ToniAnn Marini, S. M. Stirling, Shane McInnis, Alison Tracy, and Marie Vibbert explored worlds of possibilities for writers and readers at the “Socials in Science Fiction: How Does SF Use Social Sciences?” panel on Monday at 11:30AM, Hyatt Embassy AB. Marini moderated and read notes from Anya Martin, who could not be present, regarding SF authors Ursula Le Guin and Vonda McIntire’s familial connections with social scientists that affected their writing.
Responding to a question about education as a social science that might figure in SF, panelist Tracy said that if the use was not too heavy-handed or allegorical, it could give empathy and compassion to world problems. She included economic inequality and corporate control in these issues. “You could draw out or crystallize, a metaphor maybe, . . . what you could use SF to represent in our world.”
Vibbert mentioned The Dispossessed by Le Guin, in which property ownership is banned, and George Orwell’s 1984, and noted that social sciences’ direct ties with education are the use of the thought experiment. Her story “Free Wifi” in the If This Goes On anthology imagines a world without funding for public education.
McInnis tries to engage students in thought experiments. What would happen if we had all the food we needed? What would life be like?
Stirling mentioned his 2024 novel To Turn the Tide, in which five contemporary historians are sent back to second-century Rome and find daily Roman existence bizarre.
Marini added that archaeology and anthropology play a big part in SF writing. Stirling agreed and said to be careful to use those people and their history in a way that does not put wishes onto them. He mentioned the correction to archaeology’s general dogma that migrations had not been a factor. “Ancient DNA has shown that [such migrations] were as common as dirt.”
Tracy gave The Hunger Games and Divergent as examples that show challenges to the status quo and a desire to remake society. She also gave Ready Player One, Brave New World, and her own novel Guardian (featuring a world run by corporations) as additional examples of social sciences affecting SF.
The panel named many more potential SF stories that could be affected by social sciences as well as tales and novels that have already done so.
