Sample answers for Essay 1:
compare 2 or more “future scenarios”

Timothy Doherty

9 May 2019

Alien Contact and Technology

This course expanded my understanding of the various scenarios at work in speculative fiction. Two of the most popular scenarios are alien contact and high-tech. Scenarios of alien contact provide opportunities to explore the concept of interaction between “self and other” (White). High-Tech and cyberpunk scenarios tend to center on “pop-Romanticism” characterization and plotting with an emphasis on technology such as computers and virtual reality (White). Alien contact scenarios might seem like they heavily depend on high-tech scenarios in practice, but this is not always the case.

Sometimes technological jargon has an exclusionary effect which prevents a reader from enjoying or even completing the author’s contact narrative. “Hinterlands” by William Gibson is a perfect example of this potential problem. A reader can easily lose interest after four or five incomprehensible devices break the flow of the prose. Gibson begins challenging less tech-savvy readers in the first paragraph with Toby Halpert’s description of the “pain switch” built into his “bonephone implant” which by itself is moderately self-explanatory. However the deeper explanation that follows in the same sentence requires the reader to have a passing understanding that “pain centers” are areas in the brain that process pain signals from the body and that barbiturates are a class of sedative drugs. Gibson continues to throw terms like “EEG,” “lightsail,” and “singularity” in the reader’s path. I love this kind of stuff and over the years I have learned how to roll over the speed bumps without slowing down, trusting that I will figure it out by the time an incomprehensible detail matters, if it ever matters; but, I can see how wave after wave of challenging terminology could prevent a reader from appreciating the sublime mystery explored, but not solved, later in the story.

Other times, a writer takes technology almost completely out of the equation so that their contact scenario stands on its own. “They’re Made Out of Meat” by Terry Bisson does exactly that. In fact, Bisson’s story does away with every bit of unnecessary narrative drag, leaving only a brief exchange of dialog between two aliens who have discovered humankind and decide that we are not worth contacting. In the end, Bisson’s aliens ask themselves a simple question, “Do we really want to make contact with meat?” There is a disturbingly human judgmental attitude to a question like that; the tone of the story is humorous, but people have a long, violent history of devaluing intelligence when it is wrapped in the wrong skin. Luckily, these aliens fly away and leave us in peace. Avoiding the pitfalls of unnecessary tech-speak allows Bisson to imply a simple question for the reader: Would we have walked away or massacred the meaty savages in preemptive self-defense?

And, occasionally, a story explores the notion that technology can turn humanity into the alien that comes into contact with its primitive self. “The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle” by Richard Goldstein is a high-tech scenario in which Pryer, a cybernetic human, encounters a Bummer, a purely biological human who happens to have the last wood on Earth. This is an extremely difficult story to read due to the evolved way that Pryer thinks and communicates in a strange, computer-like syntax that the narrator also uses. For instance, “a proximate seek finds Pryer rising from his conform” (170) describes Pryer leaving his stationary position in Warren Beatty to roll outside in some sort of suit or vehicle which is never fully described, because, to Pryer, all the attachments and devices are normal. By keeping the reader confused with exotic language, Goldstein makes Pryer seems as alien as if he had come from some distant star to land on Earth. This alienness elevates the significance of Pryer gradually reconnecting to his human roots through the process of constructing a violin.

Alien contact and high-tech scenarios often go hand in hand, but they are not married to each other. Writers are constantly experimenting with the interaction of technology and contact to create novel, exciting plots. The three stories discussed here present interesting approaches to both contact and technology.