Writing to the future

I wonder sometimes if the stuff that is the most painful to write is also the stuff that's best to write. So little on the shelves (what will replace that phrase when it's e-books? We don't yet have much of an electronic vocabulary with which to work) seems to have the depth and substance of the past great novels or deep consideration in nonfiction, though true stories of drama and struggle do well enough on the surface.

Or not so much painful as merely difficult. It surprises me less by the day that science fiction struggles as a genre and needs more scientists to help it along the way. How else can we write of the future, when today is so rapidly changing? We can hardly approach a distant future ideal (save through philosophy, which has a large untapped potential) when we have 100,000 new apps in less than year? Who can even know what they all provide much less understand the trends of what people are choosing to use and why; but it is in the answer to such questions that we must find the new themes for future-based science fiction worth the writing. How can the current generations appreciate the vision of writers when their own parents still wrote school papers long hand? (We thought medieval paleography a challenge and quills a curiosity; what about a generation from now where writing with pen is an antique art form and yesterday's technology already out of date? In the beginning, science fiction was writing about a century two forward based on the technology and trends of past decades of developments. The science fiction writer today is essentially writing about tomorrow based on what they know of yesterday. Time travel stories had to go back a generation or centuries to show massive changes. Now a few years will suffice. The internet may not be into its second decade, but that long ago we still had phone booths.

Still, other areas have not kept up and leave the science fiction writer with room to work. Besides the boom in understanding of psychology that still has room to grow, and medicine, transportation is still well behind the curve. Cars are still rarely the electric or hybrid dreams of 100 miles to the gallon that we hoped for by now, and metro's are still clunky and slow to expand. Transportation has yet to make its leap into the new century, and sharing of technology and knowledge is ahead of the practical application of the same (the physical act of production work is different than the drawing board and requires a better educated workforce than many countries can yet provide, despite the claim to an information age). And emotional intelligence is still a beginner in the arc of development. Knowledge doesn't help if we aren't read to let it in and change management theories, like many advances in technology and information, are slow to make it into the work place to the degree needed to make the real difference.

Nor am I sure that the next generation, the one that has started working or those not yet there, are any more ready to take on the challenges facing managers and decision makers today. Some have been taught team work, but in my observation, too much is co-dependence, the reliance on finding team mates who are are better at the things we find hard, instead of the interdependence (shared independence) that gives the willingness to take on the hard stuff in case no one else can, to be one of the leaders in case the others are followers. Such things remain fuel for writing about the future but, unlike mere technology, is hard to tackle in a fun, exciting story form that reaches out to both heart and mind. If science fiction writers can go there, the genre will do well. Otherwise the new genre of popular consciousness will be whichever one can.