Science Fiction Today and Tomorrow

by Reginald Bretnor

  Thus, for better or for worse, science fiction readers are probably more realistically oriented to the inevitable forces of change than most other people. At the same time, science fiction readers are prepared by their reading to cope with the natural ambivalence that scientific and technological change generates in people's minds. These readers clearly recognize that all scientific and technological progress is not necessarily good, and that for every benefit of science there are likely to be hazards or disadvantages. Thus they are able to direct their thinking toward neutralizing or counteracting these hazards or disadvantages while at the same time nurturing and developing the benefits. And if worst conies to worst, science fiction readers are prepared to accept the worst and deal with it. They are long familiar with the ironic concept of Finagle's First Law as scientists and engineers apply it to any scientific experiment in the laboratory: If something can go wrong, it will. But the science fiction reader is also aware that this perverse principle applies just as universally to life situations as it does to scientific or engineering experiments in the laboratory.

  In short, science fiction prepares its readers for successful adaptation to change first by accepting the fact of change, whether desirable or not, as inevitable; second, by seeking to adjust to the change wherever possible; and third by modifying the change when possible or necessary in order to reduce its negative impact on our lives. On the other hand, much adaptive failure arises, first, from refusing to accept change as an inescapable factor; second, fighting against all change, the good as well as the bad; and seeking to resist or negate changes in attempting to return to or to restore past circumstances that are more familiar and comfortable. The non-adaptive individual is frightened by the unfamiliar and seeks unsuccessfully to resist it. The science fiction reader is dealing constantly with the unfamiliar and is equally constantly, and successfully, seeking familiar patterns or trends in it.

  Thus we can say that science fiction engenders a positive adaptive attitude in the minds of its readers. What is more, it furthers adaptation toward change by developing in its readers the elasticity of mind —the sheer imaginative grasp—to enable them to grapple with change constructively. The typical science fiction reader is capable of conceiving many possible futures, each different from the other, and is comfortable dealing with change one step at a time in approaching these possible futures. Critical to constructive adaptive thinking is the sort of elasticity of mind typified by the concept of fairy chess—a modification of the classic game in which an already complex game operating within a rigid framework of rules is made even more mind-stretching by the simple expedient of arbitrarily modifying certain of the rules at the beginning of each game. Thus in fairy chess the players might agree that for the purposes of the game they are about to play the knight will always have the option of moving either two spaces forward and one to the side or three spaces forward and one to the side, thus significantly altering and extending the ordinary power of the chessboard knight. All other rules of the game remain unchanged from the classical pattern. In another game the players might agree that the pawns can move only on the diagonal and capture only straight ahead, directly the opposite of the classical rule. Each such minor modification presents the players with an unfamiliar context that still bears familiar patterns or trends. It also forces the players to stretch their minds beyond the limits of the normal chess game and to cope effectively with the unfamiliar. On a somewhat similar level, the introduction of wild cards into a poker game is a clear extension of the fairy chess concept, and players in such a game are forced with each declaration of a wild card to adjust their thinking with regard to the odds and the values of cards and hands. The adaptive player grapples with such unfamiliarity, learns to calculate the shifting odds, and wins; the non-adaptive player cannot cope with the change, gets his toenails trimmed, and returns to the more familiar classical pattern of the game as quickly as the deal comes his way.

  Science fiction readers are constantly playing fairy chess with their reading. The rules are ever-changing. The notion that "nothing is certain" or that "nothing is quite what it seems" becomes familiar and acceptable; the stretching of the mind is challenging and exhilarating, not frightening or demoralizing. Indeed, it is this very mind-stretching quality of science fiction that draws the great majority of its readers to this literature.

  Consider for a moment how the rules for adaptation that we have been discussing might apply specifically to a broad and emotionally loaded area of change facing us as individuals in the future: the part that computerization is destined to play in the area of health care. To a non-adaptive the notion of introducing a machine, however complex, into the human equation of health care is anathema—a repugnant and threatening concept. It does not matter to the non-adaptive that the pattern for this change is already set, and that computerization of many areas of medical care is inevitable if universal, expert, and inexpensive health care services of high quality are to be made widely available. In spite of all this the non-adaptive fights doggedly to resist the change. He seeks to retain or to restore the ancient and comfortable concept of human ministration and laying-on-of-hands by the personal, concerned physician, even when it can be demonstrated that today's physician equipped with today's medical knowledge cannot possibly do as good a job using only the classical techniques of medical art and science as he could do by availing himself of modern computerized services. The adaptive individual, on the other hand, sees clearly that computerization offers certain very major advantages and opens the door to immensely more competent, comprehensive, and scientifically thorough health-care services, together with certain built-in losses and disadvantages as well. He recognizes clearly that the human physician working in close partnership with the computer can practice a far superior quality of medicine than the physician working alone, but that certain human touches in the doctor-patient relationship, a certain element of human concern on the part of the physician for his individual patient will very probably be lost. The adaptive then says, "How can we avail ourselves of all the advantages while taking the rough edges off the disadvantages?"

  For a simple example, consider the matter of medical history-taking. A patient's medical history—a summation of all past illnesses, a discussion of apparent symptoms of the present illness, if any, an accounting of family and social history and a careful review of symptoms relating to the various organ systems—has always been the solid core, the sine qua non of accurate diagnosis. This is the patient's opportunity to tell the doctor what is wrong with him, and the doctor knows that somewhere in this mass of data he will find the diagnostic clue he is seeking. Yet the physician approaching a difficult diagnostic problem knows that it is unlikely that he will be able to elicit a complete medical history no matter how painstaking and thorough he may be. Such a medical history would require hours of penetrating interview with a patient, hours that no physician has available to spend and that no patient can afford to pay for. Thus at best the physician can take only an abbreviated medical history, and although he may be carefully trained and widely experienced in eliciting useful data quickly, vital bits of information may elude him. The computer, on the other hand, can be programmed to take an utterly exhaustive medical history and, through the utilization of time-sharing principles, can in fact take medical histories from dozens or hundreds of patients simultaneously while each individual patient has the illusion that the computer is devoting its full and entire "attention" to him. What is more, the computer can easily be programmed to flag for the doctor's attention precisely those items of medical history data that are most likely to help him reach an accurate diagnosis. In truth, the doctor-computer team can achieve a level of competence and efficiency in diagnosis that no doctor can hope to achieve any other way.

  Obviously, then, it can be a very real advantage to the patient to have computerized history-taking facilities available. Despite these advantages, however, the non-adaptive individual objects to the coldness, the impersonality, of the
machine-taken history. He does not like the idea of a machine asking personal questions; he does not trust the utilization of the information given to the machine. Early attempts to computerize medical history-taking ran aground on precisely such objections as these; the results were anything but satisfactory and the prospect seemed discouraging. Fortunately a form of science fictional thinking suggested a solution to the dilemma—a solution which is currently under intensive development and appears likely today to guarantee that computerized medical histories will soon completely replace the human physician's history-taking. The solution was simply to make the computer seem "more human" to the patient—that is, to program into it an element of superhuman courtesy, superhuman patience, expressions of consideration and concern—in short, to create an illusion that the computer was very much like a person with a very human concern for the individual patient, even as the patient knew quite rationally in a corner of his mind that the machine really did not and could not have such a concern.

  We are not speaking now of some crude punch-card system, or a list of multiple-choice questions for the patient to answer. Rather, we are considering now a highly sophisticated computer carefully programmed for medical interviewing. Such computers are being developed and tested for everyday use even today—computers that have all the time in the world to spend with a given patient, and to which a patient can pour out his heart as the computer listens and listens and listens. Computers of this sort have been programmed to be so warm, so understanding and "human" that patients in test programs have actually preferred them to the living physician. Such a computer encourages the patient to talk about himself; it gently prods his memory; it sympathizes with his discomfiture; it offers him a cup of coffee; it urges him not to feel rushed; if the patient seems tired, the computer suggests a five-minute break and plays pleasant music for the patient while he's resting; it is polite, solicitous, concerned. Indeed, the computer can be programmed in such a way that when a patient has finished giving the computer his medical history the patient knows in his heart that that computer really cares about him and his health, and really wants to help him.

  Of course we know rationally that the machine cannot really care about anything. It is merely doing what it is told to do— but if it is told to act uncannily like a concerned human being, that is precisely what the machine will do. And if, by utilizing such a "humanized" machine to elicit medical histories, we can promise a vastly larger number of sick people a vastly more careful and accurate diagnostic work-up than can conceivably be possible in the traditional doctor's office, with vastly less likelihood of human error, misdiagnosis, or omission, then surely this is a change which offers far more advantages than disadvantages. Indeed, under such considerations, the disadvantages that the non-adaptives fear and rail against may actually seem quite superficial. Once again the reader of science fiction is encouraged, through his reading, to look beneath the superficialities of impending change, to look deeper and to imagine in greater detail the more profound implications which cursory attention or superficial consideration might miss. In short, the reader is encouraged not to fear change simply because it is change, but rather to think more lingeringly on its implications for good as well as for ill.

  We can find many examples of science fiction-inspired adaptation to change both in the past and in the present. For example, very few science fiction readers indeed were startled at the launching of the first Sputnik in October of 1957. They may have been frustrated and disappointed that the first such earth-orbiting satellite should have been launched under the auspices of Soviet technology and not our own, but to these readers the accomplishment itself, in all its implications, had been taken for granted as an inevitable eventuality for decades. Science fiction readers, indeed, had gone from the first German buzz bombs of World War II to the orbiting-earth satellite in a single leap. These readers assumed and accepted this eventuality as a matter of time and nothing more; by the time it had occurred they knew and understood the physics and technology behind it; they were fully acquainted with the logistic requirements of such a shot; they had already explored—and largely discounted — the military implications of such an accomplishment (a widespread but superficial and shortsighted concern) and instead were quite accurately recognizing the Sputnik as a first solid step in man's eventual exploration of the solar system beyond the earth. What is more, throughout the subsequent fifteen years that ultimately led to the first moon landing, science fiction readers were continuously far in advance of others in their thinking and acceptance of the implications of the space program. By the time the first exploring party finally did set foot on the moon, science fiction readers had long since been working out the logistics of permanent moon colonies, debating specific techniques for interplanetary exploration elsewhere in the solar system, and were chafing at the apparent physical limitations which seemed to make travel to other star systems something less than practical as a short-term goal.

  By the same token, few science fiction readers were seriously startled at the emergence of the uranium fission bomb on the scene in 1945, or at the subsequent staggering technological developments that made fission and fusion weapons such an unparalleled influence on the course of human affairs in the twentieth century. At the time the first fission bomb was released, science fiction readers were already fully aware of the unthinkable quantities of energy trapped in the atomic nucleus. Indeed, in their speculative explorations they had already moved on to consider not only the enormously horrifying military aspects of these power sources, but also the enormously beneficial aspects as well. They had been prepared by their reading to assimilate the concept of nuclear weaponry, on the one hand, and to adapt to the idea of nuclear power as an immensely important energy source of the future on the other hand.

  Finally, in a society which to date is still very much shaken and disturbed by the sudden emergence of the computer as a frighteningly competent partner to human endeavor, science fiction readers have moved further than anyone else in their acceptance and adaptation to the idea of a massively computer-oriented society of the future. Here again we are speaking of a change the pattern of which is already set. Perhaps the most revolutionary and far-reaching of all technological changes destined to take place in our society in the next quarter century will be the introduction of modern and sophisticated computer terminals into the individual home, operating on a time-sharing basis with existing telephone lines and television cables for input and output communications. To vast multitudes of people today the computer is still a mysterious and threatening device that seems tolerable at all only at a vast distance from everyday experience. Yet science fiction readers have long since looked beyond the superficialities to recognize the home computer terminal as a vital partner to human endeavor with profoundly beneficial potentials, a device that is destined to become as important and as necessary to the average household as the telephone, the television set, or the electric refrigerator. Already aware of the vast potentials of such a device and experienced through his reading in exploring adaptations of its use to his everyday life, the science fiction reader has already adapted. He may not understand precisely how the computer will function, nor by any means everything that it may be able to do or enable him to do, but he does see it as an inevitable adjunct to his everyday life in the future. And by the time this is reality he will be prepared for its use and able to modify it splendidly to his needs.

  As a potent device for enabling man to adapt to change, science fiction today deserves far more serious attention than it has yet received. Yet for all its potential, and for all its growth in popularity, science fiction suffers from one grievous limitation which severely restricts its successful application. This limitation lies in the imaginative fertility, the inventiveness, the emotional and literary maturity, and the insight of its writers. For all its inventive and imaginative potential, science fiction has actually proven discouragingly mundane in many areas. Only a few of its writers have begun, most tentatively, to
grapple with human beings as human beings rather than as caricatures or stereotypes. Far too much modern science fiction is more empathetic to scientific advance and technological progress than it is to human beings dealing with human problems. Too often science fiction's insights into human psychology are embarrassingly naive, and its grasp of sociological implications are distressingly provincial. And although multitudes of imaginative problems may be explored in science fiction, the solutions all too often fail to stand up to mature scrutiny. Thus, for all its speculation about future societies and future problems, as far as I can recall science fiction has failed to come up with a single new concept for a plausible alternative political or social organization since the Utopian novels of the 1920s.

  Fortunately, a few writers of science fiction are beginning to grasp this limitation and are seeking to do something about it. But far more writers must join in this effort if science fiction in the future is to have the beneficial impact which it ought to have. If science fiction is to realize its potential as a powerful force for adaptation to change, its writers must vastly expand their horizons and their imaginative and inventive capacities. At the same time, the readers of science fiction must immensely expand the demands that they place upon the science fiction medium. In its present state of evolution modern science fiction is a sleeping giant, a medium of immense but largely unrealized potential. Whether the writers and readers of the future will surmount these limitations and bring about appropriate changes in the medium is a matter for grave speculation today.