wildcat

I've been thinking about the future all afternoon and evening.

I was asked today to contribute a short story to a still-fetal online magazine, which sounded like a fun project to take on because, you know. It has specific weight, depth, and purpose. The theme was simple: "The future is now."

So I've been thinking about the future since around two this afternoon.

There was a set of short films presented at Plan B tonight as part of the Victoria Film Festival. One of them--a friend of a friend's, actually, made it--went into the "secret tunnels" under Victoria, extrapolating and articulating the class divides in the city, the historical significance, the creepy passages... on the walk home I mostly found myself looking at the number of alleyways and shop alcoves locked up behind barred gates to keep the homeless from squatting over night. And, you know, thinking about the future.

Earthbound science fiction, when poised in the direction of the future, seems to most often (big generalization!) be focused on urban spaces and our interactions with them in the wake of technological leap, species transformation, or xenocultural infestation.

But what about rural spaces and small towns? What do they look like in the future? Or a future, or any future?

Looking at the future from the present is like being in a small town, looking at the big city you want to move to, or you're afraid of, or seems to encroach upon you (think of all those little towns eaten, squelched, sucked and devoured by Toronto in its desperate guttural evolution toward Mega-City One). How does that work, that tension between Futuropolis and Todayville?

What will rural spaces and small towns look like?

And, that's all very North American, but you could say that future fiction is also tension between first/second/third worlds. But that fucks with my head, because third world urban design is practically an inversion of the first world design, and that's based on theories I haven't brushed up on in years, and I feel a bit like cracking open the urban morphology shit again.

Note that there is no inherent value judgment about particular time periods, nations, or urban/rural spaces -- each has a positive or negative attribute that balances out the others. Not every city is a utopia, and not every small town is an idyllic, simpler time.

Anyway, will be noteblogging for the next few days while I try to start something up.

Also: tomorrow I'm hoping to see the ophthalmologist and get a prescription for some new glasses. Expect eyedrop drama.