I write high-speed, strategy-driven Military Sci-Fi & Space Opera, where cunning commanders, elite soldiers, and alien warlords fight for survival on the fringes of space. Subscribe to my newsletter for my latest updates!
The Future of Entertainment
The Future of Entertainment(5 minute read) More Real Than Reality?I have written before about artificial intelligence, virtual reality and where both might take us over the next fifty years, but entertainment may be one of the areas where the change is most dramatic. Today we watch films, read books, play computer games and occasionally put on a virtual reality headset. By 2076, the distinction between watching a story and actually experiencing one may have become very blurred. Imagine deciding one evening that you want to visit Ancient Rome. Instead of turning on a documentary, you put on whatever has replaced today's virtual reality headset and find yourself standing in the Forum while senators walk past, traders shout from market stalls and carts rattle over the stones. You could wander through the streets, enter buildings, speak to people and perhaps even choose whether you wanted to experience Rome as a wealthy senator, a merchant, a soldier or somebody struggling to survive in one of the crowded apartment blocks. It wouldn’t actually be Ancient Rome, of course, but it might feel remarkably close. The same technology could let you stand aboard HMS Victory at Trafalgar, watch the pyramids being built, walk through London during the Great Fire or stand beside Neil Armstrong as he steps onto the Moon. Instead of history being something we read about or watch on a screen, it could become something we temporarily seem to inhabit. For somebody like me, who writes science fiction, the possibilities become even more interesting when we stop recreating the past and start creating places that never existed at all. You might spend an evening exploring an alien city, command a starship, walk through a fantasy kingdom or visit a planet designed entirely from somebody's imagination. Friends living in London, Bangkok, Sydney and New York could all enter the same artificial world and meet there as though they were standing beside one another. At that point, entertainment starts becoming something much more immersive than anything we currently understand. Films could change too. Today, hundreds or thousands of people spend years making a major movie. By 2076, artificial intelligence may be able to create something of comparable quality almost instantly. You might simply say, “Give me a two-hour detective film set in Edinburgh in 1925. Make the detective Scottish, slightly irritable and very clever. Add some humor, a difficult murder and a satisfying ending.” A few seconds later, your film begins. If you like one of the characters, you might ask for a sequel. If you dislike the ending, you could ask for another one. If you prefer one particular actor or perhaps an entirely artificial actor created especially for you, that could be changed as well. The strange thing is that Netflix, Amazon and the other streaming companies might eventually stop competing primarily over which programs they own. Instead, they may compete over which artificial intelligence creates the best programs for you. There is an obvious attraction to that. Why spend twenty minutes scrolling through hundreds of films trying to find something you like when you could simply ask for exactly what you want? But there is also something slightly unsettling about it. One of the pleasures of entertainment is that other people have chosen what happens. An author surprises us with an unseen twist. A director takes a story somewhere we did not expect. A character we like dies. A mystery turns out to have an answer we never considered. If we control everything, perhaps some of that disappears. There is also the question of shared culture. Millions of people watched the same episodes of Game of Thrones. Generations grew up reading Harry Potter. People quote Star Wars to one another because they have all seen the same films. Those stories become shared reference points. But what happens to family movie nights? What happens if everyone always wants to watch something different? You may spend Friday night watching a detective drama created especially for you, while I watch a science fiction film created specifically for me. Both may be excellent, but nobody else has seen either of them. Entertainment could become better suited to each individual while becoming less social at the same time. Books raise an even more interesting question for me personally. What happens when a reader can ask an artificial intelligence to write exactly the novel they want? “Give me an 95,000-word space opera with alien invasion, huge battles, strong characters, no swearing and a satisfying ending.” That sounds uncomfortably familiar. By 2076, the resulting novel might be excellent. It may understand the reader's tastes better than any publishing company ever could. If the reader prefers more battles, it adds battles. If they prefer romance, it adds romance. If they dislike a character, that character disappears from the sequel. So why would anyone still buy books written by human authors? I think there is an answer. People don’t only read stories because the plots happen to suit them. They also read them because another human being created them. A novel is partly a conversation between the person who wrote it and the person reading it. The author chooses what matters, what they think is funny, what is frightening and what is worth remembering. Readers may disagree with some of those choices, but that’s part of the experience. A perfectly personalized book might give us everything we ask for. A human author can sometimes give us something we never even knew we wanted. That distinction may become increasingly important. In fact, human-created entertainment could eventually become more valuable precisely because artificial entertainment becomes so abundant. If anyone can generate ten films before breakfast and fifty novels over a weekend, sheer quantity will stop mattering. Authenticity might matter more. People may start looking for stories because they were written by somebody whose imagination they trust, just as we currently seek out particular authors, directors, musicians and artists. And none of this means artificial entertainment will be bad. Quite the opposite. I suspect some of it will be extraordinary. Children could learn history by walking through it. People unable to travel could explore almost anywhere. Friends separated by thousands of miles could share experiences that feel almost physical. Stories could become interactive in ways we can barely imagine today. The danger may not be that artificial worlds become poor substitutes for reality. The danger may be that they become extraordinarily good substitutes for it. If your artificial beach has perfect weather, no mosquitoes, no delayed flights and exactly the people you want around you, why bother going to the real one? Will we get people who become entertainment junkies and never want to leave their self-created world at all? If your virtual friends are always available, always entertaining and never irritating, what happens to ordinary friendships? If your personalized entertainment never bores you, disappoints you or challenges you, do you eventually become less tolerant of the real world, where all three things happen regularly? That may be the biggest question of all. By 2076, entertainment might be more spectacular, more immersive and more personally satisfying than anything humans have ever experienced. But perhaps the things we value most will still be the ones we cannot completely control. A real journey, a real friendship and a real conversation. And perhaps, with a little luck, a real book written by somebody who deliberately had no intention of giving the reader exactly what they expected. 'til next time, Brian BA Gillies Grab your copy of Unite the Galaxy TodayUnite the Galaxy, the next instalment in the Return to the Galaxy series, is now available to purchase on Amazon. Free on Kindle Unlimited. The story is heading toward the series finale, and the stakes have never been higher for Ewan, Shona, Velal and the rest of the crew.
***If you've been meaning to dive into the Return to the Galaxy Universe, now’s your chance!Whether you're a new reader or just haven’t grabbed your copies yet, now’s the time to catch up on the award-winning series readers are calling “better than Scalzi” and “the best book since Heinlein died.” If you haven’t started the series yet, Book 1 is still available to buy for 99 cents or read for free on Kindle Unlimited:
***Discover More Sci-Fi Adventures Each week, I’ll team up with a group of talented sci-fi authors to bring you an incredible selection of books. Whether you’re looking for thrilling space battles, deep space mysteries, or first-contact encounters, these books are packed with stories to fuel your imagination. Author Spotlight: |
BA Gillies
I write high-speed, strategy-driven Military Sci-Fi & Space Opera, where cunning commanders, elite soldiers, and alien warlords fight for survival on the fringes of space. Subscribe to my newsletter for my latest updates!
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