LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Final Exam Essays 2013 assignment Sample answers for Essay 1: “future scenarios”

Sera Perkins

The Future is Bleak

Of the three scenarios of the future discussed in class, all lead to a form of dystopia. Using four stories as evidence there is nothing that proves of a utopian society in the future. “The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle,” “Drapes and Folds,” Speech Sounds,” and “Hinterlands” portray scenarios of all three types of futuristic scenarios—high-tech, low-tech, and alien contact—and in all three there is something terribly wrong with society, with Earth’s environment, and with the government. There is hope given at the end of “Speech Sounds” that things could one day get better, but the fact remains that society is severely impaired by the dysfunction that plagues it.

The first scenario discussed was high-tech societies, where the organic is overruled by technology and human beings are saturated and even integrated in computers and virtual realities.  In “The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle,” the narrator suddenly has this great urge to create a violin in a virtual reality where there is no purpose to music and violins are “ancient” technology. As Pryer disconnects from the virtual reality to find the wood he needs, he exits his safe capsule to enter the barren wasteland Earth has become. “Before him lay a dry valley, dust swirling across it like rotten lace curtains. A few clumps of coarse green-gray grass encrusted the ground here and there…The sky was bilious yellow” (Cyberfiddle, 171). The land is dried up and empty with the only plant life clinging on by a crumbling thread. The sky is yellow, and the author describes it as bilious: nauseous, sickly, or ailing. Earth is sick and dying. Although most of human kind live in a virtual reality that does not touch this broken earth, our planet is still very much in a dystopian future – almost apocalyptic in nature. What happens when the Earth finally gives up completely? Would the safe little world of this society’s virtual reality survive?

Beyond the obvious dying Earth situation in the high-tech society, in “Drapes and Folds” the dystopia comes from the invasion of the government. Pearl’s best friend Diana use to believe that the world was a mess, that the government had no right to destroy all individuality, until the Powers came in and wiped her memory clean and filled her head with acceptance that wasn’t genuine. When Pearl asks why she let them do it Diana responds with “They didn’t ask for permission,” (Drapes, 130). The Powers came in while she was sleeping and stole who Diana was and replaced her with another Yes Man, a drone, and robot to promote the Fabric Laws and to promote the government’s involvement with society. It was like Big Brother at the end of 1984: the main character becomes exactly what the government wanted him to be, nothing more. The loss of individuality sounds devastating, although it could be said that the Powers were doing what they could to create order in a world of cancer epidemic and gender equality in demand. The result was creating a uniform for all humans to follow, no longer is there a difference between man and woman. The fact that they imprint ideas in Diana’s head makes the scenario frighteningly dystopian. Even if one could argue the government was catering to a need, it goes beyond inalienable rights and human beings desire for freedom and individuality.

More low-tech than “Drapes and Folds,” “Speech Sounds” is a dystopian future because an epidemic breaks out that steals speech! Some people lose the ability to read, write, and/or speak. The narrator explains that whatever happened, it was as if the most important aspect of an individual was taken from them. A police officer cannot speak and give direction but he can read while a teacher can no longer read and write but she still has her ability to speak. Unfortunately, she cannot share this ability because without speech human beings seem to have reverted to basic and primal creatures, quick to anger and violence. The narrator, Rye, says “she had been a teacher. A good one. She had been a protector, too, though only of herself. She had kept herself alive when she had no reason to live” (Speech Sounds, 107). After the death of her husband and children Rye lives on, looking for a community to settle down again. She is a survivor; instead of living, she survives. What kind of world is it if all the human race does is survive? It appears that there is no natural disaster disturbing Earth’s ecosystem, and without speech there is a lack of government but that isn’t the cause of the dystopia either. Rye prides herself on her ability to survive—survive so well she turns away from two, young, orphaned children. A teacher, a protector, and she abandons two, helpless children to themselves because she assumes they are old enough to beg and survive without her. The barest hint of hope at the end is that the two children can speak just like Rye and she can share this ability in a world that would have hated her if it knew she had it, and Rye assumes that the epidemic did not touch them. The hope is small, but it is hope nonetheless in the disintegrating dystopia.

Even in the third scenario, alien contact, the dystopia is evident. The human race suffers from an obsession with finding life in the universe and failing to understand it. Toby works as a surrogate, a mediator between the astronauts who travel the Highway – the emptiness of space – and the psychiatrists who are supposed to help them through their suffering of whatever they find out there. No one knows what is really on the Highway because every man or woman that comes back from an “encounter” is disturb so terribly that they either end their life before Toby can find them, or after – the longest an astronaut lived after being found was two weeks. Toby explains whatever the astronauts find as Fear, with a capital F. “Olga knew it first, Saint Olga. She tried to hide us from it, clawing at her radio gear, bloodying her hands to destroy her ship’s broadcast capacity, praying Earth would lose her, let her die.” But the little shell in Olga’s tightly clenched hand cured cancer and humans are greedy, little creatures. In this future they overlooked the many that died for whatever is out on the Highway, wherever it was that Olga got her little shell. They keep sending people out there, and even though no one returns undisturbed the people want to travel on the Highway and see what Olga saw. There is no evidence in the story that there is something wrong with the earth, and the fact that anyone who comes into contact with whatever is on the Highway and doesn’t survive is not hidden from the public by the government spitting lies and propaganda. It is an endless cycle of curiosity and horrible death, a dysfunctional thought process that the whole world seems to be set on continuing and that makes it a dystopia with no hope of it ever becoming a utopia at any point.

With the stories discussed in class covering the three scenarios of the future – high-tech, low-tech, and alien contact – it seems to be inevitable that the future will become nothing but a dystopia. Meagan Hamlin states the same disquiet as I in the face of these stories. She writes in her 2011 final, “Loneliness likely awaits us in the Future,” “While each vision of the future has a different aspect; high tech, low tech, utopia, or alien contact, they all shared one thing; I do not care to live long enough to see them played out.” I think she did not mean to add “utopia” to the list, considering it wouldn’t sound so frightening in a “utopia,” but in regards to her feelings I can relate. People strive for their own death to seek the unknown, or they lose their speech and fall into a violent race, or the government grows into such high influence that they can invade and rewrite our very thoughts and history, or that the Earth burns up and we have no choice but to hide into a virtual reality away from actual facts and assume everything is normal and fine. There is little hope that the future holds any indication that a utopia could happen; nonetheless it is hope still that things could become less chaotic, if not utopian.