This is what I'm trying to achieve with my novel, Journey to Kyron (as you mention, 'a tale of exploration and discovery, such as space travelers encountering a strange new planet'). Plenty of conflict and human interest in the day-to-day lives of the explorers, but crucially, the reason for the journey is not to escape an ailing Earth, but because the world has become so prosperous that such a journey becomes possible.
As an author, the struggle to tone it down is real. I sometimes feel compelled to add dystopian elements to make the setting pop and increase the stakes. Anxieties like "will anybody want to publish/read this?" can drive one to play up the drama.
I'm almost finished with a novel in which there are two (mostly non-dystopian) realities. Their histories diverged for unknown reasons, and one is "us in 2050" and the other is around 150 years behind, tech-wise. (think: dieselpunk).
The mystery is: why?
I've struggled to figure out how dystopian to make each world, because of course one of the questions is, which world would you rather live in? As a technophile, I don't want it to come off as ideological or preachy. And I want to embrace and understand technology wholeheartedly, not just its good parts.
The discovery of invention is one of my favorites! The race to put electricity in homes! So much drama in that story. The race to get a man on the moon in so many space films. Trying to come up with a cure before it’s too late! Even trying to write that code before the big competition! There are so many ways we overcome conflict with invention.
One of the many things that makes Babylon 5's epic five-season story so good is the way that we see the various governments fluctuate between freedom and tyranny, such that it explores the causes of both and pretty much always has a good and bad example going at any point in the study.
This is so well written. Funny enough, the Marvel franchise comes to mind as a series of stories where the heroes tend to be on the side of technological progress and use their innovative powers to defeat threats to humanity. Even in Age of Ultron, where the villain is an actual rogue AI, part of how the Avengers defeat it is to create another AI that won’t be corrupted.
Three cheers for #3! I'm a medical researcher, and bureaucratic tensions in my worklife recently led me to revisit Steven Pinker's 2015 Boston Globe piece in which he argues, "Given this potential bonanza, the primary moral goal for today’s bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence: Get out of the way." In our actual current reality, self-righteous veto-wielding authoritarians are a major barrier to human progress, but many of my colleagues seem to have trouble perceiving the problem. It would be very helpful if entertainment could at least occasionally cast this archetype as villainous.
I would, however, offer the complaint that #3 isn't simply an alternative to dystopia - it can just as easily be a *feature* of dystopian fiction. I wolf down Silo the moment each episode is released. It's as dys as a topia can possibly get, but its central conflict is between hero-engineers who want to push the society forward versus power-mad authoritarian villains who want to keep their high-Gini society benighted and stagnant. Fist-shaking emoji! Viva #3!
Another thing I love about Silo: no children! Too much modern sci fi revolves around storylines about pouty-lipped teens coming of age or parents making heroic sacrifices for their children. I get that parenting and teen romance are important aspects of the human experience, but sci fi should be about exploring new ideas - and these hackneyed tropes are about as far from new ideas as you can possibly get.
My sense is that movie executives' inordinate fondness for parents-rescuing-children storylines is part of the reason we're saddled with so many dystopian disasters these days. There's no room for the gatekeepers' preferred storylines in movies like Her.
This is so great! Thank you for writing this. I have wondered this question for quite some time. It has often felt that every novel and movie set in the future is the same plot: Everything in the future is bad, bleak, and we're all going to die. Then eventually, the "future" that the author imagined comes and goes, and actually life is way, way better than anyone could have imagined. As the world continues to improve (and still have so many issues), it would be great to see more works of art based in the future where it is like: Hey, here is the future, things are a lot better, cancer is cured, domestic violence is no more, and here are some other struggles to make the plot interesting.
James White’s Sector General series is one of my all time favorite techno-optimist sci-fi works. Universal translators and the ability to transfer the professional experiences of healthcare experts from other species allows for breakthrough medical innovation. It was a great series to read as a teen who needed to feel good about a technical and spacefaring future! I love rereading them.
My novel Jove's Chariot (https://a.co/d/7zCEHUC), brightly foretelling a coming airship age, is a case in point. It's set in the relatively near future-- 2046 through 2059-- and the villains (a greedy corporation, an Islamist movement, ignorant public opinion, conspiracy theorists-- are familiar forces in today's world. The heroes aren't (mostly) technologists but power users of a technology-- giant airships-- that isn't all that futuristic but could be built today.
The plot is they offend a multinational company by fixing a fusion power plant that was nationalized, get outlawed, and become "The Flying Republic of Outlaws" for thirteen years. :)
There are some stories about discovery or invention. They tend to be (a) military related (Oppenheimer, Imitation Game), (b) space related (Hidden Figures, October Sky), or (c) movies about individual inventors with interesting life stories that don't go to theaters (Flash of Genius, Joy)
I think inventing something important should be considered interesting in itself, without having to have some other “human interest” element to the inventor's life story.
In the 1950s, there were tons of heroic inventor movies, especially about medical breakthroughs. I think these aren't as big anymore because there has been so very much progress in medicine that effective treatments for infection (for instance) are just taken as a given fact about the world, not the stuff of drama. Which is a pity.
All of your good examples contain conflict, so the first quoted paragraph seems inappropriately targeted at your otherwise decent argument, which I understand more as the relative presence and potential of conflict within dystopias and utopias, rather than its complete absence.
Ideas [1], [2], and [8] seem promising; I see breaking flaws with the rest, as thematic ideas-that-could-stand-on-their-own.
These flaws are explicated below, but what's really interesting to me about this post is that, simply in order to suggest ideas for writing *non-dystopias*, Jason has to reach into speculative fiction territory. Because, of course, our present reality is so crushingly dystopian, it's not viable as a fiction setting. This is a true fact, important, and seldom acknowledged.
--
On with tearing ideas 3-7 apart:
> 3. Have the heroes be the builders who want to move technology forward, and the villains be those who want to stop them.
It's been done; you'd have to subvert the tropes to make it interesting. For example, you could make the Luddites *effectively pass as* the champions of progress, to the heroes [and possibly even the readers] at the beginning of the story, and introduce a shady-looking sect which at first looks like Luddites, and turns out to be the real builders. But even this has kind of been done before; you'd have to subvert *those* tropes, too!
> 4. Tell a story of a classic human conflict, but set in a futuristic world.
'Retell an old tale with new trappings' is not, to me, really a viable idea for writing something exciting-in-a-deep-way.
> 5. Create a problem with technology, and then solve it with technology.
> 6. Create conflict over good vs evil uses of technology.
Again, trappings; the technology, as far as this type of story is concerned, may as well be magic. You can still tell these stories, and they can still be non-dystopian speculative fiction, but "technology" isn't a particularly helpful or load-bearing clue to how to create an interesting non-dystopia here.
> 7. Create conflict between a utopian world, and another civilization that is less than utopian.
You *can* just write multiple societies that are utopian in different ways, with each having internal propaganda demonizing the others which is partly but not entirely false; many glowfic threads are examples of this.
Agree. So many stories nowadays are just plain dark and dystopian. Humans either suck each other's blood or scrabble with rats for that last piece of food on a radioactive tundra.
Create a problem with technology, and then have humans figure out how to solve the problem by being more humane with the technology, as if there were some unforeseen exaptation the technology was capable of delivering by humans reframing it’s purpose.
This is what I'm trying to achieve with my novel, Journey to Kyron (as you mention, 'a tale of exploration and discovery, such as space travelers encountering a strange new planet'). Plenty of conflict and human interest in the day-to-day lives of the explorers, but crucially, the reason for the journey is not to escape an ailing Earth, but because the world has become so prosperous that such a journey becomes possible.
Do you have a draft? Sounds interesting!
I'm serialising it here on Substack so the next iteration can have feedback and input in real time :) https://shonistar.substack.com/p/journey-to-kyron-the-journey-begins
As an author, the struggle to tone it down is real. I sometimes feel compelled to add dystopian elements to make the setting pop and increase the stakes. Anxieties like "will anybody want to publish/read this?" can drive one to play up the drama.
I'm almost finished with a novel in which there are two (mostly non-dystopian) realities. Their histories diverged for unknown reasons, and one is "us in 2050" and the other is around 150 years behind, tech-wise. (think: dieselpunk).
The mystery is: why?
I've struggled to figure out how dystopian to make each world, because of course one of the questions is, which world would you rather live in? As a technophile, I don't want it to come off as ideological or preachy. And I want to embrace and understand technology wholeheartedly, not just its good parts.
The discovery of invention is one of my favorites! The race to put electricity in homes! So much drama in that story. The race to get a man on the moon in so many space films. Trying to come up with a cure before it’s too late! Even trying to write that code before the big competition! There are so many ways we overcome conflict with invention.
One of the many things that makes Babylon 5's epic five-season story so good is the way that we see the various governments fluctuate between freedom and tyranny, such that it explores the causes of both and pretty much always has a good and bad example going at any point in the study.
This is so well written. Funny enough, the Marvel franchise comes to mind as a series of stories where the heroes tend to be on the side of technological progress and use their innovative powers to defeat threats to humanity. Even in Age of Ultron, where the villain is an actual rogue AI, part of how the Avengers defeat it is to create another AI that won’t be corrupted.
Yup, and I mentioned Thanos as a great Malthusian villain.
Three cheers for #3! I'm a medical researcher, and bureaucratic tensions in my worklife recently led me to revisit Steven Pinker's 2015 Boston Globe piece in which he argues, "Given this potential bonanza, the primary moral goal for today’s bioethics can be summarized in a single sentence: Get out of the way." In our actual current reality, self-righteous veto-wielding authoritarians are a major barrier to human progress, but many of my colleagues seem to have trouble perceiving the problem. It would be very helpful if entertainment could at least occasionally cast this archetype as villainous.
I would, however, offer the complaint that #3 isn't simply an alternative to dystopia - it can just as easily be a *feature* of dystopian fiction. I wolf down Silo the moment each episode is released. It's as dys as a topia can possibly get, but its central conflict is between hero-engineers who want to push the society forward versus power-mad authoritarian villains who want to keep their high-Gini society benighted and stagnant. Fist-shaking emoji! Viva #3!
Another thing I love about Silo: no children! Too much modern sci fi revolves around storylines about pouty-lipped teens coming of age or parents making heroic sacrifices for their children. I get that parenting and teen romance are important aspects of the human experience, but sci fi should be about exploring new ideas - and these hackneyed tropes are about as far from new ideas as you can possibly get.
My sense is that movie executives' inordinate fondness for parents-rescuing-children storylines is part of the reason we're saddled with so many dystopian disasters these days. There's no room for the gatekeepers' preferred storylines in movies like Her.
This is so great! Thank you for writing this. I have wondered this question for quite some time. It has often felt that every novel and movie set in the future is the same plot: Everything in the future is bad, bleak, and we're all going to die. Then eventually, the "future" that the author imagined comes and goes, and actually life is way, way better than anyone could have imagined. As the world continues to improve (and still have so many issues), it would be great to see more works of art based in the future where it is like: Hey, here is the future, things are a lot better, cancer is cured, domestic violence is no more, and here are some other struggles to make the plot interesting.
James White’s Sector General series is one of my all time favorite techno-optimist sci-fi works. Universal translators and the ability to transfer the professional experiences of healthcare experts from other species allows for breakthrough medical innovation. It was a great series to read as a teen who needed to feel good about a technical and spacefaring future! I love rereading them.
A good dramatic biopic for # 2 would be the invention of insulin at novo and nordisk + their eventual merger!
My novel Jove's Chariot (https://a.co/d/7zCEHUC), brightly foretelling a coming airship age, is a case in point. It's set in the relatively near future-- 2046 through 2059-- and the villains (a greedy corporation, an Islamist movement, ignorant public opinion, conspiracy theorists-- are familiar forces in today's world. The heroes aren't (mostly) technologists but power users of a technology-- giant airships-- that isn't all that futuristic but could be built today.
The plot is they offend a multinational company by fixing a fusion power plant that was nationalized, get outlawed, and become "The Flying Republic of Outlaws" for thirteen years. :)
Refreshing and inspiring, thank you!
There are some stories about discovery or invention. They tend to be (a) military related (Oppenheimer, Imitation Game), (b) space related (Hidden Figures, October Sky), or (c) movies about individual inventors with interesting life stories that don't go to theaters (Flash of Genius, Joy)
I think inventing something important should be considered interesting in itself, without having to have some other “human interest” element to the inventor's life story.
In the 1950s, there were tons of heroic inventor movies, especially about medical breakthroughs. I think these aren't as big anymore because there has been so very much progress in medicine that effective treatments for infection (for instance) are just taken as a given fact about the world, not the stuff of drama. Which is a pity.
All of your good examples contain conflict, so the first quoted paragraph seems inappropriately targeted at your otherwise decent argument, which I understand more as the relative presence and potential of conflict within dystopias and utopias, rather than its complete absence.
Great post!
Ideas [1], [2], and [8] seem promising; I see breaking flaws with the rest, as thematic ideas-that-could-stand-on-their-own.
These flaws are explicated below, but what's really interesting to me about this post is that, simply in order to suggest ideas for writing *non-dystopias*, Jason has to reach into speculative fiction territory. Because, of course, our present reality is so crushingly dystopian, it's not viable as a fiction setting. This is a true fact, important, and seldom acknowledged.
--
On with tearing ideas 3-7 apart:
> 3. Have the heroes be the builders who want to move technology forward, and the villains be those who want to stop them.
It's been done; you'd have to subvert the tropes to make it interesting. For example, you could make the Luddites *effectively pass as* the champions of progress, to the heroes [and possibly even the readers] at the beginning of the story, and introduce a shady-looking sect which at first looks like Luddites, and turns out to be the real builders. But even this has kind of been done before; you'd have to subvert *those* tropes, too!
> 4. Tell a story of a classic human conflict, but set in a futuristic world.
'Retell an old tale with new trappings' is not, to me, really a viable idea for writing something exciting-in-a-deep-way.
> 5. Create a problem with technology, and then solve it with technology.
> 6. Create conflict over good vs evil uses of technology.
Again, trappings; the technology, as far as this type of story is concerned, may as well be magic. You can still tell these stories, and they can still be non-dystopian speculative fiction, but "technology" isn't a particularly helpful or load-bearing clue to how to create an interesting non-dystopia here.
> 7. Create conflict between a utopian world, and another civilization that is less than utopian.
You *can* just write multiple societies that are utopian in different ways, with each having internal propaganda demonizing the others which is partly but not entirely false; many glowfic threads are examples of this.
Disagree, the present is not dystopian at all.
Oh. It's surprising to me that you think that, although I guess in retrospect it shouldn't have been.
Agree. So many stories nowadays are just plain dark and dystopian. Humans either suck each other's blood or scrabble with rats for that last piece of food on a radioactive tundra.
Create a problem with technology, and then have humans figure out how to solve the problem by being more humane with the technology, as if there were some unforeseen exaptation the technology was capable of delivering by humans reframing it’s purpose.