Chasing Shadows

Chasing Shadows: Visions of Our Coming Transparent World
Ed. by David Brin and Stephen W. Potts

Surveillance has been an important theme in science fiction at least since the middle of the twentieth century, when Big Brother started watching us through our telescreens. Today, of course, the telescreen is a part of everyday life and privacy is coming to seem like a quaint historical notion.

Chasing Shadows collects a variety of responses by SF writers to living in the digital panopticon, most of them less pessimistic than Orwell but still expressing some misgivings. No matter their particular angle though, all are entertaining and provocative, and piercingly relevant for our own time.

While not trying to predict what’s to come, the general impression given is that we should expect technology to become even more pervasive and intrusive, in part because that’s what we want it to be: valuing convenience and connection over intimacy and the individual.

We should be careful what we wish for.