Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Information Science

Panelists at the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Information Science panel discussion.

Print

On Saturday June 25, 2011, the LITA Imagineering Interest Group offered at the 2011 ALA Annual Conference “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Information Science,” a panel discussion program that looks at the present and future of information science and information technology through the eyes of a panel of science fiction and fantasy authors: David Weber, Bill Willingham, Orson Scott Card, John Scalzi, Jim Ottaviani, Carrie Vaughn, and Gail Carriger.

Weber compared the recent information storage revolution to Gutenberg’s modern book printing revolution and stated that the mass market paperback will have to compete with e-books in the near future. Card spoke about problems with current copyright law, and noted that the public interest is not served by copyright being perpetually protected and that it is absurd to strictly protect copyright—particularly in science where dissemination of information is crucial. Scalzi brought laughter to the audience by arguing that of all people, it is librarians who are best qualified to be the first to be introduced to aliens because librarians’ first question is always what you want to know and aliens’ main interests will be learning about humans.

Ottaviani, a graphic novelist and librarian at University of Michigan, talked about the constraints on imagination we all have when we think about future. He imagined a future in which information is almost instantly transmitted, the speed required to access information is vastly improved, and information storage capacity increases by the application of quantum mechanics to computer engineering. Vaughn mentioned that early science fiction writers could imagine video telephone easily but not color videophone since, in their time, technology only offered black and white. She observed that predictions about the future in science fiction often turn out to be wrong because those predictions are rooted in our interests in current times rather than in the future.

Carriger pointed out how the change caused by technology affects culture. In particular, she talked about how the current technology revolution is significantly different from previous technology revolutions in that the former is taking place globally at the same time.

The audience asked which format each author prefers and what they think about changes in subculture that often appear to resurface over time. The panelists’ consensus about format was that they prefer whichever appeals most to their readers. Regarding the preservation of content, Card foresaw that the most beloved books will survive in one way or another even without a formal preservation program—just as we know about pre-Socratic philosophers such as Parmenides and Anaximander even with only the fragments of their writings having survived. Weber connected changes in subculture to our unchanging human nature. He stated that what we see in the flow of subculture is probably the constant appeal of the unchanging aspects of human nature and that people try to find interesting and new ways to speak to those unchanging aspects using different styles, topics, and characters.

Bohyun Kim is the digital access librarian at Florida International University Medical Library in Miami. She can be contacted at kimb@fiu.edu and blogs at Library Hat.