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Thinking out loud
11/7/13 23:08Near future science fiction is difficult.
I'm working at a scale of maybe 30-40 years in the future, so as distant from us as the 70s or 80s are -- which is not very distant at all in some ways, and very distant in others. Fashions have changed a great deal, but not in a way that's necessarily easy to describe in prose -- people wear shirts, pants, shoes, skirts, dresses. And if you do want to describe patterns, hemlines, poofy sleeves, you still need to do some work to answer all those questions about "Okay, is this just a person with bad fashion sense, or does everybody dress that way?"
Cell phones and the internet have changed people's lives enormously, but in other ways people's lives just... changed. Just because cultures are never static. Cultural norms have changed enough that I look at episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and find people's attitudes about sex and dating a little old-fashioned. But to do the "Okay, so what's changed, 30 years from now" worldbuilding -- not necessarily to predict anything, because that's futile anyway, but to plausibly create a just-a-bit-different world... in some ways it's fine to tweak a few places where things are likely to get better and some places where things are likely to get worse (though I am assuming that we pull it together at the last minute and avert the worst case scenarios for global climate change and running out of oil and water), but you need more than that. You need the arbitrary points of cultural difference, and you need to signpost them as points of cultural difference (as opposed to sloppy research, or "that's different because it's Canada.") And arguably one of the biggest changes is something that has everything to do with technological development and nothing to do with personal gadgets: globalization, outsourcing, and the resulting shift of the economy towards poorly-paid, precarious service jobs. What changes there?
I have read plenty of dystopias that didn't put nearly enough thought into, for example, how clothing production works in a society that's regressed to medieval tech levels because of zombies. (Short story idea: person responsible for sheep shearing or weaving or dyeing, in a society that's regressed to medieval tech levels because of $DystopiaReason.) But one would prefer to aim higher than that.
I almost want to tweak it to an AU where $HugeTechnologicalChange happened in the 80s-90s, so the story could take place in the present day; or else figure out a way for $HugeTechnologicalChange to happen only a few years before the story starts up. Maybe my editor will have suggestions in that direction if I ever do sell it. Until then I'll keep on keeping on, and try to quash down worries about "But will they still be wearing hoodies in THE FUTURE?"
I'm working at a scale of maybe 30-40 years in the future, so as distant from us as the 70s or 80s are -- which is not very distant at all in some ways, and very distant in others. Fashions have changed a great deal, but not in a way that's necessarily easy to describe in prose -- people wear shirts, pants, shoes, skirts, dresses. And if you do want to describe patterns, hemlines, poofy sleeves, you still need to do some work to answer all those questions about "Okay, is this just a person with bad fashion sense, or does everybody dress that way?"
Cell phones and the internet have changed people's lives enormously, but in other ways people's lives just... changed. Just because cultures are never static. Cultural norms have changed enough that I look at episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and find people's attitudes about sex and dating a little old-fashioned. But to do the "Okay, so what's changed, 30 years from now" worldbuilding -- not necessarily to predict anything, because that's futile anyway, but to plausibly create a just-a-bit-different world... in some ways it's fine to tweak a few places where things are likely to get better and some places where things are likely to get worse (though I am assuming that we pull it together at the last minute and avert the worst case scenarios for global climate change and running out of oil and water), but you need more than that. You need the arbitrary points of cultural difference, and you need to signpost them as points of cultural difference (as opposed to sloppy research, or "that's different because it's Canada.") And arguably one of the biggest changes is something that has everything to do with technological development and nothing to do with personal gadgets: globalization, outsourcing, and the resulting shift of the economy towards poorly-paid, precarious service jobs. What changes there?
I have read plenty of dystopias that didn't put nearly enough thought into, for example, how clothing production works in a society that's regressed to medieval tech levels because of zombies. (Short story idea: person responsible for sheep shearing or weaving or dyeing, in a society that's regressed to medieval tech levels because of $DystopiaReason.) But one would prefer to aim higher than that.
I almost want to tweak it to an AU where $HugeTechnologicalChange happened in the 80s-90s, so the story could take place in the present day; or else figure out a way for $HugeTechnologicalChange to happen only a few years before the story starts up. Maybe my editor will have suggestions in that direction if I ever do sell it. Until then I'll keep on keeping on, and try to quash down worries about "But will they still be wearing hoodies in THE FUTURE?"