Science Fiction Looking Less Like Fiction, More Like the Real World

(Illustration by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)

Of late, the science fiction genre has been “struck by some combination of ambition and restraint,” per The Atlantic‘s Elizabeth Alsop. Sci-fi movies, for example, have become less about the creation of a far-off fantasy world than one that mimics our current reality. She argues that “[Lately], such exercises in strong futurism seem to have been outnumbered by more modest speculative efforts—narratives imagining a moment that seems to barely anticipate, if not intersect with, the present.” That’s because we’re getting closer to that moment when sci-fi actually becomes nonfiction—whether it be through the advent of autonomous cars, space tourism, or high-tech robots. Read Alsop’s full story here.