Campfyre Stories

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then you probably already know of my love for paranoid science fiction.  From the time I was a teenager, I was fascinated by the idea of seeing what the future holds through the eyes of a well-written novelist.  Even looking at my library today, you’ll see William Gibson, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Philip K. Dick and many others scattered through the library shelves.

My movie collection is similar and possibly easier to define as paranoid sci-fi: Total Recall, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Mars Attacks, Logan’s Run, Soylent Green, video tapes of Aeon Flux…  Even my science fiction television of choice (The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone) the more paranoid the story line the better as far as I’m concerned.  I’m not as interested in time travel or space exploration as the evolution of our own society and dystopian futures.

I watched the movie Strange Days today.  This is a movie that was released in 1995 and took place on New Year’s Eve 1999.  For sci-fi, this was a very short period of time, however, the stretch of the imagination that it would have required was minor, even for 1995.

I watched this, as they discussed the world ending from a biblical standpoint and as no mention was made of the Y2k problem.  In fact, there’s a certain point in the movie where someone makes mention to "2k" and the others in question don’t understand the reference.  Looking back, 6 years later, it seems that the primary mistake here was in only giving themselves 4 years to work with because a lot of the things that they mentioned have happened in the years since.  The increased police presence on the streets of major American cities and the cost of a gallon of gas well above $2 just to name two.

The thing is that we’re not living in a violently dangerous crime-riddled nation.  Even our major cities are not on the verge of martial law, and they certainly weren’t in 1999.  We’re not seeing the techno-junkies ruining their lives by jacking in and wiring up.  Sure, the dawn of a new millennium is a convenient plot device, but this is something that I’ve seen sci-fi do forever.

George Orwell’s 1984.  When it was written, 1984 was so far in the future it was inconceivable.  I think that we still run the risk of the Orwellian dystopia coming to fruition eventually, but even in 1948, even looking at the leaps and bounds that technology made in that short 30-some years, it was rather silly to think that something that drastic would take place on such a short timeline.

The ideas come to fruition, but not on a timeline of anyone’s making.  The idea of car phones (with a long cord connecting them) was conceptualized long before the first car phone was even begun to be developed.  Smart houses and healing nanobots are the stuff of the Outer Limits, but they exist in today’s world.  Even words that are taken for granted like robots and computers were created through the fiction process.  We cannot deny or avoid the simple fact that life and society and technology are, in fact, molded in part by science fiction and the ideas therein.

But, why, are the timelines within the genre of science fiction so ridiculously sped up?  Those of us with a strong love of the genre WANT to be frightened.  We want to look at politics and history and current events, within a science fiction framework and we want to be made to think and maybe, to some extent, to fear a little.  We read 1984, those of us who read it *after* 1984 anyway, and we think "Wow, I could see something like that happening."  The thing is, we don’t give it a time frame. 

Do the authors of paranoid science fiction give us unrealistic timelines, settings so close to where we are right now that it could never happen, so that we have a way to dismiss the overall concept?  Does this somehow allay the fears of others that maybe what they’re watching on the screen (or reading on the pages) is not ever going to happen in real life?  Is it just too scary a concept?

I find that hard to believe since these frightening concepts usually end up with happy endings.  Sure, you’re a handful of people less than you were when you started, but that happens within most genres.  To me, the only thing that makes science fiction more frightening than, say, horror, is the idea that what came out of the author’s mind is something that probably has a basis in reality (current or past) and could eventually happen.

So why set unrealistic timelines?  Why not set these things hundreds of years in the future?  Even 50 years is a reasonable time period to work with when looking at the rapidly changing pace of technology, but 4 years?  Even 20 is pretty silly.  I’ll admit there are some science fiction concepts that I believe I will see come to pass within my lifetime, but at 30 years old, another 50 years is not an unreasonable guess on my part.

What do you think?  Is it more frightening when these sci-fi events take place right around the metaphorical corner or when they take place in a vaguer "we don’t really know when" kind of future?  For me, I can tell you with certainty, it’s less about the when and more about whether or not it makes sense.  If they set it too close to now for me, then the movie or book won’t hold up for as many years before it becomes a piece of dated pop-culture.  Personally, I want my science fiction to stand apart from pop culture and, as it gets closer to the vaguely-given timeline, for people to say "hey, wow, that [minor event that led to the catalyst of the story] actually happened."

~FG };^>