We Asked Australian Sci-Fi Authors to Predict Our Shitty, Shitty Future

In the early part of the 20th century some of our more optimistic thinkers predicted a future of flying machines and clean energy. We'd live in peace with one another, along with animals and the environment. But here we are. We're now well into the 21st century and we're still not at peace with each other, nor do we have personal flying machines.

But science fiction writers, as opposed to cartoonists for the Jetsons, have always had a knack for reminding us that the end is nigh. And today's science fiction authors are, in many ways, just as pessimistic as ever. So, with Donald Trump possibly about to get access to "the button" we decided to speak to some Australian authors. What are some of the more frightening scenarios they've invented? And which ones do they think could come true?

_Marianne De Pierres is a science fiction author from Brisbane. Her work includes the successful _Parrish Plessis_ trilogy, following a bounty hunter who tries to survive in a post-apocalyptic Australia run by a megalomaniacal media._

VICE: Hey Marianne, which of the scenarios from your novels do you think is the scariest and most likely to come true?
Marianne De Pierres: I think we're one step away from "Priers," which are journalist news drones. In the Parrish Plessis series, I imagined Priers to be both manned and remotely controlled by journalists seeking immediate, live stories. They were aggressive, wasp-like drones that buzzed in unannounced. I suppose mobile technology has gone part of the way to meeting that vision. But my Priers were rather more intrusive and less restricted because the media made the laws.

Do you think a multinational media company like Facebook could eventually possess the same sort of power you envisaged with the media in Nylon Angel?
I think they probably already do. It's just far more insidious and subtle than I imagined. I was writing about a tragic dystopia [The Tert] where the powerful media didn't have to appear to play nice. In the real world today, there is still the appearance of checks and balances. But beneath the surface there's this powerful undertow of social media franchises and conglomerates who are shaping our reality and our brain functions. There's been a lot written about the shallow, quick fix of information that we expect following the information revolution. We no longer ponder ideas, we skim and move on. We don't need to retain what we've learned and process it; we just google. We're human search engines.

Shit, that's dark. So what do you think the future of the media is, in terms of influencing how people live their lives?
I think the term "media" has been subsumed into a larger pond concept. We are all, in a sense, "media" now, and just as culpable in terms of subversiveness as any recognised news outlet. And perhaps the far reaching influence of traditional media has been replaced by the feedback loop between online consumers and social media creators. It's a mess out there, and those making the most noise get the last say. Also, the lines between fact and fiction are so blurred, now. So I guess what we can control is our level of self-awareness about our situation. Some people choose to actively interrogate our circumstances; whereas, others merely consume and accept. Unless we have some luddite revolution, there's no going back.

Ambellin Kwaymullina is a Palyku writer and illustrator based in Perth. Her dystopian "Tribe" series is set in a world where Earth has recently been destroyed by a cataclysmic event. The event gives some survivors superhuman abilities, but they're labelled "illegals" by the government and sent to detention camps.

Hi Ambelin, which scenario from your novels do you think is the scariest and most likely to come true?
Ambelin Kwaymullina: Everything I wrote about in the Tribe series has already come true. I'm Indigenous which means I am already living in a post-apocalyptic reality. Indigenous peoples lived through the end of the world but we did not end and nor did our cultures or our stories. So in writing a dystopia my concern was not so much about the world ending, but rather what happens once people from different backgrounds—privileged and marginalised—begin to come together in search of a more sustainable way of living with each other and with the land.

What role do the Accords (and the children being discriminated as a result) have in your vision of the future?
The Citizenship Accords divide people into three categories: Citizens (those without an ability), Illegals (those with an ability) and Exempts (those who have an ability that the government considers benign). Illegals are oppressed; Exempts are entitled to some of the benefits of citizenry but are not truly equal. This is not an invented law. It is based on the citizenship laws applying to Indigenous people in Australia in the 1940s, and particularly the Natives (Citizenship Rights) Act 1944 (WA). These real life laws offered a strange kind of citizenship that was not truly citizenship at all; the removal of racially-based restrictions that only applied in the first place because someone was Indigenous. We had to be licensed to be named "citizens" in lands we had belonged to for thousands of years.

Is a dystopia, similar to that in The Tribe series something that's much more likely in the future?
Probably less likely. I write for teenagers, and they are smarter and more globally aware than the adults who are promulgating the problems that plague the human species. Adults are collectively doing a spectacularly bad job of fulfilling the one responsibility common to all of us: leaving a better place behind us than the world we came into. But I think the next generation is up to the task of fixing our mistakes. In those who are to come lies the hope of the world. I (still) think power without limits is a concern of everyone whether situated in government hands or not.