Lawhorn’s Lawrence: Spaceship stories and Lawrence’s future

James Gunn, pictured in a June 2014 file photo, is a fixture in Lawrence. He is an author of more than 40 books and a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Driving by the tall, pointy spaceship atop Mount Oread naturally gets a fellow thinking about the future.

Don’t look so confused. Surely you know what I’m talking about — that big structure that masquerades as The Campanile. If not, I guess you aren’t familiar with the work of famed science fiction writer and Kansas University professor emeritus James Gunn. In one of his works — The Burning — The Campanile actually was found to have doubled as a spacecraft.

Gunn — an author of more than 40 books and a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame — has made a career out of thinking about the future. He has made most of it in Lawrence, having been a fixture at the university since 1955. The combination got us thinking: What does a man who ponders the future for a living think about the future of Lawrence and Kansas University?

James Gunn, pictured in a June 2014 file photo, is a fixture in Lawrence. He is an author of more than 40 books and a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Gunn was happy to share some thoughts, and even stepped out of the intergalactic mode that often permeates his books. Indeed, Gunn says Lawrence and KU’s future probably won’t rest on making peace with aliens.

Instead, it may very well hinge on making peace with conservatives.

“The idea of people wanting to resist change has grown as the country has become more conservative,” Gunn says.

That, Gunn says, is not great news for KU and Lawrence, because universities are in the change business. KU is particularly invested in change.

“One of the things that makes the university a bastion of liberal thought is that people here are constantly engaged in the process of changing their minds,” Gunn says.

I think he means that as a compliment.

But it also very well may serve as the key point of conflict in a future tale. If Gunn were writing a novel about the future of Lawrence and KU, it likely would have two main groups: 1. The university community that embraces change and, in fact, needs it to survive. 2. Everybody else.

“If I were writing a scenario based on current times, I might write a scenario where the universities and the towns that house them become enclaves in a sea of protests about them,” Gunn says. “It might be exaggerated, certainly. But it is one way the world could develop unless we learn to live together.”

Gunn says the trend has been developing for quite awhile now. He points to the student riots of the 1960s as being a turning point in how many Americans view higher education. Gunn says when he came to KU as a student in the early 1940s, the view of higher education among the general public was pretty positive. But after the turbulent 1960s, he believes attitudes of the public changed significantly.

“I think people are concerned about students coming to KU and having their views changed,” Gunn says. “They are concerned that when students have their views changed, they usually become instruments of change.”

And that’s not good, if your world view is that the world ought to be changing less.

Gunn thinks Kansas is a likely battleground for such a conflict to play out.

“At the present time, Lawrence exists as sort of an enclave in a very conservative state, which is not really interested in change,” Gunn says. “It is more interested in changing what is going on now rather than changing to accommodate what is going to happen in the future. The rest of the state is trying to save what it has rather than place bets on what it is going to have in the future.”

Many conservatives, of course, won’t agree with that assessment. They’re more likely to contend that they are not anti-change but rather seek change of a different nature than liberals.

Gunn acknowledges that there are differences of opinion. Settling them is likely to be one of Lawrence and KU’s bigger goals in the future.

“My advice is that somehow these two responses to change ought to learn how to live together, how to accommodate themselves to each others viewpoints, how to recognize the validity of each others viewpoints,” Gunn says. “But that suggests something that is sort of anathema in today’s political environment — compromise.”

We’ll see. As good science fiction proves, not all tales of the future have a happy ending.

About James Gunn

James Gunn, 92, is still writing science fiction. He currently is halfway finished with the third book in a new outer space trilogy.

The first book, “Transcendental,” was released in 2013. The second book, “Transgalactic,” is due out in March. Gunn has a deadline of June to finish the third book, “Transformation.”

“This may be my last novel,” said Gunn, who said the pace of his writing has slowed to about a thousand words per day, or about a chapter per week.

Gunn, who has written more than 40 books of both fiction and nonfiction, said he’ll continue writing in some form or another. He noted he has several short stories in the publishing pipeline.

“I tell people that old writers never retire,” he said. “They just go out of print. I always sensed writing was my calling. Any day that I didn’t write something, I didn’t feel like I earned my day on Earth.”

Gunn, 92, also shared several other thoughts on how Lawrence and KU’s future may develop. They include:

• For decades, a common view of the future was that Lawrence, Topeka and the Kansas City area someday would morph into a single community united by Interstate 70 and common business interests. Gunn said he thinks that scenario is becoming less likely.

“Various technological changes are coming along that likely will work contrary to the idea of having contiguous metropolitan influences,” Gunn says. “Technology probably will allow you to work in more isolated ways and still be in communication with other places.”

• The idea of distance learning seems very likely to take hold in higher education. That could have significant impacts on Lawrence. If large numbers of students no longer have to travel to Lawrence to take classes, the Lawrence economy would change dramatically.

“There will be winners and losers in that scenario,” Gunn says.

Gunn says the idea of distance learning creates “far more serious” challenges for the Lawrence community than for the university itself. After all, teachers would still be teaching, and administrators would still be administering. The university’s potential reach even may grow. But all the bars, apartments and other industries that exist in Lawrence to serve the students would face new hardships by having fewer students located in Lawrence.

Gunn says Lawrence’s strategy of trying to capitalize from research spin offs and innovations that occur at KU is probably the best defense against losing students to distance learning. If the community can be the home of research initiatives of the university, it can still prosper along with the university, he says.

And one more thought on distance learning: Don’t just think of it in terms of classes being streamed on a website. The world is not yet done innovating in that realm.

“We shouldn’t believe that the Internet is the end product,” Gunn says. “It probably is just a transition product.”

• Those who bet big are most likely to win big. “My bet is that change is unstoppable,” Gunn says. “The people who place their bets on how to shape change are going to be in a better place than those who do not.”

Exactly what will that change look like, though? Well, that’s the thing about predicting the future. It takes a lot of time to tell. We’ll have to rely on somebody’s grandkids to come back, read this article, and make a determination about just how smart we all were in 2015.

My piece of advice for them when they do return: Park the spaceship next to the other one on the hill.

— On Sundays, Lawhorn’s Lawrence focuses on the people, places or past of Lawrence and the surrounding area. If you have a story idea, send it to Chad at clawhorn@ljworld.com.