hot against the backdrop of science-fiction conventions from 2000 to the present, Finding the Future: A Science Fiction Conversation explores the role of sci-fi in helping people come to terms with the present and in speculating about what might lie ahead for humanity. Primarily through a series of interviews with both science-fiction authors and fans, this documentary muses on everything from the phenomenon of fandom to the role of science and technology in humans' lives, from the history of the genre to the realization today of yesterday's science-fiction fantasies.
Authors like Forrest J. Ackerman, Catherine Asaro, Ben Bova and David Brin spend a lot of time with the camera, and topics such as space exploration, communications technology, genetic engineering and the environment prove to be big issues for both authors and fans alike. But Finding the Future is also an ethnography, a chronicle and an advocacy document. Not only do the doc's makers talk about what science fiction has had to say about humankind's future, they also discuss the history of science fiction and sci-fi fandom (beginning with the first WorldCon in the 1930s; the perspective is almost exclusively American), the sociology of the SF fan and the positive role some see fandom playing in society—as a basis for community and for the furthering of knowledge and understanding.
But aside from all the heady conversation and philosophical musing, there's also plenty of people in costumes, filking and other convention weirdness in this documentary, which, to non-fans, might come off as a different kind of ethnography altogether—it might even look like science fiction itself.
Ambitious but rough around the edges
It's not too hard to see Finding the Future as a labor of love, as a project to which those who made it and those who participated in it have devoted a lot of time and thought. The interviews this documentary contains are filled with smart people talking about interesting and complex ideas, with a balance of passion and reason in their words, and the scope of these ideas and of this documentary is immense. But this doesn't always make for great viewing, believe it or not.
Combined with some fairly low production values, this ambitious film's narrative wanderings can sometimes lead to boredom with even the most fascinating of topics. The editing (the true art of documentary) ranges from sharp to inscrutable—both connections between conversations and visual inserts (i.e., science-fiction art placed over discussions of various subjects) don't always make a lot of sense. The musical score has a similar range—from wonderfully atmospheric to distractingly bad.
The number of profound discussions of fascinating ideas this film contains, however, often succeeds in overwhelming whatever technical shortcomings it may have. As Finding the Future's more sociological or ethnographic moments reveal, science-fiction authors and fans are often highly intelligent people who have thought a lot about some of the most important issues facing our present and our future, and the community that they comprise, science-fiction fandom, is often an extremely accepting one that allows for a great amount of individual, personal expression and a great number of differing opinions.
But it's in some of these cultural/ethnological/sociological considerations that Finding the Future might be seen to come up a bit short, too. It portrays the community of science-fiction fandom in a bit too uncritical or utopian a manner. Though descriptions of the "average" science-fiction fan are often appropriately flattering (despite some acknowledgment of issues like personal hygiene), the camera plainly—but unreflectively—shows that the face of science fiction is overwhelmingly white, middle-class and male (though women do get a good—even maybe disproportionate—amount of representation in the film). And then there are issues like calling outsiders "mundanes" (a term even more potentially contemptuous and derisive than "muggles"). The byproducts of a strong sense of communal identity—exclusion and othering (intentional and unintentional)—show themselves here as elsewhere in the world.
The hope is, however, as Finding the Future argues, that those who are involved in the concerns of science fiction are very well equipped to address issues like these in the future, and can do so in intelligent and fantastical ways.
