Reflections on CS. Lewis and Leaps into the Future

In Of Other Worlds, C.S. Lewis argues that a science-fictional "leap into the future" is only justified if a writer is writing about a situation which could-not be illustrated in a contemporary setting, and where a historical setting would be either impossible or awkward. Lewis gives the example of the short story "Tom's A-Cold" as an illustration of a story that could have been set in the past, rather then the future- in the dark ages after the collapse of the Roman Empire rather then after the collapse of our present western civilization, but not without taking space from the plot to explain historical events and various Roman household conveniences.

However, I would argue that a story which could have been set in the here and now can profit from a leap into the future if the author intends to explore the ramifications technological change will have for the ordinary life of humanity. I am thinking of A Civil Campaign by Lois McMaster Bujold in particular. The story itself could be set in the present or recent past quite easily. A decorated covert-ops officer has been discharged from the military for medical reasons but has found a high position in the civilian beaurocracy of his nation's autocratic government. He falls in love with a woman, a widow with an eight year old son, courts her, deals with multiple misadventures as his friends and relitives hatch their own plots, foils and a determined but repulsive rival, sees that his sovereign marries his fiancee without incident, and eventually wins his lady's consent to marriage. The basic plot could have been set in the USSR before the fall of Communism, or in any state with an autocratic government. Indeed, A Civil Campaign is primarily about taking the tropes of a Regency romance novel and putting them into a space-opera setting.

However, the story goes into great detail about how the technological changes Bujold has forseen affect things like courtship, marriage, and inheritience. For instance, uterine replicators have, in the Vorkossigan universe, made it possible to completely divorce reproduction and sex. The fact that this has allowed for people to essentially make disigner babies, and even clone themselves is explored.

A FtM person in this universe can be made into a fully functional man - one who can reproduce as a man- and ends up inheriting lands because of male primogenture. At the end of the novel he gets engaged to a demure young maiden and will soon be siring his own (male) heirs. Has he transcended sexism or reinforced it by forcing everyone in his society to give him male privalage?

In short, while A Civil Campaign could have been set in the present or the past, its future setting makes it distinctive and allows the author to take the plot in directions it could not go in a present day setting- it explores the ramifications technological development will have for everyday life. CS Lewis seems to have missed the exsistance of this sort of story, perhaps because it was not very well developed in Lewis' lifetime. He noted that he was so out of sympathy with stories which were all about some technological triumph that he could not judge their literary merit objectively, and in the 1950s stories about the effects of future technology on human life tended to be of this triumphal sort. In addition, science-fiction of the 1950s tended to assume that technology would improve but social mores would remain the same- later writers have not made this foolish assumption. In fact, Bujold almost seems to believe that technology determines morality. The Barryarans are a sexist, militaristic, feudal society because they got closed off from the rest of the galaxy and technology decayed to a medieval level. Therefore, they had to adopt a mideval society, and, while they've gotten the technology back, their society hasn't caught up with their tech level yet.

One wonders what Lewis would have made of cyberpunk? I suspect that he would have considered it depressing but accurate.