Every now and then, we make speculations about what the future would be like. Some views are overly optimistic, while others tend to be too pessimistic to the extent that the future sometimes seems to be a big black hole that will destroy or twist around any sign of goodness we have, or think we have.
Fiction writers are known for their creativity, ability to portray the past, capture the present and visualize the future in ways that get readers thinking more profoundly about themselves, their lives and certainly their future.
The Back Story
Futuristic fiction gained popularity since ancient times, when Plato published his Republic, which was one of the earliest notions of a utopia, or an ideal society. Later on, precisely in 1516, during the European Renaissance, when there was a great revival movement of ancient arts, and endeavors to revisit ancient civilizations and cultures, such as the Ancient Greek civilization, Thomas More published his Utopia.
In Utopia, More puts forward his utopian beliefs in many topics; religious tolerance, equal education for men and women, sharing of power, and the evil of private property among others. Published in Latin, Utopia portrays Raphael Hythlodeaus, a traveler who describes the political life on an imaginary island called Utopia; most scholars regard the book as a critique to Europe at the time.
A century later, Francis Bacon published The New Atlantis, in which he brought science and material progress along with a futuristic utopian vision. In that novel, Bacon created “Bensalem”, meaning “land of peace”, where values such as dignity and piety were highly cherished.
Many authors, later on, adopted Bacon’s approach to viewing the future and combined it with science. This became even more evident with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the 19thcentury. One such novelist influenced by Bacon’s utopian vision was Jules Verne, a French author, who is referred to as the Father of Science Fiction. He published novels that are now considered classics of that genre, such as A Journey to the Center of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days. Verne extraordinarily wrote about volcanoes, space and underwater travel in a time when all of these worlds were completely obscure and unknown to man.
By the 20thcentury, however, fiction writers started to develop a sense of pessimism. Thus, dystopian literature became very popular at the time; writers did not stop using science as a main theme in their works, though. In fact, science became a means of destruction rather than a means of welfare and comfort as it used to be in previous works published in earlier eras. A case in point is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, which was published in 1932.
Aldous Huxley, an English writer, was raised among a family of writers, scientists and teachers; he studied sciences and literature, which allowed him to use science as a main theme in his literary works. When Huxley published his book, the world was on the verge of conflict and disaster, which seemed to prophesize what he wrote in his novel, in which human life, with all of its emotions and feelings, was sacrificed for the sake of technological and scientific advances that were meant to create a so-called social stability.
In Brave New World, thousands of identical human embryos are produced but are classified into five categories: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta or Epsilon. Alpha are conditioned and programmed to become leaders due to their high intellectual level, whereas Epsilon have the lowest IQs; thus, they are destined to perform hard labor that demands nothing but good physique.
Infants are not just preconditioned to perform at certain levels, but they are also taught the morals of their world, which is devoid of emotions, desires and human relationships. The novel also portrays the Savage Reservation, where real human beings reside; the Reservation represents a contrast to the World State. The conflict between both worlds is seen through the eyes of John, the hero, who belongs to the Savage Reservation but gets the chance to experience the lifestyle in the World State. The novel ends tragically when John hangs himself as he cannot accept the fact that he is submitted to the World State society which he despises.
Art is the mirror of reality. But what if an artist wants to create a whole new world that is set in the future; will s/he use reality as well? Well, writers need a solid ground upon which to build their stories, and reality offers that. However, in futuristic literature, writers use certain motifs or phenomena from their own reality and develop them further to create their own futuristic reality. Whether you are reading a utopian or a dystopian novel, you will get to experience the writer's vision regarding a certain issue. Yet, no matter how different futuristic works are, most writers share common motifs and themes.
References
www.herasaga.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Futuristic-Fiction.pdf
www.bookrags.com
www.barnesandnoble.com
www.sparknotes.com
http://sparknotes.com
http://amazon.com
http://tezmilleroz.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/6-new-to-me-futuristic-ya-novels/
This article was first published in print in the PSC Newsletter, Spring 2012 issue.
Cover image by Magnific