by Pam Uphoff
Science fiction is an interesting way to deal with the uncertainties of life.
I suspect that we all have plans to deal with this and that. Both physical drill, prepping, and mentally planning what to do and how to respond to various emergencies.
Growing up it was duck-and-cover for nuclear war. Yes, I am that old.
And fire drills, of course. And here in Texas my kids got the Tornado drills, and we all had our hurricane track charts pinned up somewhere. Now it’s all on line. And where’s the fun in that, eh?
But we’ve got two weeks of food (until our first hurricane, then it became a month’s worth) and keep the gas tanks full and so forth.
But with science fiction we can game out all sorts of fascinating things.
Not just the old Nuclear War thing. Now we can deal with the Fast Onslaught Ice Age. Or the Instant Ice Cap melt. Over Population. Asteroid Impacts, and Invasions from Outer Space.
Pandemics. (Geeze, was the real thing ever an exercise in stupid! And it wasn’t even all that serious!)
Zombies.
Murderous Uplifted Apes!
AIs take over the World’s weaponry and try to exterminate humanity!
You name it, we’ve got it. Generally in multiple scenarios.
With heroes and heroines!
And it’s not all disaster fiction. We can explore the many ways mankind can spread out across the Solar System and on to other stars.
Okay, okay, to make an interesting story, things have to go wrong, but we can entertain while working out the many bugs in the possibilities.
Our stories can inspire, intrigue, and make people think about all the possibilities.
Good and bad.
As a writer, it’s all good fun, all the bad things happen to imaginary people, in imaginary places, and the good guys always win.
And despite the occasional feeling that the story is pouring into our heads from elsewhere or else when . . . it’s just speculation and entertainment.
But it’s a little spooky, to check back and see that my final draft of the novel that involved a possibly fraudulent election of a man controlled by a foreign polity . . . was completed in January of 2020.
Pure coincidence, I’m sure.
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In other news, I have occasionally had an ebook returned. Wednesday I had 39 returned. Guess I’d better search and see what pirate site they’ve shown up on . . .
God help us! They could be using them to train the AI that’s going take over the World! We’re doomed!!!!
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So, tell me? What’s you favorite fictional disaster and did you approve of the author’s solution?
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “Current and Future Events”
When Worlds Collide (much better than the movie) and the sequel, After Worlds Collide. And yes, I like the solution.
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle (1977)
Comet strikes Earth.
People died. Lots of people died. But there were islands of hope and stability in the middle of chaos. Heroes organized solutions both short term and long term and some gave their lives to make a future possible.
The good guys don’t always have to win. One of the striking things about the Crystal Soldier/Crystal Dragon prequel duology is the villians do win in that one. The heroes are merely able to escape the villains’ unmaking of their universe.
It is also interesting that the authors, as far as I know, never answer whether the villians of that story were successful in remaking their universe in their own image, or whether they unravelled themselves in that immense act of hubris.
Prequels have the problem that they often have to go to Hell in a handbasket so the original tale, which starts in Hell, is set up.
‘Favorite’ fictional catastrophe is the rise of NICE in That Hideous Strength. I am not down with the “bring back a barely Christianized wizard and make him channel the good angels” aspect of the resolution but the confusion of tongues scene bears a striking resemblance to the world as we know it: https://futurism.com/msn-ai-brandon-hunter-useless