Link: Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | Our science fiction fate.
(...) "Some years ago, I dubbed SF "hubris clobbered by nemesis". That is what we're into right now. The prescription is all too true. Mother is offended. That, indeed, is what the SF movie The Day After Tomorrow vividly expresses. When the waves hit Wall Street, we are all done for.
"We fought and did not heed the wounds, we were greedy and did not count the cost. For a while after the second world war, a spirit of optimism prevailed in SF magazines. It was a time of great projects, when rockets reached Mars, or we held what wars were available on Pluto, or we even dreamed of fleets of ships reaching far into the galaxy. It was Vasco da Gama time in the head. The unknown thrived. Hydroponic farms were built on asteroids, beautiful cities were designed to sail in solar orbits, marriages with sexy green-skinned aliens were arranged. All was stimulating and hopeful.
" But then the future went the other way - a duller, yet more dangerous way. The cold war began to blow instead. The lights went out in Cybernetics City.
"Here is today, 2007, with its diseased ideas of drugs, Darfur disputes and suicide bombers. The truth is that we are at last living in an SF scenario. Little wonder the tiger is almost extinct, the polar bear doomed. How do you think the algae feel, in the great wastes of warming ocean?...."
