I think there is a “main sequence” of evolution of sci-fi writers. They start from grandiose sci-fi assumptions and may be not utopian but accelerationist societies and end with general position “akshually, grandiose sci-fi assumptions are not that important, what I want is to write commentary on contemporary society” (see, for example, Gibson “Sprawl trilogy” vs “Pattern recognition”). I think it’s explainable first of all by the age of writer. Second factor is a literary community—hard or speculative sci-fi is considered to be low status, while “commentary on contemporary society” is high status and writers want to be high status.
end with general position “akshually, grandiose sci-fi assumptions are not that important, what I want is to write commentary on contemporary society” [...] hard or speculative sci-fi is considered to be low status, while “commentary on contemporary society” is high status and writers want to be high status.
But this clearly isn’t true of Egan. The particular story reviewed in this post happens to be commentary on contemporary Society, but that’s because Egan has range—his later novels are all wildly speculative. (The trend probably reached a zenith with Dichronauts (2017) and The Book of All Skies (2021), set in worlds with alternate geometry (!); Scale (2023) and Morphotophic (2024) are more down-to-earth and merely deal with alternate physics and biology.)
Though — I haven’t read all of his recent novels, but I think — none of those are (for lack of a better word) transhumanist like Permutation City or Diaspora, or even Schild’s Ladder or Incandescence. Concretely: no uploads, no immortality, no artificial minds, no interstellar civilization. I feel like this fits the pattern, even though the wildness of the physics doesn’t. (And each of those four earlier novels seems successively less about the implications of uploading/immortality/etc.)
In some ways, Robinson’s path as a science fiction writer has followed a strange trajectory. He made his name writing about humanity’s far-flung future, with visionary works about the colonization of Mars (“The Mars Trilogy”), interstellar, intergenerational voyages into deep space (“Aurora”), and humanity’s expansion into the far reaches of the solar system (“2312”). But recently, he’s been circling closer to earth, and to the current crisis of catastrophic warming.
Futuristic stories about space exploration feel irrelevant to him now, Robinson said. He’s grown skeptical that humanity’s future lies in the stars, and dismissive of tech billionaires’ ambitions to explore space, even as he acknowledged, “I’m partially responsible for that fantasy.”
In his more recent novels — works like “New York 2140,” an oddly uplifting climate change novel that takes place after New York City is partly submerged by rising tides, and “Red Moon,” set in a lunar city in 2047 — he has traveled back in time, toward the present. Two years ago, he published “The Ministry for the Future,” which opens in 2025 and unfolds over the next few decades, as the world reels from floods, heat waves, and mounting ecological disasters, and an international ministry is created to save the planet.
I definitely think this is a general cultural zeitgeist thing. The progressive thing used to be the positivist “science triumphs over all, humanity rises over petty differences, leaves childish things like religions, nations and races behind and achieves its full potential”. But then people have grown sceptical of all grand narratives, seeing them as inherently poisoned because if you worry about grand things you are more inclined to disregard the small ones. Politics built around reclamation of personal identity, community, tradition as forms of resistance against the rising tide of globalising capitalism have taken over the left. Suddenly being an atheist was not cool any more, it was arrogant and possibly somewhat racist. And wanting to colonise space reeked of white man’s burden even if there probably aren’t many indigenous people to displace up there. So everything moved inwards, and the writers followed that trend.
I think there is a “main sequence” of evolution of sci-fi writers. They start from grandiose sci-fi assumptions and may be not utopian but accelerationist societies and end with general position “akshually, grandiose sci-fi assumptions are not that important, what I want is to write commentary on contemporary society” (see, for example, Gibson “Sprawl trilogy” vs “Pattern recognition”). I think it’s explainable first of all by the age of writer. Second factor is a literary community—hard or speculative sci-fi is considered to be low status, while “commentary on contemporary society” is high status and writers want to be high status.
But this clearly isn’t true of Egan. The particular story reviewed in this post happens to be commentary on contemporary Society, but that’s because Egan has range—his later novels are all wildly speculative. (The trend probably reached a zenith with Dichronauts (2017) and The Book of All Skies (2021), set in worlds with alternate geometry (!); Scale (2023) and Morphotophic (2024) are more down-to-earth and merely deal with alternate physics and biology.)
Though — I haven’t read all of his recent novels, but I think — none of those are (for lack of a better word) transhumanist like Permutation City or Diaspora, or even Schild’s Ladder or Incandescence. Concretely: no uploads, no immortality, no artificial minds, no interstellar civilization. I feel like this fits the pattern, even though the wildness of the physics doesn’t. (And each of those four earlier novels seems successively less about the implications of uploading/immortality/etc.)
Kim Stanley Robinson seems to fit this too:
I definitely think this is a general cultural zeitgeist thing. The progressive thing used to be the positivist “science triumphs over all, humanity rises over petty differences, leaves childish things like religions, nations and races behind and achieves its full potential”. But then people have grown sceptical of all grand narratives, seeing them as inherently poisoned because if you worry about grand things you are more inclined to disregard the small ones. Politics built around reclamation of personal identity, community, tradition as forms of resistance against the rising tide of globalising capitalism have taken over the left. Suddenly being an atheist was not cool any more, it was arrogant and possibly somewhat racist. And wanting to colonise space reeked of white man’s burden even if there probably aren’t many indigenous people to displace up there. So everything moved inwards, and the writers followed that trend.