Magic 2.0: A reflection on the history of the future.

Early 20th century sci-fi was mostly pulps that were devoid of any real substance or quality. Along came Asimov and Clarke and the sci-fi golden age was born. Once into the golden age, every piece of sci-fi was expected to bring us new ideas, readers weren't satisfied with just space westerns anymore. When we read golden age sci-fi in the 21st century, the easiest thing for us to do is to compare their predictions with our reality. Well, to a contemporaneous audience, without the benefit of living in the future, the ideas and concepts brought forth in the golden age stories were profound. The golden age ideas were taken seriously by the authors and by the readers. For the first time, a culture was genuinely thinking about plausibly flying to the stars and living on distant worlds. Earlier works were telling their readers "look at how fantastic and imaginative these stories can be" but golden age authors were telling their readers "look at how fantastic and imaginative the future might actually be". We took it seriously for once, and that set the stage for everything else.

The wave of sci-fi authors that followed did more than bring us ideas, they built worlds. Books like Dune, Ringworld, Snow Crash, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep gave us completed universes that were bigger than the stories within them. Authors started to show us what it would be like to be the inhabitants instead of the heroes. Description and comparison of technological differences between imagined worlds and our own were an absolute must, but by now the comparison of the ethical and moral differences between our worlds starts to be foregrounded. After the golden age of sci-fi, novels stopped being vehicles for ideas and once again returned to the service of the human story. The difference (other than being spectacularly better writing) is that the golden age installed sci-fi ideas and concepts into our very culture itself. The novels of Isaac Asimov asked us to take sci-fi seriously and we did. The next generation of authors took up the challenge and wrote like they meant it. And then another very funny thing happened. A book came along with large friendly letters on the cover that said DON'T PANIC. 

It was as if science fiction readers were collectively biting their nails, serious as a heart attack when all the sudden an unexpected Monty Python skit invaded their literary lives. Just like nobody expected the Spanish inquisition, it seems like nobody expected Douglas Adams to give us permission to stop taking it all so seriously. Where Asimov had told sci-fi to straighten it's necktie and make sure it's shoes were shined, Adams had sci-fi kick off those shoes and put it's feet up on the desk. Sci-fi was officially grown up, because now it could now look back on it's teenage years and laugh at the terrible haircuts in the yearbook. Asimov told us that sci-fi could be serious; Adams told us that sci-fi could be fun. 

So where are we now? Well, I think that Scott Meyer's Magic 2.0 series is a good example of the state of the art. It's a series of novels that is accessible to a broad audience, which was a major factor in the success of the pulp era novels. It takes it's ideas seriously, it gives us a chance to think about the time traveler's paradox and the universe as a simulation. It gives us a thoroughly developed world that's bigger than the characters and the stories within it. And it also is fun. The Magic 2.0 novels would've worked in earlier eras. Novels are the words in our cultural conversation, Scott Meyer has written his novels in a way that doesn't frame that conversation as a lesson from a master to a student, but rather as a conversation between friends. Science fiction now, and Scott Meyer's books specifically, embark on their journeys shoulder to shoulder with their readers because our science fiction sensibilities were informed by the same history of great novels. When I read Arthur Clarke, I am impressed with how visionary he was in a similar way to how impressed I am with how skillful of a sculptor Michelangelo was, but I harbor no delusions that I would ever be able to make art like either of them. When I read Scott Meyer's books, I think "This is exactly what I would write (if I had talent)". I get the impression that his books were as fun to write as they were to read. 

Yes, science fiction has grown up. In a good way though. It now makes dad-jokes and has nostalgia for the Pontiac Fiero. Science fiction has a favorite flannel shirt to wear around the house. I think science fiction has outgrown it's angst, it's comfortable now.