LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Final Exams 2005

Bryan Lestarjette

June 30, 2005

It is said the road to hell is paved with good intentions. This is a common theme in literature of the future, being quite prominent in the more dystopian and cautionary SF tales. Bad situations and undesirable futures in these stories are generally the result of a good and respectable plan gone awry. Sometimes the mistake is overreacting to a problem, or perhaps enforcing a utopian strategy that stifles the individuals. In all cases, the road from the present to the future is made up of decisions made for a reason that seems perfectly fine to the decision-makers.

In "Drapes and Folds" by Audrey Ferber, new fabrics are invented that prevent sickness and cancer. The government enforces the use of these materials in the form of the Bracie, which also forces all bodies into the same shape so that no figure is better or worse or different from any other. Meanwhile, all other clothes and fabrics are banned and confiscated. The goals are hardly evil, and in fact promote good health, but the result is oppression and prohibition of personal expression and style.

"The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle" and "The Onion and I" show futures in which virtual reality is substituted for physical reality. These virtual worlds are seemingly perfect and flawless. However, while the Ideal certainly has an important place, the characters in these stories find themselves longing for a trace of the real world, which can never be perfectly simulated. In Parable of the Sower, virtual reality is portrayed almost as a kind of drug, which has its beauties but should not replace the physical world. As Sandy Murphy argues in her 2003 final exam, both the Ideal and the Physical have their place in the human experience.

In Jurassic Park, John Hammond seeks to make something real, not an illusion like a flea circus, and he wants to create a wonderful place where everyone, rich or poor, old or young, can witness what he has prepared for them. Unfortunately, things get out of hand because of insufficient preparation, poor planning, misplaced trust, and most importantly, that they fail to take Chaos Theory and the adaptability of the dinosaurs into consideration. The result is catastrophe through three movies (so far).

In Gibson's "Hinterlands" and the film Minority Report, the government utilizes research methods to the great good of society, but does not reveal the true costs to the public. In "Hinterlands", human beings are essentially sacrificed along the Highway in hopes that they might possibly return (dead) with something that will advance scientific knowledge in an extreme measure. Of course they rarely do, but the few successes are fantastic. In Minority Report, pre-cogs are able to anticipate violent crimes so they can be prevented. What the public does not know is the suffering and manipulation endured by the pre-cogs, as well as the fact that they sometimes disagree and thus potentially innocent people are executed. Both of these stories explore cost-benefit ratios, and question whether the public would go along with these government programs if it knew the whole truth. They seem to disagree with the Star Trek mantra, "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few."

While the public in "Hinterlands" and Minority Report are told half-truths, some stories involve outright deception. In the Genesis/Revelation narrative, Satan and the Antichrist deceive and manipulate Eve and mankind into disobedience to God and eventually worship of the Antichrist. In Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower, the Olivar Corporation is tricking people into trading their freedom and independence for security.

Some future-focused literature deals with well-intentioned dystopias, and some tell stories of good people being deceived into making wrong decisions, but many are simply tales of self-interest or survival with disregard to others. This is more of a Darwinian survival-of-the-fittest mentality.

"They're Made Out of Meat," "The Poplar Street Study," and H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds are about aliens with cold indifference towards mankind. In Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat," the aliens refuse to communicate with men or even officially recognize their existence because they considerate it beneath them to deal with meat, even intelligent meat. Such discrimination is awful and amusing at the same time, but hardly unrealistic. In fact the alien intellects seem strangely human because of it. In "The Poplar Street Study," humans are simply lab-rats and guinea pigs for the aliens. In The War of the Worlds, the Martians see Earthlings as animals (both pest and food-source). Their "war" is seen by them as really more of an extermination.

"Mozart in Mirrorshades" tells a somewhat similar story, in which Realtimers invade a branch of the past to take its oil and treasures, and distribute cool gadgets and anachronistic pleasures as European explorers might give beads to the natives. They act completely inconsiderately of the alternate future of the people they have invaded, who have temporarily lost their independence, have had their culture contaminated, and will someday be short in energy resources.

In "Stone Lives," it is dog-eat-dog for the people of the Bungle. The situation is not all that different for the major corporations that now rule the world and vie for dominance and survival. Parable of the Sower and "Speech Sounds" paint pictures of desperate mobs, each person fighting to survive in the face of societal collapse.

Literature of the Future, like all literature, deals at some level with human nature. Unlike love stories, which deal with emotion, or other genres with their own focuses, literature of the future focuses on decisions. Sometimes the decisions in SF stories lead to utopia and sometimes to dystopia (or somewhere in between), but they are always significant. They are usually justified by arguments concerning the greater good, are sometimes made blindly under manipulation or deception, and are sometimes based on pure self-interest.

The purpose of science fiction and its related genres is to examine the potential consequences of the decisions we make today. SF writers throw out their ideas about where we might be headed, and we as readers determine how right-on they are and how we should thus alter the course (or at least attempt to do so). Literature of the future provides a framework in which to analyze present situations and options, a framework built by a great many people in conversation, counterpoint, and consensus with each other. The future belongs to us all, and we all should have a say in it.

12:00-2:00