The main points of the argument are: (a) in the coming century innovation in science and technology will come to a near standstill and will cease driving cultural change; (b) the mainspring of science fiction is the perception of innovation in science and technology; and (c) as innovation in science and technology ceases being a major determinant of cultural change science fiction will dry up and fade away.

There are a lot of problems with this argument, but I’m not even going to discuss the whole technological singularity aspect of it. I’m not remotely convinced by the idea that technological advancement will reach some kind of standstill or plateau anytime soon, much less within the century. But I can’t argue against the validity of it as an idea. It’s not unintriguing, nor entirely implausible.

What I do think is exceptionally flawed, however, is Harter’s definition of science fiction — namely that “the mainspring of science fiction is the perception of innovation in science and technology.” What this suggests, more than anything, is a profound ignorance of the genre, which is filled with stories not at all interested in the innovation in science and technology. Harter acknowledges that “science fiction…fans are not particularly interested in futurology, i.e., in the serious attempt to understand and predict the future, as they are in the use of various futures as settings for stories.” But a) he seems to view that as a failing, and b) he for some reason seems to think those self-same stories are nonetheless concerned with futurology.

But I think Harter could have done well to read Ursula K. Le Guin’s introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness:

Science fiction is often described, and even defined, as extrapolative. The science fiction writer is supposed to take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future. “If this goes on, this is what will happen.” A prediction is made….Fortunately, though extrapolation is an element in science fiction, it isn’t the name of the game by any means. It is far too rationalist and simplistic to satisfy the imaginative mind, whether the writer’s or the reader’s. Variables are the spice of life….Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.

Le Guin acknowledges that “what sets [science fiction] apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors, drawn from certain great dominants of our contemporary life — science, all the sciences, and technology…” But that’s a far cry from suggesting that the genre needs a continually replenished and updated supply of science in order to survive.

Yes, some stories are interested — profoundly interested — in science and its evolution, but there are plenty whose depictions of technology are no more advanced or elaborate than the science fiction of twenty, thirty, or even a hundred years ago. Science fiction, like all fiction, is primarily concerned with the human condition — less in how we will live than in how we do live. One might be forgiven for thinking of it solely as a predictive genre, but only if one hadn’t actually read very much of it. Science fiction is not futurology.