I love reading science fiction for two reasons: first, because of what I learn about the possible future and second, because of what it says about the present. For instance, I read a lot of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and they correctly predicted the current rise of China, global Megacorps and crypto currencies (and we are making headway on AR and VR). I have just finished works by Neal Stephenson and Cixin Liu that give me a lot of pause about the present. I recommend them highly, but they are not for the faint of heart and may throw you into an existential funk.
Warning: the following does contain some fairly general spoilers, nothing specific though, still depending on the kind of reader you are you may want to read the books first and then come back here (which will take a while given their heft). Both Stephenson’s “Seveneves” and Liu’s “Three Body Problem” trilogy deal with existential threats to humanity and our responses to those threats. The key takeaway from both is: humanity is woefully unprepared scientifically, technologically and psychologically for an existential threat.
In both works the threat emanates from outside of our world, but much of the exploration of attitudes towards science and the challenges of maintaining democracy (and even basic humanity) would apply equally to a problem of our own making such as climate change. Both works praise, maybe excessively so (glorify?), the contributions of individual, often rogue, scientists and entrepreneurs in overcoming the inertia of a population that’s largely weak and self absorbed.
Also shared by both works is an exploration of complex male female dynamics at the level of society and how those are impacted not just by the immediate crisis but also by technological progress overall. I strongly recommend reading Liu’s trilogy to the end for an important change in perspective on a central female character, whose actions are pivotal twice. Despite that shift at the end, Liu’s view appears decidedly more male oriented, whereas Stephenson’s title “Seveneves” sums up his more female centric approach. In either case though the authors are strongly defending what might be called “hardnosed altruism” which they seem to see as declining in present society (as an aside, based on previews, the upcoming movie Dunkirk appears to cover similar territory).
The key takeaway though, one that I wholeheartedly agree with, is that many of problems we are pre-occupied with today as individuals, as nations, and as humanity as a whole, are nearly trivial when placed in the broader context of the universe at large. This is not to say we shouldn’t care about these problems or try to address them. But we shouldn’t let them take up all of our attention. Instead much of that attention should be freed up and directed towards progress. This also happens to be the central idea of my book World After Capital. Reading “Seveneves” and the “Three Body Problem” trilogy may give you a much more emotional access to the importance of the transition from the Industrial Age to the Knowledge Age.
