Written by Stephen Thompson | 19 October 2009

One guy spoke impressively about the future, where cities were painted white to mimic the reflective properties of (the by then melted) ice; where deserts were filled with machines that mimicked trees; where every house generated its own power; where suburbs were gone and we lived in satellite villages; and large cities acted like mini powerstations. There was more, much more, and a lot of it was mind-blowingly impressive in terms of vision and imagination. This guy was advocating a complete revolution in the mindset of humanity.

"Science fiction!" his opponent declared.

Yeah, I thought, it certainly is, but the way he explained the possibilities suggested that the technology was available to do it, so it wasn't totally beyond our present scientific capabilities. And isn't this what is usually meant by referring to 'science fiction' in an argument: that the proposition is beyond current technology?

However, the wet blanket in opposition used the term in a somewhat different sense. Rather than dissing the argument on technological grounds, he 'accused' the greenie, on three occasions, of talking science fiction, as if the term was a synonym for 'bullshit', and declared that issues were deliberately being obscured by, and I quote, 'fictional speculation'.

At this point I lost the thread of his argument as I went off on a tangent wondering when it was, and how it could be, that science fiction went from being a term about the limits of knowledge to becoming something tantamount to lying.

Surprisingly, once you become aware of it, this negative attachment to the genre (not just scifi but fantasy and horror suffer similar fates) is quite prevalent. It isn't just the patently (and demonstrably) ignorant apartheidism of the literati that posits our genre as insignificant, juvenile, crass and/or bland, but almost all movers and shakers use the term 'science fiction' to cast doubt on ideas that are progressive, bold or in a different paradigm to the flatland we now inhabit.

Politicians in particular use it to sidestep difficult decisions and to show how economically responsible they are. They squirm away from questions by labelling them 'speculative', that is to say, of no worth. How many times have you heard politician say that they don't get into speculation, that they are more concerned with the realities of running the country?

So, it seems, speculation and science fiction are not worthy of consideration and that both terms are about unreality, airy-fairyness, naivity. On the other hand, worldly people contemplate matters in the full light of reality, the only sort of cogitation that is serious and rational, and evidently it is the only way one can come to the proper conclusions.

Like those people in our banking system did, presumably.

Which begs the question: what is the difference between gambling on the outcome of pouring billions of dollars into the monetary system to prop up captains of industry, and embarking on programmes to combat the effects of global warming? Surely both are speculative. There's no guarantee of success in either initiative.

The difference, as far as I can see, is that one deals in ideas and the other deals with hard currency. Our system of government and its corporate mirror image is geared to pushing hard-nosed wheeler-dealer types (ie bullies) to the top of the pile. In this environment, short-termism is the king, and usable profits, power and control are the objects of desire. Thus any issue that looks far into the future, or to something beyond the immediate horizon, is met with suspicion or is fobbed off as irrelevant to the main game.

More fool us: it means we get to keep voting for people who see imagination and vision as a negative human trait.

Sad. So sad.