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the ProGressive aPocalyPse aNd other futurismic deliGhts
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The Progressive Apocalypse
and Other Futurismic Delights
(Originally published in
Locus,
July 2007.)
Of course, science fiction is a literature of the present. Many’s the
science fiction writer who uses the future as a warped mirror for
reflecting back the present day, angled to illustrate the hidden
strangeness buried by our invisible assumptions: Orwell turned
1948 into
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. But even when the fictional
future isn’t a parable about the present day, it is necessarily a
creation of the present day, since it reflects the present day biases
that infuse the author. Hence Asimov’s Foundation, a New Deal-
esque project to think humanity out of its tribulations through
social interventionism.
Bold sf writers eschew the future altogether, embracing a fu-
turistic account of the present day. William Gibson’s forthcom-
ing
Spook Country
is an act of “speculative presentism,” a book so
futuristic it could only have been set in 2006, a book that exploits
retrospective historical distance to let us glimpse just how alien
and futuristic our present day is.
Science fiction writers aren’t the only people in the business of
predicting the future. Futurists — consultants, technology colum-
nists, analysts, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurial pitchmen
— spill a lot of ink, phosphors, and caffeinated hot air in describing
a vision for a future where we’ll get more and more of whatever it
is they want to sell us or warn us away from. Tomorrow will fea-
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