http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue368/screen3.html
Finding the Future: A Science Fiction Conversation
Documentary filmmakers mine science-fiction conventions to find what
tomorrow may bring
Shot against the backdrop of science-fiction conventions from 2000 to
the present, Finding the Future: A Science Fiction Conversation
explores the role of sci-fi in helping people come to terms with the
present and in speculating about what might lie ahead for humanity.
Primarily through a series of interviews with both science-fiction
authors and fans, this documentary muses on everything from the
phenomenon of fandom to the role of science and technology in humans'
lives, from the history of the genre to the realization today of
yesterday's science-fiction fantasies.
Authors like Forrest J. Ackerman, Catherine Asaro, Ben Bova and David
Brin spend a lot of time with the camera, and topics such as space
exploration, communications technology, genetic engineering and the
environment prove to be big issues for both authors and fans alike.
But Finding the Future is also an ethnography, a chronicle and an
advocacy document. Not only do the doc's makers talk about what
science fiction has had to say about humankind's future, they also
discuss the history of science fiction and sci-fi fandom (beginning
with the first WorldCon in the 1930s; the perspective is almost
exclusively American), the sociology of the SF fan and the positive
role some see fandom playing in societyas a basis for community and
for the furthering of knowledge and understanding.
But aside from all the heady conversation and philosophical musing,
there's also plenty of people in costumes, filking and other
convention weirdness in this documentary, which, to non-fans, might
come off as a different kind of ethnography altogetherit might even
look like science fiction itself.
Ambitious but rough around the edges
It's not too hard to see Finding the Future as a labor of love, as a
project to which those who made it and those who participated in it
have devoted a lot of time and thought. The interviews this
documentary contains are filled with smart people talking about
interesting and complex ideas, with a balance of passion and reason in
their words, and the scope of these ideas and of this documentary is
immense. But this doesn't always make for great viewing, believe it or
not.
Combined with some fairly low production values, this ambitious film's
narrative wanderings can sometimes lead to boredom with even the most
fascinating of topics. The editing (the true art of documentary)
ranges from sharp to inscrutableboth connections between
conversations and visual inserts (i.e., science-fiction art placed
over discussions of various subjects) don't always make a lot of
sense. The musical score has a similar rangefrom wonderfully
atmospheric to distractingly bad.
The number of profound discussions of fascinating ideas this film
contains, however, often succeeds in overwhelming whatever technical
shortcomings it may have. As Finding the Future's more sociological or
ethnographic moments reveal, science-fiction authors and fans are
often highly intelligent people who have thought a lot about some of
the most important issues facing our present and our future, and the
community that they comprise, science-fiction fandom, is often an
extremely accepting one that allows for a great amount of individual,
personal expression and a great number of differing opinions.
But it's in some of these cultural/ethnological/sociological
considerations that Finding the Future might be seen to come up a bit
short, too. It portrays the community of science-fiction fandom in a
bit too uncritical or utopian a manner. Though descriptions of the
"average" science-fiction fan are often appropriately flattering
(despite some acknowledgment of issues like personal hygiene), the
camera plainlybut unreflectivelyshows that the face of science
fiction is overwhelmingly white, middle-class and male (though women
do get a goodeven maybe disproportionateamount of representation in
the film). And then there are issues like calling outsiders "mundanes"
(a term even more potentially contemptuous and derisive than
"muggles"). The byproducts of a strong sense of communal
identityexclusion and othering (intentional and unintentional)show
themselves here as elsewhere in the world.
The hope is, however, as Finding the Future argues, that those who are
involved in the concerns of science fiction are very well equipped to
address issues like these in the future, and can do so in intelligent
and fantastical ways.
Finding the Future may be so close to its subjects that it falls
prey to some of their failingsscience-fiction fans, like science
fiction itself, can prove to be in serious need of communicating a bit
more economically and a bit more elegantly from time to time. Matt
xponent
