LITR 4632 Literature of the Future

Sample Student final exams 2009

 Faron Samford

Rethinking Classifications

I can honestly say that I expected this course to have some very interesting readings, but did not expect it to make me reevaluate entire genres of literature.  Even in a five week sprint, it has managed to further expand the way that I view what I would have previously referred to as science fiction, and made me reanalyze the biblical text  Revelations.  It has made me change my images of apocalyptic and evolutionary literature, as well as the concept of humanity.

Before this course, any reference to an apocalyptic tale brought to mind works like Revelations or The Stand, by Stephen King.  Apocalyptic narratives were ones in which God has ended the Earth as we know it in a battle between good and evil. I would not have thought about narratives such as Parable or Speech to be apocalyptic.  Speech would have been classified as a narrative simply expressing the importance of language and communication, not of a social apocalypse.  Parable exemplifies my prior concept of apocalypse by redefining God.  Defining God as change, creates the influence of a higher being in a world where change has come very quickly, causing a social apocalypse.

Parable, also made me realize that apocalyptic and evolutionary are not exclusive concepts.  The evolutionary overtones of Machine are clear in that it is dealing with the direct evolution of the human race.  Parable, set in a post apocalyptic world where humans are quickly regressing to their animal instincts, gives an example of shaping the evolution of the species going forward.  Stone and Mnemonic, are narratives that I would not have thought of in evolutionary terms without experiencing this course. Perhaps, like in both of these tales, the future evolution of the human race is to combine machine and human into one, shaping evolution to our desires by improving organs as we feel they will benefit us.  Even Poplar contains elements that I would not have recognized as being evolutionary with the ability of the human race to adapt quickly to a change in its environment.  As a perfect example of the process by which Darwin described, continuing generations are more adaptable to environmental changes than previous ones. Hence, the natural emergence of Sunny as the leader because she is young and quick to adapt the new lifestyle.

The future of humanity is what both apocalyptic and evolutionary texts are trying to envision. Humanity is a very difficult concept to define.  The works address different facets of what human life is. Meat takes a humorous look at how to define humanity by essentially classifying it as sentient meat.  In Drapes, as well as Onion, humanity has sentiment. Drapes presents a world stricken by health plagues and the removal of individuality where humanity is the memories of friends spending time together, and the connection to the fabrics one wears as expression. It is also the ability of a mostly robotic grandchild to feel compassion at the loss of her “Gran’s” most adored possessions, and gives hope that certain qualities that make us human will persevere.  Onion represents the sentimentality where living in a virtual world cannot satisfactorily replicate the human experience.  The father uses an onion to show his virtually raised son that the human experience and condition is part of being a creature inhabiting the earth.  The intricacies of experience cannot be duplicated in anything less complex than life itself, which is why there is no comparison between a cyber onion, and the multisensory experience that a real onion delivers. Hope for humanity thrives at the end as they learn to “live between two lives.”

Before this course, my experiences with I’ll call science fiction, for a lack of determining a better definition for the genre, was fairly limited.  I’ve read all the novels of Michael Crichton, which usually take a look into the very near future, and are based on current scientific discoveries and new technologies that we are reaching, or near to reaching.  I have read many of the novels and short stories of Kurt Vonnegut Jr., my personal favorite author, and given some thought to the visions of the future that they presented.  Perhaps what I had always thought of as an interesting read, the category of science fiction, will now be something that I refer to as futuristic literature and leave out the term fiction, for we can’t truly know what future we are evolving towards.