"It's easier to write about how the current world went wrong than it is to come up with believable ways how the current world is going to survive and prosper."
- Gardner Dozois
this quote, i came across it about a month ago. today, i was reminded of it when i read a review in the omnivoracious blog: there's a collection of stories for a better future out now. it's title: Seeds of Change. i haven't read any of the stories yet, but what already struck me was the line from John Joseph Adam's introduction:
"It is my hope that reading these stories inspires some to plant their own seeds of change—that when we see something wrong, we'll do something about it. We're all in this together—and the first step toward change can begin with any one of us."
sounds so simple. so logical, really. and still, the human mind is neither: simple. or logical.
which brings me back to the first quote, and the place that linked to it: SF-writer Paolo Bagicalupi's blog entry on Optimistic CO2 Sci-Fi. in this entry, he sums the parameters of human behaviour up in a plain and ingenious two-pointer:
So I see the central problem of realistic optimistic sci-fi as being at least two-fold:
1. We’re all so self-serving.
2. We seem to be biologically wired not to deal with any problem that’s not an obvious and immediate threat.
and finally, the blog entry where the quote is from: Jetse de Vries reflection on the same topic: Optimism in SF: Is It Dead?
between their sci-fi-lines, both of the posts of course point towards a more pressing question. realistically, how long can we keep living the way we do?
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