‘It’s 2014 and we have no flying cars, no Mars colonies, no needle-less injections, and yet plenty of smartphone dating apps. Is our science fiction to blame if we find today’s science and technology less than dazzling?’ These words introduced an event held back in October at the National Academy of Science’s Keck Auditorium titled “Can we Imagine Our Way to a Better Future?”
The premise behind the event is from a public conversation between Neal Stephenson and Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University. Stephenson is, of course, the acclaimed author of Snow Crash, The Diamond Age, and the three Baroque Cycle novels. In Slate Magazine’s description of Stephenson’s and Crow’s conversation, ‘Stephenson lamented “a general failure of our society to get big things done.” Crow responded By suggesting, “Maybe it’s all your fault. Maybe it’s the science fiction writers that should help us dream better dreams.”
The outcome of that conversation was an anthology spearheaded by Stephenson, Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (Harper Collins, 2014) and an ongoing conversation, Project Hieroglyph, which can be found at http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/, and which you can join.
The all-day event in Washington was hosted by Future Tense (@FutureTenseNow), a joint project of Slate Magazine, New America, and Arizona State University. Moderated by Dan Sarewitz, there were talks and panel discussions with Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer (editors of the anthology), and with a subset of the book’s authors, including Neal Stephenson, Elizabeth Bear, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Madeline Ashby, Lee Konstantinou, Vandana Singh, and Karl Schroeder.
As Stephenson stated in his introductory talk, the stories in the collection had one rule: no hackers, no hyperspace, and no holocaust. By ‘no hacking’, he means the story must use a new solution instead of recycling an old one. The ‘no holocausts’ rule is to steer the conversation towards an optimistic inspiration. The ‘hyperspace’ prohibition insists that the stories involve what is possible as a scientist or engineer might see it, rather than relying on fantasy solutions.
The stories and the discussions at the Future Tense event follow these rules, more or less. Still, it’s difficult find much optimism even in many of these tales. Lee Constantinou’s story “Johnny Appledrone vs. The FAA”, for instance, starts with the title’s named character being assassinated by the Federal Aviation Authority, and in the anthology’s perhaps most optimistic story, “The Man Who Sold the Stars”, by Gregory Benford, the hero and his partner become the first interstellar explorers in order to flee a repressive government trying to arrest him and confiscate his assets for the sin of being successfully innovative.
One panel was “Lost in Space: How Should We Approach Our Final Frontier”, moderated by Patric Verrone (Writer and producer of Futurama), with Neal Stephenson engaging Ellen Stofan, NASA’s Chief Scientist. And yet neither of these eminently knowledgeable and professional people actually discussed the real reason our space program is such a failure- the prohibitive cost of getting to low earth orbit, which Stephenson’s story, “Atmosphaera Incognita”, addresses directly, using a steel (yes, steel) tower twenty kilometers high. NASA’s answer, Space Launch System, is spam in a can.
The most interesting piece in the book may be Karl Schroeder’s story “Degrees of Freedom”, which, ironically, is about how to hack your government (read: commit revolution) using modern tools based on social media. My question is whether the hackers are more trustworthy than the government they hack. I doubt it.
Hieroglyph is a fascinating book with great writers writing great stories that make you think. Recommended.
A more balanced and less personal review of Hieroglyph can be found at https://www.sfsite.com/00a/hg406.htm.