The thing that I don’t understand about some Science Fiction writers is how they can straight out deny the genre as prophecy. The late Ursula Le Guin (may she rest in peace) did this and Corey Doctorow does do it, among others. It’s nearly obvious that yesterday’s science fiction has become today’s science fact. Even so, authors such as the above like to explain away this fact with their rationalisation. But does prophecy have to be unexplainable or supernatural (at least directly)? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to predict the future correctly if at all. And so, like science fiction, prophecy doesn’t always get its visions of future society right.

The Science Fiction Writers who like to deny the genre being prophecy often use the rationale that sci fi is a criticism of today’s issues re-imagined as futuristic ones.While this isn’t completely wrong, Ursula Le Guin thought of the genre in this way and Corey Doctorow does similar. Using Isaac Asimov as an example, Doctorow says in an interview ar CBC.ca that he doesn’t believe Asimov was predicting the future but was instead “reflecting” his concerns about the present. He also says in this same interview that authors like Orwell, Huxley and Shelley were not making predictions but were “giving warning.” But isn’t that a major characteristic of prophecy right there? Often prophets warn about negatively impacting future events or consequences of a society’s actions.

Prophecy doesn’t have to be a precise prediction of events and a lot of times it isn’t. It anticipates what the future may be but not necessarily predict what it will be. Even experts in the Catholic Church will tell you that prophecy does not necessarily predict anything. Prophecy can imagine the future but won’t necessarily predict it even though what has been imagined may turn into reality to some extent. So, prophecy is a lot like science fiction--it speculates on the future, a future that it only sometimes gets right.

Many science fiction writers say that genre as prophecy is a false notion. That’s only partly true. There are also sci fi authors who are at least open to the possibility of the genre as prophecy. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Nebula Award-winning Annihilation, is one. In an article in The New York Review of Books, he says of surreal speculative fiction writer David R. Bunch’s stories, “In the years since his most prolific period, the nightmarish dystopia he imagined has begun to look increasingly prescient, even prophetic.” (By the way, as VanderMeer also says, Bunch’s work had been out of print for several years. But a new edition of his collection of works, Moderan, is now out. In fact, the article referenced above is from the book’s introduction that VanderMeer wrote. This is one I’ll have to get my hands on since I like dark and surreal spec fiction!)

Science fiction author Namwali Serpell straight out says that “the genre has predicted satellite communication, army tanks, tablets, submarines, psychotropic pills, bionic limbs, CCTV, electric cars and video calling.” In fact, she nearly declares herself a prophet: “I write science fiction set in the near future, so I’m constantly testing my own powers of prophecy.” She may only mean this metaphorically, but it indicates that she believes the genre itself has been prophetic.

Science fiction is not an accurate prediction of the future and not even prophecy has been that. Prophecy does not guarantee a society’s fate and science fiction guarantees it much less. Prophecy in its less mystical definition is an anticipation of what could happen and whether it happens or not is up to us as a society. As science fiction has influenced us in how we handle the course of society, prophecy has done the same. So, the prophetic fulfillment often depends on the people influenced by the prophecy and their reaction to it. Such foresight of coming events is more speculation than prediction. If those events come to be, then they were predicted correctly. If they don’t come to be, it’s because we as a people made them not to.

I’ll agree with Doctorow and Le Guin on one thing when it comes to the debate over whether sci fi is prophecy: most science fiction writers don’t sit down at their desks and attempt to predict the future. I don’t. Yet the stories themselves can be inevitably prophetic. If the events in the stories turn into reality then they do; if they don’t, they don’t. What’s important is that those stories make us think about how we as a society can improve the world while, at the same time, entertain us.

Do you think science fiction can be prophetic? Feel free to drop your answers in the box below.

Until next time . . .