Lindsay Ellis: How Science Fiction Makes Sense of the Present

One of the main hallmarks of science fiction is the use of social constructs, technologies, and futures that do not yet exist—and may never exist—as a means of exploring our present. In the case of The Giver, it was the first book I read that used science fiction to create (to an eight year old, anyway) mind-blowing revelations about the nature of society and the individual’s relationship to it. The Giver is one of those books that serves as a perfect gateway for children who are just beginning to learn that change is inevitable, that well-meaning people can be wrong, and that solutions to problems are not always obvious. 

I try to read widely, but ever since then my heart has belonged to science fiction. It’s a genre uniquely tied to the idea of the future, our future, that at the same time functions as an exploration of the present—of society, of technology, of personal identity. As a genre it has the potential to present some of the most challenging ideas and narratives by calling into question both where we are headed and current status quos. 

But we’re living in a strange time—canceled trips, parties, graduations, conventions, weddings, and other mass gatherings that normally mark our lives have vanished, creating a future that looks less like a series of events on a calendar than a miasma of uncertainty. Words like future and even time itself have begun to lose meaning as our futures become more and more foggy. We are in a time of great cultural shift and potential for change, but we are as yet uncertain how the pendulum will swing. It is for this reason, however, that science fiction is not escapist literature, but a necessary rubric to remind ourselves that our ability to imagine futures, either to work toward or against, is more necessary now than ever.  

Every generation has some level of apocalyptic thinking, but it has been understandably more common in recent years. As long as we’ve had civilization, we’ve had people speculating on what it would look like if and when the version we know crumbles. Dystopia is arguably its own subgenre of science fiction, but one tied deeply with the time it is written, and the time it is popular.

A key theme with dystopian books is often about how our relationships to our bodies might change, or might be dictated by the state. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is similar to The Giver in that it begins with what looks like a fairly benign future authority system, which is eventually revealed to have an entire class of people who exist to serve as organ donors for the wealthy. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale has shot back into the zeitgeist because of the popular Hulu show, but was a breakout hit in its time for exploring a dystopian future America where a totalitarian patriarchal government has mandated that fertile women must act as “handmaids”—in effect, breeding stock. 

This is a running theme in many of Atwood’s speculative works; her MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) depicts a hypercapitalist dystopia instead of a religious fundamentalist dystopia that effectively consumes itself to death when a plague overruns the population. Atwood’s books can be challenging reads, but her vision of possible futures feels increasingly relevant with each passing year.

But my favorite from this subgenre and one of my favorite books of all time is Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, which depicts a 2020s California that is disintegrating for a variety of reasons, from climate change to class inequality to religious fundamentalism to a nascent totalitarian administration. In the face of all of this, Parable’s protagonist, Lauren Olamina, becomes a figurehead for her ability to integrate hopeless circumstances with the idea of embracing change. Lauren’s greatest asset is her ability to see past the present and to envision a greater future for all of humanity, that there are possibilities beyond the smoldering ruins of the society she knew.

But near-future science fiction need not always be dystopian; Cory Doctorow’s Walkaway depicts an also-crumbling future controlled by wealthy oligarchs and marked by mass inequality, but focuses on the possibility of a post-scarcity gift economy through its lead characters, who choose to turn their backs on this society, or walk away.

John Scalzi’s Lock In duology takes place in a near future in which a pandemic has left a portion of the population completely immobile, necessitating that they interact with the world using remote androids, or “Threeps.” Mira Grant’s Newsflesh trilogy likewise takes place in a rebuilt society that lives alongside a zombie horde once everything has settled down a bit after the whole plague of the undead thing. Both show that, even after a major crisis, civilization finds ways to pull it together, create a new normal in the wake of mass disruption, and move on.

But one omnipresent subsect of science fiction focuses on the far future instead of the near future. Joe Haldeman’s seminal novel The Forever War, about a war against aliens, is told from the point of view of a soldier who, by virtue of time-dilation from near lightspeed travel, lives through all of it. The novel was heavily influenced by Haldeman’s experience in Vietnam, and it shows—the “forever war” is a seemingly eternal conflict that started over nothing and, in the end, fizzled out when it became untenable.

But endless conflict can be an opportunity to forge connection, as we see in Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s remarkable novella, This Is How You Lose the Time War, a semi-epistolary book about two agents from warring factions, both of whom have weaponized time travel. The novella is both gut-wrenching and heartfelt, following an enemies-to-lovers relationship that is alternately hopeless and uplifting.

Some of the most iconic science fiction novels, both classic and contemporary, deal with visions of far-future totalitarian regimes—Frank Herbert’s Dune (the first one, anyway) functions as a fairly standard hero’s journey narrative, but sets itself apart not only through its unique aesthetic and memorable world-building, but also deconstructs the idea that one man can truly be the savior of society without destroying not only himself, but also the very people he is trying to save.

Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire blends a murder mystery with a far-future dissection of colonialism, juxtaposing the personal and the political. Memory’s protagonist, Mahit, works as an ambassador to an empire that may or may not have an eye on her own home station, and she must navigate the quirks, politics, and decorum of the culture in order to survive it.

Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice series also centers on a far-future totalitarian empire, with its protagonist, Breq—what’s left of the AI from a destroyed spaceship called Justice of Torren—vowing revenge on a corrupt empire. Both series are remarkable for creating cultures that feel fleshed out and organic, having grown from their own respective histories, in some ways familiar and in others completely alien to our own civilization.

But far-future narratives encapsulate far more than dystopia and totalitarian empires, and can show a wide array of visions of human expansion, often using history and culture to speculate on possible futures. Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti trilogy explores a future in which humans are part of a galactic community, and the central character must navigate not only her place as the rare human in a much wider universe of nonhumans, but also find a sense of her own identity within her comparatively small community in West Africa.

James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, beginning with 2011’s Leviathan Wakes, creates a sprawling near future that feels lived in and extremely human, with different and often clashing political and corporate factions emerging as humans begin colonizing farther and farther into the solar system, from Earth to Mars to the asteroid belt to Jupiter’s moons. The setting Corey depicts shows a wide, well, expanse of different cultures that have evolved from this colonization, all with their own set of biases and tribalism that feels all too familiar in our own present. Despite the length of the series (and of the individual books themselves), it has only surged in popularity since its debut nine years ago.

John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy was partially inspired by the question of what if, during the era of European colonization and exploration, the trade winds simply ceased to exist? This series asks the same question on an interstellar scale in a far future where the trade wind equivalent that allowed interstellar travel called The Flow begins to break down, and eventually ceases to exist, with wide repercussions on the civilization that has grown to depend on it. Heartfelt, humorous, and prescient, this series is one of those that will likely always find a way to be timely no matter what era the reader might find it.

Being able to speculate on possible future outcomes is part of what makes us human, what drives our ingenuity and our ability to create. While engagement with the present is integral, so too is our ability to imagine different futures—both the kind to strive toward, and cautionary tales we hope to avoid.

Right now it’s easy to become obsessively entangled in an endless present, unable to envision tangible futures in a way that was so easy even a few months ago. Given that my debut novel is released in July, I did not expect to spend my entire year stuck at home, not knowing when the life I had built might resume normalcy, or what that normalcy might look like. But that is part of what makes fiction important right now—there needs to be room to step outside of the nebulous, uncertain present and imagine possible futures, for good or ill, to remind ourselves that there is always a future to look forward to, even if we don’t know what it will look like.