LITR 4632: Literature of the Future

Student Midterms 2013 assignment Sample Student Submission

Adria Weger

Essay 1

20 June 2013

The Rules of Science Fiction: “Nothing is Interesting Where Anything May Happen”

The idea that “nothing is interesting where anything may happen” seems contradictory to fiction. After all, one of the definitions of fiction includes the invention of imaginary incidents. However, John Dryden defines dramatic prose in its ability to inform, entertain, and (most importantly) be “a just and lively image of human nature.” H.G. Wells takes this a little further regarding science-fiction; Wells’ Law states that “the thing that makes such imaginations interesting is their translation into common place terms. . . [the writer must] domesticate the impossible hypothesis.” For a world in science-fiction to be believable it must not change too much from reality so the reader may still identify with it, create rules for the universe in which the story takes place, and stay consistent with those rules for the entirety of the story. It is this law that allows the three narratives of science-fiction— creation/apocalypse, evolutionary, and alternative histories/futures— to co-exist within the same stories.

The creation/apocalypse narrative is best exemplified in Genesis and Revelation of the Bible. The extraordinary change within these texts is that evolution is mostly, if not completely, removed from the development and destruction of man. Instead, there is a divine being, God, who breathes life into man in creation, then either condemns man or sends him on to Heaven at the end of the earth. Jenn Tullos claims it is this element that makes the text “unfalsifiable” (2011): science can neither predict, explain, or replicate these events, but they can only happen in God’s time. Whether looking at these books as the Word of God or simply culturally significant stories, the rules are clear and consistent. The two texts demonstrate intertextuality; though written by different people at different times in history, they tell the same story in which God is the constant, “I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 22:13 ESV). It is this narrative that sets the standard for other stories to imitate. Apocalyptic stories may not have God as the driving force of change, but they will include much of the same language as Revelation: fire, destruction, and suffering followed by a rebirth or starting over.

Parable of the Sower has these elements making it a mostly apocalyptic text. Its characters undergo multiple struggles, suffering, fire, and destruction, but they make it to a new land, a place where they can start over and rebuild. In this world, the United States has become a third-world country, showing a future the reader can recognize. Water and other resources are scarce, mostly due to global warming. This explanation lends the text an evolutionary element. It is not a divine being waging war on sin, but man’s own actions that have brought on these problems. One of these actions, drug use, creates a psychological anomaly known as hyperempathy, experienced by the main character, and a few people she meets along the way. Following the rules the author created for this potential future of the U.S., the reader can identify himself in the characters, wonder how he would respond in a similar situation, get angry when the characters make mistakes. It is this ability to connect with the characters that signifies O. Butler has created a realistic dystopia. Nothing is so far removed from the realm of possibility that the reader gets lost trying to understand what is happening.

This easiness is not always the case in science-fiction. “Stone Lives” portrays a high-tech society, in which bio-technology allows man-kind to live well beyond their first century. This text offers many foreign terms, such as “FEZ”, “the Bungle”, “rejuve”, and “ARCaidias”, which sets the scene, illustrating just how much society has changed. The technological evolution also leads to a Social Darwinism in the societal divide between the rich and the poor. While this text has many strange new things, like a bio-luminescent that makes your entire skin glow like a lightning bug, the real change the reader must accept is corporations have taken control of society. Once that reality is explained, it is easier to accept the world Paul Di Filippo created. This text also plays with elements of the apocalypse; once Stone is elevated to a new position from poverty, his world comes crashing down around him, literally, in an explosion. The company he works for is quickly collapsing with the death of its leader, but it is Stone who is raised up to start anew, and hopefully, correct the mistakes made the first time around.

“Mozart in Mirrorshades” (“Mozart”) is another example of a high-tech society that can be difficult to understand, but it is not the technology that confuses things so much as the alternate timelines it suggests. “Mozart” is a clear example of the alternative histories/futures narrative. The rules in this society the reader must accept is the existence of ‘real time’ with parallel universes corresponding—but not quite the same—as this time line; very much like the branching of a tree. Once this idea becomes established, it is easy to accept a universe in which Thomas Jefferson is the first president of the United States, and Marie Antoinette lies around reading Vogue.  This mixing of the old with the new, Mozart writing rock music instead of symphonies, follows the rules of this universe. Like “Stone Lives,” “Mozart” also has elements of the apocalypse as the tunnel connecting the alternate timeline to ‘real time’ starts crashing down, leaving the people who escape to continue on to another realm, and the people who remain to start over and rebuild from the wreckage ‘real time’ left behind.  

The idea of time travel is not a new one. H.G. Wells, the author of the first rule of science-fiction, masterfully blends the three narratives together in The Time Machine while staying true to his rule. By not explaining in detail the mechanics of his machine that allows the Time Traveler to move through time, Wells establishes this possibility with the reader. Moving forward over 800,000 years into the future, the Time Traveler describes a world vastly different from his own. However, the text does not detail what happens to the past or the future when outside forces (like time traveling) intervene. In other words, are time and history fixed or can the Time Traveler’s actions influence what has/will happen? If time is not fixed, then the worlds he goes to can change, and are therefore alternate histories or future possibilities dependent on the actions of man or outside forces.

The text does explain how this future the Time Traveler visits possibly came to be. His descriptions and hypotheses for the Eloi and Morlocks add an element of evolution. The Eloi evolved from the rich and privileged into the child-like cattle the Time Traveler described. The Morlocks, descendants of the working class, adapt to their underground environment by developing large eyes to see in the dark, longer arms—thus reverting back to ape-like shapes—to maneuver through the tunnels, and fur to keep them warm at night. In creating two new species as descendants from man, Wells portrays human nature in innovative ways.

As the Time Traveler continues to move through time, he witnesses apocalyptic scenes where life has almost ceased to exist, the sun is fading, and the end of the earth is near. His ability to leave the future, return to his own time, and go back to the future sets the possibility for rebirth by connecting back to the alternate future narrative.

Though not every science-fiction story contains all three narratives within the same text like The Time Machine, it is clear that when the rules of prose and science-fiction are followed, mostly pertaining to the idea that the text should reflect human nature, the three narratives can co-mingle to lesser and greater degrees with believability. Audre Lorde once said, “There are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt.” By establishing new rules for the world, writers can explore human nature in ways that make us think, feel, and react to the strange, absurd, or foreign as if it were a possibility.

Adria Weger

Essay 2

20 June 2013

The Ultimate Question

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man

Every story asks the question, who am I? The events and problems undertaken by the characters help to shape the narrative, but ultimately define who the character is, or who he is not. In a systematic effort to define human nature, Alexander Pope claims man is made up of two contrasting drives, Self-love and Reason. Self-love is that part of man that is selfish; it harbors his passions and appetites. Reason is what man uses to overcome those appetites. Where Self-love gives man ambition, Reason gives him the fortitude to follow through. Pope asserts that man cannot exist without both aspects of human nature. Literature, science-fiction in particular, offers us a means to explore identity in many ways, including discovering hidden aspects of self through letting go of Reason, how man may choose one over the other and how that affects relationships or survival, and what might happen when man begins to separate these two drives.

Some stories answer the question, who am I, by looking at sexuality. Gender roles, and cultural expectations play a big role in sexual identity, but human nature is what drives it. In “Better Be Ready ‘bout Half Past Eight,” Alison Baker wonders what it would be like to be suddenly confronted with your own sexuality. After learning that his best friend has decided to become a woman after 38 years of living as a man, Byron struggles to understand the decision which he deems mutilation (27). Byron analyzes everything; it is his attachment to Reason that prevents him from understanding the pain his friend has experienced for decades. However, it is through his scientific, over-rational mind that Byron finally begins to, if not understand, accept his best friend’s decision. Through a series of ‘experiments,’ Byron explores his feminine side and begins to see how “he’d make a terrific woman” (28). Through this process, he begins to see that gender does not define identity.

Another relationship driven text, “Somebody Up There Likes Me” depicts a marriage between a Reason-driven man, and a Self-love-motivated woman; a couple who appear to have a well-balanced marriage; and a potential sociopath who has a happy family image in one house, and abuse-tests (228) computers in another. Snookie is the wandering woman who is never satisfied where she is, but does not have the drive to follow something through to completion. Dante is so stuck in his mind that he cannot see the forest for the trees. Their marriage is falling apart because the two value different aspects of their own nature.

Their friends, Boyce and Janet, have a nice balance in their marriage. Boyce tries to bring consciousness to technology through a “computerized mind of the world” (218), and Janet, as a Jungian therapist (219), tries to “bring conscious and unconscious elements of the psyche into balance” (http://www.nyaap.org/about-jungian-analysis). This balance allows the couple to encourage and support when losses occur, rather than become scared or discouraged, which builds the marriage into more than an agreement, but a true union between two people.

Finally, there’s Mickey. Upon first entering his house, Dante meets the ‘happy’ family. Mickey must have a balanced life enough to support the wife and children in this aspect of his life. But in his shop, Mickey can give over purely to Self-love— mutilating, attacking, destroying— he reverts to his most primal nature. “He had just completed a kill and he wouldn’t want to fight. He’d feel unthreatened and kingly. Unless overtly attacked, he’d be docile” (228), Dante’s description of Mickey’s mental state sounds like the narration of an Animal Planet documentary. Here, in this place, Mickey is free and safe to let out his truest nature. But he is not completely un-evolved. Like a child, he becomes concerned when Dante cries, and gives him presents to make him feel better (234). Mickey needs an outlet to express is Self-love desires, but is human enough to let Reason influence other aspects of his life.

Through this story, Ralph Lombreglia explores many facets of human nature; how, when they work together, relationships become stronger; when they don’t, they can fall apart; and sometimes, you have to go back to your most primal self to cope with who you are.

Showing a different side of mankind, Parable of the Sower explores how man may revert to Self-love when faced with the apocalypse. When resources are scarce, mankind has less need for Reason, and more for survival. The impulses Self-love offers means man reverts back to a primal state, regressing past hunting and gathering to a ruthless cutthroat need for survival. When society reverts to these primal instincts, chaos abounds. It becomes okay to take from those in need because your need is greater; “there was more danger where there were more people” (154), the more you have, the more you have to loose, be it belongings, food, money, or lives.

However, as Lauren and her group show, this pure abandonment of Reason does not equate to survival of the fittest. Lauren exemplifies the balance between the two forces of human nature. Her ability to use both Reason and Self-love is what helps her and the small community she leads to survive, her “we haven’t hit bottom yet” (328) mentality helps her to stay strong when the world around her falls apart.

Where Parable of the Sower explores a digression in dangerous times, The Time Machine looks at man from a distant evolutionary aspect. In this text, H.G. Wells explores what becomes of man when he separates the two aspects of human nature. The image of man the Time Traveler discovers is far from what he expected, “I had started with the absurd assumption that the men of the Future would certainly be infinitely ahead of our selves in all their appliances” (70). Instead he found the Eloi and the Morlocks.

“Above ground, you have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty” (63)— the Eloi. These beautiful, child-like descendants of man exist solely on the whims of Self-love. They eat when they are hungry, sleep when tired, have no motivating forces in their nature, containing the “now purposeless energy of mankind” (41). Evolving from the rich and privileged of society, the Eloi have no problems and live in harmony amongst themselves. Like children, they fear the dark, or rather the creatures the darkness brings: “below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour” (63). These creatures, the Morlocks, are not the polar opposite of the Eloi appearing as hyper-rational, reasonable creatures. Rather, they operate in a devolved sense of Reason. They still aim to fulfill their basic needs, but as carnivores, they hunt the cattle-like Eloi. Underground they maintain and operate machines producing goods for the Eloi, much like a farmer takes care of his herd before slaughter. These creatures, products of evolution, show what may happen when man solves all the problems of the world. Without the need to strive to make things better, man can become fat, dumb, and happy like the Eloi, or labor driven, cunning, but sequestered like the Morlocks.

Looking at these and other stories, we can always ask the ultimate question, who am I? These stories not only explore human nature at its best and worst, but they make the reader question himself. Do I identify with Byron, stuck in my ways but desperately trying to understand my friend, or Zach, trapped in an identity that seems foreign? Am I on the path to the child-like lifestyle of the Eloi, or destined to become the underground working Morlock? Questioning our natures like this is what makes us the well-balanced creatures of Man that we are.