LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student Final Essay 2003

Sara Sills
LITR 4632
June 30, 2003
Dr. White

Final Exam 

            Throughout the semester, we have been reading scenarios of the future, different depictions of the future seen through many different authors’ eyes.  The future intrigues everybody because of the mystery it holds.  No matter how hard we try, we do not know what the future holds in store for us, and that causes interest on both the parts of the author and the reader.  We like to think we know what will happen by looking at how the world is today, and how we live our lives.  Our examination of the world now helps us try to determine how the world will be in years to come.  This makes the present very important.  But this present will one day be the past.  That does not mean we will discard these years as if unimportant.  The past helps to mold our future.  It helps us figure what the future may be like, and it helps us to seek that knowledge of what the future will be like.  We learn from experience, and to neglect former knowledge and understanding brings potential for a dystopic future.  Whether the stories reveal a high-tech society or a low-tech, the past is constantly being brought to a factor to make the new world more of a utopian one.

            The Onion and I is one of the more obvious examples of the importance of the past and not forgetting our roots.  The father in the story is dealing with two worlds- one of cyberspace and one of reality.  The problem is, though, that the future he lives in is trying to make cyberspace his own reality.  The computer world could not even create an onion to match an organic one, so the father cannot see how anything else in cyberspace could be considered quality, or real.  He remembers the taste, smell, and feel of onions, and has nostalgia for the past and how it once was before computers took over.  He makes his son realize, too, that computers are imperfect, and the past may not have been so bad, after all.  Some things seem to get lost in the shuffle when living in such a high-tech society, but morality and knowledge of things previously learned are important aspects to incorporate into our future. 

            The same idea-holding on to what was once precious, so as to gain knowledge of the future- is present in Drapes and Folds.  In this story, we read of all of the mistakes made by government, in an attempt to control humans.  The author realizes that because we are human and imperfect, we are going to have to make mistakes. That fact will not change in the future.  How we adapt and mold to these decisions helps to alter our future, though, in a different way.   In the government’s attempt to forget all things once held valuable by us, they fail.  Their press for a perfect society will never happen, especially if they do not learn from mistakes made in the past.  They seem to ignore past transgressions, though, in an effort to create a “new and better” future.  In the end, though, morality and family ties prove to be the only constant, something we have always valued in our culture.  So no matter how hard we try to escape the past, we never will and we never should.  It is a part of our future. 

            Hinterlands shows what extreme measures humans have gone through to escape the earth they once inhabited.  The image of heaven is used to correlate to how we think of heaven today-our escape from planet Earth, our escape from the past.  We usually equate heaven with being above us, and we are trying to reach out to grab it and to learn more about it.  That is what these “scientists” have done aboard this spacecraft.  They are reaching out beyond their grasp for knowledge that cannot be attained right now.  Because in the end, they do not find what they were looking for, and they will probably have to attain other ways to find what they’re searching for, which will bring them back to experience and knowledge already comprehended in the past. 

In Men on the Moon, humans venture out to space again to further expand their knowledge.  They, too, are escaping from Earth, in the eyes of the grandfather, just like they do in Hinterlands.  He does not understand why we do not seek for knowledge here on Earth, since there is plenty to be discovered.  It shows the diversity in humans and how they think, depending on their culture.  We see a man not versed in the ways of the high-tech world.  He thinks things are fine the way they are now.  He is able to shed light on a significant historical point in our world’s history.  He does not see landing on the moon as progress, when we still have knowledge we should be searching for back on Earth.  “Progress” is not always beneficial, when it leaves real world problems behind.  The problems only come back to haunt us, like Newton’s Sleep.

Newton’s Sleep shows just how hard it is to escape the past, literally.  They make a desperate attempt to leave the planet Earth.  But when ghosts of their past come to haunt them, guilt and other human emotions come into play, emotions that have defined our existence as humans for centuries- longing, guilt, betrayal, denial.  There are many adjectives to describe all the emotions that manifest due to the humans in the story trying to forget their past, humans not incorporating what has been learned and experienced in the past, to build the future.  They learn, finally, that they cannot escape where they came from, Mother Earth.

            Chocco is another example of a planned utopia, another example of the low-tech stories that comes back to Mother Earth for the answers to the destiny that awaits this Indian nation.  They even talk of the “machine people” and how those people let technology sweep them into a craze of stupidity and downfall.  They had let machines take over their lives, new inventions and ideas.  They looked for the bigger and the better, but collapsed under the system.  When people dwell on computers and the latest advances in technology, they can sometimes forget where they came from, hence the Memory Keeper.  He is in place to make sure old traditions and attitudes are not forgotten, so that they will live to see a future.  These new people value morality and tradition to keep their home alive.  Incorporating some of the ways of the machine people (irrigation systems, glass) while keeping their spirituality and roots permanent is the key to a lasting society.

            In Heliopause and Cyberfiddle, the two different worlds are present.  They are very distinct from each other, though.  Pryer realizes, though, that some of both worlds is beneficial.  When he attempts to build a fiddle, he realizes just how much has been forgotten in the past.  Here is another story without too much unattainable computer jargon, but still very dependable on the new high-tech age.  Computers have again become more mainstream than stories and families.  But when Pryer ventures into the old world, he sees humanity, even through all the dust and smog.  Somewhere along the way, that has been forgotten as machines started doing all the thinking for them.  Yet in the end, another lesson about the past has been learned, and Pryer learns to live a part in both worlds.

            The machine world is even more prevalent in Johnny Mnemonic, as it is a much more high-tech story than many examined so far.  Computers and the like are now even beginning to take over the people.  Still, though, even in a story this high-tech, the main character learns to revert back to his past, to his memories, to better himself and the world he lives in.  He realizes that computers may better us in some ways, but that does not mean that we should forget everything before them.  The more knowledge, the better, and to discard of previous knowledge and experience, unless it is someone else’s in your head, is a deprivation, even in the new age.

            What all these stories show is how humans in literature of the future, revert back to the past to seek the answers unexplained in that future.  They realize that even with a new world of computers and technology, we are better off integrating tendencies of our past into this new world.  Like the old saying says- “You should not forget where you came from.”  If the scenarios of the future are anything like what we foresee, not only should we not forget our past, but we will not.