Some Final Reflections on Speculative Sci-Fi

The Impermanence of Scholarship

Universities are hot beds of scholarship and research in our society. They encourage growth and development of their faculty as well as their student scholars. Universities aggressively seek funding, grants, and royalty fees for intellectual property as well as new discoveries, concepts, and applications of information gained. But where did all the academics go in the future? Strangely, in speculative sci-fi they have gone amiss. I believe this stems from the ruthlessly egalitarian nature of speculative sci-fi literature that emphasizes the dystopian.

For instance, in H. G. Wells’ novel The Time Machine the protagonist steps out of his time machine with wonder and anticipation at meeting people of the future, but he is shockingly disappointed by their intellect: “You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Eight Hundred and Two Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asks me a question that showed him to be on the intellectual level of one of our five-year-old children” (26). The Eloi people have the intellectual capacity of a Teletubby (comically highlighting the repression of the intellect). The Time Traveller is himself an academic, a scientist, full of curiosity that gives him the drive to explore the future, but what he finds is a future with no need for scholarship:
[I] presently recognized . . . the decaying vestiges of books. [. . .] Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with the keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this somber wilderness of rotting paper testified. At the time I will confess that I thought chiefly of the Philosophical Transactions and my own seventeen papers upon physical optics. (Wells 70)
In the fictitious setting of The Time Machine, there is no need to excel academically because everything is done with perfect equality. The Time Traveller contemplates as to the reason the future is devoid of scholarship: “There is no intelligence where there is no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers” (Wells 81). In an egalitarian society, academic accomplishment is nonessential.

WE, a novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin, offers a more subtle approach to the suppression of the intellect. Here again, readers notice individual thought, and scholarship is monolithically subjugated. Every person’s ability is used to further enhance the One State (a collective, who only have ambition to promote the group’s imperatives and suppress individuality). A character in the novel named I-330 expresses this attitude aggreviously, “‘Clearly,’I-330 interrupted, ‘to be original means to somehow stand out from others. Consequently, being original is to violate equality . . .’” (Zamyatin 27). In fact, the only true academic in the novel is a poet named R-13, but even his artistic endeavor is repressed by the One State, “Now poetry is no longer a brazen nightingale call. Poetry is a state service; poetry is purpose” (Zamyatin 60). Individual intellectual property has been stigmatized as a form of rebellion against the collective good—breeding inequality. This dystopian inclination to suppress thought for the collective good is peppered through-out the novel WE.

Likewise, Aldous Huxley explores this concept further in his novel Ape and Essence; in this work of fiction, not only are intellectual accomplishments and creative abilities squelched, but also even mere competence is frowned upon. As in The Time Machine, the protagonist of Ape and Essence is a scholar, a botanist with a PhD from New Zealand, who was not affected by the radiation contamination in America. Dr. Alfred Poole is on expedition to America to examine what plant life may still be thriving post-nuclear, but what he encounters is a group of surviving people with the intellect of an ape. Dr. Poole is completely baffled by their lack of enthusiasm for scholarship:
One of the bakers opens a furnace door and starts to shovel the books into the flames. All of the scholar in Dr. Poole, all of the bibliophile, is outraged by this spectacle: ‘But this is frightful!’ he protests. The chief only laughs. ‘In goes The Phenomenology of Spirit, out comes the corn bread. And damned good bread it is. (Huxley 91)
What’s more, the chief of the Belial Church incriminates scholarship for their current plight: “Take scientists, for example. Good, well-meaning men, for the most part. But [Belial] got hold of them all the same—got hold of them at the point where they ceased to be human beings and became specialists. Hence, the glanders [deformities] and those bombs” (Huxley 131).
This oppressive religion prohibited learning for the “public good.” The only concern is to ruthlessly control the people’s minds to submit to the catechisms of the church of Belial. In turn, the people have lost both the ability and motivation to seek out the unknown and promote scholarship; everything they do is for the pleasure of the church.

These dystopian works of fiction suggest stifled scholarship that would be counter-productive to a society. Abilities, accomplishments, and even competence are seen as forms of inequality. The Time Machine portrays future people as completely simple-minded; whereas the novel WE highlights a suppression of the intellect; and in the novel Ape and Essence the characters are driven completely by animal instinct, so much so, that they cannot be bothered with academic pursuits. Thus, the characters in the novels do not impute any importance to scholarship. Conversely, it is intriguing and appropriate that speculative science fiction novels such as these asks readers to first suspend reality for an imagined society of the future, while simultaneously allowing the reader to conceptualize the possible future of our actual society and to assess whether this is a valid concern for our future.

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Huxley, A. Ape and Essence, 1948. Chicago: Elephant Paperbacks, 1992.
Wells, H. G., The Time Machine, 1895. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003.
Zamyatin, Yevgeny. WE, 1921. New York: Modern Library, 2006.

Brazil: A Dystopian Film

Brazil: A Treatment on Materialism

Brazil (1985) is a hardcore black comedy directed by the brilliant Terry Gilliam. The film highlights a common dystopian theme: technocratic bureaucracy versus individual freedom. Sam Lowry (the main character in the film) tries to escape from the monolithic control that is suffocating him.

The color grey is predominately used in the scenery of the film and backlights the bleakness of human kindness, which is in direct contrast to the two representative classes of people: the proletariat (plain clad with a uniform appearance), and the bourgeois (bright and flamboyantly dressed). While these groups interact with daily life, terrorist bombers continually blow-up people all around them, but no one seems to care about the victims. Gilliam uses his Monty Python type humor to highlight the trend in current society to be more concerned with status than human empathy.

For instance, there is a terrorist bombing during a scene at a posh restaurant, half of the people are blown-up, and yet hardly anyone looks up from their dinner conversation. In fact, the headwaiter at Sam Lowry’s table apologizes to his wealthy patrons for the inconvenience and hurriedly finds a screen and some plants to cover up the obnoxious sight of dead bodies lying around. On another occasion at the mall, there is another bombing, and once again, the people are angry at the inconvenience to their shopping. Even Sam Lowry, the most empathetic of the lot, is more concerned about his domineering mother’s friend seeing him with a woman than the injured victims surrounding him. These are nonhuman responses, clearly.

This dystopian film allows the audience to be entertained by the twisted thinking of the characters in this film, while at the same time questioning our current society and its inclination toward materialism and the obsession of the day-to-day struggle to make a living while human suffering surrounds us. Gilliam extends the reasoning of the characters in this film ridiculously in order to arouse our indifference toward the inexplicable pain in our current society.

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Gilliam, T. (director). Brazil, (1985). UK: Embassy International Pictures.

Examining Zamyatin's WE

The Quantified
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s WE is a dystopian novel about testing the allegiance of D-503 (the protagonist) to the One State (a collective group who have mathematically perfected a state of logical and calculated utopianism). D-503 vacillates between mathematically sound reason and a stream-of-conscious dream state; therefore, he must
be definitively corrected by the One State.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, a respected Sufi teacher, once said, “Reason is the illusion of reality (1).” The novel WE attempts to apply calculus to all things—everything is set in rational-derived boundaries. However, Zamyatin suggests in his novel that reason is a counterfeit of life, and this challenges readers to examine their lives in the contemporary context of their day as well. Today, we are so constrained to calculus boundaries that we operate with the suggestion of freedom, but in reality are living in the confines of the calculus; we are like the children at the amusement parks who think they are really driving, but instead are on a calculated track.

Zamyatin orchestrates the alpha-numeric existence of D-503. Everything in the life of D-503 is categorized. As readers, we see this as something bizarre, but we are not so far removed from living a categorized existence that is alpha-numerically bound. “Gods have become like us, ergo, we have become like gods. And to you, my unknown planetary readers, we will come to you, to make your life as divinely rational and exact as ours” (Zamyatin 61). We are becoming slaves to our exacting human proclivity to numerics.

Moreover, as a culture, we are increasingly operating according to alpha-numerics: student ID numbers define us at university; we bank according to a series of alphabetic and numeric combinations; and we have alpha-numeric combinations for virtually everything in life. No longer are we asked to give our names when calling a help-line, insurance billing department, or when making frequent-flyer airline reservations—we are becoming a calculus-based entity.

Numbers are inert. They neither do nor can generate entropy or energy. “So there are two forces in the world, entropy and energy. One tends toward blissful peace, to happy equilibrium, and the other toward destruction of equilibrium, toward torturously constant movement” (Zamyatin 144). This adherence to the inertia of calculus was D-503’s demise of the soul and his subsequent counterfeit life. Through his prose, Zamyatin warns the reader of a subtle attack of dehumanizing by numbers that he saw evident in his day (before the computer age). It would be interesting to hear his thoughts of our present day culture if he were alive today. Would our subjugation to being a number (as a matter of ease and efficiency) surprise him? How would he classify the current generation? Zamyatin would identify the modern reader more with the ciphers than the planet-dwellers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Zamyatin, Yevgeny. WE, 1921. New York: Modern Library, 2006.
(1) “Sufi Order International.” An Interfaith Ap
proach to Spiritual Growth. 23 April 2007. http://www.sufiorder.toronto.on.ca/ .

The Metaphysics of Blade Runner

The Metaphysics of Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?)

Phillip K. Dick’s Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1968) is a novel set in the near future. In this sci-fi novel, the dividing-line between humans and androids grows ever closer in this religious-based society. All of the relationships in Blade Runner are centered around technology. However, the most surprising is the characters’ dependence on technology for their spirituality. This reliance on technology is seated in their desire to play God, thus presenting the characters in the novel as biologically human, but who behave in inhumane ways (legislated by their own morality).

Mercerism is the name of their society-wide religion. One of the major tenants of this religion is fusion with their medium named Mercer (by means of an empathy box they hold in hand) as well as with the other humans who are in a state of fusion at precisely the same time. These individuals in fusion are changed into some sort of transcendent state of being, but at the same time experience physical pain because of this fusion (oftentimes they are bleeding after their spiritual encounter). This technological tool—the empathy box—is the most valuable things humans own: “‘But an empathy box’, he said, stammering in his excitement, ‘is the most personal possession you have! It’s an extension of your body; it’s the way you touch other humans, it’s the way you stop being alone’” (Dick 64). Clearly, they not only apply moral predicts to a technological object but make it a compulsory part of human discourse and empathy. As a result, they place technology in the metaphysical realm.

Moreover, this makes Mercerites in complete control of determining the value of a life based solely on their metaphysical experience whilst attached to their empathy boxes:
You shall kill only the killers, Mercer had told them the year empathy boxes first appeared on earth. And in Mercerism, as it evolved into a full theology, the concept of The Killers had grown insidiously . . . [I]t was never clear who or what this evil presence was. A Mercerite sensed evil without understanding it. (Dick 29) This doctrine allows the individuals of Mercerism the function of determining evil, a quality usually preserved for the godlike; they subjectively decide who or what is worthy to go on living.

In turn, this fusion with the empathy box distorts ethics in the everyday life of this society. They are biologically human, but the Mercerites’ practical workings of humanity are dubious. In reality, Mercerites value materialism above human empathy. The goal of every human in this society is to own a real animal, but they are a scarce resource, and, to compensate, a whole industry is created to manufacture technologically simulated animals. These artificial animals help the people to maintain social standing with their neighbors. The Mercerites do not have true empathy for these animals but use them as a means to prove their human superiority in empathy above other humans, the androids, and other nescient entities. This is a life of cultural relativism—morality is determined by its fusion with others using the empathy box.

It is problematic to have a morally relative society as seen in the novel Blade Runner. Moral relativism causes a distorted view of humanity. By postulating that any act is good, so long as it is directed toward a god, is a dangerous premise to live by because it removes responsibility from an individual. This ideology is troublesome as fleshed-out by Mercerism. It is always dangerous to transcend moral values.

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Dick, P. K. Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), 1968. New York: Ballantine Books, 2007.

An Analysis of the Movie: THX-1138

THX-1138: An Analysis

George Lucas’ movie THX-1138 (2004 director’s cut) is a dystopian film about a highly controlled underground city, and one man’s (THX-1138) desire to disassociate from the domination.

The symbolism of THX-1138 helps drive the narrative—everything is white. This symbol repeats throughout the film, and creates the mood of the film. Lucas portrays the underground city as pristine, white, sterile, and Taylorized. All of the characters dress in white and have shaven heads. The premise of this movie portrayal is a future devoid of nature—the mechanistic is a replacement of the natural in this film; therefore, freedom is dimished by the driven order and whiteness.

People are mechanized in THX-1138; they are required to take drugs to control any natural emotions. In fact, drug evasion is a crime. The only inference to sharing one’s feelings is when they are allowed to go in the confession booth; here they have a screen image of a god to confess their sins, but ironically, it is an insect (behind the screen) that is the mouthpiece of the god. What’s more, OMM (the god) is more interested in Taylorizing the people of the underground city than in forgiving their sins, “Let us be thankful we have an occupation to fill. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy” (minute 25). In addition, there are intercom announcements throughout the film, such as, “Consumption is being standardized” (minute 5), and, “Thrifty thinkers are always under budget” (minute 60). By displaying the characters as flat and mechanical, Lucas is emphasizing his intended tone of the movie.

THX-1138 demonstrates his increasing connection to the natural throughout the film. The first threshold he crosses is his sexual encounter with his partner LUH-3417 (minute 35). This encounter irreversibly motivates him to seek out the organic, despite being sent to trial for the crime of having sex and illegal drug evasion. Furthermore, he uses his natural abilities to escape prison; he then goes searching for LUH-3417 in order to continue their plan to escape the underground city together. This drive to obtain the natural is equaled with his increasing ability to think on his feet, although he tends to think up about half the plan and then stop (such as his idea to escape the prison-holding cell, but his failure to plan a suitable escape route). Nevertheless, he overcomes this weakness, and by the end of the movie demonstrates that he has learned to trust nature above the sterilized collective.

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Lucas, G. (director). THX-1138, (2004, director’s cut). USA: Warner Bros. Pictures.