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 (you might be interested to read "Part 1: The Back Story"). Yet, no matter how different futuristic works are, most writers share common motifs and themes:
Socio-Political Life
Since ancient times when Plato published The Republic, writers have often offered their own vision; in Plato's case, of how a utopian society would be like in the future. The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, which means information is not given directly but presented instead, through posing a series of questions, where Plato puts forward his definitions of justice and portrays the dialectical forms of government.
Other modern novelists, like George Orwell, were concerned with sociopolitical life. They spotted things they regarded as threats in their present and visualized how such small problems would turn into serious disasters in the future. Usually, those small issues or symptoms were of sociopolitical nature. In that way, writers drew their readers’ attention to those problems hoping that the latter would do something about it and change the current reality.
Fear of the Unknown
Usually, most writers share their fear of the unknown, which is translated in works that show a dystopian vision of the future. Whether it is a totalitarian system where people are repressed and deprived of all forms of freedoms whatsoever, or a rigid society where everything is mechanized and there is no place for emotions or humanity, a dystopian dark vision prevailed in many futuristic novels.
Here are some futuristic novels that captured the attention and the admiration of many people from different ages, cultures and eras:
Paris in the Twentieth Century
Paris in the Twentieth Century was written by Jules Verne in 1863 depicting Paris in 1960, about 100 years in Verne’s future. The novel was published for the first time in 1994, because Verne’s publisher rejected the novel claiming that it was too unrealistic and pessimistic.
The novel portrays a young man who lives in a technologically advanced world that is short on culture and arts. Paris in the novel only celebrates technological advances: nothing but technology is available at bookstores; working in the “arts” field is considered as a disgrace; warfare has become so scientific that there is really no need for soldiers anymore; most women have become neurotic career women; food is synthetic made from coal; among other eerily familiar visions.
Verne creates a tragic end for that gloomy world where Paris faces massive famine due to the destruction of food supplies, and people experience climate change where temperature drops to thirty degrees below causing all rivers to freeze.
In that imaginary world Verne created, he succeeded in making several futuristic predictions of what we have actually witnessed hundreds of years after he wrote his novel. Some of those predictions include skyscrapers, calculators, telegraphic communications network, known nowadays as the Internet, electric chairs, and computers.
1984
Written by George Orwell, one of the most acclaimed writers in English literature, 1984 is a critique of the socialist movement that was gaining a lot of propaganda and attention at the time. Orwell was a big supporter of socialism like millions of people worldwide. However, his fascination with such a political vogue turned into loathe and contempt after he witnessed the Spanish civil war in 1937, where socialist and Marxist parties were involved. That experience was life-altering for Orwell; right after his stay in Spain, he denounced socialism and wondered how life would be like in the future, if socialism reigned.
In 1984, Orwell brought his fears and concerns to life by creating that imaginary futuristic totalitarian world, where nothing is private and there is no space for individual private life. Everything is monitored and watched by the imaginary “Big Brother” that was created by the ruling party.
The hero of 1984, Winston, succeeds in creating his own world away from the ruling party’s eyes and away from Big Brother by starting a love affair with a girl, Julia, who shares his loathe for the system. However, at the very end, Julia and Winston discover that their private affair was not private at all when they get detained and tortured, till both of them give up their old rebellious ideas and succumb to that totalitarian system.
I, Robot
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, World War II had just ended and the world was obsessed with air combat and the role of technology in society. Isaac Asimov’s stories reflected his concerns over the danger of technology, but they also humanized robots, indicating that it is not technology that is evil but the way it is sometimes abused. His stories were so successful that, in 1950, nine of his best short stories were selected for publication as the book I, Robot.
I, Robot, the first and most widely read book in Asimov’s Robot series, forever changed the world’s perception of artificial intelligence. Here are stories of sensitive robots, robots gone mad, mind-reading robots, prankster robots, and closeted robots that secretly dominate politics. Chronicling the robot’s development from primitive prototype to ultimate perfection, I, Robot blends scientific fact with science fiction in Asimov’s provocative style.
Fahrenheit 451
This 50-year old novel by Ray Bradbury is set in a grim alternate-future setting ruled by a tyrannical government in which firemen as we understand them no longer exist. Instead of dousing fires, they ignite them.
Books are illegal in Bradbury's world, but books are not what his fictional, yet extremely plausible, government fears. They fear the knowledge one pulls from books. Through the government's incessant preaching, the inhabitants of this place have come to loathe books and fear those who keep and attempt to read them. They see such people as eccentric, dangerous, and threatening.
One day, a fireman named Montag meets a young girl who demonstrates to him the beauty of books, of knowledge, of conceiving and sharing ideas. When Montag's previously held ideology comes crashing down around him, he is forced to reconsider the meaning of his existence and the part he plays. After Montag discovers that “all isn't well with the world,” he sets out to make things right.
Life As We Knew It
Life As We Knew It is an award winning science fiction novel written by Susan Beth Pfeffer and published in 2006. The novel portrays life on Northeastern Pennsylvania when an asteroid hits the moon bringing it closer to Earth. Pfeffer was inspired by the Sci-Fi movie, “Meteor”, which made her think about how life would be and how people would behave when faced by such a disaster as the one she proposes in her novel.
In Life As We Knew It, tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the Sun. Miranda, the heroine of the novel, succeeds in convincing her two brothers and her mother to retreat in their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove. Miranda, in this way, retains her hope in that desperate post-apocalyptic world. The novel hits a nerve and relates to its readers not only through the highly appraised writing style, but also due to its topic, which discusses natural disasters that form real threats in our real world.
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