Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
“The world is too much with us,”
William Wordsworth warned, and it's true: we do
get caught up in
the day-to-day affairs of our everyday lives. As a result, we often
miss the mystery and beauty of the natural world—and of the inner
worlds of ourselves and others.
It is
to escape the tedium of everydayness that men and women travel,
devote themselves to arts or crafts, learn to play musical
instruments, attend movies or sports events, concerts or plays, and,
of course, read.
Reading
takes us out of ourselves; sometimes, it also takes us out of this
world, to times past or future, to strange worlds or other
dimensions, or even, in the case of Dante's Inferno,
to hell itself (not that such a destination is recommended,
ordinarily.)
But
what happens when the worlds of poetry, fiction, and drama themselves
become too familiar to provide the escape from everydayness we crave?
When the tropes and themes of genre literature themselves become too
commonplace, they cannot alleviate the boredom of what The Mothers of
Invention called our “dull, gray” existence.
Futurology,
the study (or, perhaps, speculation about) of possible future
situations, events, and states of existence based upon extrapolations
from current ones, often rekindles the imagination. The future may
not be exactly as futurologists envision it, but, even if it is not,
their conjectures provide fresh visions of the way things could
be, and that's
all a writer of popular literature, regardless of genre, needs to
rekindle his or her own
imagination.
With
thriller and horror fiction genres in mind, let's
consider some of the possibilities that futurologists' ideas might
suggest in the way of such elements of fiction as characters,
settings, plots, motives, and conflicts.
There
are astonishing technological marvels on the horizon, futurologists
predict, including eye-controlled technology, paper diagnostics,
designer antibiotics, ingestible robots, smart clothing, photonics in
space, volcanic mining, a spintronics revolution, carbon-breathing
batteries, super antivirals, diamond batteries, optogenetics, nano
feasibility, an unhackable quantum Internet, biometric materials, the
next generation of artificial intelligence, 3D printing in every
home, designer molecules, a fully immersible, computer interface, and
a self-sufficient ecosystem.
Whew!
If that list
doesn't suggest some fresh characters, settings, plots, motives, and
conflicts that can be, as Stephen King defines horror, (a)
disgusting, (b) horrific, or (c) terrifying, maybe there's no future
for horror (or for the unimaginative aspiring horror writer, at
least).
The
first step in using the futuristic fiction approach is to research
the type of technology in which you're interested as a writer. Start
by gaining an overview of the technology. Then, learn whatever more
detailed material you need to make your story accurate and
believable. (Hint: Videos, such as those available on YouTube, are
often quite sound academically and provide a moving, audio-visual
rather than a static, learning approach, which some might prefer to
reading.)
For
example, suppose you're interested in eye-controlled technology. You
might make a list of questions to research:
- How does it work?
- What uses does it have? (How has it been used? How else might it be used? In other words, what are its applications?)
- What benefits does it provide?
- What are its disadvantages?
As
other relevant questions present themselves, research them as well.
How
does it work?
Eye-tracking
technology can installed
in personal computers, peripheral devices, or eyeglasses.
There’s
a chance that soon eye
tracking will be a standard feature of a new generation of
smartphones, laptops and desktop monitors setting the stage for a
huge reĆ«valuation of the way we communicate with devices—or how
they communicate with us.
“In
the past year eye tracking technology moved from being a promising
technology to being adopted in commercial products in a wide array of
consumer segments simultaneously,” Werner says.
. . . VR headset companies are making large investments
in eye tracking technology.
.
. . eye tracking might make it a whole lot easier for gamers
to interact with the gaming environment.
“There
is an increasing interest in using eye tracking to help diagnose —
and potentially treat –neurological disorders,” says Bryn
Farnsworth, science editor at biometric research company iMotions.
With
eye tracking technology, online advertisers will be able to measure
exactly how many actual human eyes actually view their ads when they
appear on the page.
“Eye
tracking sensors provide two main benefits,” says Oscar
Werner, vice president of the eye tracking company Tobii Tech.
“First, it makes a device aware of what the user is interested in
at any given point in time. And second, it provides an additional way
to interact with content, without taking anything else away. That
means it increases the communication bandwidth between the user and
the device.”
What
are its disadvantages?
- The equipment is expensive.
- Some users can't work with the equipment (for example if they wear contact lenses or have long eye lashes).
- Calibrating the equipment takes time; [as a result] this problem may . . . cause the user to deviate from using the device.
Without
developing a detailed synopsis, we can suggest some possibilities
simply by breaking ideas into the three parts of any story: the
beginning, the middle, and the end:
Eye-controlled Technology
- Beginning: An art gallery stages an exhibition for an up-and-coming artist of the avant-garde.
- Middle: An explosive device installed in the wall, behind one of the artist's paintings explodes.
- End (Terrifying and Gross-out Elements): Sixteen people are killed, including the artist, as terrorists prove the efficacy of their latest innovation: eye-tracking technology that can be used as a trigger to detonate an explosive device. (A good title for such a story might be “The Tenth Gaze,” because the software used to detonate the bomb triggered its explosion in accordance with the tenth time someone gazed at a specific point on a particular painting.)
Next-generation
Artificial Intelligence
- Beginning: A next-generation robot is activated as it exits the assembly line.
- Middle: Its programmed role as a “helpmate” is initiated.
- End: Unhappy with its assigned role, the robot “commits suicide.” (A good title for such a story might be “Access Denied,” since the robot, in self-destructing, denies access to itself to a buyer.) In an alternate ending, the robot could allow itself to be purchased and then kill its owner, claiming the owner's residence (and perhaps his or her family) as its own.