This week on my podcast, I read my latest Locus Magazine column, “The Age of Vapor,” about the role science fiction imaginaires plays in fueling high-tech investment bubbles.
It’s one thing to make everything about imaginary technology when you’re writing SF. The point of those imaginative exercises is to illuminate: To provoke reflection on our present moment, to inspire or warn about the future.But spinning narratives about imaginary technology as investment advice is a very different matter. The point here is to obscure: to convince investors that a company with a 90% market share will somehow continue to grow, to stave off the day when Stein’s Law (“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”) asserts itself.
