Marginalia Futurologica 15, 2008
The Science Fiction of Mass Mobility
In 2007,
Superfast Ferries closed the ferry service between Rosyth (Edinburgh) and
Zeebrugge. In summer 2008, DFDS Seaways closed the service between Newcastle
and Bergen. The reason for both? Cheap flights, of course.
It seems a
strange coincidence, however, that in summer 2008 we have seen a point where
the airline industry itself has got under enormous pressure. Alitalia seems on
the verge of collaps and break-up, the low cost carries suffer from rising fuel
prices. The higher the oil prices the more likely is a serious decline in air
traffic.
While
General Motors has introduced the Volt, an all-new electric car, promised to be
the future of the automobile, new alternative power sources for aircraft are
nowhere to be seen.
Even a
hydrogen-powered aircraft (which in itself is science fiction in the
foreseeable future) would probably be smaller and with reduced range and
carrying capacity, resulting in higher prices. And as nobody seems seriously
committed to building anything bigger than the A380 or faster than the
Concorde, present-day passenger aircraft seem to be the climax of traditional
kerosene-based types.
The SF
questions in it
Is there
any chance to develop new power sources that allow 300 people to fly in the
same aircraft over the oceans – for a reasonable price? If not, will only a few
people fly that far? Will more smaller planes be built? Or will many people
together fly only on short flights?
Will we be
flying to the Mediterranean in 30 years? Probably not. How will this future
world organise trans-continental mass mobility without mass air traffic? With
ships? Ferry services like the ones recently discontinued? Equipped with
hyper-modern, automatic plastic sails?
If there is
no way to organise quick and cheap transcontinental mass mobility like today –
will we see the return of the jet set, a class of super rich defined by their
use of jets? If future mass mobility is surface travel alone (cars, trains
etc), what are the consequences for tourism on the Canaries? For the UK? For
Hawaii? What will this decline in air travel mean for the mobility patterns of
the US, a country with practically no useful long range trains?
The SF
answers in it
The answers
to these questions are clearly SF: A technological problem, in the future, and
the social consequences of this problem. But what could answers be like? How
would SF writers respond to the problems posed? Cross-continental maglev
trains? Giant bridges across the Straits of Gibraltar? Over to Sicily? How
would the world look like after the return of helium-filled dirigibles? Or a
world where the mass mobility of the second half of the 20th century
is simply not possible anymore? Where ordinary people simply do not go on
holidays more than 100km from home?
We are waiting for your stories…
© Matthias Bode und non
volio 2008