Oregon doesn’t have a shelter-in-place order, but I’m planning ahead. The Governor keeps saying there’s no order but we all know different. We’re going to be stuck inside like the rest of you in a matter of days. As I said before, scifi needs to graduate from dystopian stories, and if it wasn’t clear before we should all know it now.
So what kind of scifi should we be reading/writing in the apocalypse? My feeling is pretty simple – we can do what we always did. For example, in times of leisure we focused on what the world would turn into if certain factors did not improve. Now that they are upon us, we can continue.
For example, we can use our imaginations to focus on what happens when the world is a better place. There are genres like this already – solarpunk for example. There’s no reason we can’t turn our attention to what the world will look like when it is free of disease, crime, and violence.
Just like Gene Roddenberry, we can imagine a happy future for ourselves and march toward it. There’s no reason we can’t start doing this right now!
Warm wishes, and happy dreams. And wash your dang hands.