I like the positive tone of your post. I have nothing against hope — in fact hope is an act of rebellion in itself. But I’d like to add a qualifier: by itself it is not enough. If hope becomes complacency then we are in real trouble. I’d like to point to global warming as an example. Here is an environmental catastrophe that could, really, end life on Earth as we know it. We didn’t sign an immortality contract with the universe. If we want to reverse GW before the point of no return, we have to act. We have to change things in ways that we never imagined before. I’d like to see more SF stories imagining a world saved from global warming. What would we have to change to ensure that?

There are many people who assume that technological solutions will fix the GW issue. But the problem is too big for a band-aid, quick-fix solution. I happen to be a physics professor at a small state college. My college did a massive cross-disciplinary student teach-in of GW across 15 disciplines. My own students dug up the data on carbon dioxide and the whys and hows of greenhouse gases, and looked at mitigation issues. But our analysis was only a small part of the whole. From sociology and psychology we learned about how societies react to change, and what obstacles stand in the way of people changing their behaviors — and from the art students we learned about how art connected us to nature. And so on. I’d like to see SF that proposes complex answers to complex problems. Technology is an essential element but it is only a part of the solution.

Lastly my own reading of SF has been mixed. Especially the reading I did as a kid made me realize that much of SF at that time was not written for women and people of color, let alone people from other nations. I could identify much more easily with the conquered aliens than the conquering, usually white, male heroes. So while I got intellectual thrills from SF at the time, I also felt excluded and certainly not optimistic about the future. Not until I read Le Guin and others later in life. (At the same time I was quite determined to write the stuff).

I think there is still a strong current of that in spec fic, which means I still have a fairly mixed reaction to it today. But also there is reason for hope, because there are writers taking all kinds of interesting, mind-bending risks (including you, Catherynne and Jeff) and that is the sort of spec fic I celebrate.

Vandana

Actually, we’re probably all buggered. Our fates are in the hands of some serious, serious high-fantasy Tolkien nuts. They’ll wind up being the only ones who can recognize what plants we can eat, and know how to make a fire. *I* will know how to make a fire if given a small tinderbox of futuristic origins. But two sticks? Errr…

So! Go read the SF for when the internet wakes up and says “Hang on…” but then go read the Fantasy for when the world goes boom and we have to eke out existences amidst city-rubble. And. Er. Go read romance so you’ll know how to repopulate the species? Okay, there goes my theme for this paragraph…

However I do think we owe it to the cockroaches, as one species to another to commit seppuku.
They’ve waited quite patiently. Its about time they had a turn being at the top of the food chain, and who knows they might learn from our mistakes.

Arming the Truth-Cats from 4chan with bacterial/vir@l agents (the experimental kind which produce zombies and mutant insectoids.) Nukes and armoured hovercraft. 4 their Holy War against Scientology, Web 2.0, Walt Disney’s head, EMO, My Chemical Romance, The daily Telegraph and its entire readership base, would be a good start.

Where’s my inhuman robot body and my backups? I’m ready for a strange, surprising future!