Where are we going?

Agent hunting, I came across one listed in the past for Science Fiction and they still are, sort of, but they provided a fairly specifica discussion of what they were looking for, and it was, in my old fashioned view, about as science fiction as Flubber, Shaggy Dog, and that movie more recently where the guy could suddenly read the minds of women--contemporary Earth, near future, with some element a little further along than now or taking a bigger place in someone’s life, all about the people.. I suppose, technically, they could be labeled SF, just like most of the James Bond movies, but such stuff has always been in the main stream, on the general fiction shelves. Do they really need to be on the Science Fiction shelves? Do they belong there? and perhaps more important, is that what science fiction genre fans really want, the future that is no further away than next week or next year? If that’s really all they want, my own science fiction is doomed, but in reality, I haven’t noticed that much of a decline in Star Trek books on the shelves, either.

According to one recent discussion, it would be a sign of a decline in curiosity about the world and science, and leave the science fiction to the Chinese consumers, where curiosity is still growing. To me, the lack of curiosity dooms us to stagnation for years to come, for it is a sign of a generation lacking hope, faith, dreams of better to come, an interest only in the struggles of the day, and in addressing those struggles only in the most short-sighted way, if they can address them at all. Today, ethics, the environment, the sense of right and good, and long term value and meaning all too often seem to lose the argument. Even the books that address them seem too often to sermonize instead of letting the reader or student learn, and that is the approach of the defense, not outreach.

If I wanted to write about the contemporary world, I wouldn’t choose to take the course of science fiction and fantasy (though a few fantasies, like Harry Potter, have done it well and left the genre not in question). Popular fiction inevitably does better than genre fiction, and anything that can take that route should probably do so.