Futuricity is my loveletter to science fiction in novel form. Begins with a history of Futuricity the SF website/forum. Slightly pretentious, the website has occasional sundry contributors but by the start of this tale is down to just four nerds – one in Cumbria, one in North Devon, another in South Wales; with the webmaster/narrator in Somerset. The four are of different ages and professions.
Julian in Ilfracombe is an inventor as well as antique dealer and fixer of things electronic. In his loft laboratory Julian accidentally invents a cage that takes him into space. Unable to figure out just how the cage works he seeks the help of his three friends. With the workings once understood he hopes to patent the cage and sell it as spyware. (This comes later when they discover that once active they and the cage are invisible.) In each their cages all four make it into space, meet up - invisibly - on Saturn's rings. Travelling at the speed of light they go no further than the solar system. But becoming concerned about radiation they confine their cage trips to within Earth's atmosphere. Steve, a software designer in Cumbria, adds a chronometer to his cage set-up and travels into the future, but can only go into the future. This is a huge disappointment to history buff Bart....
Excerpt
Inquisitor: If I may suggest, Senior One, that you skip the first 5 chapters of The Book. They are of little concern to The Enquiry, give but background to the four main characters initially involved. Can be of passing interest only. Mention is made of the original Faraday Cage in Chapter Three, but again solely as background. Chapter Six onwards is what leads directly to our Enquiry.
Senior One: Appreciate your advice, but I'm already on Chapter Three. And there are clues.
Inquisitor: Really? Such as?
Senior One: Attitudes, mindsets maybe, more than clues as such. These four were on the island of Britain?
Inquisitor: Yes.
Senior One: [after a pause] Once our Enquiry into his disappearance begins in earnest we will work on the assumption that not everything was/is what it seems/seemed. We therefore need to know everything.
The Book : Futuricity
Chapter One: Futuricity
Futuricity, the name of our website, is where for the past twenty plus years we have been assessing works of science fiction. Any member – almost fifty of us active at one point – can put up a 'discussion paper.'
'Paper' can make us sound like scientists, academics, intellectuals; even more like poseurs. Nevertheless 'papers' is what they still get to be called; and in the online discussions that follow the posting of new papers we continue to refer to them as 'papers.'
Although we are all enamoured of SF/Sci-fi we do try to keep our discussions of the merits/aspects of this or that author/sub-genre down to earth. Which, given Futuricity's causa causans – chucking in a Latin or otherwise foreign phrase or two can certainly add to the 'paper' pretentiousness – has by no means been easy.
Before it was called Futuricity one of the many titles Steve and I considered was The Future Remembered, its credo 'Remembering the Once Future.' When historian Bart became a regular he suggested changing it to Future History. Having by then though settled on Futuricity it was my idea, when 'Fake News' as a misleading concept came along, to have under Futuricity by way of explanation, the epigraph, 'Is Science Fiction the only route we now have to the truth?' Which drew the comment, 'Aren't all SF authors perpetrators of fraud?' Discuss.
Steve and I originally met on another social media SF and fantasy forum. Where we, at various times, both voiced our despair at contemporary SFers ignorance of century-old SF. We had both shaken our metaphorical heads at their enthusiasms for 'new' concepts, many of which had been articulated better way back when.
One book for instance that I still keep virtually ramming into peoples' faces is John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar.
We are now living upon the overpopulated world that John Brunner described. Yet Stand on Zanzibar nowadays hardly ever gets referenced, let alone read. What John Brunner describes – for anyone who doesn't know – is a world so overcrowded that it drives some individuals berserk, where they attack whoever is at hand. Senseless killings. Bombs in public places, school shootings, knife and machete attacks, cars used as lethal weapons... All so familiar to our news feeds today, and written by a Somerset author in the early 1950s. Possibly before.
Consequently one of my early 'discussion papers' on Futuricity extolled Stand on Zanzibar. I say 'discussion paper' but Stand on Zanzibar's central hypothesis having become self-evident my 'paper' didn't provoke much in the way of discussion. Had been good though to get it off my chest.
What Steve and I had wanted for Futuricity was a discussion, an exploration of SF's multitudinous futures, the airing of a myriad alternatives. Neither of us was particularly keen on SF tales that slipped over into Lovecraftian-type horror, or with battle-heavy SF, where aliens were always the counter-cultural enemy.
Unfortunately we never did get the debates per se that we were after. Or only in the sense that some 'papers' started a thread of people putting up their own take on the same book. Or we got someone gleefully pointing out an anachronism. As there inevitably is in any book of the future, especially those written a while back, including even the more recent internalised high-tech dreamstate takes on the future. But where, peradventure, there are still cigarettes and newsprint when, within our time, most have already become largely defunct....
Professional Reviews
Emma Lee
“Futuricity”, like some of the characters, has more than one identity. It starts as a website, created by four friends, where members can upload discussion papers to assess works of science fiction, consider science fiction’s futures although, predictably, most members use it as a vehicle to promote a favourite book or writer without really engaging with other members. One of these four friends based in Somerset, Devon, Cumbria and South Wales, known for tinkering around in his attic workspace, inadvertently creates a credible time travel machine (details of its workings not given in this review). A few experiments later and he decides to share this with his friends to see if they can create their own versions. The friends discover they can go forward in time, but not back (which conveniently gets round that problem of travelling back in time, observing and returning to the present without giving into the temptation to alter the past). Ben, the main narrator in the first part of the book, a former journalist naturally documents their findings: not some high-tech dystopian future but a place where twenty-second century knowledge is applied to organic technology. They stick with the rules about observing and not interfering. Discoveries include the ability to breathe and communicate: they seem to be simultaneously in space and within the cage in their place on earth. The cages can become irradiated, but not the travellers. The one who discovered all this, suggests limiting their journeys.
Back in the world outside of websites and time travel cages, Ben has finished building his eco-home and seeks to rent the caravan he was living in. He meets O/V, occasionally Ollie, but originally Vincent, O/V moves into the caravan. A foundling, left on a hospital doorstep, O/V is a product of the care system. A loner with a side-hustle in growing cannabis and occasionally shifting other illegal drugs. After an accident, Ben becomes reliant on O/V and tells him about “Futuricity”, the name of Ben’s memoir, and shows him how the cage works. O/V sees potential, but treats the cage with caution until Ben passes away (natural causes). O/V starts with travelling forward in time to enrich himself, taking care to spread his bets so it’s not too obvious. However, the local gangster O/V has drug dealings with, becomes suspicious, and, under threat of his life being cut short, O/V confesses as to the source of his much improved finances. The gangster has ideas, unsavoury ones.
O/V’s actions come to the attention of a mysterious corporation called the Time Police, who despatch a Moderator to curb O/V’s exploits. Knowing he is acting under duress, the Moderator is not inclined to criminalise him but talk him out of continuing. The Moderator, who becomes known as Myra, blurs the boundaries and breaks protocol to start a relationship with O/V, initially justified as trying to befriend and divert him from greater crimes. Given O/V’s background in care, he’s well-equipped to deal with a life under observation and slip away. The Time Police have a dilemma: track the AWOL pair or come clean about their real motives and purpose.
“Futuricity” is the sort of sci-fi that the Futuricity website operators would approve of: realistic science as a vehicle to interrogate humanity, where societies succeed or fail and how they can be strengthened or weakened by mavericks and disrupters. But it’s also a tale about how a child brought up in a neglectful, stretched care system can, through an unlikely father figure, discover a capacity for fatherhood and break an assumption that the future generations will follow the same path. Each has their own view of what a future city or family might look like. Science, it seems, can’t thrive without the human attributes of compassion. Through “Futuricity” Sam Smith doesn’t just ask what a future city or family might look like, but what values future societies need to thrive and continue and how attitudes towards and within communities can contribute to their success or failure. Were the Time Police right to go easy on O/V and what drives their motivations to police him rather than the criminal who coerced him into deviancy in the first place? What might a compassionate, humane society look like and could such a society survive?
“Futuricity” is neither a dystopia or a utopia, but, like humans, a mix of good, bad and complex characters and a challenge to readers’ philosophy.
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