Utopia, the work of inventing a better future with the powers of imagination, has never looked so out of reach and yet so urgent.
We live in difficult times. Technology, once heralded as an agent of human liberation, has only brought upon us rampant economic inequality and a dreadful resurgence of fascist filth. Runaway climate change, the bitter fruit of our industry, is consuming forests and melting glaciers and ice caps. Coral reefs are dying; heat waves are desiccating arable lands; cities and islands are drowning. Civilization is staggering on the edge of a precipice.
Our present is dystopian. As for our future—Leonard Cohen, pithy and savage, sang back in 1991, a lifetime ago: “I've seen the future, brother/It is murder.”
It turns out it is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine utopia. And the culprit is science fiction. Science fiction killed utopia. Science fiction failed us.
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