The Future Was Yesterday
As technology advances at an increasingly alarming rate, how does science fiction adapt?
In 1902, French filmmaker Georges Méliès released A Trip to the Moon. It is a significant film regardless of genre, as noted here (wikipedia):
The film was an internationally popular success on its release, and was extensively pirated by other studios, especially in the United States. Its unusual length, lavish production values, innovative special effects, and emphasis on storytelling were markedly influential on other film-makers and ultimately on the development of narrative film as a whole. Scholars have commented upon the film’s extensive use of pataphysical and anti-imperialist satire, as well as on its wide influence on later film-makers and its artistic significance within the French theatrical féerie tradition. Though the film disappeared into obscurity after Méliès’s retirement from the film industry, it was rediscovered around 1930, when Méliès’s importance to the history of cinema was beginning to be recognized by film devotees. An original hand-colored print was discovered in 1993 and restored in 2011.
A Trip to the Moon was named one of the 100 greatest films of the 20th century by The Village Voice, ranked 84th.[6] The film remains the best-known of the hundreds of films made by Méliès, and the moment in which the capsule lands in the Moon’s eye remains one of the most iconic and frequently referenced images in the history of cinema. It is widely regarded as the earliest example of the science fiction film genre and, more generally, as one of the most influential films in cinema history.
By today’s standards of course, no one would see this as anything but fantasy (or even comedy). But in 1902 our understanding of space travel, the geography of the moon and other scientific and technical aspects were immature at best, if not non-existent. But it’s worth noting that Méliès endeavored to infuse his picture with the trappings of science. The crew of astronauts who make the journey are not ‘Buck Rogers’-type heroes, but rather astronomers who journey to the moon by a technologically advanced (for the time) ship, not via some form of magic.
Film historians suggest that Méliès, — like many of the creators of Steampunk, a science fiction sub-genre that features anachronistic technologies or retro-futuristic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — was influenced by the works of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, a further indicator that Méliès wasn’t simply creating a fantasy work with A Trip to the Moon, but had put some intellectual rigor against the idea of how the science and technology of getting people to the moon may really work.
If we jump forward more than a century, another film, The Martian, based on the book by Andy Weir, tells the story of a crew of scientists who travel beyond Earth to investigate another part of our solar system.
The linear progression from A Trip to the Moon to The Martian can be seen through several lenses — the development of sophisticated storytelling, the advancement of special effects in film, and of course in our understanding of science. In fact, one of the more memorable lines from the movie, uttered by the character Mark Watney, the titular Martian, speaks to the importance of the scientific element of the film.
“I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.”
To be sure, Hollywood, or more accurately the entertainment industry in general, isn’t abandoning fantasy. In just a few days the Star Wars franchise returns and the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which also lives on television on both ABC and Netflix) is nothing short of some amalgamation of juggernaut/behemoth/leviathan at this point. But at the same time, the distance between science fiction and the current reality of technological progress have created fascinating opportunities for creators to develop compelling stories that feel much closer to our current reality than what’s happening in a galaxy far, far away.
Sometimes called hard sci-fi, which is characterized by an emphasis on scientific accuracy or technical detail, these works seem to be growing in popularity. In just the last three years we’ve seen Gravity, Her, Interstellar, Ex Machina and the aforementioned The Martian hit theaters. These are neither vanity projects or arthouse cinema, but rather big budget vehicles featuring stars such as Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Scarlet Johansson, Matthew McConaughey and Matt Damon and an equally impressive list of directors ranging from Christopher Nolan and Ridley Scott to Spike Jonze, Alex Garland and Alphonso Cuarón.
What do we mean when we say Hard Sci-Fi?
But I’m not particularly enthused by the term hard sci-fi. I like neither the ‘hard’ nor the ‘sci-fi’ aspects. The delineation between hard and soft carries baggage I’m not comfortable with. Hard has connotations of masculinity and hard sci-fi is often equated or aligned with military science fiction. By default, soft sci-fi then becomes a more feminine, (more irrational?) aspect of the genre?
Even the term science fiction itself starts to become problematic. Not because it doesn’t fit, in fact movies like Ex Machina might fit the term science fiction better than most. The problem is that Star Wars or Pacific Rim are also called science fiction when they are using science very loosely. Actually, let’s look closer at Pacific Rim. I certainly wouldn’t consider a movie that features monsters from another dimension to be hard sci-fi, but the militaristic themes and pounding action seemed poorly suited for the term soft sci-fi.
For a fantastic look at trying to define terms such as hard sci-fi and soft sci-fi, or the distinction between science fiction and fantasy, watch this excellent video by Jason Rizos on his Elements of Science Fiction YouTube channel:
Hard, soft; science fiction, fantasy; as is the case in so many things, we find ourselves mired in arguments about classification and nomenclature. Have we been living with the term science fiction for so long that it has outlived its purpose? Has the thinslicing of sub-genres within sub-genres helped or harmed our understanding? Would new terms help, or only further confuse?
The Adjacent Possible
In the Fall of 2015 I attended an event put on by the American Association of Advertising Agencies — the 4As. CreateTech is the brainchild of Chick Foxgrover (talk about a name right out of a 1930s sci-fi serial!). Chick is the Chief Digital Officer at the 4As and is one of the brightest, most knowledgeable people I’ve met in advertising when it comes to technology. For the 2015 CreateTech event, Chick chose the theme, The Adjacent Possible. Here’s Chick on the concept:
CreateTech’s theme this year is “creativity and the adjacent possible.” The “adjacent possible” is a concept I was introduced to through Stephen Johnson’s book, How We Got to Now and his essay, The Genius of the Tinkerer.
After reading Johnson’s book I was was particularly taken with the suggestiveness of the concept as a thought experiment for many of us looking to innovate collaboratively in our work and thinking.
For the conference, we interpret “adjacent possible” as optimizing imaginatively with the resources, tools, and activities that are evolving around us, while pushing our own ideas into the cultural and professional mix.
I think that third paragraph is particularly interesting, illuminating and relevant for science fiction.
…optimizing imaginatively with the resources, tools, and activities that are evolving around us, while pushing our own ideas…
That to me is as good a definition as any of the type of TV, movies, books, video games and graphic novels that I’m most interested in right now. The Adjacent Possible isn’t about encountering aliens, developing mutant powers or saving the universe from time-traveling robots. The Adjacent Possible gives us a glimpse of another world that is right around the corner. Exciting, dynamic, frightening, exhilarating, dangerous and filled with potential. Just like the world we inhabit.
I like the phrase The Adjacent Possible. It sounds like the name of a William Gibson novel. Actually, Gibson is a perfect person to speak about in the context of The Adjacent Possible. In his ground-breaking “Sprawl Trilogy” [Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)], Gibson creates a near-future world that is part dystopia and part noir-thriller homage all with a technological sheen. Many of the characters and occurrences seem quite far beyond the capabilities of the time (early-80s), much in the same way that Blade Runner (1982) envisioned a future that seemed incredible if not fantastical. Blade Runner in fact was very influential on William Gibson and both he and Ridley Scott, the director of Blade Runner are masters of The Adjacent Possible.
But what is perhaps most interesting about Gibson and his work is how it has evolved. His more recent trilogy has “caught up with today” in many respects. His protagonists have evolved from Neuromancer’s Case, a “cyberspace hacker” — think how exotic that sounded in 1984 — to Cayce Pollard, an “advertising consultant” in Pattern Recognition (2003), Zero History (2007) and Spook Country (2010). The latter trilogy is still vintage Gibson — I would argue it’s some of his best work — and still filled with wondrous technology, but now everything feels slightly more of the moment rather than a dystopian future. This change in perspective by the author is noted in an interview Gibson did with the Paris Review which opens by noting:
With his next books, he began to write about the present-day, or more precisely, the recent past: each of the three novels in the series is set in the year before it was written. He started with September 11, 2001.
And this to me is a key turning point, a demarcation, of where we now see The Adjacent Possible starting to come into view. The interview is peppered with insights from Gibson giving clues to his own feelings about fantastical sci-fi and fiction set in some far-flung future:
INTERVIEWER
Do you think fiction should be predictive?
GIBSON
No, I don’t. Or not particularly. The record of futurism in science fiction is actually quite shabby, it seems to me. Used bookstores are full of visionary texts we’ve never heard of, usually for perfectly good reasons.
and…
INTERVIEWER
You’ve written that science fiction is never about the future, that it is always instead a treatment of the present.
GIBSON
There are dedicated futurists who feel very seriously that they are extrapolating a future history. My position is that you can’t do that without having the present to stand on. Nobody can know the real future… There was an effort in the seventies to lose the usage science fiction and champion speculative fiction. Of course, all fiction is speculative, and all history, too — endlessly subject to revision. Particularly given all of the emerging technology today,…
So, rather than write about a distant future, one which he was likely to miss the mark on, Gibson started looking at the present, and found fertile ground in which to set his stories…
INTERVIEWER
When did you decide to write about the contemporary world?
GIBSON
For years, I’d found myself telling interviewers and readers that I believed it was possible to write a novel set in the present that would have an effect very similar to the effect of novels I had set in imaginary futures. I think I said it so many times, and probably with such a pissy tone of exasperation, that I finally decided I had to call myself on it.
Now we hit the crucial moment…
INTERVIEWER
Do you think of your last three books as being science fiction?
GIBSON
No, I think of them as attempts to disprove the distinction or attempts to dissolve the boundary. They are set in a world that meets virtually every criteria of being science fiction, but it happens to be our world, and it’s barely tweaked by the author to make the technology just fractionally imaginary or fantastic. It has, to my mind, the effect of science fiction.
Another perfectly viable definition of The Adjacent Possible.
One of Gibson’s contemporaries, Neal Stephenson, has similarly moved the settings of some of his novels from a near-ish future to something much more like the present. Whereas Snow Crash (1992) and Diamond Age (1995), two cyberpunk classics (or perhaps more accurately post-cyberpunk), are loosely parallel to Gibson’s Sprawl Trilogy, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon (1999), Reamde (2011) and Seveneves (2015) inhabit a world that is less cyberpunk, or even post-cyberpunk, and more Adjacent Possible.
Here’s Stephenson in an interview with Slate from earlier in 2015:
You launch the narrative from a universe that’s very similar to the world we live in now. There are a number of characters in that early section who are reminiscent of some of our current nerd celebrities — people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk. Do you think of the novel as a commentary on the world as it is?
Well, I think one of the essential features of an ark book or a big global disaster–type story is that you, the reader, are always asking yourself, What if this really happened?What if today the moon blew up or some kind of global disaster came upon us, what would I do? What would my friends do? What would the leaders of our society do? We’ve got certain types of people who would be conspicuous. It would be conspicuous if they failed to show up in this book. Your eminent scientists would have something to do, the science popularizers, politicians, the military, the billionaire nerds. If you didn’t put those people in to this book and show them reacting to the situation, it would feel weirdly empty.
At this point I don’t think I need to point out how much that aligns with the concept of The Adjacent Possible (though I just did).
Reamde (the title refers to a key element of the plot, a computer file that is purposely mislabelled [think readme file]) is instructive to view on a meta level in the context of this conversation. In Gibson’s Neuromancer, characters jack into “cyberspace,” a sort of virtual world that many people interpreted as a precursor to the world wide web. Remember, the book came out in 1984 so the idea of ‘cyberspace,” a term Gibson is often credited with coining — or at least popularizing — was purely in the realm of science fiction. In Reamde, the characters log into a MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft. Far from being seen as some futuristic fantasy, Stephenson’s description seems quite familiar to anyone who has played a game like this. So rather than jump 20 years into the future to imagine how we might be interacting with a virtual reality platform, Stephenson has set his novel in the present, or at least an Adjacent Possible.
The Future Was Yesterday
The relationship between creator and consumer is complicated, intricate and often delicate. Did Sam Esmail create Mr. Robot because that was the story he wanted to tell, or did he see that the commercial trends were leading in that direction? Are audiences craving stories like those presented on Black Mirror because it’s well done, or because it fulfills a need people have to consumer a specific type of story? In other words, is there a change in perception by the audience? Are stories from The Adjacent Possible striking a particular nerve right now as we experience what was previously classified as science fiction as our current reality?
There will always be a large audience for fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones) and fantastical science fiction (Star Wars) but we are seeing more and more examples of shows that are pushing towards The Adjacent Possible. Person of Interest and Helix, along with the shows and movies mentioned above, as well as video games like Watchdogs, show an increasing interest in stories set in The Adjacent Possible.
I hope to post essays weekly here on the concept of The Adjacent Possible. In addition, you can subscribe to my weekly email on the subject where I will feature the standard story links, but also other original content and ideas. If you care to join in, you can subscribe to The Adjacent Possible newsletter.
