Is near-future fiction mundane?
The definition of mundane is: “very ordinary and therefore not interesting.”[1] But, is it really true that the ordinary is not interesting? I don’t think so, yet the word has been tainted to mean just that, denoting something to ignore, something that will be boring.
Actually, it’s the everyday, the ordinary, that’s the most fascinating because that’s where the real stuff happens.
Why do I care? Well, I’m gearing up for the release of a new novel, We Are Not Anonymous, and thinking about which sub-genre it belongs in.
Most booksellers will consider the novel to be science fiction, but I worry that the general public see science fiction as something that has either aliens, space travel or some form of apocalypse, and that’s not the basis of We Are Not Anonymous.
There is a sub-genre of science fiction called mundane science fiction and its definition fits with my writing very well. To quote Wikipedia: “typically characterized by its setting on Earth or within the Solar System; a lack of interstellar travel, intergalactic travel or human contact with extraterrestrials; and a believable use of technology and science as it exists at the time the story is written or a plausible extension of existing technology.”[2]
But mundane doesn’t feel like a very clever marketing term i.e. “read this book, it’s boring.”
Personally, I prefer to use the term near-future fiction, but sadly that’s not a widely recognised term when it comes to today’s sub-genre definitions.
However, the good news is that the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction[3] has an entry for near future (science fiction) and its history from 1871, so all is not lost. However, the bad news is that it ends with this: “Despite the increasing number of sf titles published each year, realistic speculative fiction about the near future is scarce and will undoubtedly remain so. Such fiction is too frightening to be popular; even those readers who like to be frightened prefer to gain their excitement from the obsolete workings of the supernatural imagination, which are utterly without consequence for the way they must live their lives.”[4]
Real life, the everyday, takes place in the grey area somewhere between utopia and dystopia, differently for different people and differently at different times in their lives. That’s where I situate my writing, in the “intersection of messy humans and imperfect technology.”
You could call it a form of activism, by getting people to imagine different possibilities, to step into another’s shoes, and to play with ideas. Unlike the dystopian novels that we’re familiar with, which, as the encyclopedia suggests, tend to be wildly pessimistic, often post-apocalyptic or at the very least, portray an extreme and black and white vision of the future.
I believe it’s important for society to discuss the near future and to encourage / enable that conversation is a form of activism. To be most effective as activism, stories should be set within the lifetime of someone already alive, someone who can consider the consequences of the present on their future. Let’s say then, that the time horizon in near future fiction is roughly 80 years from the time of its writing.
This immediacy and the fact that we have to engage with these ideas because the timescale is within our own lifetime makes it the opposite of escapism. In fact, in a world where significant change is almost inevitable in someone’s lifetime, the visceral effect of near future fiction is extremely present.
We live in highly unpredictable times.
If we consider the Futures Cone[5], where the further away you get from the present the greater number of possible futures there are, then the current situations of climate change, geopolitics and technological advancements widen that cone a lot closer to the present than previously.
That said, near-future is still a genre with more constraints than other sub-genres of science fiction. There’s more chance of finding out you got it wrong, sometimes before publication, so attempting accuracy in any extrapolation of today’s bleeding edge technology and ideologies becomes important. There’s also a need to balance warning with hope because of the influence it may have on how its readers approach their futures.
In my guest-editorial for the “futures” issue of Vector[6] I began by “wondering whether, as a writer of near-future science fiction, I have a moral duty to reflect potential futures as accurately as possible, rather than simply selling the sensational.” Having read and reflected on the articles in the journal I concluded that, “Yes, speculative fiction does influence scientists and technologists in what and how they research, discover and invent. Yes, its predictions do affect the future if you take ‘predictions’ and ‘affect’ in their broadest sense. To an extent, it has a responsibility to be accurate and not sensational, but shouldn’t lose the ‘attractiveness’ of the story because then it’ll be ignored. It doesn’t have to be tech-utopian. For example, I want to warn and inspire, but not demoralise. At the very least, it should generate some action even if that’s only in subtle shifts of understanding and behaviour. And, although the primary purpose of speculative fiction is entertainment, don’t forget that pondering possible futures can also be entertaining.”
The encyclopedia suggests that, although by the 1960s there were images of near future in mainstream literature i.e. non science fiction, they, “tended to work with an impoverished vocabulary of ideas,” and that, “The near future is an uncomfortable imaginative space for writers and readers to inhabit, and it is entirely understandable that those who venture into it should go equipped with blinkers, armoured by some protective obsession which obviates the necessity of dealing with the near future-world as a whole.”
While this may be true for some readers and writers, my experience of applied science fiction[7], of using near future fiction for foresight work with academic researchers and technology developers shows that, as Dr Christine Aicardi from King’s College London puts it in the foreword to Biohacked & Begging, “There is a public out there hungry for forums where they can explore the complex shades of ethical grey surrounding science and innovation, as opposed to the kind of purposefully orchestrated black-and-white debates so often taken to be the dominant norm of ‘what the public wants’.”[8]
That’s why we should all ‘Nudge the Future’ because ‘the future is ours, and it’s up for grabs…’
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/mundane
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundane_science_fiction
[3] https://sf-encyclopedia.com/
[4] https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/near_future
[5] https://thevoroscope.com/2017/02/24/the-futures-cone-use-and-history/
[6] https://vector-bsfa.com/2023/05/03/futures-guest-editorial-by-stephen-oram/
[7] https://stephenoram.net/science-and-scifi-projects/
[8] https://stephenoram.net/biohacked-begging/