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FUTURE_FRAGMENTS

I promised some random thoughts,
so let's be random about it.



   new urbanist
   science fiction

       A brave new
       low-tech
       world.         Or, low-energy,
                      but high-tech.


               A world whose primary
               difference from ours
               is not technical advance
               but a determination
               to be different

Perhaps:

  The future is a place in which
  it's hard to tell stories.

  Too many problems have been solved
  for an interesting problem to fall
  within the grasp of individual heroes.

    Even the old reliables of adventure
    fiction "chasing after the macguffin"
    is often derailed by ease of communication.

      Why not get on the cell phone
      and call for help?

      And what *is* the macguffin?
      A microdot?  Oh, *please*...
      just send it over the network
      already.



  But maybe: a future in which we
  can tell stories would be a future
  in which we'd like to live.


Much interesting SF could be
written working with a
hypothetical social change as        (Though the distinction
primary premise.                     between "social" and
                                     "technical" isn't always
                                     clear.)


In conversation with
the Toadkeeper in
the mid-1970s:                                            TOADKEEPER

       Doom:   "What would the horror fiction of the
                future look like?  It's easy to
                imagine the residents of Asimov's
                _Caves of Steel_ telling stories about
                strange monsters outside the walls of
                the city, but that's just present-day
                phobias transported to another
                setting.  The question is can you come
                up with a phobia that that doesn't yet
                exist?"

   Toadkeeper:  (pause) "Fear of not being watched."





              What if, in a panic, congress
              decided to outlaw _______.



              What if a small, typically ignored
              country in an odd corner of the world
              invented a new type of radically            In Africa,
              different business organization that,       Central Asia,
              though technically illegal in much of       South America...?
              the civilized world, became wildly
              successful...



              What if a new fad developed for __________.



                        What if they all woke up?



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