What is science fiction? I propose this definition: It is a feeling one imagines will be the structure and mode of being in a world that is far ahead of your place in time. You feel what it might feel like to be in this world that is not yet yours, this unrealized place you are drawn to, this setting, this other kind of social existence you may never see or experience in your lifetime. There are certain buildings and sculptures that can dislocate us from the present and relocate us to this future time and space—some of these works are deliberately science-fictional, others are not. Oddly enough, Seattle, a city that was invented recently and has several major high-tech (indeed futuristic) corporations, is a place we find a lot of science fiction in its accidental form rather than its deliberate one. (I'm completely ignoring in this piece the Cold War monument called the Space Needle.) There was a kind of space program that thrived in local hiphop between 2008 and 2012, but it was mostly a retro or collector's science fiction. Rappers and DJs were mining records and sounds of a future as it was imagined by the past, the Space Age.

One of the few local artists who has made science fiction that is not reflexive and actually looks forward is Vox Mod. This producer/musician/futurist has released five LPs/EPs under his name, is the drummer in the space-rock band Lazer Kitty, and recently collaborated with RA Scion on Sharper Tool; Bigger Weapon. He is about the production of a science fiction that is on the horizon of our point in time...

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