(2016 midterm assignment) Model Student Midterm answers 2016 (Index) Essay 2: Personal / professional topic

LITR 4368 Literature of the Future   Model Assignments

Kimberly Hall

March 23^rd, 2016

Back to the Future

“...would you realize what Progress is, call it Tomorrow.” – Victor Hugo

          Literature of the future, predictably, looks at current social and political issues, with an eye to the slippery slope of how those issues may present in the future. In examining works of speculative fiction, one can identify the authors’ fears for the future and desire for social and political progress. By looking at historical events surrounding works of speculative fiction, I plan to discuss the social and political themes specific to each piece, as well as how these works have functioned as vessels for discussions of social and political progress, both historically and today.

          The Time Machine, written by H.G. Wells and published in 1895, deals heavily with the ideas of social Darwinism and class conflict. Seen through the eyes of ‘the Time Traveler’, humanity has evolved into two different species, the Morlocks and the Eloi. The Time Traveler eventually comes to the conclusion that capitalism has translated into natural selection, with the working and upper socioeconomic classes evolving separately into different species. The conflicts between the Morlocks and the Eloi directly mirror the conflicts between the working and upper classes at the time Wells was writing The Time Machine. Workers’ unrest and labor strikes were extremely common in the 19^th century[1], and the upper class were fearful of violent labor disputes—just as the soft, non-working Eloi are terrified of the times the Morlocks will lash out against their oppressors. Wells likely intended this novel to spark discussion of these significant social issues—and though it was written in the late 1800s, The Time Machine still sparks discussions of the same kinds of labor issues over a century later.

          Similarly, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) opens up discussion for and criticism of mass production and industrialization. Both Brave New World and its German film contemporary Metropolis (1927) take heavy inspiration from the economic depressions and social upheaval that came out of the First World War—particularly the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Weimar Republic. They also take some direct inspiration from Henry Ford’s assembly-line principles—both stories are set in cultures where critical thinking and individualism are discouraged in favor of homogeneity and mass production, and where social castes are extremely stratified. Capitalism is criticized in both works, describing systems that care more about a bottom line than the people working the machines. And those issues dealt with in both Brave New World and Metropolis are still relevant today, as people debate economic and social consequences of raising the minimum wage, as well as companies funneling jobs overseas in order to pay less for labor and deal with fewer labor regulations. The conversations that took place around these stories when they first appeared are still taking place nearly 100 years later.

          More recently in the history of speculative fiction, we find Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which deals with more social issues than I have time to comprehensively describe. Even the name of the novel clearly states that Butler intended to send a message—a parable is inherently a story with a message. In Parable of the Sower, the main character Lauren Olamina lives in a post-apocalyptic United States, where the natural environment has somehow been destroyed and political system has subsequently decayed—and the cost of living has become dangerously high. Butler uses Parable of the Sower to touch on corporate greed, misogyny and racism, homelessness, illiteracy, and drug addiction, all of which are set against the backdrop of a society collapsing under the strain of environmental failure. These issues were all extremely important in the social discussions of 1993, when Parable of the Sower was published, and continue to be relevant today in discussions involving intersectional feminism and climate change.

          When continuing this essay for the final, I would like to discuss more examples of speculative fiction, and the historical events surrounding them and how they relate to ongoing social and political issues (e.g., police brutality in The Hunger Games series, and the growing class and social divides of the 1980s in “Stone Lives”, and maybe even the militarization of law enforcement and dictatorial government in the original Star Wars trilogy). I would also like to see if any of the authors of any previously-mentioned works have published non-fiction works or provided interviews addressing the social and political progress desired in speculative fiction.