I really liked cyberpunk, especially the early novels. The trouble is that all of them were in dystopia, and I did not sign up to live in one.
Like the one we’re in right now.
How did we get here? Many authors – I can mention Orwell, and I can point to Gibson, Williams, Sterling and the rest wrote their novels as warnings, in the classic sf mode of “if this goes on”.
Other people had other ideas. I suggest you read https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell-memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/ then understand that they acted on that, with the first big assault being Reagan’s deliberate assault on the Air Traffic Controllers. Since then, union membership has plummeted from nearly 25% in the mid-seventies, to barely over 10% now. In the meantime, millionaires became billionaires, and your income has been close to static.
Charlie Stross, on his blog, had a thread recently about “The Torment Nexus”, with the theme of “someone writes a novel warning of the torment nexus”, and some tech bro, backed by venture capital, announces they’ve created the torment nexus.
Now, we’re in crisis, between the right wing around the world reaching for full control, as the climate crisis begins to seriously impact life around the world. (Not sure you believe this? Ask Aussies about the temperatures this summer. Or Europeans about the floods. Or people in the US midwest about droughts.)
A few years ago, hopepunk became a subgenre. I have an issue with it, in that most of it seems to be some small group of people manage to survive, and begin a small, slow climb back.
I say that’s not enough.
Now, I grew up during the Cold War. No, I don’t remember duck and cover under our desks, perhaps because it was utterly pointless. I grew up in North Philadelphia. Not fifteen miles away were the US Navy Yard, which included mothballed battleships. And an international airport. Oh, yes, and SEVEN major oil refineries. If the Button was pushed, we were dust in the wind, one large bay where the Schuylkill River debouched into the Delaware, where Philly used to be.
But somehow… the Big One never came. We do seem to have found a weapon too terrible to use. The point here is… we *all* survived. There’ve certainly been enough wars, but not THAT.
So for me, a few people here and there surviving, isnt’ enough of a goal. It’s a surrender. I want MOST of us to survive, my kids, my grandkids, my friends, and I want them all with a better life, not just collecting nightsoil to fertilize their small fields to feed themselves.
That’s why I decided that there should be a larger movement than hopepunk (besides the fact that I hate everything being -punk). That’s why I’m calling what I write the Future Perfectable.
I didn’t say perfect. I’m not imagining that there can be a utopia. What I’m imagining is a better future for all of us. I’m looking for a real world where, say, you don’t spend 16 hours a day shoveling coal, like our ancestors did for real, or sitting at a keyboard, leaving your family in despair (as I personally did).
So I wrote Becoming Terran for all of you. I doubt I’ll live long enough to see it, but it’s as real as I can make it. And it’s NOT some Famous Leader or messiah Leading Us To The Promised Land, its about ordinary people, like you and me, finding themselves at the right place, at the right time, and finding the courage to do what is necessary, regardless of whether they might lose their job… or their life.
And that’s how we make a better future.