Visions of the Future: The 2010s- Here's to the Future

The closer we get to our present time in the study of history, the harder it is to see the meaning of the events we are studying. Hindsight is a wonderful gift, in that it enables us to put the pieces together, and figure out what really mattered- what really made an impact. This blog post is unique, in that I don’t know what people will still be talking about in twenty, ten, or even five years. The stories and ideas mentioned here are what I think have been impactful so far. What will be the defining characteristics of the 2010s? We still have half a decade to discover that.

Science Fiction:

Literature-

In 2010, Ian McDonald published The Dervish House, winner of the 2011 BSFA Award, as well as the 2011 John W. Campbell Award. It describes from various perspectives the aftermath of a bus bombing in Istanbul, Turkey.

The 2011 winner of the Hugo and Locus awards for best novella was Ted Chiang’s 2010 story, “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”, about a woman who raises an intelligence from simple AI to human-like consciousness.

The 2012 spoof Redshirts, by John Scalzi, won the 2013 Hugo and Locus Awards. It parodies Star Trek, (and similar science fiction shows), from the perspective of the “red shirts”- those expendable extras who never seem to make it back from away missions.

In 2011, Andy Weir published The Martian, which details the struggles of a stranded astronaut attempting to survive on Mars. The novel was adapted into a film in 2015.

Chinese author Liu Ci Xin wrote The Three Body Problem into 2008. It is an alternate history, in which aliens invade earth during China’s Cultural Revolution. It was translated into English in 2014, and won the Nebula Award for 2014, and the Hugo Award for 2015.

Television-

Continuum, a Canadian sci-fi show released in 2012, was about a group of future terrorists who travel to the present, and the police officer who was accidentally dragged along with them. It was created by Simon Barry, and starred Rachel Nichols as the displaced officer, Kiera Cameron.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe branched out into television in 2013 with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., starring  as a resurrected Agent Coulson. He and his team deal with the issues raised by superhumans and aliens, and must fight forces from outside the universe, and inside their own organization.

Film-

Christopher Nolan, known for his gritty, realistic style and mind-boggling plot twists, put out fan-favorite, Inception in 2010. It explores ideas of dreams and reality, and the thin line between them.

The culmination of the first phase of Marvel Cinematic Universe films took place in 2012 with The Avengers. The film saw an epic team-up between Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, as they learned to work together, and fought evil aliens led by Thor’s powerful and jealous younger brother, Loki.

The next year, J. J. Abrams released a sequel to his 2009 Star Trek reboot called Star Trek Into Darkness. It reintroduced feared villain Khan Noonien Singh, and had some parallels to the classic Star Trek film The Wrath of Khan.

A trend I have noticed over the past few years in film is what I would call “NASA sci-fi”- films portraying humans in the near future exploring space in ways that stay true to what we know can currently be done.

2013’s Gravity was the story of an American astronaut struggling to survive after being disconnected from the space station she worked on.

In 2014, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar showed a group of astronauts attempting to find a solution to an ecological crisis in the not-too-distant future using ideas that are presently being studied by quantum physicists.

The Martian, by Andy Weir, was adapted in 2015, and seems to have a similar modern realism to that of Gravity and Interstellar.

Also, the rights to the Star Wars movies were sold to Disney studios, who hired J.J. Abrams to direct the first film in a new trilogy, The Force Awakens, released in 2015. You probably already knew that.

Thank you so much for sticking with me through this trek through history. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, and been enlightened or inspired in some way. I have personally learned so much through writing this series, and am looking forward to posting about some of my more specific insights in the future. The next post will be some of my recommendations for experiencing the highlights of sci-fi history. After that, I’ll briefly cover the first six Star Wars movies, and give my spoiler-free review of The Force Awakens. Then, I will finally get to work on blogging through all the episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series for the 50th anniversary of the show.

Thanks again!

Keep on glowing in the dark,

Elora

Visions of the Future: The 2000s- Nothing New Under the Sun

One of the defining features of the first decade of the twenty-first century was globalization. Advances in internet technology allowed detailed information to be sent over long distances instantaneously. In 2002, the euro became the currency of the economically connected European Union.

The new globalization did not necessarily foster peace and universal understanding, however. Tensions continued to increase in the Middle East. The United States was pulled deeper into the conflict after the attack on the World Trade Center towers in 2001.

Science Fiction:

Literature-

In 2000, Ken MacLeod wrote Cosmonaut Keep, which won the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2001, and the Hugo award in 2002. It played on the conflict that had marked the previous half-century, as it featured a rebooted U.S.S.R., which once again grappled against the United States. It also told the story of earth colonists trying to develop trade relations with an interstellar trade union.

The same year, Ursula K. Le Guin published her first follow up novel in The Hainish Cycle since 1974, The Telling. The plot centered on the conflict between native culture and corporate culture.

Many consider Schild’s Ladder, written by Greg Egan and released in 2002, to be the hardest science fiction published to date.  It presents a construction in differential geometry as the main science element of the story.

Kim Stanley Robinson presented an alternate history of earth in which the Black Plague had killed 99% of Europe’s population, and postulated the historical ramifications of such a catastrophe in The Years of Rice and Salt, published in 2002.

The first historically focused dictionary on science fiction was published by Oxford University Press in 2007, and entitled Brave New Words.

Young adult fiction became a more and more lucrative genre, with the publication of series such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter saga, and The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. The Hunger Games features a near-future dystopia in which North America is separated into twelve districts, from each of which young people are sent yearly to compete in a battle to the death. The first novel, called The Hunger Games, was published in 2008.

Film-

Minority Report was a 2002 film starring Tom Cruise, and directed by Steven Spielberg.  Based on a Philip K. Dick story, it featured individuals with psychic powers who were able to solve crimes before they were committed.

Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, took the terror of invasion explored in stories such as War of The Worlds, and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, and focused in on one disheartened preacher and his family as they struggled to survive an extraterrestrial attack. It came out in 2002.

Star Wars completed its prequel trilogy about the rise and fall of Anakin Skywalker with Attack of the Clones in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith in 2005.

Acclaimed creators of many computer animated family films, Pixar Studios, delved into science fiction in 2008 with Wall-E. The titular robot was left on earth to clean up after the humans, who had over-polluted it, and left the planet on a generation ship.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation films concluded in 2002 with Star Trek: Nemesis. In 2009, J.J. Abrams directed a reboot of Star Trek: The Original Series called simply, Star Trek, which starred a new cast as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise in a universe slightly altered from the one fans knew and loved.

Television-

In 2001, Star Trek released its first ever prequel series with Star Trek: Enterprise. It starred Quantum Leap’s Scott Bakula as captain of the first Starfleet ship to set out on a deep space mission, as well as the first Starfleet ship called Enterprise.

Joss Whedon’s Firefly, which focused on the lovable renegade crew of The Serenity premiered in 2002, and was infamously cancelled after one season. Due to a firestorm of fan fury, the crew was given a final outing in the 2005 film Serenity.

Wildly popular survival sci-fi show Lost premiered in 2004. The premise was a philosophical and postmodern look at the survivors of a plane wreck stranded on an island.

The same year, Battlestar Galactica received a darker, more nihilistic update that became an instant favorite within the science fiction community.

Due to the popularity of Stargate: SG-1, a spinoff show was launched in 2004 that focused on a Stargate headquarters in the Pegasus galaxy, which was located in the original city of Atlantis, built by a race known as The Ancients.

After being cancelled in 1989, and creating a television movie in 1996, Doctor Who finally made a comeback in 2009, with a reboot series that picked up where the film had left off. It starred Christopher Eccleston as the ninth incarnation of The Doctor, and Billie Piper as his companion Rose Tyler. The series continues on today, with Peter Capaldi now playing the 12th Doctor.

Keep on glowing in the dark,

Elora