I stream a lot of science fiction from the web – at the moment I watching Star Trek: Discovery. I find myself asking: What’s this about? I’m not asking about what’s happening in this or that story, or even for interpretations. In some way I’m asking about the genre (broadly speaking): What’s science fiction, as a form of story telling, about, why does it exist?
For one thing, it’s as much about technology as science; the distinction between the two is elided. Moreover, depending on the story (& franchise) the science ranges from plausible to fanciful. It seems to me that the genre couldn’t exist without science itself having become a topic of observation and commentary on the public stage. While there are antecedents going back to who knows when, the genre didn’t really emerge until the twentieth century.
Moreover, it is often, but now always, associated with the future. To be sure, War of the Worlds was not about the future in any interesting sense; it’s set in the present, as are most alien invasion stories. The Star Wars saga is set in “another galaxy, far, far away.” But if you search on something like “science fiction predictions” you’ll come up with a lot of hits. These days the Progress Studies folks are calling for science fiction that is optimistic rather than dystopian. Why? Because they think these stories will affect how people think and act; the influence the world. Of course, Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 is about the future in a way that’s different from the Star Trek franchise, and that’s worth exploring, but not here and now. But still, the future. The future is no longer something that just happens. It’s something we can plan for and change through our thoughts and actions.
Is that what science fiction is about, human agency? But all fiction is about human agency is some way. Perhaps it is that science fiction signals a shift in our sense of the locus and range of human agency, of what we can do and our place in the universe. Surely that’s been explored in the extensive literature on the subject.
If that is so, to the extent that it is, what then do we make of the story of the computer that goes crazy, the computer that surpasses us? That’s a story about human agency coming to displace or negate human agency, no? What kind of story is that? It’s as though we've become our own alien invasion. Does that tell us something about why the idea of a super-intelligent computer is as much an object of fiction as a hope-and-fear of research?
More later.
No comments:
Post a Comment