LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student Final Exams 2011

Meagan Hamlin

Loneliness Likely Awaits Us In The Future

            Stories based on visions of the future always have the potential to draw in readers simply because the future is a mystery.  Humans tend to fear what they don’t understand, which results in many attempts to predict our impending future.  I found it intriguing, almost addicting, to study the different outcomes our planet could face thanks to creative imaginations and talented authors.  The literature we studied depended heavily on exploiting the way our world functions today and rightfully so.  The simple truth is that we hold the key to the future, and as a planet we are less than likely to change our ways in order to aid our future generations.  While each vision of the future has a different aspect; high tech, low tech, utopia, or alien contact, they all shared one thing; I do not care to live long enough to see them played out.  Each vision of the future mostly results in the deterioration of the human relationship to each other, the earth, or actual reality; however, this analysis obviously excludes ecotopian literature, which seems to be the only future in which we can strengthen all bonds.

As we become increasingly dependent on the world of technology, we tend to step back from a way of life that emphasizes the importance of face to face human relationships.  While technology is slowly replacing the need for physical contact, we become less acquainted with basic human attributes such as compassion and the urge to help those in need.  In an atmosphere such as the one created by William Gibson in Johnny Mnemonic and Burning Chrome the term “loner” is taken to a new level.  Each character shows no sign of family and rarely any indication of friends.  Johnny befriends Molly and Jack seems to somewhat care for Rikki, but the real need for loving relationships seems to get lost in virtual reality.  The eventual merging of human and technology only worsens this predicament.  This is showcased in Drapes and Folds in which Pearl lives with her robot granddaughter, Xera.  Xera is a cross between human and robot, but Pearl’s description of her is anything but human, “NewOnes were a ghastly mix of human and roboid…in her rigid volymer face, real light blue eyes quivered like jellies.”  Her relationship to Pearl is nothing compared to Pearl’s relationship to her own grandmother.  This idea can simply not be recreated with technology.  We can attempt to create actual world experiences through virtual reality, but as in the unnatural effect of Xera’s eyes, virtual reality could never live up to real world experience and feeling.  Laura Moran eloquently stated in her 2007 final, “Consequently, while technology strives to improve the future, the malfunctions that accompany it may remind one that simple pleasures are sometimes the best.”

This notion is revisited in The Onion and I.  Living in virtual reality offers endless opportunities and possibilities, but they are merely pretend.  The lives of the family reminded me of a child playing house.  Perhaps they could see these things, but they were not actually experiencing them.  A computer is not a living thing, although we sometimes feel that we could not live without them.  Our connections should be contained to real actual living beings, not an easy escape into “paradise.”  The high tech world was not enough to appease the boy’s father’s connection to the earth and onion.  Human connections and bonds cannot be forgotten, and they cannot be forged, for they are precisely what make us human.  In the father’s heart low tech beat out high tech, because no matter how real and perfect his life seemed in the virtual world, it wasn’t ever as real as the smell and taste of an imperfect onion.

According to these visions of the future, our world also has the ability to fall deep into the low tech spectrum.  Octavia Butler is a writer who highly favors low tech scenarios.  Much like Parable, Butler created a world in which people were not safe from each other in Speech Sounds.  By stripping some people of basic skills Butler created a great divide between the abilities of people and the heightened sense of jealously caused chaos.  Those who are unfortunate enough to have lost their ability to speak and read or write became increasingly aggressive and violent.  This story could not be further from virtual reality, yet the loss of connection is still present.  Rye has been alone for three years much like Johnny and Jack, and similar to Pearl, remnants of her past life haunt her. 

No matter how much our society advances technologically or regresses on the evolutionary scale, the future looks bleak according to literature of the future.  High tech vs. low tech doesn’t matter much when humanity loses either way.  The futures modeled by both of these outcomes are grim and dismal.  It appears that they only hope we have is that of an ecotopia.