The promised spoils of information technology are: Unfettered communication with anyone; the accumulated knowledge of humanity available instantly; and information about the world in real-time. The technorati among us already benefit from these advances; in the near future, everyone will.
This poses a problem for novelists. How to concoct story lines that are immune to the relentless advance of technology? What does it take to write a future-proof plot?
This is not a new problem. Many of the novels and films conceived as recently as 10 years ago contain plot lines that would strain credibility if set in 2006 — now that mobile phones and the internet are ubiquitous. My habits have changed drastically over the past 10 years as a result of these twin inventions, as have those of my friends. This has turned virtually everything fictive produced up until the late 90s into unwitting period pieces. Novels being written today relying on current technology will age even more rapidly.
Many of the classics could not have been conceived today. In The Great Gatsby, the narrator would have googled Jay Gatsby by page 5. Romeo and Juliet would have SMSed each other constantly, removing any need for an unreliable fat friar. Cyrano de Bergerac would have been bested by Skype video. Not one single Hitchcock film could have been made had the protagonists had mobile phones.
There have been some interesting responses to the influence technology exerts on plot possibilities. Fantasy and science fiction coöpt the problem, consciously adding or removing technology to the fictive universe, and exploring where the plot lines might lead. What if there is no electricity but dragons are a viable form of transportation? What plots are possible if teleportation and warp speed are feasible?
Less successful, in my opinion, is magical realism, which likes to have its cake and eat it by allowing ghosts and ESP and other assorted pseudoscientific claptrap into the universe of the allowable, yet still insists on being called a literature of the real world. Magical realism is the snobbish aunt of literary genres.
Another response is to write historical fiction. The study of how Roman technology presented opportunities for plot twists animates Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, for example. John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman has Sam, a disgruntled footman, crucially fail to deliver a message between the two lovers, and it turns their worlds upside down. Fowles is exploring the genre conventions of the 19th century novel; in those days, messages were at the mercy of unreliable servants — servants were the weak link, and subsequent advances in communications technology made them redundant in this respect.
Fowles’s novel illuminates why technological advances threaten the novelist’s art. Plots traditionally depend on the possibility of error, of misunderstandings, of miscommunication, on the inability to verify claims made by others about the world and the room this leaves for destructive human emotions to grow. Technology aims to eradicate these impediments to our quality of life, but in doing so also empoverishes the novelist’s toolbox.
In the near future, then, we’ll be able to reach anyone, unless the attempt is refused. We’ll be able to verify anything via the internet. And everyone will have equal access to news about the world, unless a choice is made to tune out. We’ll be like Greek gods, omniscient if we wish, yet still governed by petty human inclinations. What will literature look like then? Will it even be possible?
Yes, definitely. The very first literary genre, the Greek myth, deals precisely with such characters. Zeus is all-knowing and all powerful. Iris is the flawless messenger. Helios sees everything. The Greek gods are unconstrained by technology, which frees them to perform ever crueler tricks on one another. With plot twists no longer at the mercy of technology, but instead as a result of uninhibited human volition, the literature of the near future should come full circle, adopting the literary conventions of the myth.
You’re a great read, as always, Stefan. But, also as always, I disagree.
Technological innovations doesn’t hamper great storytelling, because storytellers doesn’t portray reality.
Hitchcock got that question a lot: “Why don’t they call the police?”
He explains it several times in the must-read “Hitchcock” by Francois Truffaut (på svenska: Hitchcock om Hitchcock).
I quote from their conversation on Psycho:
“F.T. I admired that picture enormously, but I felt a letdown during the two scenes with the sheriff.
A.H. The sheriff’s intervention comes under the heading of what we have discussed many times before: “Why don’t they go to the police?” I’ve always replied, “They don’t go to the police because it’s dull.” Here is a perfect example of what happens when they go to the police.
F.T. Still, the action picks up again almost immediately after that.”
There you have it, Stefan. It would be dull!
As Per wrote, the plot doesn’t have to be future proof. If it’s well written, and somewhat consistent, the reader (well, most of us) accepts the plot on its own terms.
This is why I don’t agree with your opinion on magic realism; it’s where the writer, in the words of Marquez on Kafka, uses his authority to make us (well, most of us) accept “unnatural” plots as an intergral part of the world of the story. It requires a light pen, but when well done I find it most interesting.
Kafka does not lose value because his plots might defy logic. The events are perfectly logical in the world of the story. So, magic realism (or surrealism for that matter) stories are not so much set in the real world, but in the real world plus a “what if”-factor. Now, the idea of course is that the inhabitants of this world know its rules and therefore need not react to the unnaturals in a surprised manner. “So you’re clairvoyant. So was my great-grandmother, but still didn’t see that anvil falling.”
Tre ˆnskningar i en
– Pappa, jag vill se rymdfilm med en man-mot-man-duell med sv‰rd pä en pytteliten plattform ovanfˆr ett enormt schakt d‰r…