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LITR 4632: Literature of the Future  |
Sample Student Final Exams 2011
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Jeannene Gazaw
At What Cost?
As time goes by and the present becomes the past, we look to the future with hope and optimism. Each week bring technological advances promising to enhance our lives and ease the burden our everyday existence imposes on us, rendering a world made virtually effortless. However, if you subscribe to the idea that “if it looks too good to be true, then it probably is”, then you must ask : at what cost? As Jackie Baker (2009) noted, “As a society, we must learn that with advancement always comes regression. We cannot expect to explore the technological world without experiencing the side effects. It is comical to realize that we are trying to produce a perfect world full of beauty and perfection which will one day be our prison. Our chrome gilded cage will envelop us; we will scream for escape.” Indeed, throughout many of our readings, the allure of the high-tech future is soon lost and replaced with a yearning to return to a semblance of past life.
A good example of this dissatisfaction with the high-tech world of the future is seen in “The Onion and I”. Having given up everything to live in a virtual town, where “nobody would feel dissatisfied living there rather than in what so many people so stubbornly insisted on calling the ‘real’ world”, the father of the family struggles with his unhappiness. His love for growing onions and his longing to commune with nature cause a heightening displeasure with the cyber world. Ultimately, a balance is found between both worlds and contentment is achieved.
Similar to the discontentment seen in the Onion, in “Drapes and Folds” we find Diana and Pearl existing in a high-tech world, but doing all they can to hold on to remnants of the past. Fabric laws have been imposed in their future world; in fact, “The Powers saw sumptuous clothing and fabric as part of the ‘anarchic individualism’ that had poisoned the last half of the twentieth century”. But Pearl tries to hang on to her fabrics and designs because she associates them with “warmth and affection” that she remembers from her past but no longer has in the future cyber world. Clinging to one remaining piece, she finds a warmth and closeness with her granddaughter (a robot) that she has not experienced in this world but has wished for.
As in “Onion” and “Drapes”, “Johnny Mnemonic” exists in a high-tech world of artificial intelligence, but yearns for a simpler life. Used as a storage facility for other’s memories, he looks forward to a day when “…I’ll have a surgeon dig all the silicon out of my amygdalae, and I’ll live my own memories and nobody else’s, the way other people do”. Though he remains in this future world, he chooses to live up near the Killing Floor, where conditions are dark and quiet, and thoughts of warm, happy memories of his own prevail.
Like “Onion”, “Drapes” and “Mnemonic”, “Speech
Sounds” depicts a future world in which there is great unhappiness and a wish
for a return to past conditions.
A terrible illness having been unleashed, many have
died and those remaining have lost their ability to speak.
While the innovations and technological advancements of the future are sure to bring a positive change to some aspects of out lives, it seems that we should not sever all connections with our comfortable past. In the safety of our present, we can cautiously seek a near perfect world while retaining our individuality and enjoying all the pleasures that this life can bring.
