At present, sci-fi is absolutely everywhere in literature, movies, TV, games, and much more, to the point where it’s hard to imagine modern culture without its critique. In short, current sci-fi focuses heavily on everything “digital,” which isn’t surprising because modern life is practically defined by the internet. We’re talking reflections of fear and paranoia about social media, depersonalization and alienation, the pitfalls and deceptions of digital personas, and so on. Take this and combine it with some throwback space colonization forays like “The Expanse” (2015-2022), and lots — repeat: lots — of remakes, redoes, rehashes, and reboots of older work, and you’ve got a good snapshot of sci-fi as its evolved over the past 40 or so years.
While it’s hard to find an exact cut-off for when the “modern” era of sci-fi began, we could make a worse choice than William Gibson, born in 1948. As Vice discusses, his “Neuromancer” (published in 1984) created nearly every dystopian, cyberpunk convention you can think of: a highly stratified, oppressed futuristic society; Frankenstein-like cybernetics; consciousnesses removals and uploads; everything. “Black Mirror” (2011-2019), “Altered Carbon” (2018-2020), “Upload” (2020-present), and so many more all reflect his particular strain of sci-fi.
As always, art is arguably the best barometer of the times, which makes current dystopian and cyberpunk preoccupations rather telling. This is why sci-fi doesn’t just represent a forecast of our possible futures, but a chronicle of our past and present, as well.
