Why no far future SF?

[Warped9]

The following quote from another thread got me thinking:

My peeve is I so much want to see a genuine and well thought out far future space adventure, the kind of thing we sometimes get in SF literature.

Don't hold your breath. They are a rare beast and always have been.

Sadly and true. But why?

Why is it something so hard to conceive? Perhaps because SF authors are rarely involved in SF oriented films?

Most often in SF films (and television) we get one or two examples of advanced science and technology and everything else seems pretty much familiar. But real science and technology doesn't work that way. If you introduce something new (like new tech) into society it relatively quickly is adapted to new applications. The future would be no different.

If you look at a film like Metropolis (1927) the most advanced looking thing there is humanoid robotics and a flatscreen television like viewer. Yet most everything else is very rooted in 1920's technology. Even their "flying cars" are just an elaboration of early air flight. And Metropolis isn't a sole example, but merely one of the first in a long line of films.

Jump decades later and look at the Star Wars films. It's sword and scorcery dressed up with spaceships and lightsabers. Okay, in fairness, SW isn't serious science fiction, but it does speak to my point.

We look around at our everyday world and accept it without thought. But how would even an enlightened citizen of Earth from even 100 years let alone 500 or a thousand years past see our world today? It would be mostly unrecognizable.

I say "mostly" unrecognizable, but there are things that should still be somewhat familiar. A table fork is a fork, a house is a house, a road is a road, a bridge is a bridge, a boat is a boat and so on...

I'm really challenged to recall films that really make an effort to look genuinely futuristic. Today "futuristic" seems to have a very industrial look to it and often doesn't really seem very much advanced over what we already have.

It's sad really because I've read quite a bit about speculative science and technology and there are so many things that one can speculate with to fashion reasonably plausible ideas that while seemingly farfetched to the everyman are not really completely dismissible when you examine them.

I also think that viewers today can be more receptive and less intimidated by grand ideas then they are given credit for. Even if they don't immediately understand the ideas presented they initially can still enjoy the spectacle of it if it's within the context of a good story.

And story is key. An engaging story with good characters is the most effective way to present futuristic ideas.

I think many people fall into the trap of believing that far future SF is something that would intimidate average moviegoers. The flip side is that often we see examples of things (design wise) that are just arbitrarily weird and not well thought out to be convincingly futuristic.

Yes, it's a challenge to do something smart as well as entertaining. Although rare it's been done often enough in film (and television) over the decades. Now if we could only see it applied to far future SF (and note that far future can be as little as 100 years though usually distinctly more than that).

Film examples I thought futuristic when they were released (and I still don't think they're bad):
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Logan's Run (1976)
Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979)
Minority Report (2002)

What films do you think seemed convincingly far future (at least passably so at the time)? And do you think such films can find an audience?

 

[jefferiestubes8]

to answer the thread title question it costs a lot to have production design reflect a future society in entirety.
Total Recall felt far future to me.
Minority report felt near future.

stylistically the interiors in The Island (2005) felt far future with all the white (cough, Apple store, cough) yet it was really a big interior set.
Judge Dredd felt near future. The Running Man felt near future.

Far future would also require the director to have a real vision.

Aliens (1986) felt far future to me.

 

[captcalhoun]

try the comic 'Dragon's Claws'. it's set in 8162AD. available from Amazon in a tradde paperback of all 10 issues.

there doesn't seem to be any space travel, but they've got anti-grav technology, some advanced robotics and cybernetics...

 

[BolianAuthor]

The following quote from another thread got me thinking:

My peeve is I so much want to see a genuine and well thought out far future space adventure, the kind of thing we sometimes get in SF literature.

Don't hold your breath. They are a rare beast and always have been.

Sadly and true. But why?

Why is it something so hard to conceive? Perhaps because SF authors are rarely involved in SF oriented films?

Most often in SF films (and television) we get one or two examples of advanced science and technology and everything else seems pretty much familiar. But real science and technology doesn't work that way. If you introduce something new (like new tech) into society it relatively quickly is adapted to new applications. The future would be no different.

If you look at a film like Metropolis (1927) the most advanced looking thing there is humanoid robotics and a flatscreen television like viewer. Yet most everything else is very rooted in 1920's technology. Even their "flying cars" are just an elaboration of early air flight. And Metropolis isn't a sole example, but merely one of the first in a long line of films.

Jump decades later and look at the Star Wars films. It's sword and scorcery dressed up with spaceships and lightsabers. Okay, in fairness, SW isn't serious science fiction, but it does speak to my point.

We look around at our everyday world and accept it without thought. But how would even an enlightened citizen of Earth from even 100 years let alone 500 or a thousand years past see our world today? It would be mostly unrecognizable.

I say "mostly" unrecognizable, but there are things that should still be somewhat familiar. A table fork is a fork, a house is a house, a road is a road, a bridge is a bridge, a boat is a boat and so on...

I'm really challenged to recall films that really make an effort to look genuinely futuristic. Today "futuristic" seems to have a very industrial look to it and often doesn't really seem very much advanced over what we already have.

It's sad really because I've read quite a bit about speculative science and technology and there are so many things that one can speculate with to fashion reasonably plausible ideas that while seemingly farfetched to the everyman are not really completely dismissible when you examine them.

I also think that viewers today can be more receptive and less intimidated by grand ideas then they are given credit for. Even if they don't immediately understand the ideas presented they initially can still enjoy the spectacle of it if it's within the context of a good story.

And story is key. An engaging story with good characters is the most effective way to present futuristic ideas.

I think many people fall into the trap of believing that far future SF is something that would intimidate average moviegoers. The flip side is that often we see examples of things (design wise) that are just arbitrarily weird and not well thought out to be convincingly futuristic.

Yes, it's a challenge to do something smart as well as entertaining. Although rare it's been done often enough in film (and television) over the decades. Now if we could only see it applied to far future SF (and note that far future can be as little as 100 years though usually distinctly more than that).

Film examples I thought futuristic when they were released (and I still don't think they're bad):
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Logan's Run (1976)
Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979)
Minority Report (2002)

What films do you think seemed convincingly far future (at least passably so at the time)? And do you think such films can find an audience?

The only thing I can even begin to point to would be Dune, but then again, I think even that had a couple problems.

For me, the main issue with far-future sci-fi isn't so much the inability to devise a great concept or story... I think there are plenty out there. But the problem lies in the inability to speculate just HOW advanced humanity will be so far in the future. I mean, when Dune was made, our computers were still big and clunky, and we had big-arse CRT monitors... same with TOS BSG and even ST:TNG. Now, in 2010, that dated technology shows, and we as a people are now more technologically advanced, in some ways, then the tech we saw on those shows.

As a writer, I simply think people are afraid of dating the story too glaringly. For instance, let us say that an author has a great idea for a story taking place in the 11th millennium of time. Great... that is very far into the future. But would humans even be recognizable as humans that far off? Would we have FTL? Would we still be in our own solar system or galaxy? Would man even still be only ONE species, or would our biotech have allowed us to create offshoot races? Would Earth even look recognizable? Would we even have organic brains anymore, or would we have become so interconnected with computers and AI, that both terms now mean something completely different? Would we have telepathy? That is the problem.

With the 23rd or 24th century, it's fairly easy to extrapolate where we may be, as a race... but when you start to go thousands of years and more into the future, it gets much harder. With Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, you at least have the escape route of setting it in another solar system or galaxy, with no specific date or time frame to compare humanity from Earth with, so it allows you to write that story far easier. Anyway, that's just my two cents on the issue of far-future sci-fi.

 

[Holdfast]

It's tricky to set an engaging story in a world culturally and emotionally entirely different to our own, with no frame of reference (as a story set in the far-flung future is likely to be, unless it's the fantasy/space-opera variety of Sci-Fi). It's probably easier to write a story where resonances with modern day cultures and technologies can be more easily created, I guess.

 

[Hober Mallow]

A part of it is that it's easier for the general public to relate to characters who aren't too far off from us today in our world.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Someone needs to do a film adaptation of one of the Culture books. They may not technically be far future, but they feel like it.

 

[Kegg]

Film examples I thought futuristic when they were released (and I still don't think they're bad):
The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Logan's Run (1976)
Star Trek - The Motion Picture (1979)
Minority Report (2002)

I think you can see the problem right there. The Day the Earth Stood Still is, in fact, set in the then-present day. Not the future, not the far future, not even a week from now. Most of the film is grounded among contemporary human characters. The s/f trappings, indeed, are kept to both a minimum and awfully vague - it's even not clear what planet Klaatu is from, for example.

2001: A Space Odyssey was set in the near future - just a couple of decades after the film's release - and thus was specualting on possible technological trends within the lifetimes of many of the viewers. It hardly qualifies as far future either. Minority Report likewise.

If you keep those in your definition of 'far future' films, well, what on earth do you mean by the concept? I'd assume Star Trek applies a little better as it's a couple of centuries past the present and society has changed considerably; and well, there are certainly definitely many space opera movies. If you mean serious scientifically plausible films set that far into the future, it's true that those, such as they exist, favour a date close to the present day.

 

[Warped9]

In The Day The Earth Stood Still I should have been more specific. I meant to refer to Klaatu's ship. Except for the exterior saucer design I loved the interior and still do after all these years.

The interesting thing about 2001 is that while set near future I still think that with rare exception it still looks futuristic from our perspective. Today that film could be 2050 or 2099: A Space Odyssey because the real space program didn't go forward as many had assumed.

Minority Report is set near future which I think was a conceptual mistake because I thought it had ideas that looked further ahead.


I know that in my own writing attempt at original science fiction I'm trying to incorporate ideas adapted from real speculative science I've read in nonfiction sources as well as other science fiction novels. I try to incorporate many of these ideas in terms of world building without beating the reader over the head with them. And in doing so I can easily imagine how many of these could be realized in the visual medium in much the same way.

Perhaps in some ways it's easier in prose simply because you describe what the science and/or tech is and what it does. In film or TV you can just show it and show it in operation and leave it to the audience to grasp the idea. You don't necessarily need extended exposition to explain it.

 

[Kegg]

In The Day The Earth Stood Still I should have been more specific. I meant to refer to Klaatu's ship. Except for the exterior saucer design I loved the interior and still do after all these years.

But it's brief and very sparse. The society of the film really works because it implies far more then it says; it says very little but most of Klaatu's engimatic responses to questions suggest that he knows some pretty interesting answers.

And as indicated, it's a downplayed part of the movie. I'd consider The Day The Earth Stood Still actually the antithesis of the deliberately far future and far flung Forbidden Planet.

The interesting thing about 2001 is that while set near future I still think that with rare exception it still looks futuristic from our perspective.

That's a meaningless distinction. 2001 still doesn't look like a far future setting. It's true that the lack of advancement in the space race makes that aspect of the film still seem futuristic, though.

The point is; in no sense are these far future films, and if we accept them as examples of far future films, what are we even talking about? It's a defintional thing. David Lynch's Dune, say, has a better claim to this title than those three films.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Perhaps in some ways it's easier in prose simply because you describe what the science and/or tech is and what it does. In film or TV you can just show it and show it in operation and leave it to the audience to grasp the idea. You don't necessarily need extended exposition to explain it.

That's it exactly. Prose gives the science and tech oriented Hard SF the room to explain. TV and film are visual, so if you cant explain it visually or quickly through dialog ( and a simple metaphor ) the result will be the sort f ogrinding-the-plot-to-a-halt type of exposition you need to avoid in a time contrained medium like film or TV.

 

[Warped9]

^^ It's challenging. When I read an interesting idea in SF lit or nonfiction speculation I can actually envision it in my mind so that I can see how this could be depicted on film or TV. I think what one needs to do is to be very clever visually to communicate an idea without having to explain it.

For example: let's say you have a fast relativistic ship moving close to the speed of light. You don't really have to explain it. You just show some quick shots of two chronometers: one moving at a normal pace (ship's time) and one moving at an accelerated pace (realtime or time outside the ship). If you show an outside view of the ship passing by then have the ship's colour tinted red as it approaches and shifting to blue tinting as it passes and recedes. These are visual cues conveying ideas and information without any verbalized exposition. And they have the added bonus of being technically correct.

 

[MyCylon]

I wonder if part of the problem is that, in my feeling, anyway, we're largely playing catch up in terms of technology these days. New breakthroughs (both real and marketed as such) just keep flying at you all the time, really. And many times it seems as though what we once considered very advanced, e.g. stuff like Trek's tricorders or communicators, has now very much arrived in every day life and far surpassed what many people would have expected to see in their lifetimes, really (I'm not saying an iPhone, for example, can truly do what a communicator and/or tricorder could do - it's the appearance of how advanced it is that I'm referring to).

And, as far as I can tell, this trend will only accelerate. So, in many ways we're very much struggling to even understand the world around us and what consequences even seemingly simple stuff like online interactions via social networking platforms or automatic license plate registration or biometric IDs etc. will have. The technology is right here, right now. Yet few, I think fully understand the impact they are already having.

So, and this is purely speculation on my part, the need to deal with things unknown and not well understood, something science fiction does, has very much become focused on the here and now and/or the near future.
Also, I'd say that the number of people who are capable of creating something truly visionary might be becoming smaller than in the past. It's nigh impossible to keep up with all the technological and scientific advancements in this day and age, let alone dream beyond things that were the stuff of our dreams for so long.

Obviously, there still remains the question of why you still have science fiction set in the far future in books but rarely on TV or in movies. I think, to a large extent, this is due to the fact that both forms of media are more likely to try to appeal to a mainstream type of audience. On some level, even the type of people who will watch Trek and the likes could be considered mainstream, I guess, in that they're often pretty ordinary people and not necessarily geniuses or visionaries that would be able to see beyond the here and now as well as the near future (as I said above, I think there's very few people who can do that).

I'm not sure if I was able to properly outline some of my thoughts here. But I hope it makes some sense.

 

[Rii]

Heh, when I read 'far future' I was thinking of cosmological timescales. Last and First Men, The Last Question, some of Stephen Baxter's work, etc.

I hadn't really given it any thought before, but I imagine I'd classify things roughly as follows...

Very Near Future (VNF): <10 years from now.
Near Future (NF): 10-50 years from now.
Middle(?) Future (MF): 50-500 years from now.
Far Future: 500-2000 years from now.
Very Far Future (VFF): >2000 years from now.

 

[EnsignRicky]

The only ones that come to mind are films like Planet Of The Apes, A.I. and The Time Machine. The problem it would seem with going too far into the future is that the human race, if lucky, will be back to texting their friends through smoke signals.

 

[bigdaddy]

Money, money, money. The further you go into the future the more money it cost.

Try Doctor Who.

 

[Silvercrest]

Andromeda was far future according to (apparently) most people's definition-- but I don't think we should hold it up as an example.

 

[Hober Mallow]

The interesting thing about 2001 is that while set near future I still think that with rare exception it still looks futuristic from our perspective. Today that film could be 2050 or 2099: A Space Odyssey because the real space program didn't go forward as many had assumed.

Aside from the title, I don't recall anything in the film overtly dating the movie. I guess maybe the one thing that dates it is the cost of the video phone from the space station to Earth which probably was meant to be expensive but today seems quite a bargain. That aside, it's still a movie that feels like it could happen some day. And it's just a fantastic movie. Looks amazing on blu-ray, BTW.

 

[Kegg]

The only ones that come to mind are films like Planet Of The Apes, A.I. and The Time Machine. The problem it would seem with going too far into the future is that the human race, if lucky, will be back to texting their friends through smoke signals.

That's a narrative choice more then anything else. It's easier to imagine what a post-apocalyptic society that has regressed into ancient modes of behaviour might be like then it is to see it as even more advanced.

 

[Reverend]

I mean, when Dune was made, our computers were still big and clunky, and we had big-arse CRT monitors... same with TOS BSG and even ST:TNG. Now, in 2010, that dated technology shows, and we as a people are now more technologically advanced, in some ways, then the tech we saw on those shows.

I think I should point out that there are very clearly defined reasons why the technology in Dune appears "clunky". Computers are not just illegal, they're forbidden by holy edict and for good reason. About 10,000 years previous thinking machines enslaved and damn near wiped out all human life. What we see in Dune is a technologically advanced culture that has adapted to function without computers. Instead relying on some very sophisticated materials, electro-mechanical machines and mutated humans like mentats, navigators and the biological constructs of the Tleilaxu.
Indeed, it's so far in out future that we have a job to even recognise how advanced they are.