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In ”Star Trek, First Contact” (1997) a
guest from our own time visits the space ship of captain Pickard in the year
2430. He says:
"The
economics of the future are somewhat different. You see, money does not
exist in the 25th century. . . . The acquisition wealth is no longer the
driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of
humanity".
From Frankenstein to Matrix Reloaded
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In 1818
Mary Shelly wrote the novel about Frankenstein. Industrialism was in its infancy, and for the first time a picture was painted of the
future where science and technology got out of hand. 40 years later Jules Verne
started to write down his fantasies and visions about the future where technical
inventions and fantastic machines dominated society. He also focused on social
problems when he realized that technology was an amplifier of man's best and
worst talents.
If
people did not improve their conscience and sense of responsibility, technology
could only be a tool for such a defective conscience and responsibility. Paris in the 20th century was written in 1863, but, the
manuscript was so pessimistic that his editor refused to publish it. It was
found and published in 1994.
In this youthful work
Jules Verne introduces the idea that technology might develop the more abusive
human talents. Technology as he saw it was nothing more than an extension of the
human being himself. He illustrates technology in the service of imperialism and
British colonialism, and he reacts against these. All this is woven together
with rockets, space travel and electrical office machines. This kind of social
realism was rarely seen in his later novels. One might say that market forces
suppressed Jules Verne’s capacity for social criticism.
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SF saw
the light of day
in the US in 1926 in the magazine Amazing
Stories. However, SF did not pick up international speed until after WW2. The
stories were at this time based on the latest discoveries of science and put
these into a fantastic social-technological context. So also
with Matrix Reloaded that recently came to a cinema near
you. The Matrix in the film is an intricate computer programme where
humans are locked into a virtual reality, which they believe to be true.
And now they are to be "saved" from their illusion holding them
imprisoned by "evil" machines, now controlling the Earth.
Matrix Reloaded (like
most SF movies) is mostly a collection of tricky fighting scenes and an ad
for indoor sunglasses rather
than a portrait of an esoteric future. Thus the movie (similarly to Jules Verne in his
days) portrays our own time more than the future. SF films are today dominated by
anxiety of technology and extraterrestrials, by war and violence under the name of "action",
rather than the danger of anxiety itself and its proliferation.
SF still confronts its greatest challenge: To
take human beings seriously and realise that Science (computers
and weapons technology) may not necessarily be the most exciting Fiction
of the future. However, we live in a terrorist-popular era. SF is not able to free
itself from that and to see the future as captain Pickard above. |
"The Matrix
is the world that has been pulled over your eyes in
order to blind you from the truth"
Morpheus
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Here
are links to some important future forecasting sites:
| To
study SF
& Fantasy at university is also possible. Just look
here. |
SFnet and the
magazine Locus has a comprehensive overview of
SF
and Fantasy connecting to the majority of interesting SF
themes and sites.
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| Science Fiction
Cirkelen
is a
Danish SF organisation with quite a few activities on their agenda. |
Arthur
C. Clarke
is possibly the greatest of all SF authors. This is because his life as
an engineer and inventor demonstrates how thin the line is between fantasy and reality.
In fact, Clarke is a living example of how the gap is bridged between
the “virtual” and the “real” world. Clarke’s 3. law: "Every sufficiently advanced technology is
impossible to distinguish from magic." |
 - Rodney
Matthews made
this picture
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