Writing positive futures - is it possible?
Writing alternate futures besides default dystopian narratives
Welcome
First off, if you’re new here, Welcome! I’m Matthew Kressel, three-time Nebula Award finalist, World Fantasy Award finalist, and Eugie Award finalist, co-host of the Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series, and creator of the Moksha submissions system. I’ve recently moved my mailing list to Substack, so if you have no interest in reading this, there are unsubscribe links below. I’ll be sad to see you go, but I’m not interested in sending spam. But I do hope you’ll read on…
Pessimism and Optimism
Recently, I started reading Hannah Ritchie’s new book Not the End of the World. In it, Ritchie posits that the world is not as bleak as it seems. And she backs it up with a tremendous amount of data. Chart after chart after chart, with extensive footnotes, show a marked improvement in things like: reduction of child mortality, reduction of acid rain, reduction of air pollution, reduction in per-capita carbon footprint, and many more positive trends. But she’s no ostrich, with her head stuck firmly in the sand. Ritchie very clearly recognizes that we still have many large and difficult problems to overcome.
But if you ask the average person what they think of the world, the answer you get is strikingly negative. Among 16-25 year olds, 46% of Americans think “Humanity is doomed.” The numbers are 51% for the UK and 73% in the Philippines. The number tops out at 74% for India. When half to three-quarters of Earth’s population thinks that humanity has no future, well, we have a problem.
When half to three-quarters of Earth’s population thinks that humanity has no future, we have a problem.
I believe this pessimism has multiple causes. Our species survived by being hyper-vigilant to threats. We look for danger everywhere, and we are more attuned to dangers than not. But some of this, I believe, comes from science fiction.
There are few jobs more suited to the role of prognostication than science fiction. Sure, an economist might predict the future in some capacity. As will scientists who look at trends. But they are looking for just that: trends of data. Science fiction, on the other hand, has the unique power to posit alternative futures, divergent possibilities, and realities we cannot yet envision. But all one needs to do is a simple Google search on “scifi art” and you will find that the default vision of the future tends to be bleak. Dystopia, war, famine, drought, AI-uprisings, and alien invasions are the norm.
I have no issue with those who wish to create such visions. I have written about such futures, I have loved dystopian movies, and I have enjoyed works of art that are quite bleak. But we have an “All Summer in a Day” problem.
If you’re not familiar with that Ray Bradbury story, students living on Venus live in perpetual rain. The sun comes out only once every seven years. Margot comes from Earth and remembers the sun well. But the other students have never seen the sun, and so they mock and tease her when she speaks of it, and they lock her in a closet. When the sun finally comes out, the students who have never seen the sun are so enamored by the light that they forget all about Margot, and she spends the time locked in the closet while the students enjoy the brief moment of sunlight.
It’s a sad and affecting story, not just for Margot’s plight, but for how the students, who are so used to bleak weather and rain, can’t envision an emergent sun. And this is where we stand as a species. We have been told over and over and over again, via science fiction and other media, that the future is bleak, that there is no hope. More than half of the planet’s young people now believe this.
If every day the weather forecaster predicts nothing but rain, you will never expect the sun to come out. If every day, science fiction posits mostly bleak futures, you will never expect to get a brighter, happier one. Worse, you won’t work to bring one about. You won’t demand a better future because you simply don’t believe one is possible.
Instead of despairing, I see an opportunity here. As a writer of science fiction, I have a unique opportunity to shape alternative visions of the future, visions that aren’t bleak, but positive. Futures that aren’t dark, but vibrant. Worlds that aren’t despairing, but dynamic and alive.
In the next few weeks, months, and years, you will be seeing stories, novels, and works of art from me that posit this alternative future. If you’re curious what that might look like, here’s a 3d artwork I made recently:
In this possible future, a young woman stares up at an old CO2 scrubber tower. Once used to filter excess CO2 from the air, the tower has fallen into disuse, and nature has taken over.
And in the image below, a New York City street has gone solarpunk, covering its sidewalks and roofs with plants and solar panels.
I’ve been working to capture this aesthetic in my fiction for a while, and more of this work will begin to appear in the next few weeks.
It’s going to be a lot of effort to counter those bleak narratives, to provide alternative positive futures to the default bleak ones. But it’s effort worth doing, not just for the reward of creating the art itself, but for the potential of reducing global pessimism and actually bringing about brighter futures for everyone.
I want everyone to see the sun.
I hope you’ll stick around.
Best,
Matthew Kressel
If you’d like to read my fiction, you can find my full bibliography here.
You can view all my latest art here.
Thank you Matthew. I’m trying to do the same. I also started reading a lot of the solarpunk genre. The problem is - as Margaret Atwood said in an essay I read - utopian futures often simply aren’t as interesting to read about as dystopian futures. But that doesn’t need to be the case. I would classify The Expanse and Horizon Zero Dawn as solarpunk - what these stories do well is still provide high stakes where people’s lives are on the line. I guess a good way of writing gripping solarpunk is by focusing less on the fact that climate change has been “solved” (or at least mitigated) and focusing more on the resulting problems - so we made it to space, so we terraformed the earth with AI, what now? Idk I’m still working through this myself; I’d like to hear your thoughts.