Interviews with David Brin

More of the "serious" authors are writing SF set in Einstein's universe, for example, without cheats like warp drive and such. Oh, I'll pretty soon write another Uplift Universe novel, with twenty ways to get around old Albert. Great fun! But our most carefully crafted thought experiments — the stuff we write for grownups — these tales try to test reality the way we see it, playing with the hand that nature dealt us.

Lately, a lot of SF has peered at the so-called "Singularity"... the issue of whether exponential increases in computing power might transform us into gods... or unleash AI to leave us in the dust. That's certainly a topic in Existence.

Writing was the first truly verifiable, repeatable and effective form of magic. Picture how it must have impressed ancient people to look at marks – on papyrus or clay – and know they conveyed the words of scribes and kings long dead. Knowledge, wisdom and art could finally accumulate, and death was robbed some of its sting. Writing still is magical. To create strings of black squiggles that millions of others can skillfully de-code with just their eyes – into emotions and thoughts, or the struggles of believable characters.

“Truly pervasive sousveillance” could range all the way to radical levels portrayed in Damon Knight’s story “I see you,” in which the future is portrayed without any secrecy or even privacy at all. Knight shows a humanity that is universally omniscient — any human, even children, can use a machine to view through any walls. And Knight depicts us adapting, Getting used to simply assuming that we are watched, all this time.

Now let me be clear, I do not care for this envisioned tomorrow! In The Transparent Society I devote a whole chapter to how essential some degree of privacy is for most people. I argue that in a society full of liberated people empowered with highly functional sousveillance technology, sovereign citizens, able to apply sousveillance toward any center of power than might oppress them, will likely use some of that sovereign power to negotiate with their neighbors, and come up with some way to leave each other alone.

Back in 1999, I forecast that people would shrug off future shock when the big millennium rolled around. At first it seemed that way, as people blithely went about their routines. Now I suspect there really was a 21st-century trauma. Romantic nostalgia is rampant. You find very little interest in the modernist agenda of confident problem solving. Robert Heinlein predicted this, but I didn’t. I also expected a few technologies that never came. For example, lie detection based on involuntary eye movements, a method that ought to work even during a televised interview or press conference. A potential nightmare for deceitful politicians! But I was misled by hope. Other disappointed forecasts include rapid understanding of the immune system and big advances in computerized teaching.

The new science fiction novel by writer and futurist David Brin paints a complex picture of the world just 40 years from now. It's at once familiar and shockingly unraveled. Into this broken-down version of the planet, a new element is introduced from beyond our world. And it's left up to the reader to discover if that element saves, destroys, or transforms the earth.

On Fiction Writing: David Brin on the Rack. What five books do you wish you had written? Is self-publishing the new "slush pile"? What four literary characters would you like to invite to dinner?

I am concerned about one thing, above all, understanding how and why humanity escaped (at last) from its old, vicious cycle of feudalism and began a tremendous enlightenment. One that included vital things like science, democracy, human rights and science fiction. I've come to see that openness -- including openness to free-flowing criticism -- has been the key. Secrecy is the thing that makes every evil far worse. And it is especially pernicious when practiced by the mighty

There are no current trends in science-fiction. There is an explosion of different directions. This is how science-fiction should be. Now, do I get upset that some clichés aren't being broken often enough in science-fiction? Like always giving a new thing to some faceless corporation, some dark conspiracy, hidden aliens or a mad scientist…

When in fact, what is done in our civilization is that new things are peddled and sold to everyone. Show the new thing in the hands of everybody. It is much more interesting and it shows an interesting and different culture. Yet the cliché of some faceless dark conspiracy almost always dominates, since it is easy to put your hero in jeopardy if society is incompetent. Clichés like that frustrate me. But, are there wonderful things going on in today's science-fiction? Of course there are!