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!
Program Book: https://www.worldcon76.org/images/publications/WC76_PocketProgram_2018_Final_WEB08152018.pdf
Image: Taken in South Korea, August 2018
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