Reality TV

The success of reality TV have started to affect televised Science Fiction in a bad way. This is a trend I am not particualarly fond of since I loath reality tv with a vengeance. Seeing adults degrade each other without any other purpose than to entertain us just feels wrong for me. I know there are a lot of people out there that like and watch reality tv but for me it feels like being a Peeping Tom. I like being entertained by someone telling me a story with a bigger purpose. This is about scripted shows trying to imitate reality tv, don’t get me started on the reality tv shows that are popping up with science fiction aspirations.

Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors. The genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television (primarily with game shows), but has expanded significantly since Big Brother first aired in 1999. Documentaries and nonfictional programming such as news and sports shows are usually not classified as reality shows.

The genre covers a wide range of programming formats, from game or quiz shows which resemble the frantic, often demeaning shows produced in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s (such as Gaki no tsukai), to surveillance- or voyeurism-focused productions such as Big Brother.

Virtuality didn’t make it to series on Fox but the pilot aired as a two hour movie last summer and it is a good example of what I mean. The story is set aboard earth’s first starship on a ten year journey to explore Epsilon Eridani, a nearby star. The ship has virtual reality modules to help the crew cope with the long mission. The crews experiences are broadcast back on earth as Fox’s reality television program Edge of Never: Life on the Phaeton.

Another close encounter with reality tv was the now canceled tv show Defying Gravity. First pitched to the networks as a Grey’s Anatomy in space it have much in common with the personal conflicts as portrayed in reality tv, it also has ‘confessions’ report similar to the confession booths. The show had some good points but the drama got a bit to much reality tv and too little science fiction. The show is follows eight astronauts on a six-year space mission through the Solar System, during which they are monitored from Earth via a real-time communication system. Part of the financing is made by a media company that airs the adventures and confessions of the crew.

Stargate Universe 1st winter season has had many good stories centered on survival that have been good and science fiction. But there have also been a lot of reality tv type drama that threatened to overshadow the genre parts of the story. I love SGU for the record but the reality tv aspect of it is something I have a little trouble with. SGU starts it’s winter season tonight and I have great hope for more aliens, space travels, technological marvels than earthbound drama, that would make my day.

One could say that one part of SF and literature in general has always been to throw a group of strangers into a room and see what happens but I feel that there is a difference in style between that and reality tv. The change might be from more intellectual conflicts towards emotional rantings.

Maybe I should combine this with Soap Operas? The shows above plus Caprica and Kings all have a big portion of soapy drama that at one time or another have covered or threatened to cover up the genre parts?

Trends in Current Science Fiction Post Index:

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Another trend in modern science fiction is the concept of Singularity, but also the opposite which I will cover in a later post. The thing is, that we might have seen the Singularity trend peak and that it in fact has started to fade now at least according to some posts on the Blogosphere (see links at the end of this post). Personally I think it will be here in one form or another for a long time. Technology and Science are changing the world around us and it is only natural that science fiction writers explore those changes to the limits of imagination. There is many ‘modern’ science fiction written which involve the singularity concept which we don’t see in ‘classic’ SF.

Singularity refers to a theory that technological and scientific progress will continue to speed up and that we will develop more intelligent beings that will speed up the progress even more while they invent even more intelligent beings and you see where this is going. Until we reach a point where not even our imagination can follow.

Singularity science fiction follows a Moore’s Law of the future, where science improves our lives exponentially over time. Eventually human life is so radically transformed that it’s unrecognizable to those of us living in the relatively crappy present. – io9

This is usually done by a combination of genetics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Sometimes the beings are ourself evolved and transformed to a post-human or transhuman race with little in common with the meat monkeys we are today.

History of singularity:

In 1965, I. J. Good first wrote of an “intelligence explosion”, suggesting that if machines could even slightly surpass human intellect, they could improve their own designs in ways unforeseen by their designers, and thus recursively augment themselves into far greater intelligences. The first such improvements might be small, but as the machine became more intelligent it would become better at becoming more intelligent, which could lead to a cascade of self-improvements and a sudden surge to superintelligence (or a singularity).

Vernon Vinge minted The Singularity expression in 1982.

In 1982, Vernor Vinge proposed that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence represented a breakdown in humans’ ability to model their future. The argument was that authors cannot write realistic characters who are smarter than humans: if humans could visualize smarter-than-human intelligence, we would be that smart ourselves. Vinge named this event “the Singularity”. He compared it to the breakdown of the then-current model of physics when it was used to model the gravitational singularity beyond the event horizon of a black hole. In 1993, Vernor Vinge associated the Singularity more explicitly with I. J. Good’s intelligence explosion, and tried to project the arrival time of artificial intelligence (AI) using Moore’s law, which thereafter came to be associated with the “Singularity” concept.

Proof and examples:

A good example on Artificial Intelligences is William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, in which AIs are strictly regulated by the Turing Police so that they can’t become self aware, but one wants to anyway. A more recent example is the WWW series by Robert J. Sawyer.

The singularity is sometimes addressed in fictional works to explain the event’s absence. Neal Asher’s Gridlinked series features a future where humans living in the Polity are governed by AIs and while some are resentful, most believe that they are far better governors than any human. In the fourth novel, Polity Agent, it is mentioned that the singularity is far overdue yet most AIs have decided not to partake in it for reasons that only they know.

A flashback character in Ken MacLeod’s 1998 novel The Cassini Division dismissively refers to the Singularity as the Rapture for nerds, though the singularity goes on to happen anyway.

Accelerating progress features in some science fiction works, and is a central theme in Charles Stross’s Accelerando (free download). Singularity Sky also touches on singularity.

Ken MacLeod’s Newton’s Wake is a post-singularity work as well as the Evergence Trilogy by Sean Williams & Shane Dix both which I like.

Other authors that address singularity-related issues include Karl Schroeder, Alastair Reynold, Greg Egan, Ken MacLeod, Paul Melko(Singularity’s Ring), Rudy Rucker, David Brin, Iain M. Banks, Ian Douglas, Neal Stephenson, Tony Ballantyne, Bruce Sterling, Dan Simmons, Damien Broderick, Fredric Brown, Jacek Dukaj, Nagaru Tanigawa, John Dickinson (WE), Douglas Adams and Ian McDonald etc

Popular movies in which computers become intelligent and violently overpower the human race include the Terminator series, the parody of a film adaptation of I, Robot, and The Matrix series.

On television series Battlestar Galactica and Caprica also explores artificial intelligence.

Another form of Singularity of a more spiritual kind is explored in the differentStargate installments. Ascended beings beyond human comprehension play a significant part in the Stargate universe (not SGU so far). Although most of them ascends through spiritual means, there are also cases of a more technological form of ascension now and then. The most significant ascended being in the series where Daniel Jackson here seen during the process.

Please watch this video where some of the aforementioned authors discuss Singularity.

The Singularity: An Appraisal from Michael Johnson on Vimeo.

This panel was held at Boskone 47 in Boston, MA on February 12th, 2010. Moderating was the Guest of Honor, Alastair Reynolds. Other panel participants included several time Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge, Locus Award winner Charles Stross, and Karl Schroeder.

What’s your take on Singularity?
Got any good books to recommend?
Please write a comment.

Trends in Current Science Fiction Post Index:

Sources:

Bill Joy’s Wired magazine article “Why the future doesn’t need us“
Technological Singularity page on Wikipedia
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Singularity FAQ for Dummies
Acceleration Watch
The Great Enhancement debate
whatisartificialintelligence.com
Science fiction at the end of time a blog post from Marianne de Pierres’ Journal
The Singularity Backlash a blog post from io9

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I am doing a series of articles about trends in modern Science Fiction that I hope you will find interesting. I will try to describe the trend and then use examples from books and tv series as ‘evidence’.

2. Environmental Disaster Earth

With all talks about global warming it’s not surprising that many current science fiction writers have taken that idea and run with it all the way to disasters that threatens life as we know it. This is a contrast to the world spanning cities of technological marvels or interstellar empires of old.

Some goes the way of the ultimate disaster that wipes out all life on earth. Ben Eaton might be a Comedian but his novel Stark is an excellent example of such a book. Most writers stop short of killing off the human race though, it makes for a better story if there is a few left to tell it.

Karen Travis has a different twist in her Wess’har Wars Series (City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, Ally, Judge) . Here we meet aliens that are making a eco-jihad on the universe. It is interesting how they approach the restoration of earth.

The Windup Girl is another resent novel that has environmental disasters, this time its caused by calorie companies that releases plagues to destroy non patented seeds and to achieve monopoly on food. It doesn’t work out as intended instead it plunges the world into an even worse recession when the diseases mutate and start to affect animals and humans.

In many stories it is just a convenient backdrop to the story telling like in Elizabeth Bears Hammered or David J. Williams’ Mirrored Heaven and in others it’s a major part of the plot as in The Quiet War by Paul McAuley. Allen Steele’s Coyote Series also comes to mind somewhere in between.

There are fewer examples from television here, and usually the disasters portrayed here are more direct a nuclear strike, a virus or poison that kills off most of the human race and we get to follow the Survivors like in the tv series with the same name.

Blade Runner with its acid rain is maybe one of the lighter ones in this genre, Waterworld and the Mad Max Trilogy are other examples of earth after an environmental disaster, in the movie about the cute little robot Wall-E, earth is covered in garbage. The road is another example where an unexplained disaster kills most of the humans and plants don’t grow any more.

What do you think? There are many more examples out there, why don’t you add yours as a comment?

Index:

Sources:

Liz Jensen’s top 10 environmental disaster stories (the Guardian)
9 Best Echo Apocalyptic Films of All Time

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I am planing a series of articles about trends in modern Science Fiction that I hope you will find interesting. I will try to describe the trend and then use examples from books and tv series as ‘evidence’.

1. Nanotechnology

Have you noticed that nanotechnology have replaced the atomic engine as the bread and butter technology of modern science fiction? In fiction we are talking of tiny machines that often are self replicating and can put atom on atom and build almost anything. Arthur C. Clarke might have been the first to describe nano machines in his short story The Next Tenants from 1956. It’s been portrayed as a threat to all life in different kind of grey goo scenarios, or as potentially biological threats like in Blood Music by Greg Bear where intelligent smaller beings ‘invade’. But the most common usage is as enhancers of technology like in shape shifting houses in a recently read book (can’t remember which one at the moment) or the smart metal in the Kris Longknife series by Mike Shepherd or flexible military crafts like in The Quiet War or Semper Human.

When it is not used for enhancing machines it is used to enhance humans, providing longevity, self repair, additional senses, communication, weapons. Here the examples are numerous Infoquake, Worldwired, Gravity Dreams, One Jump Ahead etc

There are also examples of large living swarms of nano machines that form equally wast intelligences but more about that when we talk about Singularities in a later part of this series.

There has also been numerous example of nanotechnology being used on television in shows like Star Trek where the Borgs used nano probes to assimilate and convert their victims like the lovely seven-of-nine, in Stargate SG-1 the Replicators is a self replicating menace that in the end defeats even the Asgards. There was also an episode in SG-1 were Colonel O’Neal was infected by a nanovirus that speed up his aging etc.

The question is how long nanotechnology is going to be science fiction? We already have nano material in every day appliances and clothing. Nanomaterials are being tested in an increasing range of treatments and drugs.

What do you think?

Index:

Source: Nanotechnology in Fiction

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