Everybody says we ’re living in a science fictional geological era now . Your grandma ’s poodle is on Facebook , your whole societal life is on your iphone , and mega - corps experience everything about you . But if you imagine the domain is futuristic now , just wait another twenty age . The weirdness will pullulate exponentially , making the world of 2028 easy as jarring as 2008 would seem to a visitor from the Reagan era . So how can we , as author and storyteller , create a believable medium - near - future human beings ?
Images byGoodnight London .
Extrapolate from current trends …
Certain things pass off now will probably carry on , and even accelerate , over the next two decades . The icecap will keep melt , natural disasters will probably hail more often , and drouth may affect more regions . Rich countries will become fortress of the elderly , with few young citizenry who are n’t immigrants . Corporations will in all probability keep becoming more powerful and diversified , unless the next economic nuclear meltdown in reality weakens their world power somehow . There will be less oil , and more combat over oil . solid food prices will keep going up for third - world commonwealth . China and India will be economically resurgent , unless they fuck up . Some forms of societal aberrance will be marginally more accepted , within wealthy societies at least .
… but do n’t be their bitch .
Do n’t take over that every current trend will keep in a unbowed line — it ’s never work that way in the yesteryear , and it ’s unlikely to set out now . unexampled technology will aid halt some of the negative trends we ’re dealing with right now . And impossible disasters will trip unexampled cycles of wretchedness that will swing us all down . Nobody in 1988 could have predicted 9/11 or thegirl who hanged herselfbecause her MySpace friends turned out to be mean grownups . ( How would you even explain the “ MySpace hoax ” to someone in 1988 ? )
The technology of tomorrow already exist .
Nanotechnology is already turning up in socks and aesculapian gadget , and everyone ’s predicting it ’ll replace basic circuitry and lead to miracle cures within a few years . People are already chuffed about home robotics , and robots are already helping us fight our wars . There ’s a lot of talk about amazing replacement arm that will use nanotech , and even be able to translate signals from your brainiac . And there ’s a lot of intellect to be optimistic about gene therapy .
Do n’t just pick one technology to update .
One of my favourite peeve is the cheeseparing - ish future tarradiddle where everything ’s more or less the same , except that there ’s one miraculous new technology that is transforming the world . It ’s way more likely that there ’ll be half a dozen semi - miraculous technologies that will be prod the world in different directions . ( And we ca n’t discount the possibility that thing will go to shit so bad that none of those amazing new technologies will come to fruition . )
The story comes first .
We ’re not writing a ashen paper here , we ’re create LITERATURE . ( And yes , it has to be all in block caps , because that ’s how you know it ’s serious . John Updike agrees with me . ) It ’s impossible to be “ accurate ” in depicting the future unless you ’re a precog or a metre - traveler . So the second most important affair is to create a time to come that ’s amply alienating and put the correct amount of hereafter - shock on your reader ’s sushi - same bit . The most important thing is to have it all be in the service of your report , so that all the footling contingent bolster your theatrical role and help make the characters ’ activity seem plausible in context .
So here are a couple of near - future writing utilisation .
Writing exercise # 1
rent ’s take a fabricated case , we ’ll call her Betty January , and she has some sort of future job . Like she ’ll wipe an hour of your life out of the incarnate transaction / surveillance databases , or she ’ll chop your fresh nanotech / biotech artificial limb to get around the DRM that prevents it from play the pianissimo like Stevie Wonder . Whatever .
write exercise # 2
Everything run low to shite . Now that you ’ve done a Nox - in - the - life eccentric practice , try write the twenty-four hour period when Betty ’s populace falls apart . You never notice a lot of the applied science around you until it fail , so some variety of technical failure should be part of this scenario — but not of necessity all of it . Maybe some potbelly finds out what Betty ’s been up to and has her fire - walled . So suddenly her cyberspace admittance does n’t work , and her extra arm , unable to download updates , start turning into deadened weight confiscate to her side . ( She does n’t have to have an extra arm , I just throw that in there . ) Or mayhap there ’s a natural tragedy , like an earthquake , which takes out the phone pipeline and cellphone column . The main thing is , write the first five or ten minutes after Betty ’s universe falls aside and everything hold back work the way it should . What ’s the worst she imagine ? What desperate measures does she attempt to get thing working again ? What does her support space look like to her when she ’s freaking out and feeling unsafe ?
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