As a genre, science fiction has a proud heritage of shaping the future. We find it entertaining to imagine what the world could be like. Science fiction enables us to explore possible futures, and through exploring them, decide for ourselves what future we want to create.

For example, the space-race of the 1950's and 60's, was driven by a spirit of optimism and excitement for humanity breaking free of the Earth to explore the solar system and beyond. While the influence of the Cold War cannot be understated, it was science fiction that inspired us. Through science fiction we imagined a future where space travel was possible, and this drove us to make it a reality.

We imagined a better future. We wanted it, and we created it.

I feel we have lost this.

Science fiction has become dominated by dystopian and apocalyptic visions of the future, which for a time was entertaining. For a time, it was fun to imagine climate catastrophes, pandemics, authoritarian governments, economic collapse...

I think you can see where I'm going with this.

Reality is catching up with fiction. Cautionary tales have become our lived experiences. These worlds, into which we escaped for entertainment, now feel too close to our everyday lives. Consequently, we are less excited by our future, and expect less from it.

This is not a new thought. Other people, much smarter than I have made this observation before, and made it better. So I won't labour the point.

I want to focus on what we can do next.

We are losing our optimism for the future, and I think that science fiction has a responsibility to help bring it back. We do not need to be trapped in feelings of hopelessness. Through science fiction we can escape.

Escaping Together

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

― J.R.R. Tolkien

Science fiction and fantasy provide escapism, they allow us visit other worlds, different from our own. Ordinarily escapism is fleeting, a temporary respite from our ordinary lives into an exceptional fantasy. But Tolkien understood escapism to be more than this.

He believed that escapism was a duty, a moral obligation to escape from the tyranny of the mundane. To free our minds from the constraints of our lived experiences to imagine a different and better world.

I believe that science fiction has a duty to help us to escape from a perceived future of hopelessness. To break out of a pessimistic view of our world, and to show us paths to making life better for all.

It is wrong to believe that science fiction is just a playground for unrealistic fantasies. Science fiction is a tool for exploring the possible, for imagining the future. It can change the world.

It has done this before, it will do this again.

If we broaden our imaginations, explore the possibilities together then fantasy can become reality. Impossible can become inevitable.

From Impossible to Inevitable

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are laying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

― Milton Friedman

Friedman was an economist, political philosopher and Nobel laureate. He was a key figure in the development of the Chicago School of Economics, who's ideas became very influential in the 1970's and 80's, particularly with the Regan and Thatcher governments in the USA and UK.

I am not a fan of Milton Friedman, his politics and mine have little in common. But he did understand that for new ideas to be realised, they must become established long before they are needed. If we wait for crises to occur before we start thinking about solutions, we are already too late.

I believe that a lack of alternatives to our current political and economic ideas is a problem for the world right now. The crises in our current political and economic systems are obvious, we feel them every day. But our leaders (of all political colours) are stuck in the same old ideologies, repeating the same mistakes - we need new ideas.

While there are new ideas out there, sometimes even good ideas, these are not yet well established enough to be seen as politically viable. In Friedman's terms, there are no politically inevitable alternatives laying around.

Your politics is your own, and I'm not advocating any one idea over another here. What I am encouraging is a shift away from doom and gloom, towards optimism for our future. To get back the hope we once felt and a culture of ambition for a better world.

Science fiction can help by suggesting, exploring, promoting and establishing new ideas. By showing us visions of a brighter future, we will become excited by the possibilities of what we can achieve together, and be motivated to realise it.

Final Thoughts

If you're trapped in the dream of the Other, you're fucked.

― Gilles Deleuze

In the past, science fiction has inspired us to literally fly to the moon. I believe that science fiction has a moral obligation to inspire us once again, to help imagine a future that is better than our present, to make us hope for it, fall in love with it and want to make it reality.

Feeling hopeless about our world, may be justified, but is not inevitable. I encourage you to seek out hope and optimism and, most importantly, to share it.

Imagine the world you want. Write it with passion, and share it with love.

❤️