LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Final Exams 2005

Kevin Kaup

June 30, 2005

Final Exam: Literature of the Future

"The Future is Now."

            We have read this jingoistic, propagandized phrase for decades, connected with everything from space programs to shaving cream, from technical schools to cuisinarts.  It is trite, but chillingly accurate.

            We are writing the future, ourselves, now--and it is revealing itself to be a book with a fairly sad ending.  The future scenarios open to us dwindle in number with each passing year, as we, as a race, trundle inexorably toward self-inflicted extinction. 

We have spent the last century-and-a-half making technological strides and cultural "advancements," and patting ourselves on the back for our ingenuity.  However, we seem to be a species determined to annihilate itself, in spite of--or, most likely, because of--our efforts to improve humanity and secure our rightful place as inheritors of the Universe.

Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" proves an apt example of the inherent flaws within the efforts to improve--I'm sorry, "improve"--Humanity.  Johnny himself is a walking, talking storage device, a hard-drive with a pulse.  Molly Millions has had optical enhancements.  They encounter an assassin that could give SouthWestern Bell a run for its money, as he can both reach out and touch someone AND let his fingers do the stalking--er, walking.  Not content to limit themselves to their own species, the humans of this future have even "augmented" a dolphin.  What good is all of this "improvement," though, when the world has gone to hell?  All of these augmentations and gadgets are just so much diversion, calling our attention away from a collapsing infrastructure, absent morality, and rampant pollution.  As Blaise Pascal agrees, "The only thing that consoles us for our miseries is diversion.  And yet it is the greatest of our miseries.  For it is that above all which prevents us thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to destruction."  The future will not be saved by Band-Aids and trinkets, nor bread and circuses; it will require inward-looking and total restructuring of the standards of civilization.

In a series of ironies worthy of the best Greek tragedy, we have an almost unerring capacity for taking one step forward, while simultaneously stepping backward one (or more) steps.  We create microwaves to speed up meal preparation, only to expose ourselves to radiation; we invent automobiles and aircraft to propel us at ever-greater speeds, in an effort to maximize our productivity during our brief stay on this planet, while simultaneously destroying our fragile biosphere; we hitched the wagon of our collective future to a finite natural resource, basing our planetary economy on the presence of fuel.  In marketing terms, this is called "planned obsolescence"--and we've been planning it for ages.

Jenn House points out, in her class presentation of 28 Days Later, the propensity for man to engineer its own destruction, by injecting monkeys with viruses--just because they can--without contemplating the inevitable, and disastrous, consequences.  A similar fate befalls the Earth in 12 Monkeys, when scientists perfect viral agent after devastating viral agent, never stopping to wonder if they should; to modern Man, the mere ability to do something is all the validation that is necessary to go and do it.

In a typically ironic twist, the protagonist of Silverberg's "House of Bones" suffers such a fate, using advanced technology to project himself through time, but instead being left there, in a primitive glacial era, to fend for himself without the Band-Aids and trinkets of his own time.  He can be held accountable, to a certain extent, for his own plight; however, probably more to blame are his project coordinators and administrators who, after tiring of the technical issues inherent with the Zeller Ring, just did a cost-benefit spreadsheet and decided it wasn't worth the trouble to attempt to retrieve one human life, merrily going on to their next quick-fix to human enlightenment.  The protagonist of "House of Bones," though, comes to term with the apparent finality of his situation, and actually begins to enjoy, respect, and admire the ways of this tribe of proto-humans, bridging a twenty-thousand-year cultural gap through the simple act of kindness and sense of community.

Sara Sills, in her own 2003 final exam for this course, brings the story of "The Onion and I" to the table as an other example of the crossroads between the past ecocentrism and the future techno-world: "'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…[He has a] 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."

Callenbach's "Chocco" takes the agrarian and eco-friendly setting touched upon in "House of Bones" and projects it thousands of years into the future, seeing it not only as the birthplace of humanity, but also as its ultimate destiny.  Here we see an Earth devastated by war and pollution, by radiation and superfluous technology, but that has, against all odds, blossomed forth a rare and beautiful flower from the dunghill that is the legacy of the Machine People.  Although depressing at first, once you realize the admission of the death of our way of life, as well as our actual lives, "Chocco" really represents the most optimistic and balanced scenario of our future, incorporating limited but necessary technology into a predominantly agrarian society.  Of greatest note is the fact that these people thrive, not because of technology, but in spite of technology, choosing to concentrate most of their efforts on the perfection of the inner being and the culture, rather than abandoning inner peace and longevity for mechanical immediacy and lethargy and impotence at the hands of automation.  It is only a shame that an entire civilization had to commit near-suicide in order to realize the necessity of such a wholesale reappraisal and restructure of the priorities of human existence.

If this essay seems like an ecologically-minded, Greenpeace-induced diatribe, it is only because we are quickly approaching a time where a tree-hugging approach to survival is not just a fringe lifestyle choice, but the only option for the survival of the species.

Having read so many compelling and thoughtful visions of the future in our class this semester, I feel as though I have visited each one of these possible scenarios in turn, absorbing their consequences, shuddering at their implications.  Here, at the end of this course, I feel as a time-traveler, freshly returned from the "parts unknown" that is the Future, grabbing the world by its shoulders and trying to shake some sense into the collective consciousness of five-billion-plus consumers--consumers that don't realize that their expiration dates have already been stamped. 

The possibility of extra-terrestrial contact has, traditionally, been seen as a moment of apocalyptic terror, a period of sudden shift and/or extermination of the human race.  To a great many, though--especially in recent years--the thought of alien contact has become a welcoming notion, a warm security blanket in which to wrap the world.  As things get worse here on This Island Earth, and our future options dwindle, we begin to view aliens as saviors rather than conquerors, as parent figures that will make everything all better with their superior technology and cultural refinement.

Gibson's "Hinterlands" is an excellent example of this scenario.  Here we see the human race reduced to its basest and most honest form, that of the compulsive gambler and eternal optimist.  We are exposed to nuggets of alien technology, at uneven and unpredictable intervals, clutching at this intergalactic flotsam in the hopes that it might hold the key to one more door of survival.  These artifacts come at a high price, though: the lives or sanity of countless "meatshots," volunteers giving their lives to some extra-terrestrial deity in the hopes that it might pay off for the survivors.

Our boundless optimism, a hallmark of Humanity, is commendable, but it is regretful that we seem to have more faith in luck, circumstances, aliens and God than in ourselves and our potential.  We would much rather trust to fortune to deliver our race from extinction, rather than our own self-determination.

Another excellent example of the alien-as-savior motif is the early-'Eighties miniseries "V."  In this first contact scenario, we have dozens of huge spaceships, circling the Earth ominously, poised seemingly to attack.  Instead, they reveal themselves to be poised to aid.  They land, are taken to our proverbial leader, and offer to share with us "all the fruits of [their] knowledge," in return for some simple chemical compounds.  Well, true to the axiom of "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is," the Visitors are soon revealed to be interested in only two things: the Earth's water supply, and its free-range livestock--us. 

This nightmare scenario of becoming prey for another civilization begs an important question, namely, "Is this what will become of us?"  I mean, will we become galactic oppressors?  Another less-likely extra-terrestrial contact scenario involves us leaving the cradle and going out to encounter them, rather than waiting for a kindly passing space-faring species to roll down the window and say "hi."  If (and when) we get the gear and the gumption to go out to the stars looking for life, will it be as friends and neighbours, or as conquerors and pillagers?  Judging from Ortiz's "Men on the Moon," there is a distinct possibility that we will proceed to the stars, not out of a sense of wonder and curiosity, but as the extension and ultimate realization of one of the founding and most brutal and egotistic tenets of American society, Manifest Destiny.  Our five-hundred-year track record as conquistadors, pilgrims, colonists, and mercenaries certainly bares out the likelihood of this scenario.

Hundreds of years ago, we lived for the past, honoring our forefathers and trying to live up to their ideals, while only slightly tweaking those standards in order to keep up pace with a gradually changing world.  We were, for the better part, a static community of earthlings, each living within our own realm, generally oblivious to our neighbors, letting each culture live as they saw fit.  Colonialism, exploration, mechanization, and industrial revolution came, and changed the playing field.  With electric lights to let us work day and night, telephones to connect the world, and a homogenization of the global culture, we now live for the present, for the NOW, because we have the ability to do what we want, change what we will, NOW.

But when will we begin thinking for tomorrow?  When will we shift from the trivialities and visceral immediacy of today to the long-term goals and future consciousness of next week, next year, next millennium?

And how many will we have to sacrifice, how many personal futures will be abandoned in order to save the ultimate future of Humanity?