The world has finally caught up with science fiction. This sentence seems more appropriate in 2018.
Science fiction and the world. They created each other. The influence of the outside world on science fiction is obviously greater, but the influence of science fiction on the world is more targeted. The two were evened out.
Moreover, there is no dispute that we live in a world of science fiction. We are surrounded by signs of a new order: our lives are very different from those of our fathers, and even more so from those of our fathers. The pace of life is getting faster and faster, and we are either wrapped up in it or left behind. We ride on the back of the galloping horse of technology, and if we take the risk of jumping, we will break our necks. We— or at least most people— sit in the living room and look at images that can move and talk. We ride in cars up to 100 miles per hour on wide tarmac roads across continents, or fly through the air in a vehicle with a speed close to the speed of sound. We live in houses where the temperature adjusts automatically, and work in tall buildings that soar into the sky. We — or at least some of us — have the power to destroy another country or even an entire world. We — or at least some of us — have landed on the moon.
These are the words I wrote more than forty years ago. They are still real, but they are unremarkable. Today we have built a space station; we have observed Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune; we have mapped Mars, and our robots have probed the surface of Mars; with the help of orbiting telescopes, we have expanded our understanding of the universe and distinguished the smallest molecular structures through giant accelerators; we have cloned sheep and pigs to discuss whether to clone humans; we have cracked the human genome; we have eliminated diseases such as smallpox, but we have discovered new diseases that can wipe out all of humanity The computers we use on our desks are as computing power as house-sized machines as they were more than forty years ago; we do business and communicate with people on the Internet, which allows us to stay in touch with anywhere on earth. Whether it's in Lawrence, Kansas, or on the streets of New York or Shanghai, we talk to people through mobile phones, or send and receive messages; sometimes we can take electronic photos through devices we wear on our wrists and instantly transmit them to anywhere in the world; we keep getting news from the news media, which didn't exist in 1975...
What kind of world is this? Isn't this a science fiction world?
More than forty years ago, the questions people asked to science fiction writers had changed from "Where do you crazy ideas come from?" Becomes "Now that man has landed on the moon, what else can you write?" ”。 Today, these questions have become irrelevant as science and technology turn the imagination of science fiction into reality every day. More than forty years ago, Isaac M. Isaac Asimov has pointed out that we live in a science fiction world: spaceships and nuclear power (and the threat of nuclear war), planes faster than sound, antibiotics, landing on the moon (which, in Asimov's view, is the most dream come true) – these are all things that he and Robert E. Lee have ever lived in. A. Heinlein and other writers wrote about it in 1939 and the early 1940s.
……
Back in 1863, from his first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, Jules Verne began describing the wonders that originated in scientists' labs and engineers' drawing boards. Kurd Lasswitz wrote On Two Planets in 1897; Gensback created Ralph 124C 41+ in the United States in 1911; and earlier, in 1849, Edgar Allan Poe published Mellonta Tauta. His books and stories describe the wonders of the future and the great journey through the wonderful, wonderful, exciting world of the future. However, for more than a century, especially after 1926, most people (including a few famous scientists) scoffed at concepts in science fiction, such as aircraft heavier than air, nuclear weapons and atomic energy, and space flight, and any work that touched on these concepts was dismissed as "pure science fiction".
The Great Scientist Ralph 124C 41+depicts space travel, plastic surgery, fluorescent lights, coin-operated record players, liquid fertilizers, megaphones, aircraft, sleep learning, solar energy, radar, stainless steel, microfilm, television, radio networks, air Chinese word1, hydroponics, tape recorders, water sports shows, vending machines, night baseball, clothes made of fiberglass, synthetic fibers—all written in 1911.
Science fiction is based on the idea that the world is constantly changing, our way of life is changing, and human beings must either adapt themselves to the environment or adapt the environment to humans, otherwise they will perish. This is the theme of Alvin Toffler's best-selling 1970 book Future Shock, in which the author writes:
The wild current of change is so powerful that it has overturned institutions, changed our values, and withered our roots. Change is the process of future invasion of human life, and we must examine it carefully, not only from the macro perspective of history, but also from the perspective of living people who have personally experienced change.
Today, no one talks about the impact of the future. This is not because people are immune to What Toffler calls "diseases" caused by "the early arrival of the future", but because change has long been taken for granted and is not worth mentioning. In the early 1970s, however, Toffler pointed out that science fiction can make people immune to future shocks. He quotes another "Futurist" (a term that has become well known over the past few decades) Robert Jungk about education:
Nowadays, people focus almost exclusively on learning what has already happened or done. Tomorrow...... At least one-third of the courses and exercises should focus on developing science, technology, philosophy and the crises that people have predicted, as well as possible future answers to these challenges.
Toffler went on to point out:
We don't have "futuristic literature" to use in these courses, but we do have literature about the future, which includes not only the great utopian novels, but also contemporary science fiction... Science fiction is a power to expand your mind and can be used to cultivate the habit of predicting the future. Our children should learn from Arthur B. The novels of C. Arthur Charles Clark, William Tenn, Robert Heinlein, Ray Douglas Bradbury, and Robert Sheckley are not because they can teach them about spaceships and time machines, but because they can lead young minds to explore politics, society, psychology, and so on. The jungle of ethical affairs, these are the things they must face when they grow up. Science fiction will be a must-read for the "Elementary Course in Futurology.".
This is not to say that the science fiction world we live in is the world that science fiction writers want to see. Sometimes, writers like Ray Bradbury do not aim to foreshadow the future, but to prevent it. Yes, most of them can't wait for the future, and their readers are different from those who are afraid of change and succumb to the impact of the future, who do not want to wait for the future to come in a step-by-step manner, but want to see the future in advance by reading novels about the future. But in novels about the future, there are almost as many stories of caution as stories that whitewash the future, and even the most wonderful technological paradise has one or two apples with worms.
Ecological problems, overpopulation, the horrors of mechanized warfare, the misuse of nuclear energy, brainwashing in psychological warfare, social brainwashing of people —all these, and many more, have been the object of condemnation by science fiction writers long before others see them as problems.
This ability to foreshadow future crises, vividly express the consequences and implications of crises to humanity, and propose other alternatives to avoid crises is one of the main functions of science fiction. In the face of its vivid expressiveness, the world-renowned power of science fiction has been eclipsed.
If this is the case, science fiction should be considered the literature of the science fiction world. That happy time has not yet come (this is what I wrote in 1975), but this great day is bound to come.
That happy age may have arrived, but it was discovered that, like those tech havens, it was an apple with worms. Now that Harlan Jay Ellison in 1967 in his introduction to Dangerous Visions could say this: "The new millennium is just around the corner." What is happening has made us what is happening. Then, in 2018, we can look back and say, "Everything that has happened has made us happen." ”
I wrote in 1975: "More and more people are reading and watching more science fiction than ever before. More science fiction books are published, more science fiction movies are coming out, more science fiction DRAMA series are being planned..." In 1972 alone, 348 science fiction and fantasy novels came out. That was when the science fiction publishing industry began to flourish, growing at a rate of 50% per year, reaching 1,200 publications in 1980; after a few years, it grew to 2,000 annual publications in the late 1980s, and has remained so today. One notable change, however, is that fantasy novels, which originally accounted for only a small share of the market, have now grown rapidly, creating a situation of competition with science fiction, or even surpassing the latter. Peter Pringle argues that it all began with the publication of J. Berger in the United States from 1965 to 1966. R. R. Tolkien The astonishing success of R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; the subsequent Conan series, and Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, Ursula Lee's Baby, and Ursula Lee's The Lord of the Rings, which followed a year or two, followed by Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby. Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea and Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn are also fueling the wave. The rise of fantasy fiction may simply be a trend sparked by a best-selling trilogy, or perhaps a sign of writers abandoning the pursuit of rational answers.
In 1975, I traced the popular history of science fiction films, from the late 1940s and early 1950s to Planet of the Apes, Dr. Strangelove), The Andromeda Strain, A Clockwork Orange, and the most invested science fiction film of the time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Later, in 1977, Star Wars and Contact of the Third Kind were released; in 1978, the movie Superman was released; in 1979, Alien and the film version of Star Trek were released. Suddenly, science fiction movies not only shed the label of second-rate movies and drive-in theater movies, but also became feature films that attracted a lot of investment and made money — and more importantly, made money. In fact, most of the most profitable movies of all time have been science fiction films, including E. T. Aliens, Star Wars and its various sequels and prequels, the Raiders of the Lost Ark series, Jurassic Park and its sequels, Independence Day, Batman and sequels, and so on.
In 1975, Twilight Zone and Star Trek were a thing of the past, and their success in the field of television dramas would not materialize until in the future, notably Star Trek and its sequels, Such as The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager. Their success has also been perpetuated by other TELEVISION series, including the TV series Immortal, based on my novel The Immortal. The multiplication of the number of networks and cable television provided access to the famous Babylon 5 and the blockbuster "The X-Files," and half of the new tv series that came out since then seem to be based on science fiction or fantasy. Later, a specialized science fiction television channel was born and operated very successfully, with its own productions and movies.
Long-form science fiction has never been favored by publishers, and once sold an average of only 5,000 hardcover copies, they are now considered to have bestseller potential. Arthur M. C. Clarke's novel of the same name as the film 2001: A Space Odyssey sold well in the late 1960s, but this achievement was by the mid-1970s by his novels "Meets Rama," Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, frank Herbert's "Dune." The third installment of the Dune series, The Children of Dune, catches up. In 1982, with the science fiction trio's novels — Isaac Asimov's Foundation's Edge, Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two , and Robert A. Heinlein 's Friday — simultaneously onto the New York Times bestseller list, a new era of science fiction arrived. Also on the list is Marion Zimmer Bradley's feminist fantasy novel About King Arthur's legend, The Mists of Avalon.
At the same time, science fiction began to gain a place in mainstream literature, and mainstream writers began to increasingly use concepts and writing methods that were once considered unique to science fiction. In 1975, I mentioned in this book such things as Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Herman Wouk, Ayn Rand, John Hersey, Pierre Boulle, Anthony Burgess, john Mainstream writers including Barth), Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov and Kurt Vonnegut. Later on, we can add John Updike, Margaret Atwood, Don DeLillo, Doris Lessing, Marge Piercy, Joan Piercy, and Joan Delillo to the list. M. Orel, Angela Carter, Anne Rice, and people like Abe Kobo, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, Carlos Fuentes, and Gabriel García. Writers such as Gabriel García Márquez who write in other languages.
Not all of these writers consider themselves science fiction writers or are willing to let others classify their work as science fiction. Some, especially Latin American writers, wrote about magic realism, while others, like Atwood, considered their work to belong to mainstream literature and denied that they were writing science fiction. Other writers, such as Vonnegut, insisted on removing the word "science fiction" from their books, severing their early association with science fiction. However, science fiction writer Ursula M. K. Le guin and Frederik Pohl won the National Book Prize, Ray Bradbury was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award, and writers like William Golding of the United Kingdom, Harry Martinson of Sweden and Doris Lessing of the United Kingdom even won the Nobel Prize.
What attracts readers and critics who are hard to talk about?
"Fiction is a dream expressed in words," said John W. Bush, editor-in-chief of Novel Science Fiction. W. Campbell writes, "Science fiction contains the hopes, dreams, and fears of a tech-based society (and for some, these dreams may be nightmares). ”
"It has been pointed out that science fiction is the 'supernatural' writing of materialists," writes Groff Conklin, the first major anthology published after World War II, The Best of Science Fiction, "to read true science fiction without compromising on the 'original self.'" If you are willing to give the word "reason" a certain degree of flexibility, then all these stories have rational explanations. ”
"Science fiction is a fantasy story of putting on a tight corset." Sam Merwin, editor-in-chief of Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in the late 1940s, said.
"Social science fiction is a branch of literature that focuses on the impact of scientific progress on humanity." Isaac Asimov wrote. Asimov is not only a science fiction giant, but also known for his large number of popular science works.
At this point, we have stepped into a sea of definitions in which it takes a lot of effort and often nothing to get out of— in fact, Samuel R. Delaney insists that science fiction is undefinable, and Arthur C. Clarke gives the definition that science fiction is an undefinable branch of fiction.
If I had to give me a short definition, I would call science fiction "the literature of change," but I also like to use the definition of "literature of all mankind," which is similar to Aldis's slightly longer definition: "Science fiction is a quest for man's definition and his role in the universe, which exists in the advanced and chaotic knowledge (or science) of man..."
Science fiction is difficult to define because science fiction is difficult to discern by a certain behavior, a place, or even a scene like other genres. In fact, it's a superhuman novel that can be blended with any other genre of fiction, such as science fiction detectives or science fiction romance stories. Western stories, gothic novels, horror novels, or most commonly adventure novels can all be combined with science fiction. Perhaps the only criterion for defining science fiction is its attitude: science fiction contains the basic idea that the universe is knowable, and that humanity's mission is to understand the universe, to discover where the universe and humanity came from, how it evolved to where it is today, where the universe and humanity are going, what laws are constraining them, and what will eventually end and how it will end.
Most definitions have a common denominator, which is that fantasy fiction evolves into science fiction when technology begins to influence the way people live, when the future replaces history as the guide to people's decision-making, and what is about to happen becomes more important than what has already happened. Science fiction is a little more plausible than it was when the Industrial Revolution began more than two hundred years ago. Before the middle of the 18th century, even in the eyes of scientists, science was only a philosophical pursuit, and did not have much practical value. In fact, science often gets scientists into trouble because their findings often contradict deep-seated ideas.
Before the advent of the scientific age, the ideas of what could be called science fiction were not very practical, but writers always tried to make the mysterious and impossible things in the story real.
Asimov proposed dividing modern science fiction into three periods: 1926-1938, a period dominated by adventure, a period in which science fiction was written by ordinary writers who knew only a small amount of scientific knowledge, and wrote stories mostly space operas, monsters, and "dangerous discoveries"; and the period from 1938 to 1950 was a science-dominated period, beginning in 1938 when the influence of John W. Campbell, the new editor-in-chief of Novelty Stories, began to stand out The third period was a sociologically-led period, with a number of new magazines founded in 1950 (especially Galactic Science Fiction) attaching great importance to society's response to scientific progress. Asimov argues that the fourth period of science fiction took shape in the mid-1960s and was in conflict with the sociological influences that still dominated at the time; because of the focus of science fiction on sexuality, violence, and experimental style in this period, Asimov called it a "style-led period." After the 1960s, such divisions became increasingly difficult. Magazines that have always had a profound influence on the field of science fiction have given way to books, and no more strong editors have left their mark on science fiction, and science fiction has begun to diversify. The closest thing to the indie genre is the "Cyberpunk" science fiction novel of the 1980s.
In the eyes of writers, science fiction has always had two charms: practicality and freedom. The utility of science fiction comes from its concern for current events: nuclear weapons control, space travel, the impact of machines on humans and society, aliens, pollution, advertising, television and now the Internet and other means of social intervention, robots, computers, overpopulation, and eternal problems such as communication, prejudice, intolerance, injustice. Writers who wish to express their opinions on these issues are likely to find themselves writing science fiction.
Many years ago, the British critic Edmund Crispin called science fiction "the origin of the species novel" in the Thames Literary Supplement. "Its basic assessment of man is that man is nothing more than one of a group of animals that co-inhabit the planet. In view of this, it is not difficult to see that in science fiction, the individual actually occupies only a small weight. Since there are so many human beings– if we accept such a view, why should we be so true to Madame Bovary, Sraed, or Leopold Bloom? ”
If this all-encompassing perspective prevents science fiction from digging deeper into characterization and the eternal themes of love, war, and death (unless they are of social importance), at least science fiction presents in the form of fiction situations that no one has ever discussed or can discuss: for science fiction, no theme is too serious or too sensitive to be explored.
But science fiction is a closed circle in which most of the people who live in it communicate only with their own people. It wasn't until science fiction broke out of the small circle that people discovered that the problems these people discussed were just as important to the whole world.
What is the cause?
Perhaps an important factor was President Kennedy's plan to go to the moon, which triumphed when Neil Armstrong took that step in 1969 that would affect the fate of the entire human race. Earlier, the Soviet Union's Sputniks made the American people realize the importance of space, recognizing that science and technology are essential to the success and survival of the country. Although the United States later suspended its lunar exploration program, NASA's later achievements in observing Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets cemented the belief that science fiction is literature about reality, not dreams. The public was as concerned as scientists were about photographs of those planets; at the end of the 20th century, novels about human expeditions to Mars began to blossom, and the public seemed ready to begin the expedition.
Before convincing themselves in reality, people must first have dreams. As Asimov commented on the success of the moon landing: "The human landing on the moon is not all the credit of science fiction writers and science fiction readers, but they have created an atmosphere that makes people believe that a human landing on the moon is feasible." ”
For many readers, science fiction seems more real than mainstream literature, because mainstream literature depicts not the future, nor the present, but the past. When newspapers and magazines publish articles about new scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs, they often begin with sentences like: "This is not science fiction, but..." or "This seems to come directly from the scene of science fiction..."
In fact, the scene on TV of the Apollo 11 astronauts landing on the moon looks like a science fiction movie from the early 1950s, "Destination Moon". The moon scene in the film was designed by Chesley Bonestell. The image quality of the film may be a bit rough, but that's only because the film has worn out. The only thing that makes the film less confusing with recent films is the female astronauts in the film, and the comedic elements of the film as a concoction—a bunch of clumsy crew members from Brooklyn or Texas. The above review was written in 1975, and by 2018, female astronauts have long since ceased to feel fresh.
In recent years, we have sent hundreds of satellites into orbit around the Earth, performed observation and surveillance missions, broadcast television programs (typically to individual wireless receivers on the ground), and transmitted telephone signals. In 1945, Arthur C. Clark wrote about the synchronisation satellite in his novel, and he later recalled it with remorse in the article "How I Lost Hundreds of Millions of Dollars in My Spare Time."
As Asimov said, we live in a world of science fiction.
The outbreak of World War II justified the science fiction focus on spaceflight and atomic bombs, and the same attention that had previously led outsiders to joke that science fiction was "something Buck Rogers did." When Werner von Braun's V2 missiles fell over London and the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the otherwise dismissive things became important. For the most part, the battle to win and lose world war WAS in the lab, with the victors relying on bigger and faster warships and planes, devices like radar and sonar that can locate and shoot them down, and rocket engines that help planes take off and accelerate.
Another factor that has pushed science fiction out of its closed circles is the rapidly growing community of high school and college students, men and women educated in science and technology, and professionals of all stripes. Science fiction is particularly appealing to well-educated people, people who like to think about problems, to be tolerant, and even to enjoy the unknown. With the continuous improvement of education level, more and more young people are ending high school and entering college, and more and more college graduates are leaving school, which makes the market for science fiction continue to expand. Some college students took science fiction courses while in school, which emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today's science fiction classes are not as disruptive as they were in the early days, and they are not as large as they used to be, but they have become an accepted part of many college courses.
Previously, high school sci-fi fans were more distant from their peers: he didn't like them because they found them boring; they didn't like him because he didn't get along well. Therefore, he used science fiction as spiritual food to meet the needs of his restless mind, and threw himself into the arms of science fiction fan organizations, because this is the group that can gladly accept himself. Today, this situation still exists, and the nerds and tech-obsessed tech-obsessed technologists in high school students are still outside the social circles of their peers, often attracted to science fiction and science fiction fan organizations. But nowadays, almost everyone watches science fiction movies and television, and science fiction and fantasy novels have perhaps become most people's favorite books, even if they only read movie-related novels or works that imitate The Lord of the Rings. Moreover, the future will be made by nerds. In fact, so-called "singularities," or technological developments that transcend human control or cognitive abilities, are often referred to as "nerd obsessions."
Another factor that fostered young people's science fiction reading habits was the mass proliferating of high-quality teen books after World War II, such as Lester del Rey, Robert Silverberg, Jack Williamson, Frederick Ball, Gordon W. Bush, and Others. R. Gordon R. Dickson, Donald J. Books written by writers such as Donald A. Wollheim and Andre Norton, especially Robert A. Wollheim and Andre Norton. A. Heinlein's annual teenage novels (published by Scribner Press) are nothing short of a big deal; they have all been serialized in magazines aimed at adult readers. Today, the scarcity of new teen science fiction has led to a decline in the readership of high school students, which has attracted the attention of some writers, some of whom, such as David Brin, have embarked on a number of campaigns to reverse the situation.
Perhaps the biggest impact came from the "medium" (film and television) acceptance of science fiction. For many years, science fiction was conceived as a teenage genre for low-budget films and low-budget tv series like Space Cadet and Lost in Space, and even critically acclaimed films like Outer Limits and Yin and Yang Were rushed out of budget. Landing on the Moon ushered in a new era of sci-fi cinema, but the most astonishing shift came with Stanly Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Not only is it an expensive film, but the effects of those investments — and the ideas of the authors and directors — are also on display on the silver screen. With it came the brilliant success of Star Wars, and the prospects for science fiction were further affirmed: science fiction films on a large scale could be successfully shot, and more importantly, science fiction films could generate astronomical profits. The film brings some symbolic marks of science fiction into people's daily lives, and also turns science fiction into a genre of fiction that everyone knows. While science fiction movies plunder material from novels, they also try to replace the language derived from science fiction with their own terminology: humanoids, warp speed, the force, transport... Not only that, but movie-derived novels have also begun to compete for a place on the shelves of science fiction in bookstores.
Since Star Trek in the late 1960s, science fiction television has changed dramatically. In the case of the Star Trek tv series, for example, its spin-offs are more popular than the three-year-old series itself. Star Trek has produced enough "descendants" to make it a brand, while other TV series have come and gone, some of which have won a certain applause, and some of which have disappeared overnight. But in the 21st century, it's a breeze to be on TV for a new sci-fi series. This is due first and foremost to the emergence of independent television stations and derivatives markets; the addition of two new television networks in the United States, which require popular movies and TV series; and the birth of cable channels — even specialized science fiction channels — that can broadcast programs on a small scale. Undoubtedly, the next trend will be the development of online communication media. The TV series will also spawn its own novels and compete with traditional novels and magazines.
Since the first Puritans settled on the North American continent, it has always been considered a land of opportunity. European countries have not been able to escape the shackles of tradition. People carved out a new life in the new colonies of North America (the Indians were sacrificed for it, of course), and whenever a certain settlement slowly had a historical precipitation and traditional patterns of behavior followed, the disgruntled people would move westward. For them, it is the future, not the past, that guides them. Science fiction was born in France and England, but found itself in the United States.
Today, more than ever, the country's development depends on belief in the future, and its decisions are based on how everything will develop, not on how it used to be.
The world has finally caught up with science fiction, but science fiction is no longer there. It has soared like a rocket into an unknown world, depicting new territories of imagination and further expanding the frontiers of what humanity may accomplish.
This article (and picture) is excerpted from the first chapter of "The Intersecting World: A History of World Science Fiction Figures", abridged, and published with the permission of the publisher.