The future is now

When my brother left home in the 90s for the blinking lights of the IT boom, he gifted me something. I’d grown up with his penchant for sci-fi and intense 70s prog, but this was new: a space man called David Bowie. Unlike Freddy Mercury, who I wanted to marry, I didn’t want to be with Bowie: I wanted to be Bowie. Or, no, it’s more psychological than that. Our dad had died just before I was born and my 12-year-old brain pretty much slotted Bowie in as a vague approximation. I had, after all, grown up with stories about the beautiful man in purple hotpants who was my father—it checked out.

When Bowie died in 2016, it was at once shocking and very easy to believe that he’d been rocketed into space and that’s where he lived now. Bowie set us up for these multiple states of wonder: shifting forms between ‘an alligator’, ‘a mama-papa coming for you’, ‘a space invader’ and ‘a rock ‘n’ rollin’ bitch for you’. The ability to exist in multiple imaginative realms is what I love about science fiction in any form. For most people who are into the genre, sci-fi isn’t just an escape to another planet where everyone is called Zentox Fortuna. It’s a comment on the world around us. In asking ‘Is there life on Mars?’ we are at once longing for escape and expressing our loneliness on this blue planet. It has never been a genre that exists only in fantasy—the ‘science’ part grounds it. No fan is more excited when the fictional depiction is accurate or, even better, comes true. George Orwell predicted the surveillance state in 1984! Octavia Butler foretold Trump-era popularism in Parable of the Sower! Having stated my admiration, I have to admit that I don’t actually read much hard sci-fi—all that tech and interplanetary loping is too plotty for me. I either want gritty realism or speculative fiction that has its feet planted in the earth, its head in the what-might-be. These are my comfort genres. So, when the pandemic struck and we retreated into lockdown, it was to the hyper realistic and the daringly speculative that I turned.