We've all encountered Margaret Atwood's dystopian visions of a bad future. The Handmaid's Tale. What is less well known is the practice of bad futurism hidden within seemingly convincing stories that promise absurd tomorrows based on reckless assumptions about the present. It is the pursuit of the latter that took me to a packed convention hall at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow, England in August, a gathering of writers and critics discussing “techno-orientalism.” I watched the all-star panel. But as I discovered, this idea goes far beyond fiction. it is…
Source: www.newscientist.com