he Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, aka SFWA, a group of 1,200 or so writers in the field, once considered adopting a motto: "The Future Isn't What It Used to Be". You see, SFWA's counterpart, the Mystery Writers of America, had its own official motto: "Crime Doesn't Pay—Enough!"
I don't remember SFWA ever voting to accept the proposed motto, which may say as much about the state of the future in the sci-fi community at large as it does about this particular organization.
But if you look at sci-fi television and feature films, the future is in pretty bad shape. It not only isn't what it used to be—sometimes you don't even see it at all.
I freely admit that my prejudices are showing here. I prefer sci-fi that shows me a possible future—not an alternative history, not a quasi-medieval mythical past and not a space-opera future. By the latter, I mean a space-war story in which the tactics and background are essentially the same as a sea-going story of the 1800s, with heroic captains and midshipmen, or even a World War II-style Pacific fleet battle, with slipfighters replacing Grumman Hellcats.
As a counter-example of real future sci-fi, I would cite the work of Isaac Asimov (the Foundation and Robot series), Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End), Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451), Robert A. Heinlein (his Future History stories in particular). And just to show that I've read sci-fi published after 1965, I will further cite William Gibson's Neuromancer, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's unfortunately overlooked Oath of Fealty, the Beggars series of novels by Nancy Kress, and almost any novel by Bruce Sterling, Greg Bear or Kathleen Goonan.
I'll concede right now that this purist sort of sci-fi prose isn't as common as some of the other types I've mentioned. It's certainly not as popular. But it still seems to me that the core of an art form which purports to take you to a "world beyond the hill" should actually take you to a world that is different.
A world devastated by a nuclear or biological war.
A world in which men have disappeared.
A world in which telepathy exists and is part of everyday life.
A world in which human beings routinely live to be 200, or are immortal.
Worlds we don't live in, but can easily imagine. Worlds that exist because a writer has found some aspect of the way we live now, and asked, "What will happen if this goes on?"
Defining the future of science fiction
We have seen some intriguing extrapolations of the future on the big screen, notably with The Matrix. More recently we have seen two different Steven Spielberg films—A.I., his posthumous collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, and Minority Report.
The Matrix meets all my narrow-minded standards for a pure sci-fi film, for all that I look upon its presentation of the future with horror. It is "if this goes on" storytelling with a vengeance.
A.I. tackles the same core idea—what if our machines continue to grow in complexity and ability?—and comes up with a completely different, but equally nasty world.
Then there's Minority Report, based on a story by Philip K. Dick, which takes an intriguing aspect of contemporary life (the desire to make accurate predictions about everything from the weather to the Dow Jones) and applies it to crime. The results are ... well, they're as horrifying as those of The Matrix or A.I.
Where do we see speculation about the future on television? Not on X-Files or Buffy, certainly: They don't pretend to deal with the subject. Time Tunnel—not that I remember. (Maybe the new Fox version will jump into the future.) Quantum Leap—no.
Anthology series have dealt with the future from time to time—Twilight Zone (in all its versions) and, more notably, Outer Limits.
Then we have Star Trek, five editions and counting. Deep Space Nine, in particular, dealt with life in a future, but not necessarily the future, if you catch the distinction. (The distinction, for me, is this: If I can see the path from my life to that future, I know I'm dealing with "if this goes on." For all its virtues, the later Star Treks and especially Deep Space Nine present futures I might like, but don't connect to.)
I happened to work on one series which really tried to show a future, and that was Max Headroom, which ran on ABC in 1987.
The future has been canceled
I claim no credit for the speculations which formed Max (Max being a computer-generated "twin" of a real-life investigative reporter) or the world "20 minutes into the future" (in which there are thousands of television channels, and television watches you). The conceptual work was done by a variety of people, beginning with a writer named George Stone, followed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, and Steve Roberts and Peter Wagg, and perhaps several others. (Note to self: The richness of a future world might be proportional to the number of minds creating it. See "Sharing the World" in Science Fiction Weekly issue #268.)
Alas, Max Headroom failed as a commercial television property. True, it might have simply been ahead of its time (change "thousand channels" to "Internet" and ask yourself how it would do as a new Showtime or SCI FI Channel series today) or just in the wrong timeslot. (It was up against Miami Vice and Dallas, two gigantic network hits.)
More recently, you had Dark Angel, which dealt straight on with the themes of enhanced evolution and its effects on human beings, all set in a world that would have been right at home in a William Gibson novel.
Like Max, Dark Angel failed.
About the only true "if this goes on" world on my radar is that of Showtime's vaguely post-apocalyptic Jeremiah, which has just squeaked into a second season.
Maybe the problem is this: All of these speculative series—and movies—show futures that are dark and depressing. Do you want to live in The Matrix? Or 20 minutes into the future?
I don't.
One time I heard a group of sci-fi writers asked this question: Have you ever written about a future you'd like to live in? The first reaction was a sharp intake of breath, the one you make when someone asks you a fresh new question.
The answer was no.
Maybe that's what we should be trying to create—futures that aren't so grim and depressing.
Michael Cassutt has written 70 scripts for television series, including episodes of Twilight Zone, Max Headroom, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, and, most recently, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda and Odyssey 5. He also writes fiction, and his story "More Adventures on Other Planets" was recently reprinted in The Year's Best SF, 18th Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois (St. Martin's, June 2002).
