The Long Tomorrow

“No city, no town, no community of more than one thousand people or two hundred buildings to the square mile shall be built or permitted to exist anywhere in the United States of America.”  Constitution of the United States, Thirtieth Amendment.

Thus begins Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, included in the Library of America’s American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels: 1953-1956.  The first thing to note about this novel is that it does cause one to wonder (once again) about the definition of Science Fiction.  When does a book deserve to be included in the genre?  The only futuristic aspect of this novel is that the world has been decimated by nuclear war.  Otherwise, no technological advance; indeed, there is very little of what would traditionally be considered science.  Indeed, most of the book takes place in a world which could be considered pre-scientific.  The closest we come is a discussion on the merits of nuclear power—and therein lies the interesting place of departure for reflection.

Post-nuclear war, the remaining citizens of the United States blamed cities for the war, and vowed henceforth to live in the Amish manner. No electricity, steam engines or anything of the sort.  Horses and buggies and small communities everywhere.  Our hero tires of this life, wanders off to find the rebellious, perhaps mythic, city in which they still use advanced technology.  Upon finding it, well, they still live in a ridiculously primitive manner, but hey, they have a functioning nuclear power plant.  The discovery terrifies our hero (Nuclear Weapons = Bad; Nuclear Power = Nuclear Weapons = Bad).  At which point we spend a small amount of time realizing maybe nuclear power isn’t so bad after all.  At which point, the realization dawns: the Reader no longer cares at all about this novel.  Here we have a curious “Science Fiction” novel; when we are reading about people who have reverted to Olden Times in the aftermath of a nuclear war, there is something at least minimally interesting; when we find the town using nuclear power, the novel just dies.

One virtue of the novel: it shows how little the opponents of nuclear power have evolved in the last 60 years.  They sound just like the opponents of nuclear power in this novel.

All of this got me wondering (shocking, to be sure), not about nuclear power (which, Truth be Told, I like—clean, safe, plentiful power), but about economic progress.  It is one of those facts which often surprises students when I mention it, but the age we live in when people expect rapid technological advances not just in their lifetime, but in the next decade, is a historical anomaly.  For most of human history, technological advance has been slow.  Yes, things were more advanced in 1500 than in 500.  But compare the shock of taking someone from the year 500 and putting them in a town in 1500 to the shock of taking someone from the year 1900 and putting them in a town in the year 2013.  It’s not even close.  Our current world would be overwhelming to someone from 1900.  Literally overwhelming.  And mostly unrecognizable.

So, why do we prefer the Modern world to the Older world.  Why is it obvious to us that people would be happier in the modern world than they would in a world in which the most advanced technology is something which predates the steam engine?  Yes, I have a hard time imagining going back to an earlier technological age—and it isn’t terribly hard to figure out why. (Think: no internet.)  But, now go the other way.  Imagine the current state of technology would be frozen for the rest of your life.  Nothing which exists now would go away.  Would you be content with that state of affairs?  I wouldn’t; I’d be sad about the cessation of technological advance, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what technological advance will make me happier in 20 years.  Two decades ago, I never imagined I would ever have anything like the iPhone 5.  Now that it exists, why do I think that if it was still the summit of technology in 20 years, that we would be really missing out on something?  And, again, the curious thing to me is not that I think this way, it is that for most of human history, nobody thought this way.  Does the rapid pace of technological innovation breed a hunger for itself?

Maybe.