On Neil Gaiman, technology and asking ‘What if...?'

I recently attended the Wireless Infrastructure Association’s Connect X event in Charlotte, North Carolina. The programming hit on just about every major trend currently shaping telecom, including 5G, CBRS, MulteFire, multi-access edge computing, small cells, towers, fiber and more. The excitement was real, like we were collectively standing on a precipice of greatness, poised to answer the question, “What if…?” Following a day of keynotes, breakouts and interviews, my colleagues Kelly Hill, Geoff Moskowitz and I attended a party hosted by SiteTracker. As we arrived, we were instructed to don name tags and denote something about which we feel passionately.

I lack creativity so took an easy out and wrote down, “Digital media.” Geoff, who has a well-established love of spirits called out his preference, “Tequila.” Kelly, on the other hand, put down something that was honest, fun and not surprising: “High fantasy.”

That sparked an easy 10 minute conversation about what constitutes high fantasy—large scale world building, obviously, but is a creation myth or a language a requisite?—who are the masters of the genre—J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Robert Jordan and few other heavy-hitters came up; George R.R. Martin did not.

But why do I describe Kelly’s choice as unsurprising?

I could make a poor attempt at articulating this, but instead I’ll turn it over to one of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman, whose own works most certainly have a place in the pantheon of great sci-fi and fantasy and are rivaled only by his encyclopedic knowledge of the genres. Here Gaiman, giving a speech in Orlando to a group of literary academics, recalls a 2007 trip to China for a state sponsored sci-fi convention. Speaking with a party representative, Gaiman asked, “'Up until now I have read in Locus that your lot disapprove of science fiction and you disapprove of science fiction conventions and these things have not been considerably encouraged. What’s changed? Why did you permit this thing? Why are we here?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you know for years we’ve been making wonderful things. We make your iPods. We make phones. We make them better than anybody else, but we don’t come up with any of these ideas. You bring us things and then we make them. So we went on a tour of America talking to people at Microsoft, at Google, at Apple, and we asked them a lot of questions about themselves just the people working there. And we discovered that they all read science fiction when they were teenagers. So we think maybe it’s a good thing.”

And it is a good thing. It’s a thing that I am quite certain plays at least a small part in fostering the innovative thinking and creative problem solving you can find in almost any corner of our community, from Tier 1 operators to laser-focused startups. I’m quite certain about this because the conversation Kelly’s name tag choice sparked isn’t the first time this has happened.

Earlier this year I was in Manhattan for Oracle’s Industry Connect event to learn about how the vertical applications of powerful cloud computing and data analytics tools, coupled with robust connectivity, are spurring digital transformation in crucial enterprises and industries. During breakfast I did as I always do and simply picked a table, sat down, and tried to strike up a conversation. I followed course, the table filled in and this eventually happened, as recounted by me in a contemporaneous tweet: “I love working in telecom. I’m at #OracleIC18, at breakfast, and this guy busts out a super obscure Lord of the Rings joke. Whole table got it and laughed. It’s not like this in most industries.” Now for the setup and punchline. “Guy was packing a banana and muffin into his bag. Said, it’s no lembas, but it’ll have to do for elevensies.”

A few years ago I went on a longish work/personal trip that took me to Nice for TM Forum Live and then on to London for Small Cells World Congress at the ExCel Center. At the time I was reading through the collected volumes of Gaiman’s expansive, beautiful Sandman series, itself a story about stories that draws heavily from a range of mythologies and literary titans. I thought I had brought enough reading material to get me through the trip, but on my first night in London I reached the end of what was on hand. I wasn’t satisfied so I immediately resolved to acquire the next few volumes.

To fill in this bit of the narrative, I need to go back to Gaiman, this time writing the preface to Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores. Gaiman recalls the bookstores that shaped him as a child including Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, an homage to a Ray Bradbury story, in St. Anne’s Court. “One day I went to London and the windows in St. Anne’s Court were empty, and the shop was gone, its evolutionary niche supplanted by Forbidden Planet, which has survived for over twenty years…”

I didn’t want to waste my time going to bookstores closer to my apartment in the Canary Wharf area, so I got online to find a shop I knew would have in stock the volumes I needed. After a few quick clicks, I found the website for Forbidden Planet and made my way to the Tube. I was not disappointed with the result.

Returning to China, returning to a year after Gaiman’s conversation at the sci-fi convention, we meet Liu Cixin. In 2008 his The Three-Body Problem, the first in a trilogy collectively called A Remembrance of Earth’s Past, was published in China; in 2014 Ken Liu brilliantly translated The Three-Body Problem into English, prompting Liu Cixin to earn a nomination for a Nebula Award and, in 2015, winning him the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel. In the books a scientist who came of age in the Cultural Revolution decides to attempt first contact using a powerful radio array. It works and the aliens opt to leave their dying planet and relocate to Earth. The 400-year trip from the Alpha Centauri system (that pesky speed of light) provides plenty of time for mankind to very thoroughly panic, plan and prepare to meet their destiny. It’s the first time since Sandman that I’ve finished reading something and immediately begun re-reading it.

In the little more than a decade since Gaiman spoke with the Chinese official at the convention, China has invested massively in virtually all areas of technological development, becoming an absolute powerhouse on the world stage as the country pursues its Made in China 2025 and Belt and Road initiatives. Deep down inside, I genuinely hope that a small part of the what set this into motion is the mind-bending work of Liu Cixin, who turns the Drake Equation and Fermi Paradox into one of the most compelling tales of which I’m aware.

And, finally, Gaiman again. “There are three phrases that make possible the world of writing about the world of not-yet…and they are simple phrases. “What if…? If only…If this goes on…” To all my colleagues, please keep asking yourselves those questions.