From the SFRA Review
Fall 2024
Ian Campbell
Living in the USA right now feels like the backstory to an SF novel, where in less than a week, some mad scientist is going to pull the quantum lever that sends different versions of each of us off into two different universes, one with a decent and hard-working government that at least attempts to do something to bring us closer to a equitable and inclusive future—though in fact it won’t likely be all that equitable—marked by technological innovation and at least an attempt to mitigate the great Jackpot of climate change, and another future that has concentration camps.
What I never would have thought in all my years reading SF as a child and young adult is that something close to half of Americans want to live in the future with concentration camps.
Many people fear modernity, whether because they’re used to privilege so equality feels like oppression, or whether they’re constitutionally anxious and have a hard time dealing with change. Many people look at the increasingly clear signs of climate change and become reactionaries not out of hatred but out of wishful thinking: maybe they could pull their own quantum lever and go back in time to where it wasn’t quite so hot and loud and fast. In America at least, power has been maintained by the gentry since colonial times by telling downscale white people that no matter how much of their money gets funneled to the gentry, they’ll still have people who don’t count as human to kick down on.
Just imagine the SF novel written about this: some ambiguously hot Special Circumstances agent and her wisecracking drone companion standing there agog, when a white man who misses the days of segregated lunch counters explains that they don’t mind poverty and abjection so long as they get to be gleeful about others’ having it worse.
We don’t have that in this issue of the Review, but we do have a really interesting look at feminized robots and our usual spread of nonfiction, fiction and media reviews. Enjoy them all, while I and half of my compatriots sit around wringing our hands waiting to find out which way that quantum lever sends us. I’m really hoping it’s the future where I don’t get more fake special privilege for being a white guy. Write me at icampbell@gsu.edu.
SFRA Review 