January 6, 2019

Slice of PIE: Near Future Fiction – How Do You Write It When Everything’s Changing?


Using the Program Guide of the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California in August 2018 (to which I will be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. The link is provided below where this appeared on page 59…

Keeping Ahead of Tomorrow: Near Future Fiction

How do you successfully write near future fiction when reality is constantly catching up? Is it meant to be predictive? A warning? Can your story avoid becoming dated? Panelists explore stories, books, and authors that have done this successfully, as well as the techniques that make it work.

John Scalzi: Mr. “Whatever” himself! No one is more opinionated and expressive than this writer. His books are fun, thought-provoking, and apt to take a critical look at our future as a species.
Sarah Pinsker: Speculative fiction writer and musician, she is also a fellow CODEXIAN.
Linda Nagata: Incomparable writer of science fiction. While I’ve only read her short work, she’s fantastic.
Annalee Newitz: Co-founder of i09. Nothing more needs to be said.
Chen Qiufan: Chinese speculative fiction writer.

The perfect group then!

As I wasn’t there and we’re getting farther and farther from the event, I’m going to restrict my comments to what I’ve been trying to do with my own writing.

I know I’m not extensively published, but as regards my SF, I have been exploring ideas close to me. In particular, I wrote a short story about one way we might assist Alzheimer’s patients. As my father is currently in memory care facility, I wanted to explore ways we might better care for people like him.

So I tried to imitate the first “real” science fiction writer I ever read: Ray Bradbury. His “There Will Come Soft Rains” left a deep impression on my as a thirteen-year-old, so when I wanted to look at an idea that involved an “intelligent house”, his story was the first place I went to.

“And After Soft Rains, Daisies” was my attempt to show what it might be like to use an AI room to care for an Alzheimer’s patient. A session I’d attended on dealing with my dad had suggested that when you’re dealing with someone who has memory challenges, you should just “go with their perceptions”. So if Dad started talking as if he was living at one of his old homes, I was supposed to just act as if we were talking about that time period.

Needless to say, it’s hard to talk with Dad when he talks as if my mother is still living. I sort of refuse to do that…It’s also difficult to tell him that he can’t leave the memory care unit. My attempt at the story is here: https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2018/05/possibly-irritating-essay-and-today.html

Haven’t sold it, never will as it’s posted on my blog (duh!) and that counts as published.

Another near-future story is out in submission (one rejection so far, from Clarkesworld), but it came out of my three week sojourn in South Korea with my son, his wife, and my grandkids. The South Koreans I met and the museums I visited…as well as “how” they live, and their tenacity (South Korea was within HOURS of being annihilated when the United States, along with other UN countries, finally quit dithering and stepped into Six Two Five (in reference to the day North Korea invaded, June 25, 1950) at the very last instant when the North Koreans reached something call the Pusan Perimeter. I was there, standing on the part of the bridge that was intentionally blown up (and later replaced -- that's my DIL, son, and grandkids passing over the very spot...) where the UN stopped North Korea, China, and Russia) – lead me to believe…well, hopefully the story will see print and then you can read it yourself!

Of my other near-future ideas, one looked at infiltrating North Korea with meme-carrying cardboard cockroaches (of course, the Chinese and Russians had the same idea); another tempted a young tribal chief to use biological warfare against North and South Dakota; another still looked at the impact of aliens snatching Humans and using them in First Contact situations – after providing us with the plans for micro-fusion reactors. The understanding is that we are in debt to the intelligences who gave them to us. And the governments KNOW…

Anyway, I love speculating on technology in the near future – now I just have to figure out how to present my ideas so I can sell them!

Image: Taken in South Korea, August 2018

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