Will Sci-Fi Become Optimistic Again?

It is no secret that, for the past 40 years or so, sci-fi has been a cynical genre. For instance, dystopian lit is currently the hottest genre in the YA market.

It wasn’t always this way, though. In the so-called Golden Age of sci-fi pulp novels, storylines were very linear and problems were easily solved. A new technological advance was always just around the corner: flying cars, moon colonies, interstellar space travel, small hand-held communication devices. It seemed as if progress would march on and improve the fate of humanity.

That wide-eyed optimism collapsed when the atomic bomb taught us that technology can be destructive. Admittedly, much of the pessimistic tenor of post-Atomic Age sci-fi is justified: global nuclear annihilation is now possible and humans have ruined Earth. In the worst possible scenario, Serbian scientists predict that methane released by melting permafrost could cause surface temperatures to rise 40 degrees Celsius within the next century. In addition, the increasing intelligence of machines causes people to panic: will a robocalypse happen?

But, looking at this last point, it seems that at least some of sci-fi’s pessimism may be unfounded. And there’s the rub: extreme cynicism is just as unrealistic as extreme optimism. As technologies that we previously saw as a threat, like artificial intelligence, prove to be benign, might it bring sci-fi to a more reasonable middle point?

Artificial intelligence is the next frontier in scientific research. Already, the increased intelligence of machines has actually caused formerly plausible threats, like a computer simulation that inadvertently destroys the world, to become obsolete. As bots — software-based programs that automate tasks — grow more complex, it is more evident that bots are, like humans, neither inherently good nor bad. Some bots are created solely to generate art and some converse with humans. Personal assistants, like Siri, are already a fixture in modern life. Instead of a future in which humanity is subjugated by mechanical overlords, might it not be more realistic to envision a future with good, bad, and neutral AI?

This is just one example of how optimistic sci-fi could make a comeback. The pendulum swung to one extreme during the Golden Age of sci-fi, then to another during the nihilism of post-Atomic Age sci-fi. Will the pendulum swing back towards extreme optimism? If so, will sci-fi authors document the zeitgeist’s journey? They better, because optimistic sci-fi has historically been important in inspiring engineers and scientists — cell phones, for instance, were inspired by Star Trek. Who knows what the next generation raised with optimistic sci-fi might dream up?