Sci-fi

Another KQED Perspective...

It seems to me that recently, my favorite science fiction books are starting to come true . Or that they have always been true, but I’m just now realizing it.

When driving down to LA this summer, I saw smoke and flames blazing in the distance from the Malibu fires. I thought of a novel I had read, where the whole valley is ablaze and refugees flee their homes by foot up the 405, all six lanes filled with bodies moving North.

When walking down a dusty dirt road inland, the winds picked up a my friend and I covered our eyes as a small dust storm blew through. It reminded me of another novel, where environmental degradation leads to agriculture drying up and dust storms rule.

When collecting trash on the beach in Santa Cruz after a big storm, I find such a random assortment of human life washed up from the storm: chairs, an empty can of sardines, deflated balloons. I thought of a book in which one of the last remaining men on earth lives off of what he can scrounge from what washes up on the beach.

Sometimes I confuse reality with the stories I read. In LA, for a moment I thought I could remember a time when the 405 really was filled with refugees fleeing by foot, just like in the book. Watching the dust storm across the dry landscape, I thought for moment that I was seeing abandoned fields, just like in the book. Collecting trash on the beach, I thought for a moment that I saw someone scrounging not for trash, but for food, just like in the book.

These stories sneak their way into my reality. And in doing so, they remind me of how close to reality they really are. Because while the scenes that I imagine are made up...they are quite close to the truth. In California today, fire refugees, agriculture failure, desperately hungry people are very much real. These stories remind me not to normalize what I see. We need storytellers, dreamers of both good dreams and nightmares, to shock us into seeing what is already before our eyes.

Sometimes it takes science fiction stories to see reality more clearly.