Starship Summer

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So we’re now well into the “new millennium,” that evocative date beyond which used to be purely the realm of science fiction. So when our clocks finally flipped over that fateful Y2K point, did all us SF authors suddenly become “contemporary” authors? Not according to the marketing strategists and helpful genre-labelled shelves in bookshops—normally at the back of bookshops away from daylight and public sight. Nope; we’re still apparently churning out stories about spaceships, robots, and ray guns (well, I am, anyway). That distinctive summary of all things SF. Take a bow, marketing department and the popular press.

Actually, on one level, I have to admit, it’s a fair cop. Us SF authors write the literature of ideas, pushed forward by advancing technology whose chrome-plated gadgets gleam brightly and enticingly in the strange light of alien suns. Who can resist all that shiny new gadgetry? The way it affects our lives, the options it provides, all those myriad neat possibilities for a twist in the tale as you reverse the polarity, decouple the tachyon spin, and escape with a mighty bound. It’s useful stuff. Back in the alleged golden age of SF, which I think is the late forties/early fifties depending on who you ask, engineering and science were the defining parameters for SF: that’s what it was all about. People in these stories were mere tour guides to steer you through the possibilities of new worlds full of wonderful ideas. They didn’t count, they weren’t characters with feelings or personalities.

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