News13Now
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Business
    • Politics
    • Science
    • World

    Scientists create tomatoes genetically edited to bolster vitamin D levels | Gene editing

    EBay enters NFT business, with assist from hockey icon Wayne Gretzky

    EBay enters NFT business, with assist from hockey icon Wayne Gretzky

    Biden says US would respond ‘militarily’ if China attacked Taiwan, but White House insists there’s no policy change

    Biden says US would respond ‘militarily’ if China attacked Taiwan, but White House insists there’s no policy change

    Public Notice: Jones County Public Schools

    Public Notice: Jones County Public Schools

    Biosolutions: A clear path to fighting climate change

    Biosolutions: A clear path to fighting climate change

    Charter schools show education and politics can work in NM

    Charter schools show education and politics can work in NM

    Man shot and killed Sunday morning on New York City subway train

    Man shot and killed Sunday morning on New York City subway train

    Trending Tags

    • Lifestyle
      • All
      • Food
      • Health
      Truffles: What makes them so delicious? | Food-and-cooking

      Truffles: What makes them so delicious? | Food-and-cooking

      Adding pickled cucumber to sour cream can boost health benefits

      Adding pickled cucumber to sour cream can boost health benefits

      Why this CMO revealed his mental health struggles to his team

      Why this CMO revealed his mental health struggles to his team

      LC FB CH | Cooking with Carson: Pickling onions is so easy, even a husky could do it – The Daily Evergreen

      LC FB CH | Cooking with Carson: Pickling onions is so easy, even a husky could do it – The Daily Evergreen

      Palestinian teen killed in Israeli army raid in Jenin, Health Ministry says – Haaretz

      Palestinian teen killed in Israeli army raid in Jenin, Health Ministry says – Haaretz

      People urged to cook frozen fruit and vegetables because of Listeria findings

      People urged to cook frozen fruit and vegetables because of Listeria findings

      College of Education and Health Professions Honors Outstanding Alumni Award Winners

      College of Education and Health Professions Honors Outstanding Alumni Award Winners

      Trending Tags

      • Entertainment
        • All
        • Sports
        Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

        Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

        Noah Thompson named the newest 'American Idol' | Features/Entertainment – Huntington Herald Dispatch

        Noah Thompson named the newest 'American Idol' | Features/Entertainment – Huntington Herald Dispatch

        Two Roster Weaknesses Denver Broncos can Bolster with Remaining Cap Space

        Two Roster Weaknesses Denver Broncos can Bolster with Remaining Cap Space

        Inflation is rising, but fans are paying for NBA, NFL, other sports tickets

        Inflation is rising, but fans are paying for NBA, NFL, other sports tickets

        Black composers’ music back in the limelight

        Black composers’ music back in the limelight

        Adley Rutschman’s Teammates React to No. 1 Prospect Being Called Up

        Adley Rutschman’s Teammates React to No. 1 Prospect Being Called Up

        Lupita Nyong’o drops out of The Lady In The Lake | Entertainment

        Lupita Nyong’o drops out of The Lady In The Lake | Entertainment

        Trending Tags

        • Tech
          Flagstaff Seeks Carbon Capture Technology to Meet 2030 Climate Goals / Public News Service

          Flagstaff Seeks Carbon Capture Technology to Meet 2030 Climate Goals / Public News Service

          Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Market 2022 Segments Analysis by Top Key Players :Chain Inc., IBM, Accenture, Monax Industries, Intel, Deloitte, Earthport, Microsoft Azure, Digital Asset Holdings

          Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Market 2022 Segments Analysis by Top Key Players :Chain Inc., IBM, Accenture, Monax Industries, Intel, Deloitte, Earthport, Microsoft Azure, Digital Asset Holdings

          Top military officers says technology will transform war

          Top military officers says technology will transform war

          How to avoid consumer pain points around wearable medical technology

          How to avoid consumer pain points around wearable medical technology

          Technology Investment and Authentic Thought Leadership are Requirements for Modern Associations

          Technology Investment and Authentic Thought Leadership are Requirements for Modern Associations

          Watch: Future battery technology – a journey into the unknown for the supply chain | Video

          Watch: Future battery technology – a journey into the unknown for the supply chain | Video

          New technology may pave the way for development of point-of-care devices and diagnostic tests

          New technology may pave the way for development of point-of-care devices and diagnostic tests

          Trending Tags

          Monday, May 23, 2022
          No Result
          View All Result
          • Home
          • News
            • All
            • Business
            • Politics
            • Science
            • World

            Scientists create tomatoes genetically edited to bolster vitamin D levels | Gene editing

            EBay enters NFT business, with assist from hockey icon Wayne Gretzky

            EBay enters NFT business, with assist from hockey icon Wayne Gretzky

            Biden says US would respond ‘militarily’ if China attacked Taiwan, but White House insists there’s no policy change

            Biden says US would respond ‘militarily’ if China attacked Taiwan, but White House insists there’s no policy change

            Public Notice: Jones County Public Schools

            Public Notice: Jones County Public Schools

            Biosolutions: A clear path to fighting climate change

            Biosolutions: A clear path to fighting climate change

            Charter schools show education and politics can work in NM

            Charter schools show education and politics can work in NM

            Man shot and killed Sunday morning on New York City subway train

            Man shot and killed Sunday morning on New York City subway train

            Trending Tags

            • Lifestyle
              • All
              • Food
              • Health
              Truffles: What makes them so delicious? | Food-and-cooking

              Truffles: What makes them so delicious? | Food-and-cooking

              Adding pickled cucumber to sour cream can boost health benefits

              Adding pickled cucumber to sour cream can boost health benefits

              Why this CMO revealed his mental health struggles to his team

              Why this CMO revealed his mental health struggles to his team

              LC FB CH | Cooking with Carson: Pickling onions is so easy, even a husky could do it – The Daily Evergreen

              LC FB CH | Cooking with Carson: Pickling onions is so easy, even a husky could do it – The Daily Evergreen

              Palestinian teen killed in Israeli army raid in Jenin, Health Ministry says – Haaretz

              Palestinian teen killed in Israeli army raid in Jenin, Health Ministry says – Haaretz

              People urged to cook frozen fruit and vegetables because of Listeria findings

              People urged to cook frozen fruit and vegetables because of Listeria findings

              College of Education and Health Professions Honors Outstanding Alumni Award Winners

              College of Education and Health Professions Honors Outstanding Alumni Award Winners

              Trending Tags

              • Entertainment
                • All
                • Sports
                Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

                Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

                Noah Thompson named the newest 'American Idol' | Features/Entertainment – Huntington Herald Dispatch

                Noah Thompson named the newest 'American Idol' | Features/Entertainment – Huntington Herald Dispatch

                Two Roster Weaknesses Denver Broncos can Bolster with Remaining Cap Space

                Two Roster Weaknesses Denver Broncos can Bolster with Remaining Cap Space

                Inflation is rising, but fans are paying for NBA, NFL, other sports tickets

                Inflation is rising, but fans are paying for NBA, NFL, other sports tickets

                Black composers’ music back in the limelight

                Black composers’ music back in the limelight

                Adley Rutschman’s Teammates React to No. 1 Prospect Being Called Up

                Adley Rutschman’s Teammates React to No. 1 Prospect Being Called Up

                Lupita Nyong’o drops out of The Lady In The Lake | Entertainment

                Lupita Nyong’o drops out of The Lady In The Lake | Entertainment

                Trending Tags

                • Tech
                  Flagstaff Seeks Carbon Capture Technology to Meet 2030 Climate Goals / Public News Service

                  Flagstaff Seeks Carbon Capture Technology to Meet 2030 Climate Goals / Public News Service

                  Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Market 2022 Segments Analysis by Top Key Players :Chain Inc., IBM, Accenture, Monax Industries, Intel, Deloitte, Earthport, Microsoft Azure, Digital Asset Holdings

                  Blockchain Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Market 2022 Segments Analysis by Top Key Players :Chain Inc., IBM, Accenture, Monax Industries, Intel, Deloitte, Earthport, Microsoft Azure, Digital Asset Holdings

                  Top military officers says technology will transform war

                  Top military officers says technology will transform war

                  How to avoid consumer pain points around wearable medical technology

                  How to avoid consumer pain points around wearable medical technology

                  Technology Investment and Authentic Thought Leadership are Requirements for Modern Associations

                  Technology Investment and Authentic Thought Leadership are Requirements for Modern Associations

                  Watch: Future battery technology – a journey into the unknown for the supply chain | Video

                  Watch: Future battery technology – a journey into the unknown for the supply chain | Video

                  New technology may pave the way for development of point-of-care devices and diagnostic tests

                  New technology may pave the way for development of point-of-care devices and diagnostic tests

                  Trending Tags

                  No Result
                  View All Result
                  News13Now
                  No Result
                  View All Result
                  Home News World

                  Can speculative fiction teach us anything in a world this crazy? – TechCrunch

                  by Editor
                  May 1, 2021
                  in World
                  0
                  Can speculative fiction teach us anything in a world this crazy? – TechCrunch
                  492
                  SHARES
                  1.4k
                  VIEWS
                  Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


                  There’s an old saw from Mark Twain about how truth is stranger than fiction, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve lived through a very strange reality this past year. With all the chaos and change, we’re led to a foundational question: what’s the purpose of speculative fiction and its adjacent genres of science fiction and fantasy when so much of our world seems to already embody the fantastical worlds these works depict?

                  So I got our occasional fictional columnist Eliot Peper and the author of Veil, the three part Analog Series and other speculative fiction novels on the Gmail for an epistolary conversation on digesting 2020, the meaning of speculative fiction, and the future of art.

                  This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed.

                  Danny Crichton: I’m curious about the future of speculative fiction. We just went through a devastating year with the pandemic and a number of major climate disorders – the types of events that are among the fodder for this genre. How do you keep speculating when reality always seems to catch up with the amygdala of our imaginations?

                  Eliot Peper: Current events are a painful reminder that unlike fiction, reality needn’t be plausible. The world is complex and even the wisest of us understand only a tiny sliver of what’s really going on. Nobody knows what comes next. So while it may feel like we’re living in a science fiction novel, that’s because we’ve always been living in a science fiction novel. Or maybe speculative fiction is more real than so-called realist fiction because the only certainty is that tomorrow will be different from today and from what we expect. Depicting a world without fundamental change has become fantastical.

                  As a writer of speculative fiction, I’m an enthusiastic reader of history. And in reading about the past to slake my curiosity and imagine possible futures, I’ve learned that the present is exceedingly contingent, fascinating, and fleeting. For me, speculative fiction is less about prediction than it is about riffing on how the world is changing like a jazz musician might improvise over a standard. Accuracy only happens by mistake. The most interesting rendition wins because it makes people think, dream, feel. And thanks to technological leverage, to a greater and greater extent people are inventing the future – for better and for worse.

                  So I’m not worried about reality catching up with speculative fiction because speculative fiction is rooted in the human experience of reality. Every black swan event is simply new material.

                  Crichton: So this gets at a challenge that I think blurs the line between realist and speculative fiction and makes these works so hard to categorize. To me, the reality of the pandemic isn’t the black swan that a novel virus could take hold across the planet (after all, pandemics are actually quite common in history), but rather the black swan of the completely shambolic response that we witnessed, one that was not at all well-coordinated.

                  If I were designing a speculative fiction scenario, I don’t think I could come up with “we develop a cure extremely rapidly thanks to the progress of medical science, but the general day-to-day response of people is to massively inflate the death totals through their own actions.” When I think speculative, I think spectacular — something exceptional, but this particular black swan shows the power of the mundane actions of our lives to influence the course of events.

                  Peper: Speculative fiction is all about asking “what if?” What if a lone astronaut got stranded on Mars? What if genetic engineers resurrected dinosaurs and stuck them in an amusement park? What if we are all living in a simulation? The question that sparked my latest novel, Veil, is “what if a billionaire hijacked the climate with geoengineering?” These questions are hooks. They capture the imagination and pique curiosity. That’s all well and good, but it’s only a starting point.

                  To pay off a speculative setup, you need to keep the dominos falling as second-, third-, and fourth-order effects ripple out through the story. Momentum builds. Progressive complications tighten the ratchet. Unexpected reversals fling the reader forward. If an earthquake flattens San Francisco in your story, it’s easy to imagine potential physical consequences: the Bay Bridge collapsing, BART flooding, the power going out, gas leaks, fires, etc. It’s less obvious but at least as important to imagine the potential social consequences: Do people risk their lives to rescue their neighbors or fight over limited emergency supplies? How do the governor and the president respond given their particular personalities, incentives, and constituencies? How might such an event rework the social fabric of the Bay Area? (Also, crucially, where is Dwayne Johnson?) How people respond to events is integral to how events play out.

                  Published in April 2020, Lawrence Wright’s The End of October does an eerily good job extrapolating the messy, cascading social and political reactions to a global pandemic. Kurt Vonnegut’s Galápagos depicts an apocalyptic scenario driven by such mundane, shambolic human shortsightedness that it feels nearly absurd enough to be realistic. While some science fiction overindexes technological change, Ada Palmer’s brilliant Terra Ignota series imagines the cultural, political, and sociological aspects of a fictional future with extraordinary rigor. So often, human behavior is the X-factor that transforms and amplifies the impacts of the original scenario, shaping a new world in the process.

                  This hints at a deeper question though: What is fiction for?

                  When I write fiction, I am not trying to accurately depict or anticipate reality. I’m trying to create an experience, to take the reader on a journey that is compelling, surprising, and fulfilling. Even though part of the fun might be extrapolating a scenario rooted in a particularly intriguing facet of the real world, success isn’t getting things right. Success is a reader turning pages deep into the night to find out what happens next in a story they can’t put down and won’t soon forget.

                  Neil Gaiman likes to say that fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. When it comes to speculative fiction, I love stories that reveal a deep emotional truth or illuminate an underlying force shaping the course of history even if they are wildly but entertainingly wrong about literal details. That doesn’t mean that striving for technical accuracy is bad, just that it isn’t always the point. The point might instead be to make you think, to make you feel, to make you imagine how the world might be different.

                  Crichton: So on that last point, I’m curious how you think about imagination and its power for change. Obviously, art has had a sustained and powerful impact on the imagination of people throughout history, and there are often artistic antecedents to large societal, cultural, and political changes. Part of its power historically though, at least from my perspective, was its rarity and its ability to surprise.

                  Today, we are just subsumed in imaginative worlds, from video games to movies to streaming television shows to books and graphic novels and on and on. If you read time-use studies, Americans are awash in imaginative contexts for potentially a majority of their waking hours. I feel like I’ve been increasingly seeing this gap between the extreme breadth of imagination available in our art, but the extreme narrowness for change in our daily lives. Is that a threat to the ability of art to provoke change? Is speculation still an activity that can lead to action?

                  Peper: Speculation is part of what it means to be human. Before we make a choice, we imagine the possible consequences. We simulate potential futures in daydreams before committing to them in reality. Our mental projections are often wrong, but they are also often useful. For better and for worse, thought experiment is foundational to our internal lives. This individual dynamic scales to the human collective: Imagining a better future is the first step toward building one.

                  Art is a vehicle for imagination. A filmmaker codifies their vision in a movie that others can watch and, in watching, exercise their respective imaginations – sometimes even sparking new creative endeavors that spin off into yet more projects that together form what we call culture. Technology has made more movies, books, songs, poems, photos, paintings, comics, podcasts, and games available and accessible to more people than ever before. Imagined worlds are an integral part of the real world as we experience it, layering meaning and possibility onto actual events. We are all interpreting reality for each other all the time, transforming it in the process. The increasing density and intensity of that process is the result of a growing population that is knitting itself together ever more tightly along ever more dimensions.

                  But technology hasn’t just made new artistic mediums possible and changed the ways in which people make, discover, and experience art. Technology amplifies the impact of human choices. Hippocrates couldn’t have invented an mRNA vaccine, Genghis Khan couldn’t have pressed a button to initiate a nuclear apocalypse, and Odysseus had to build his Trojan Horse out of wood instead of code.

                  Our tools give us superpowers our ancestors never imagined and the consequences of our decisions scale accordingly. Because technical ingenuity is morally neutral, technological development ratchets up the stakes for timeless questions of human agency – what does it mean to live a good life, to contribute to the greater good, to be a good ancestor? This is the moral geography to which artists offer diverse, imperfect, contradictory, and occasionally invaluable maps. So in a certain sense, the more technology empowers us, the more we need art.



                  Source link

                  Tags: crazyfictionspeculativeteachTechCrunchWorld
                  Share197Tweet123Share49
                  Editor

                  Editor

                  Ohio City’s Stir Studio Kitchen offers cooking classes focused on having fun, creating bonds

                  Ohio City’s Stir Studio Kitchen offers cooking classes focused on having fun, creating bonds

                  March 7, 2021
                  Watch now: RaiderCon draws cosplay, comic book fans to Moweaqua | Local Entertainment

                  Watch now: RaiderCon draws cosplay, comic book fans to Moweaqua | Local Entertainment

                  April 9, 2022
                  What's Happening in Health: July 11, 2021 – WKRC TV Cincinnati

                  What's Happening in Health: July 11, 2021 – WKRC TV Cincinnati

                  July 11, 2021
                  Shannon Health celebrates successful surgeries thanks to technology advancements

                  Shannon Health celebrates successful surgeries thanks to technology advancements

                  April 13, 2021
                  Special education providers across NY seek pay equity

                  Special education providers across NY seek pay equity

                  July 29, 2021

                  China leads world’s biggest increase in wind power capacity | Energy industry

                  March 10, 2021
                  China tensions: Taiwan does not seek military confrontation but will defend its freedom, President says

                  China tensions: Taiwan does not seek military confrontation but will defend its freedom, President says

                  October 8, 2021

                  Rookies DeVonta Smith, Ja’Marr Chase get first TDs

                  September 12, 2021

                  Big Boss Season 4: Aswin Vijay gets evicted from Mohanlal show

                  April 26, 2022

                  Perot Museum Expands STEM Education Reach Online – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

                  May 24, 2021

                  El Paso storms cause damage, floods with submerged cars; rescue seen on video

                  July 18, 2021

                  School Sports Roundup: Emely Rodriguez walks it off for St. Mary’s softball

                  May 18, 2021

                  Tensions simmer as McCarthy won’t say whether Cheney should remain in House GOP leadership

                  April 27, 2021

                  Israel, Hamas escalate heavy fighting with no end in sight

                  May 12, 2021

                  As grim pandemic milestone arrives, GOP still plays politics with the crisis | Guest Commentaries

                  May 18, 2022

                  German radio station apologies for remarks about K-pop’s BTS | Entertainment

                  February 26, 2021
                  News13Now

                  News 13 Now!

                  Categories

                  • Business
                  • Entertainment
                  • Food
                  • Health
                  • News
                  • Politics
                  • Science
                  • Sports
                  • Tech
                  • World

                  Recent News

                  Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

                  Previewing Packers OTAs: Tight Ends Robert Tonyan, Marcedes Lewis, Tyler Davis

                  May 23, 2022

                  Scientists create tomatoes genetically edited to bolster vitamin D levels | Gene editing

                  May 23, 2022

                  Copyright © 2022 The Blakeslee Group, Inc.

                  No Result
                  View All Result
                  • Home
                  • Entertainment
                    • Gaming
                    • Movie
                    • Music
                    • Sports
                  • Lifestyle
                    • Fashion
                    • Food
                    • Travel
                    • Health
                  • News
                    • Business
                    • Politics
                    • Science
                    • World
                  • Tech
                    • Apps
                    • Gadget
                    • Mobile

                  Copyright © 2022 The Blakeslee Group, Inc.