Tuesday 14 April 2020

The future of another timeline (a review of Trouble and her friends by Melissa Scott)

Reading Trouble and her friends made me nostalgic.  Remember when we thought that Usenet would evolve into an entirely different world that was separate from, but connected to our own?  When we visualized it as a place of abstract shapes and arbitrary physical laws, a virtual frontier where outlaw crackers would battle through corporate Intrusion Control Entities (ICE) for data or for valuable code?   Remember when we thought the internet would be "Cyberspace"?

As I was reading Scott's book, I was reminded of the title of Annalee Newitz's latest book:  The future of another timeline.  Trouble lives in the future of a timeline not our own.... the future as imagined in 1993 or so, a future where you visit cyberspace by plugging a cable directly into your augmented brain.  A future that is an oddly hopeful dystopia where dispossessed kids can develop world-shaking skills, and world-shaking reputations.

I wonder if Scott is ever nostalgic for that future too? It seems so remote from us now.  The internet is ....just so ordinary.  It's out-of-date websites that local businesspeople don't have the access or the skills to update with their COVID-19 opening hours (if any). It's corporate news sites, struggling to find ways to gather the money to do journalism. It's advertising tracking you through your days.  It's working from home, doing yoga from home, having video calls with your pet. It's the crazy uncle you used to only have to talk to at Christmas posting offensive political memes on your Facebook page.  It's community and an excuse never to talk to anyone directly, all at the same time.

Unless you're William Gibson (who scares me), we suck at predicting the future.

And all of that is a digression from saying that Trouble and her friends is a well-imagined world with engaging characters, an interesting plot, and interesting ideas.  Why haven't I read more Melissa Scott?  I need to scare up more of her books, and visit more of her past futures.