Future Fiction with a Unique Twist

Future fiction is entertainment with a unique twist. All fiction needs to have colorful characters…people that say interesting things, act in ways that set them apart and make people think about what they’ve said and done. All that these characters do must take place in a set of events that tell an interesting tale. After all, people want a story that sweeps their imagination up and takes it for a ride. The twist, however, with future fiction is where it takes the situation today and tells what it might mean for the future. Whether it’s scientific or sociopolitical in nature, an aspect of the world we live in is subject to creative prognostication.

It is this predictive component that made 1984 so fascinating when it was read by its first readers. Orwell looked at the bleak circumstances that arose from Joseph Goebbel’s propaganda machine: an entire, albeit desperate nation, was completely mind-controlled by the Nazi spin-machine and the populace accepted (at least the bulk of it) complete control and believed in the sordid mission of its leaders. Orwell took this recent occurrence and wrote in 1949 about how far this scenario could go if such public manipulation could be executed to completion and with absolute public control. His story is fascinating, his characters are nuanced and he takes you on a dark journey through a fascinating set of events.

More authors in Orwell’s era: Ayn Rand (Anthem, 1938), Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, 1932) and others tried their hands as well at future fiction. Later, Harlan Ellison published anthologies of future fiction with his Dangerous Visions books (first, Dangerous Visions in 1967 and Again, Dangerous Visions in 1972). In all of these cases, there is this consistent imaginative push by the story authors: what might things be like based on where we (society, science, the universe) seem to be going.

That's the focus of Darwin's Orphans and this blog: future fiction. Please weigh in with your thoughts on the subject or my book's treatment of it -- Mark Salow