Welcome to the column of tomorrow, The Future! My name is Ken Spencer and I am a RPG writer, archaeologist, geographer, educator, and all around great guy. You might recognize by name from the long running A Bit of History column here on rpg.net that just wrapped up. You also may know me from my work for Steve Jackson Games (several Pyramid Magazine articles such as "Looting Your Lifepod's Locker" and the "Roma Universalis" series of pulp alt-history sci-fi), Alephtar Games' Vini, Vidi, Vici, Frog God Games' Northlands Saga, and of course Rocket Age from Cubicle 7 Entertainment (where I am the writer and line developer).

I have been a fan of science fiction for most of my life, really nearly all of it. My father was a big sci-fi fan and I was read Heinlein's Starship Troopers as a bedtime story. I grew up on sci-fi literature, comics, movies, and TV shows, and naturally gravitated in that direction after I started playing RPGs in the mid-eighties. My first game was Dungeons and Dragons, but I moved on from there to Star Frontiers, Gamma World, and Traveller. There have been times where other genres captured by interest, there were more than a few urban fantasy games played in the 90s, and when I started writing RPGs I started with historical games (which cross over with sci-fi from time to time). Despite venturing off into other genres I keep coming back to sci-fi, and coming back hard every time. Of all the genres of gaming this is the one that allows the most leeway, and in my view, gives the biggest rewards.

What is "The Future"? This column will cover science fiction and gaming, mostly tabletop role-playing, but we will branch out into board games, card games, and even electronic games of various sorts. Other media, such as literature, movies, and television, will also be explored from time to time. The focus will be on how these various media can be used at the tabletop, even if your tabletop is virtual in form.

But what is science fiction anyway? Merriam-Webster defines science fiction as: "fiction dealing with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential operating component". In many ways that is a bit too narrow for my tastes, sci-fi can run a broad range from space opera to hard science, and everywhere in between. Most people would define sci-fi as fiction that takes place in the future, or in space, but even that is a bit restrictive. You can have sci-fi that takes place in the past, or even the present. A single planet can be a setting, or sci-fi can take place across multiple universes yet never leave the gravity well. Setting a definition and carving it in stone would be a crime against sci-fi, for one of the key elements of the genre is change and tracing the effects of that change. We needn't limit ourselves.

However, it is helpful to have some loose boundaries, otherwise we will wander off and not really have a grasp about what we are talking about. A simple way to go about this is to add technology to the definition. Another is to look at some more nebulous aspects of the genre, and two that stands out to me are hope and explanations. Even the grimmest sci-fi still has some degree of hope, maybe not that everything will work out, but that the future will be better in some way. Maybe this better future is only for the characters in the story, maybe it is for only part of society. However it comes about, there is the chance to make things better.

For me a key component of sci-fi is that an explanation, even a poor one, is given for why setting elements happen. This explanation is grounded in at least sciency terms, if not actual science. Take your standard B-movie monster, for example a gigantic shark that is terrorizing a community. A sci-fi take on this would be that the shark is a mutant strain of an existing species, the result of genetic engineering gone awry, a previously unknown species, or possibly even a species from the prehistoric past that has somehow made it into the modern world. In horror or fantasy there need be no explanation at all as to how that monster shark came to be, or if there is it can be up to blatantly supernatural means, such as the will of the gods or a magic spell. In sci-fi the reason for the shark needs to be clear, grounded in scientific terms (even if it is more pop science than actual), and given to the audience. There might be a lot of hand waiving in the explanation, but without the why and how, the whole plot will fall apart. In short, sci-fi settings must exist in a mechanical universe where things happen for understandable reasons, and not the will of supernatural entities.

This still leaves a lot of breadth to the definition of science fiction, and there are dozens if not hundreds of genres and sub-genres that push the boundaries. Like most things involving artistic and literary analysis, it often comes down to a case of, "I know it when I see it." True, we can talk about genre conventions, tropes, themes, moods, tones, and such, but the analysis of sci-fi is not a science, it is an art. It would be so much easier if we could just count the number of science terms and divide by the square root of the ratio of blaster bolts to laser beams.

So, if a certain amount of what is sci-fi is determined by the mind of the consumer, what will "The Future" be about? Simply put, whatever I decide to put in it. I consider Star Wars to be sci-fi, but pushing the boundaries into the realm of fantasy. Lovecraft's work also fits, if you understand that the 'magic' in it involves accessing dimensions with different laws of physics, and that the 'gods' are interdimensional beings and not supernatural entities (though at the level of ability and dimensional strangeness the edges blur here a bit). The use of psychic powers fits nicely with sci-fi, though in extremes it smells like magic (but is often given some sort of explanation that is more mechanistic than supernatural). Occasionally the major superhero intellectual properties stray into sci-fi stories, or at least play with the tropes from time to time. Then there are the more clearly sci-fi settings such as Traveller, Larry Niven's Known Space series, Blue Planet, and the wonderful Eclipse Phase. We will be looking at them all, the beating heart of sci-fi as well as the far outliers and the settings that drift off into unknown lands.

A setting doesn’t have to be sci-fi to have sci-fi components, indeed some fantasy settings push their own boundaries and either blend with sci-fi or trend into dangerous waters. Iron Kingdoms is definitely fantasy, but the magical industrial revolution hints at some sci-fi aspects. The Dresden Files has established rules of magic that are growing increasingly complex as the setting expands, and might be considered as a fine means of bringing the explanation component of sci-fi into urban fantasy. One of the trends I have noticed in literature, gaming, and other media over the past two decades has been a loosening of genre divisions, and a lot more mixing of genre components. This is a trend I would like to see, for there is nothing worse to me than having someone tell me that what I like is not fun because it is in the wrong genre. Let's leave the orthodoxy to other venues and other topics, it has no place in entertainment or art, both areas where experimentation and innovation should be the rule of the day.

Next month "The Future" will bring you the designers notes for Blood Red Mars, the latest release in the Rocket Age line. What else lies in the future? Only time will tell.