The Sci-Fi Loop: At The Movies!
The content below is from the 10/31/18 edition of my email newsletter, the Sci-Fi Loop. Subscribe here if you want to receive it in your inbox!
Hello, gang! Glad you could join me here for the very first edition of the Sci-Fi Loop, an occasional email newsletter where I share my latest writing, news, and recommendations related to the powerful feedback loop between science fiction and real-world innovation.
This past month I was particularly focused on the feedback loop as it applies to sci-fi movies, writing two new articles focused on how fictional futures on the silver screen have impacted real science and policy.
First Man and the Sci-Fi–Science Feedback Loop: This article that I wrote for The Atlantic is all about the influence of Hollywood science consultants. There are already plenty of articles out there — typically timed with the latest Marvel release — using the angle of “oh, neat, these movies with weird fake science have real scientists as advisors, isn’t that funny!” This story takes a different tack, looking more deeply at how science consulting for the movies has actually advanced real science and technology in surprising ways, starting with the very first sci-fi movie consultant almost a hundred years ago.
How Sci-Fi Like WarGames Led to Real Policy During the Reagan Administration: This piece that I published with Slate’s Future Tense focuses on the outsized influence that sci-fi and sci-fi writers had on President Ronald Reagan and his administration’s policies, from computer crime law to the Strategic Defense Initiative, AKA “Star Wars”. I wrote it to accompany a Future Tense screening of WarGames that I hosted on October 11th along with sci-fi author Malka Older. If you haven’t read her novel Infomocracy or its sequels in the Centenal Cycle, you are missing out on some of the best new fiction about the future of the internet and global governance.
Speaking of recommendations, there are three pieces of writing that were released this past month that I’d encourage you to read: one novel, one short story, and one non-fiction book on sci-fi-ish themes.
First up is Eliot Peper’s sci-fi political thriller Borderless, the followup to the phenomenal first book in his Analog series, Bandwidth. If you’re looking for fast-paced near-future fiction that grapples with hot-button topics like online disinformation and manipulation, tech monopolies, climate change, and the increasing conflict between global data networks and the sovereignty of the nation-state, Eliot has got you covered.
Next up: What happens when you combine the trend of millennial group house networks like The Embassy Network with universal basic income proposals, put them in a blender along with a heaping serving of American economic stagnation, and then grind them together for a few decades? You get this amazing political science fiction story from Lee Konstantinou via our friends at Slate.com’s Future Tense, “Burned-Over Territory”. As with all of the Future Tense Fiction sci-fi stories — they’ve published a bunch of amazing short pieces from great writers like Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Nnedi Okorafor — there’s also a non-fiction essay from a real-world expert responding to the story’s ideas.
Finally, on the non-fiction side of things, I also wanted to recommend that you pick up the new book from my colleague Peter Singer, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, which — amongst many other things — tells the story of how a 1979 chain email about science fiction spawned the internet we know today. Peter literally wrote the book on the use of drones in warfare, Wired for War, and followed that up with a sci-fi war thriller that doubles as a heavily-footnoted exercise in strategic foresight, Ghost Fleet. Like those books, his latest is an essential read for anyone trying to get a grip on technology’s impact on conflict in the 21st century.
That’s it for now. Go see First Man in IMAX before it’s gone, if you haven’t already, and have a positively spooky Halloween!
Best,
Kevin
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