LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Sample Student Final Exams 2011 sample essay 1

Valerie Mead

Aliens, Technology, and Utopias: Common Scenarios of the Future

            Whenever ideas of what the future may bring are presented in any type of media, there are four dominant types of futures that are envisioned: those having either high technology (virtual reality) or low technology (actual reality); those based in utopias, dystopias, or ecotopias; and those that revolve around the idea of alien invasions of Earth or of humans taking part in off planet discovery.  If there is a story being told about the future, in virtually any medium, there is certain chance that one of these scenarios or visions will be involved.  Though I had a vague sense of what each of these individual scenarios entailed by viewing popular films and television shows, and reading certain books, I learned a great deal more about them from the class’s required readings and lectures on the topic, which was essential to my fully understanding the complete realm of literature of the future.  Of the four, the high technology, low technology, and utopia/dystopia/ecotopia narratives tend to have the most in common and are interrelated in many ways and on many levels, whereas the narrations involving alien invasion/off-planet discovery are usually separate from the other three and tend to stand more on their own.

            High technology narratives are those that deal with hard, scientific facts and the realm of virtual reality.  This is seen in “Mozart in Mirrorshades,” “The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle,” and “The Onion and I.”  There is also a distinct loss of family ties in high tech stories, as is seen in “Burning Chrome” and “The Onion.”  Though high tech stories have the appeal of incorporating hard science (which can also be a downside, as the high technology language and ideas can be difficult to understand and weigh down the action of the story), the writing style used is widely unknown out of the science fiction genre.  However, cyberpunk, a new form of the high technology faction, as is seen in “Cyberfiddle” and “Johnny Mnemonic,” is becoming rapidly more popular.  I myself did not know much about this type of future vision scenario outside of what I had seen in popular movies such as The Fifth Element, but was glad to learn that there was more depth to this type of work than I initially thought.  Low technology narratives, such as “Drapes and Folds” and “Speech Sounds” are considered to be based on actual reality and to be the antithesis to high tech stories.  They are appealing because they focus on reestablishing the bonds of the human family, as Rye does in “Speech Sounds.”  Another appealing aspect of low tech stories is that they give the reader the satisfaction associated with conquering technology and/or bureaucracy, which is the case when Pearl defies the government in “Drapes and Folds.”  A distinct drawback to reading low tech narratives is that they lack the science that other genres in science fiction have.  Low technology stories are more appealing because of the strong emphasis they place on family and because they are more real and relatable to readers than stories based on high technology, which can seem overwhelming and hard to follow at times.

One of the most common types of future vision scenarios is the utopia/dystopia/ecotopia.  Veronica Nadalin said in her 2009 final exam that “The stories we read either focus on the argument of perception of utopia/dystopia or are set in such environments where debate over whether or not the world is "utopian/dystopian" are futile.”  I happen to agree with her; many future literature stories are often based in a utopian world or a world that was once a utopia but that eventually turned into a dystopia, which is seen in “The Onion and I,” “Drapes and Folds,” “Speech Sounds,” and The Giver.  Coming from the Greek, “utopia” can either mean “no place” or “good place,” and is often characterized by a small section of the population that attempts to distance itself from normal human society by making what they feel is the perfect world to live in.  Dystopias, on the other hand, are often the exact opposite of a utopian world; frequently, dystopias are often seen hiding under a thin guise of a utopia.  Ecotopias are a newer type of future vision, but they are rapidly gaining popularity among future literature writers.  Ecotopias are based on the idea that a society’s health is directly connected with its relationship with the environment.  Because utopian/dystopian works are so popular (including many classics, such as Orwell’s 1984, Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Zamyatin’s We), most people, myself included, had some sense of what these terms entailed, especially in a literary context.  However, I learned much more about them in class, especially about the lesser known ecotopias.  Utopias and ecotopias appeal to the majority of people in that they are the ideal world in which to live in; everyone finds flaws with the world in which they live in, and these ideal worlds give the reader the chance to fanaticize about what their world could potentially be.  However, the disadvantage to these stories is fairly obvious because these societies are virtually all unrealistic and not feasibly able to be maintained.  Also, boredom and the loss of individuality as well as certain freedoms can quickly turn what was once a utopia into a dystopia. 

These scenarios for the future, though they are different in many ways, are often interconnected.  For example, in most stories about high technology, such as “The Logical Legend of Heliopause and Cyberfiddle” and “Johnny Mnemonic,” there is often an opposing aspect of the society that is mostly low technology in nature.  In “Cyberfiddle,” inside the Warren lives a rather advanced, high technology society; however, “outside is dust…and a fell wind” (159) where “bummers” or “stayers” who refused to give up the life they had on the outside, live in terrible conditions directly opposed to those inside the Warren.  In “Johnny Mnemonic,” Johnny initially lives in the high tech world that, but there is also the low tech world above the Sprawl that Johnny and Molly hide out in and eventually make their home.  Though there are many stories that focus primarily on one type of scenario, like “Speech Sounds” (low technology) and “Burning Chrome” (high technology), there is often a greater overlapping and intertwining of these two visions for the future that is sometimes hard to unmesh. 

This overlapping of future scenarios also comes into effect when the idea of a utopia, dystopia, or ecotopia is brought up.  Within this vision for the future, overlapping definitely takes place as one person’s idea of a utopia is usually someone else’s idea of a dystopia.  Therefore, whenever a “utopia” is created in fiction, it is likely that this said utopia will represent someone else’s dystopia--if not initially, then later on down the line.  This is obvious in the case of the father and the son in “The Onion and I.”  These two are not satisfied with the cyber world that they are coerced in to living in, and it eventually becomes a dystopia of sorts for the both of them, while the mother is perfectly content to forego the virtual world and live in her utopia of the cyber world forever, even at the expense of her family.  Her utopia is literally their dystopia.  In “Drapes and Folds,” the present dystopian world was created as a result of an overwhelming illness affecting women in the society.  The world was made to be safer and more utopian than how the world was before and during the epidemic; essentially, they were attempting to make a utopia.  They may have succeeded for a while before endless monotony and loss of familial ties changed many people’s minds on the idea, causing it to be viewed as a dystopia by some.  Though utopias and dystopias are opposites, they are often overlapping in many regards in future literature.

Many dystopias are founded on what used to be utopias or based on the idealization of the past, making this new world seem utopian, especially in relation to the dystopian present.  “The Onion and I” proves this: both the son and father were happy living in the cyber world at first, and then, after a while, the world becomes plain, repetitive, and endlessly boring.  What once was a utopia quickly became a dystopia for everyone in the family but the mother, and then the past became the new utopia, especially for the father with his onion farming.  In “Drapes and Folds,” Pearl felt that her “early days…felt closest to [her] heart” (138), which makes the present world that she lives in, with all its differences from the past, especially hard to bear.  This, in turn, makes the past in which she was nurtured and had a real family, seem that much more desirable and utopian, especially when compared to the carefully controlled present that she perceives as dystopian.  The past is also idealized in the low tech world of “Speech Sounds,” where the illness caused “paralysis, intellectual impairment, [and] death” (97).  The past, where most people in the country were literate or could at least easily relate ideas, was made out to be a utopia by Rye and probably others, with many of the negative aspects of that world being forgotten.  Utopias and dystopias are usually integrally related and somewhat cyclical in that one can cause the other, and that often normal societies were made out to be utopian when compared to the present dystopian worlds in which they live.   

Usually there is some sort of cataclysmic event that makes a society drastically change itself, as was done in “Drapes and Folds” after the women’s epidemic of 2025 and “Speech Sounds” after their epidemic.  These drastic events can cause a society to go from high tech to low tech, which happens in “Speech Sounds,” or from low tech to high tech, like in “Drapes and Folds.”  This loss of technology can lead to a dystopian present and an overwhelming nostalgia for the past that can make the current situation seem worse than it is and the past seem better, more utopian, than it ever really was.  Catastrophes on such a massive scale, like in Parable of the Sower, can cause a society to be so shaken by the events that took place that they forgo everything and try to become a utopia, like the founding of the Earthseed colony.  However, a great deal of these stories usually have some sort of devastation happen in the not too distant past that causes great changes in technology (by either losing or gaining technology), which in turn can cause the society to either become utopian or dystopian.  No matter how different these future visions and scenarios are, they are most often integrally related and overlapping on many levels.

            In future literature, there are four main types of scenarios of the future: those based on high technology, low technology, utopias/dystopias/ecotopias, and alien contact/off-planet exploration.  Mass appeal and general popularity levels can help to determine how much a person knows about each individual type of future vision.  Before I took this class, the majority of what I knew about these types of works came from only the most popular of these genres, but since I’ve taken this class, I’ve learned much more about each of these future scenarios.  I have learned that future literature has much more depth to it than I previously thought, and that even though many might not consider it to be so, there are many future literature authors who are excellent writers and have works that should be read by a much wider audience.  I have also learned that even though these scenarios of the future are all different in numerous ways, they also tend to have quite a bit in common, and are all interconnected on many levels, causing overlapping in almost cyclical manners that is not often obvious on the first read through.