Science fiction, double feature ... - Jennifer Rohn & Neal Stephenson, 18 August 2012

Ken MacLeod at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2012

A sunny Saturday afternoon (18 August, 5-6 pm) saw the Scottish Power Theatre tent filled almost to capacity for the Wellcome Trust Event 'Putting the Cult into Culture', a discussion on science fiction and science in fiction. Chaired by Forum Writer in Residence, Pippa Goldschmidt, the discussion featured best-selling SF writer and tech guru Neal Stephenson, with cell biologist, novelist and LabLit editor Jennifer Rohn.

Rohn began by explaining that lab lit, as distinct from science fiction, is fiction about scientists and scientific practice in the real world, historical or present-day, rather than in imagined or future worlds. The number of novels that fit this description is suprisingly small - she knew of about 120 in English, which is not a lot to show for the four centuries (more or less) in which science and the novel have flourished in the English-speaking world.

Scientists, she went on, are 'not trusted messengers'. Their views on controversial topics, even within their own specialty, are seen as just their opinion. By showing scientists as human beings, and showing their daily work realistically, lab lit could help to overcome popular suspicion and incomprehension of what scientists are up to. It could also, of course, be of value and enjoyment to scientists and science students to see their world and way of life reflected in literature, and these are among lab lit's most avid readers.

Neal Stephenson looked at the topic from a different angle: the role of science fiction as a stimulus to scientific and technological advance, not just in attracting young people to study or work in these fields (as it evidently does) but in inspiring scientists and engineers with visions of what they could do. Here, he argued, science fiction writers have been falling down on the job: instead of envisioning big projects such as space exploration or robotics - as their forebears in the 1920s-1950s did - they have wallowed in dystopian gloom. Thus they are partly responsible for the lack of major technological innovations which are sorely needed in such areas as energy supply. Heinlein's rockets and Asimov's robots gave engineers something to shoot for. We should try to do at least as well, or better. Stephenson has presented this view at conferences, and set up a website, Hieroglyph, to open a new dialogue between SF and technology.

A lively discussion followed, in which I didn't get a word in edgeways, which is probably just as well because I wouldn't have been polite. At a Genomics Forum-sponsored event at the 2006 Book Festival, SF writer Charlie Stross provocatively said that SF is the literary wing of a totalitarian movement that never got a mound of skulls to call its own: Technocracy. I've found this a useful quip for resisting attempts to impose an agenda on the genre - including, I have to say, that of 'public understanding of/engagement with science'.

Stephenson, in my view, has got the problem exactly backwards. There's no shortage of grand visions of technically practicable and/or boldly innovative projects, in SF and in the imaginations of engineers and scientists themselves. The reasons why they're not implemented, or even seriously proposed, are social, economic, and political. We need - in the first instance - to understand these obstacles, rather than present yet more shiny visions of what could be done if they were overcome. Needless to say, opinions as to what the obstacles are will differ. For one example of such an analysis, I'd point to David Graeber's recent stimulating if perhaps over-stated polemical essay Of Flying Cars and the Falling Rate of Profit.

A bit of dystopian gloom is just what we need. Sheer dismay at where we're going could yet drag us out of the rut.