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LITR 4368 Literature of the Future 
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Sample answers
for Essay 2:
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Mark Stapelfeldt
Humanity Recalled
If I had to choose from the many
topics I have invested interest, it would have to be about the concept of
humanity and its place in the universe. From all of the stories I’ve read and
the video games I’ve played, the one thing that stood out to me was the
alteration of how to define a ‘person.’ In future narratives, there are so many
different humanoid looking individuals who interact with human beings from
aliens, robots, animals, plant life, etc. The limitation of the human form to
some is considered personal vanity.
In the course texts, the characters represented were mostly humans doing
human things in a human setting on a human Earth. Two exceptions to this would
have to be Time Machine and
Stone Lives, both having great
alterations to what it truly means to be human. It is unfortunate that in Time
Machine the working class and upper class morph into their respective species,
and somehow the lower class phased out immediately. A foreign Japanese novel
called Shin Sekai Yori (From the New
World) is one the closest comparisons to Time Machine that I have read. It
features the similar concept of the upper class evolving at an incline towards
godhood where 0.1% of modern people today receive the gift of telekinesis,
slaughtering the weaker class and forming a utopian culture while the working
class evolves into mole-like monsters that walk bipedal and can speak common
language.
Stone Lives has futuristic scientific inventions that rely on drugs to
make some parts of life more convenient for humans. In one of the future visions
in class, Deus Ex: Human Revolution
offers a possible future where human body parts can be replicated and maintained
through the use of addictive and expensive drugs to effectively enslave a
massive portion of the population. The give and take narrative is so fascinating
that it becomes very sublime. The significance of alternative body choice will
ultimately affect how creatures live in their environment. Humans have carved
this present time because of the limitations placed on them, who knows what
would happen if they started out with three or four arms.
Many
video games feature organisms that exist other than humans, meaning writers are
capable of inventing life forms that do not fit the mold of humanoid. My
experience with Dungeons & Dragons
tabletop adventures tells me there are plenty of ways to change the human form,
but even more to go against the cookie-cutter template of arms, legs, head,
torso. Time Machine at the very end of the time cycle did feature giant versions
of diminutive creatures and a giant black tentacle slime monster, but it could
have gone further in displaying the varying nature of organic life. In the
inevitable conclusion towards the end, I would truly wish to know how important
it is for humans to actually stay human for the sake of evolution and the
unavoidable expansion into deep space.
If
people do end up going to space, they’re going to have to prepare for the very
low possibility of obscure life forms (Fermi Paradox), such as the ones
mentioned in They’re Made out of Meat.
Being talked about as if living meat were some abomination (although there is
more to the body than just meat, to aliens it would be the identifying factor)
made me feel uneasy, and that’s a good thing. The first step in admitting a
problem is to look through another someone’s or something’s perspective. The
discussion between the two aliens reminds me of a similar encounter in a video
game called Mass Effect where the
main character can eavesdrop on two different aliens complaining about how
humans get special treatment in certain sectors of space. It made me think about
the human ideal of ‘manifest destiny’ and wanting to colonize everything to be
claimed and fought over like property, it won’t stop at planets getting
conquered if humans were capable of mass space travel.
Alien
life doesn’t have to bring humans out into space, they could be here on Earth
disguised like us doing everyday things, such as in
The Belonging Kind. That story had me
worried because it presents a danger hidden in plain sight. It wasn’t all bad
though, the alien species had a commensal relationship with people, not doing
any major harm in the process of getting by. This can put humans in the light of
the absolute predator, hunting down any and all aliens found in the urban wild.
The movie that seemed to have taken some inspiration from this is
Men in Black, a show about humans
harboring countless aliens on their world as a sort of neutral ground, or as if
the entire Earth were Switzerland in the Galactic Wars. There are plenty of
aliens hiding as humans in that movie because: “A person is smart, but people
are dumb, panicky dangerous animals” –K. History shows that people are afraid of
change, and are mostly hostile towards things different from them. This is not
the case for every person, but it is true for the majority.
After hearing about the potential of
being completely alone in the universe, along with the idea that humans one day
will become the new horses towards artificial intelligence, it made my heart
sink. I wasn’t depressed, I was shocked at the sublime possibilities the human
race has set itself up for. Out of all of the outcomes, letting AI take over as
a self-fulfilling prophecy is ironic from our storytelling at best. If I’ve
learned anything from this class, it’s the true fear of the future. Since I’m a
man of the possibilities, I understand the want and need to progress as a human
species, but I cannot agree with the path it is heading towards.
