Categories

A Children’s Crusade Adolescent angst Alien Lifeforms Alpha 5 Alpha Mission Alternative history America Artificial Intelligence Brazil Climate Change Exobiology futurology Growing up History imaginative literature Intelligence intertexuality irrationality Lights in the sky LiteraryCriticism media landscape Myth and folklore narcissism narrative styles Near Future paranoia Philosophy picaresque politics populism Post Apocalypse postmodernism Prediction psychology Science Science Fiction SF scholarship Social breakdown Socialization social media solipsism Space Travel Time Young Adult Fiction zeitgeist
Planet
Planet Surface (Detail)
Pseudo-shrubs (detail)
Book Cover for 'A Children's Crusade'
Han
Marta
The Dome (detail)
Su Ying
Jorja
Pseudo-crustacean
Book Cover for 'The Leftover Girl'
Priya
Rai
Senhora Daguia
Alphane life (detail) , dome in distance
Nurse G

Recent Posts

Category: politics

Future history

Future history

By | | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental sixteen: Future history
My plan to write a series of short stories filling the background of the Lights in the sky universe went awry (after three stories), when one of the stories decided to turn itself into a novel!

So I’m now writing my sixth piece of extended fiction with the current title The Great Flood. If this sounds like historical fiction then that’s the point; writing about a putative future as if it were history, a common approach in science fiction!

As ever the intention is to write something that will appeal to the general reader, to a mainstream readership, in fact!

We’re in recognisable world (a possible criticism is that it’s a bit too like our own!). I think this is inevitable and a commonplace in fictional works set in a supposed future! I’m not futurologist, nor do I have clairvoyant powers! Most futuristic fiction reaches an accommodation with its audience… It’s different from the present day, but not too different! This provides reference points for the reader…

The trick would appear to be to introduce a number of technological, cultural, and social changes while maintaining a recognisable milieu…

This is complicated in the current times by the sheer pace of technological and related social and cultural transformations, but nothing is worse than supposed future world filled with supposed ‘developments’ which prove laughably wide of the mark (personal jetpacks and flying cars anybody!).

Science fiction reflects the time that it is written, anyway; and mine reflects a suspicion of and an apprehension with unchecked technological advance and economic change which is a part of the current zeitgeist! Obviously, another strand within the same zeitgeist welcomes this change with open arms…

This schism forms part of the ideological and cultural wars that characterise our times. This is very much a work in progress and it will change, as I modify and customise the text through the writing and editing process…

As ‘historical’ fiction the past is very much present in the world of the novel, manifesting both in the preoccupations of the main characters, and in the thematic elements and symbolism I intend to employ…

Stephen Clare   January 2018

Goodbye and good riddance!

Goodbye and good riddance!

By | | Comments 0 Comment

Blog entry supplemental fifteen: Goodbye and good riddance!
I find it difficult to remember a year that I’ve wanted to see the back of more than 2017, although 2018’s not looking too promising!

This year we’ve had the full horror of Donald Trump’s populism unleashed on the world, and the full implications of Brexit (as well as the sheer ineptitude of the current government!), have become clearer by the day…

Add to that the now widely accepted belief that the environmental cataclysm and the accompanying mass extinction event are underway and that there’s nothing we can do about it! Apologists are even now saying that this the way of the world and we should embrace the natural order of thing;, I would like to point out to these people that the species likely to disappear includes our own! Oh and President Trump thinks that some good old Global Warming would be good for his country! Maybe he should tell that to Californians…  

Signs of optimism for next year include the possibility of a Democrat majority after the US midterms followed in short order by Trump’s impeachment, and a snap General Election that sweeps away the Maybot, and leads (at the very least) to more rational variety of Brexit… But I’m not convinced!

But hey, Birmingham’s got the 2022 Commonwealth Games!

My response to all this has been to take refuge once more in my fictional futures; Lights in the sky is finished, but Tales of the Collapse is well under way…

So far this consists of four short stories, with another one, The Great Flood, well underway!

Worrying, this last piece seems to want to grow beyond a mere short story and is threatening to become a novella (or maybe even a novel!)…

Happy New Year

C.E. Stevens    December 2017

Blog entry supplemental thirteen: The rise of unreason

Blog entry supplemental thirteen: The rise of unreason

By | | Comments 0 Comment

Back in the late 80’s, in more innocent times, I wrote a song based on a common minor key blues progression called The Rise of Unreason; this charted the rise of Christian fundamentalism and the religious right in America, and elsewhere. Over the years I have revised and added to this song, both lyrically and musically, in response to changing times; but after 9/11 it acquired a new resonance and urgency as Islamic Fundamentalism cast a growing shadow over both the West and the Muslim world.

The song is now in its fifth or sixth iteration, and has never seemed more relevant…

But, I think we’ve gone beyond the relatively well thought out irrationality of the religious fundamentalists (which at least has some basis in belief, scripture, and ideology, however extreme and archaic!), to something deeper.

The rise of narcissistic populists in the political sphere seems to have coincided with (or maybe unleashed!) a more general outbreak of irrational behaviour on the part of ordinary people not linked to any particular belief system. Everybody seems to be angry, but why should this be so at this point in our history?

Outbreaks of delusional behaviour are not new, and characterised much of the Mediaeval period, persisting into the early Modern Age. But the Enlightenment and the triumph of rational economic systems was supposed to have put paid to them. So what’s happening to bring them back to the fore?

Well, there are a number of suspects…

It’s worth revisiting Clarke’s dictum that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ and apply it to our own societies. Technological change has been so rapid and so remarkable in recent years, that ordinary people are being left behind; marveling at what their new handheld devices can do, but not understanding the science that lies behind the tech. Not so long ago any reasonably well-read lay person could be expected to comprehend in broad terms the technological and scientific principles that underpin his or her civilisation; this is no longer the case! And irrationality has a habit of rushing in to fill such lacunae in our understanding…

And then there are the various existential threats our civilisation now confronts…

Some of the more improbable; the asteroid strike or the erupting supervolcano, are essentially beyond our current power to mitigate, and thus not worth considering, but others are clear and present dangers. Climate change, resource depletion, pollution and the potential impact of AI on employment are all things that human activity is responsible for, but rather than address the issues, large sections of the populace seem to want to deny they are happening altogether, or slip into a kind of helpless apathy.

Reaching for the irrational belief system is a symptom of all this…

Demagogues and despots have always known the emotional appeal of the irrational when times are tough and the solutions demanding and difficult, hence the election of right wing populists.

In our cultural life the appeal of the supernatural and of the superhero is strong at the moment; fantasy worlds to visit and fantasy heroes to rescue us.

Fundamentalist religion, I’ve mentioned, but there is also the growing popularity of pseudoscience, which rather than offering solutions re-frames the threat in mythic terms; the oft-promised arrival of Nibiru functions almost like a giant metaphor for the real dangers that we face. The next global extinction event has already started according to many scientists, and there’s plenty of evidence to support this view. The old chestnut of finding a new home for the human race has leapt off the pages of science fiction and into popular discourse, something I have referenced in previous blogs.

So what’s all this got to with your SF saga, I hear you ask?   

Well, Lights in the sky anticipates the coming ecological cataclysm, but I’m thinking that my fictional doom is (in the best traditions of British SF), a rather cosy catastrophe! By the end of the series Gaia and her allies have staged a successful counterattack, and the biosphere is recovering nicely.

In the real world ‘the civilisation of the world as we know it’ would appear to be coming sooner than expected, and the cavalry doesn’t appear to be about to ride to the rescue…

C.E. Stevens   October 2017

Blog entry supplemental twelve: New Earth and other fables

Blog entry supplemental twelve: New Earth and other fables

By | | Comments 0 Comment

I eventually got round to watching The Search for a New Earth…

Hearteningly I had anticipated most of the issues and challenges outlined in the programme in my similarly-themed tetralogy Lights in the Sky…

What I hadn’t anticipated were: plasma rockets as a means of space propulsion rather more efficient than chemical rockets (I may substitute these in the relevant chapter, as it would only be a modest change), Proxima b as the Earth-like planetary destination, and artificially-induced hibernation as a means of dealing with the length of time needed to traverse the distance between here and the Centauran system…

But overall, not bad!  

I enjoyed the programme (…at least at first!), but after a while it began to strain credulity, featuring as it did; postage stamp-sized space probes capable of reaching another star system (and beaming back data!), hibernating bears immune to radiation sickness, and hibernation-inducing serum obtained from hamsters, for Christ’s sake!  And I began to wonder if the whole thing wasn’t some kind of late April Fool’s joke! Then I remembered the original Tomorrow’s World (my favourite television programme growing up!), anchored as it was by overly-enthusiastic, manically-grinning presenters, and showcasing (on a weekly basis) ground-breaking technological developments that were never heard of again!  

But seriously folks, there were a couple of important issues that weren’t raised by the programme. Firstly, any manned mission to Proxima b would appear to be asking the putative crew members to spend twenty years of their lives in hibernation, time they would presumably never get back! The question of whether being in hibernation would slow the ageing process was never discussed, but it doesn’t seem to do so in the case of bears (or indeed, hamsters!).

Secondly, we have the elephant in the room!  The Proxima expedition (like my Alpha Mission!), would do nothing for the billions left back on Earth, presumably to die miserably in the impending ecological catastrophe! Eventually, a significant number of those billions would realise this and start to seriously oppose these plans, asking (quite reasonably) why the effort and the (billions of) dollars going into an expedition to the stars aren’t being spent sorting out the problems here on Earth!   

I was also re-assured by the rather precarious prospect offered to any settlement on the planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, with its one face permanently turned towards its primary (and being baked by its rays), while the other remains in deep freeze, and with only a thin strip of supposedly habitable planet between the two! I decided that, on reflection, I much preferred my world, Alpha 5, as the fictional destination for my explorers cum colonists…   

Imaginary worlds need to be better than the one we live in, or why else would we invent them?

C.E. Stevens   September 2017

Blog entry supplemental nine: the wheel is turning

Blog entry supplemental nine: the wheel is turning

By | | Comments 0 Comment

Apologies for not blogging for a while; but I’ve been away, in America, in fact! This was a road trip I took with my mate, Rob… We both play music and we’ve played together in various bands for the past twenty years; so this was a musical odyssey!

We flew to Chicago and proceeded south, mainly (but not exclusively) following the path of the Mississippi… I did the driving (to St Louis, Missouri, Nashville, Memphis, Natchez, Mississippi, ending up in New Orleans); the total distance is not far short of 1500 miles and I did that in nine days, driving on alternate days…

So what’s this got to do with SF and the Lights in the sky series, I hear  you ask?  Well, I’m getting to that!

The trip was a chance not only to visit and pay homage to old musical heroes and discover new ones (Rhiannon Giddens and Gary Clark jr. at the Chicago Blues Festival were particularly memorable!), but also a chance to get away from my life; away from the writing and away from my claustrophobic little island!

I completed part two of The Leftover Girl, just prior to leaving and I’m thus between two thirds and the three-quarters of the way through the book. The first two sections are called The Road, and …to Hell, and the final part will be called …paved with good intentions, so you probably get the drift…

Time away from a work-in-progress is important because it helps give you perspective, vital for a writer. I re-read the section I’d just completed on my return in preparation for starting on the final leg of the literary journey; and I realised something that, although obvious, just hadn’t occurred to me in the rush to complete part two of the book before my departure. The revelation is that the second character in my novel, Dr (later Professor) Helen Choi, ends her life in despair; concluding that she has been in error, pursuing false scientific goals and denying her essential nature. She has lived her life in maya, the world of illusion, effectively denying her own spirituality… She dies hoping that when she meets her husband (‘…in whichever version of the afterlife she is bound’), he will find it in his heart to forgive her…     

The second conclusion I came to (the start of this came while watching the aforementioned artists in Millennium Park, Chicago), was that after three terrible years things are finally moving in our favour once more… Chicago Blues was important because I was disillusioned with music (which for a songwriter is my own version of despair!).

A bit of context is needed here! For those of you unfamiliar with the form, blues festivals in the UK consist of a few hundred (mostly) blokes my age or older, standing ‘round drinking real ale and watching acts even more ancient than they are!

Chicago was different; the first thing we saw (the Blues Village stage), was just like UK blues festivals, and we nearly left at this point! But I looked at the flyer and saw that Rhiannon Giddens (for Christ’s sake!), was performing on the main stage and she was just about to start! For those of you who don’t about her she’s immensely talented as a writer and performer, utterly beautiful, from North Carolina (my favourite out of the twenty seven states of the Union I have visited!), and the possessor of the best voice God ever gave a woman!

We moved to the fantastic open-air auditorium in Millennium Park (think Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao!), and were presented with at least twenty thousand people in the open air-bowl that forms the arena! And these people weren’t old gits like me and Rob, they were young people, of all races, who love music that most young people in my country wouldn’t be seen dead grooving to… The reaction to Rhiannon Giddens was ecstatic enough, but that was nothing compared to the welcome they gave to Gary Clark jr, the new Jimi Hendrix, and someone I hadn’t even heard of !

Not only did this restore my faith in music, but I realised that things in general are changing! It’s not just music; Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity with young people in the UK (as evidenced by his reception at Glastonbury!), the totally unexpected election result, the retreat of Fascistic populism everywhere etc etc

The wheel is indeed turning; favouring authenticity rather than artifice; art rather than commerce; individual expression rather than Simon Cowell-mentored posing; idealism rather than self-interest!

Finally, we seem to be throwing off the twin dead hands of Postmodernist ‘irony’ and neoclassical economics, and discarding the appalling cynicism they engendered…and it occurs to me that this can only be good for me personally, because the type of fiction I write may even come back into fashion…

I talked about the zeitgeist in a previous post; well, I think its just shifted…

C.E. Stevens  June 2017