a continuity of progress

[sergebroom]

The year 2009 is almost over. Yes, there are still 4 months left to go, but before you know it, the Holidays willl have arrived.

Then 2010 will begin. That's the year that Brunner had chosen as the setting for his magnum opus, the novel Stand on Zanzibar. I haven't read it since I was in college, circa 1973. I've been wondering if I should take a look again, now that it's about to become an Alternate History. That got me thinking, and I've noticed an interesting thing about the SF novels written in the late 1960s, for example Spinrad's Bug Jack Barron or Silverberg's Resurrections. The stories assumed that, if we manage not to let our garbage poison us into Extinction, there'd be a continuity of progress from what was going on when those stories were written. Each new improvement would build on what had come before.

Goodness, were they wrong.

I'm not talking about the state of human presence in space, or that we're nowhere near creating Artificial Intelligences. I'm talking about Earth.

What those writers didn't foresee was that the forces of conservatism would not remain confined to the darkness, and that their fringe would become an accepted part of the mainstream where, for example, the public arena would discuss topics such as whether or not America should torture its ennemies - supposed or real. They have been able to say, without finding themselves sent to the funny farm, that some of our citizens should be left to die rather than be provided with decent health care.

There has been progress, but it has been in spite of the others, who have fought against progress every step of the way and even managed to have us walk backward at times.

If anything, the 21st Century has reminded me that Progress's upward path isn't guaranteed.

Comments

[summers-place.livejournal.com]

That's the sort of thing I find myself thinking about, too. And it makes me nostalgic for those halcyon days of my youth, when I could read dystopian SF and feel sure that these stories would serve as cautionary tales to keep us from descending into those sorts of depths, and could also read about bright SFnal futures and believe they were bound to come to pass, rather than being overwhelmed by the Forces of Darkness.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

At the time, around 1970, I was fairly certain that the 21st Century would be as dismal as that of Soylent Green. It didn't happen, maybe because of those cautionnary tales. Part of me wants to believe that, once again, Reason and Humanity will prevail against those new threats from within. I only hope it happens before we fall off the cliff.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I can just see some people ignoring the new cautionary tales because some of the 1970s dire warnings didn't come to pass. It'll never occur to them that some of those bad things didn't happen because someone did listen to the earlier warnings. I haven't forgotten Y2K and people complaining that nothing had gone wrong.