Last week I went to GCF2012 in Riyadh, and to be totally honest I only enjoyed 3 things: the networking, the Saatchi and Saatchi presentation & the panel of SciFi writers.
And what most enjoyable to me was the opportunity I got to spend some quality time with some of best SciFi writers in the world (such as Catherine Asaro, Marl O'Green & Dr. Arlan Andrews) and got to discuss some very important fictional topics ;-)
The main topic that I was exploring is the effects of fiction and especially the scientific type on the advancement and prosperity of any society. I have always believed that the main drive behind advancement was SciFi, and would argue that we are yet to see any new invention or gadget that has not been dreamed up in a SciFi story before some engineer/scientist made it happen.
This is very apparent when you look at the contrast between the USA & Japan, each has its own rich and unique SciFi culture, and that clearly shows in the kind of technologies they are each working on. I would argue that the Japanese have a very deep emotional and psychological SciFi that looks more into the supernatural, while the USA has a much more materialistic kind of SciFi that focuses more on the physical looks, feel and power of technology. And this difference clearly effects how products are developed and designed in both these countries.
My point in most of the discussion was that you need a good SciFi culture to drive your economy , and when an economy's quality of SciFi production goes down, so does the economy it self. I believe that the main drive behind the fall of the US economy is what we see in the movie industry today, where they are now recycling SciFi ideas from the 80s. in my opinion that shows that the creative drive in this economy is drying up and no one is willing to invest in digging deeper to keep it running, therefore forcing it to dry off even faster.
But how dose SciFi effect progress and why? what are the main components in SciFi that if perfected would drive an economy forward? What is it about SciFi that drives us humans to advance? and more importantly, How is it that SciFi writers have the vision to know that the bold ideas they are presenting are actually scientifically possible even though every one at the time of writing it called fiction? and building on that, why is it called fiction when it turns out that it was possible?
But as usual my big mouth got me to places I did not intend to go, and I was put on the spot to lead something I did not intend to lead.
Dr. Arlan Andrews, when asked about SciFi in the Arabian world decided (without consulting me) to point me out of the audience as the future of the Arabian SciFi culture (thank you Dr. Arlan Andrews, for throwing that responsibility on my shoulder).
So guys help me out here, if we are to build a SciFi culture for the Arabic world (I know it is ironic that I am writing about this in English), what do we need to focus on to build this culture? how can this SciFi culture help drive us forward into the 21st century? and on a much more controversial topic, how would we have our own SciFi and what are the aspects that would differentiate us from the rest of the SciFi that exists in the world today?
And what most enjoyable to me was the opportunity I got to spend some quality time with some of best SciFi writers in the world (such as Catherine Asaro, Marl O'Green & Dr. Arlan Andrews) and got to discuss some very important fictional topics ;-)
The main topic that I was exploring is the effects of fiction and especially the scientific type on the advancement and prosperity of any society. I have always believed that the main drive behind advancement was SciFi, and would argue that we are yet to see any new invention or gadget that has not been dreamed up in a SciFi story before some engineer/scientist made it happen.
This is very apparent when you look at the contrast between the USA & Japan, each has its own rich and unique SciFi culture, and that clearly shows in the kind of technologies they are each working on. I would argue that the Japanese have a very deep emotional and psychological SciFi that looks more into the supernatural, while the USA has a much more materialistic kind of SciFi that focuses more on the physical looks, feel and power of technology. And this difference clearly effects how products are developed and designed in both these countries.
My point in most of the discussion was that you need a good SciFi culture to drive your economy , and when an economy's quality of SciFi production goes down, so does the economy it self. I believe that the main drive behind the fall of the US economy is what we see in the movie industry today, where they are now recycling SciFi ideas from the 80s. in my opinion that shows that the creative drive in this economy is drying up and no one is willing to invest in digging deeper to keep it running, therefore forcing it to dry off even faster.
But how dose SciFi effect progress and why? what are the main components in SciFi that if perfected would drive an economy forward? What is it about SciFi that drives us humans to advance? and more importantly, How is it that SciFi writers have the vision to know that the bold ideas they are presenting are actually scientifically possible even though every one at the time of writing it called fiction? and building on that, why is it called fiction when it turns out that it was possible?
But as usual my big mouth got me to places I did not intend to go, and I was put on the spot to lead something I did not intend to lead.
Dr. Arlan Andrews, when asked about SciFi in the Arabian world decided (without consulting me) to point me out of the audience as the future of the Arabian SciFi culture (thank you Dr. Arlan Andrews, for throwing that responsibility on my shoulder).
So guys help me out here, if we are to build a SciFi culture for the Arabic world (I know it is ironic that I am writing about this in English), what do we need to focus on to build this culture? how can this SciFi culture help drive us forward into the 21st century? and on a much more controversial topic, how would we have our own SciFi and what are the aspects that would differentiate us from the rest of the SciFi that exists in the world today?
Interesting twist Yasser, SciFi leading Sci-none-Fi, surprisingly I tend to agree with you on this one.
ReplyDeleteOn ArabSciFi matter, I think we have a major problem there.
I think we forgot how to dream.
We forgot that dreams know no boundaries follows no roles.
The worst of it is that we use English to dream because if we express our dreams in Arabic we would sound silly. This might indicate how stray we’ve become.
We know all the terminology of talking NERD or SciFi in English, we know none of it in Arabic. Probably, this might be your first challenge, to build a culture you need to build a language. To build an Arab-SciFi culture… guess what you need to do !
Make people dream in Arabic again, maybe even writing Arabic SciFi pomes :)