the only part of our lives
that we might change, it is the most realistic form of literature in
the world.

Try it, and see for yourself. 


Naples resident Ben Bova has written more than 100 science fiction
novels and nonfiction books about science. His latest novel is "The
Silent War." Dr. Bova's web site address is www.benbova.net.