Science fiction and the prediction of the future: essays on foresight and fallacy

271 Pages·2011·1.533 MB·English

by  Yuen, Wong Kin;Chan, Amy Kit-sze;Westfahl, Gary

Science Fiction and the Prediction
of the Future
CRITICALEXPLORATIONSINSCIENCEFICTIONANDFANTASY
(a series edited by Donald E. Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III)
1Worlds Apart? Dualism and Transgression
in Contemporary Female Dystopias(Dunja M. Mohr, 2005)
2Tolkien and Shakespeare: Essays on Shared Themes and Language(ed. Janet Brennan Croft, 2007)
3Culture, Identities and Technology in the Star WarsFilms: Essays on
the Two Trilogies(ed. Carl Silvio, Tony M. Vinci, 2007)
4The Influence of Star Trekon Television, Film and Culture(ed. Lincoln Geraghty, 2008)
5Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction(Gary Westfahl, 2007)
6One Earth, One People: The Mythopoeic Fantasy Series of Ursula K. Le Guin,
Lloyd Alexander, Madeleine L’Engle and Orson Scott Card(Marek Oziewicz, 2008)
7The Evolution of Tolkien’s Mythology: A Study
of the History of Middle-earth(Elizabeth A. Whittingham, 2008)
8H. Beam Piper: A Biography(John F. Carr, 2008)
9Dreams and Nightmares: Science and Technology in Myth and Fiction(Mordecai Roshwald, 2008)
10Lilithin a New Light: Essays on the George MacDonald Fantasy Novel(ed. Lucas H. Harriman, 2008)
11Feminist Narrative and the Supernatural: The Function of
Fantastic Devices in Seven Recent Novels(Katherine J. Weese, 2008)
12The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF Storytelling
and the Gnostic Imagination(Frank McConnell, ed. Gary Westfahl, 2009)
13Kim Stanley Robinson Maps the Unimaginable: Critical Essays(ed. William J. Burling, 2009)
14The Inter-Galactic Playground: A Critical Study
of Children’s and Teens’ Science Fiction(Farah Mendlesohn, 2009)
15Science Fiction from Québec: A Postcolonial Study(Amy J. Ransom, 2009)
16Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Essays on Bridging the Gap Between
the Sciences and the Humanities(ed. Gary Westfahl, George Slusser, 2009)
17Stephen R. Donaldson and the Modern Epic Vision: A Critical Study
of the “Chronicles of Thomas Covenant” Novels(Christine Barkley, 2009)
18Ursula K. Le Guin’s Journey to Post-Feminism (Amy M. Clarke, 2010)
19Portals of Power: Magical Agency and Transformation in Literary Fantasy(Lori M. Campbell, 2010)
20The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy(Bruce Shaw, 2010)
21Illuminating Torchwood: Essays on Narrative, Character and Sexuality
in the BBC Series(ed. Andrew Ireland, 2010)
22Comics as a Nexus of Cultures: Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and
International Perspectives(ed. Mark Berninger, Jochen Ecke, Gideon Haberkorn, 2010)
23The Anatomy of Utopia: Narration, Estrangement and Ambiguity in
More, Wells, Huxley and Clarke(Károly Pintér, 2010)
24The Anticipation Novelists of 1950s French Science Fiction: Stepchildren
of Voltaire(Bradford Lyau, 2010)
25The TwilightMystique: Critical Essays
on the Novels and Films(ed. Amy M. Clarke, Marijane Osborn, 2010)
26The Mythic Fantasy of Robert Holdstock: Critical Essays
on the Fiction(ed. Donald E. Morse, Kálmán Matolcsy, 2011)
27Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future: Essays on Foresight
and Fallacy(ed. Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen, Amy Kit-sze Chan, 2011)
28Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film: A Critical Study(Roslyn Weaver, 2011)
29British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays
(ed. Tobias Hochscherf, James Leggott, 2011)
30Cult Telefantasy Series: A Critical Analysis of The Prisoner, Twin Peaks,
The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lost, Heroes, Doctor Whoand Star Trek (Sue Short, 2011)
Science Fiction
and the Prediction
of the Future
Essays on Foresight and Fallacy
Edited by
GARY WESTFAHL, WONG KIN YUEN,
and AMY KIT-SZE CHAN
CRITICALEXPLORATIONSIN
SCIENCEFICTIONANDFANTASY, 27
Donald E. Palumbo andC.W. Sullivan III, series editors
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
ALSOOFINTEREST
Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction(by Gary Westfahl;
McFarland, 2007)
Science Fiction and the Two Cultures: Essays on Bridging the Gap Between
the Sciences and the Humanities(edited by Gary Westfahl and George
Slusser; McFarland, 2009)
The Science of Fiction and the Fiction of Science: Collected Essays on SF
Storytelling and the Gnostic Imagination(by Frank McConnell, edited by
Gary Westfahl; McFarland, 2009)
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Science fiction and the prediction of the future : essays on
foresight and fallacy / edited by Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen
and Amy Kit-sze Chan.
p. cm. — (Critical explorations in science fiction and
fantasy ; 27)
[Donald Palumbo and C.W. Sullivan III, series editors]
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-5841-7
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
¡. Science fiction films—History and criticism. 2. Science
fiction—History and criticism. 3. Future in literature.
4. Forecasting in literature. I. Westfahl, Gary. II. Yuen,
Wong Kin. III. Chan, Amy Kit-sze.
PN¡995.9.S26S278 20¡¡
809.3'876209—dc22 20¡0048¡00
British Library cataloguing data are available
© 20¡¡Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen and Amy Kit-sze Chan. All
rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover illustration© 20¡¡EyeWire
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Table of Contents
Introduction: Of Futures Imagined, and Futures Inhabited
GARYWESTFAHL 1
I. Cosmic Visions
1. Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to
Predict the Future
GARYWESTFAHL 9
2. Emotional Dimensions of Transmimetic Fiction: Emotion,
Aesthetics, Ethics, and Rhetoric in Tales of Tomorrow’s
Science, Technology, and Technoscience
RICHARDL. MCKINNEY 23
3. The Internet and the Anagogical Myths of Science Fiction
KIRKHAMPTONANDCAROLMACKAY 41
4. Technobodies and the Anxieties of Performance
VERONICAHOLLINGER 52
5. Places of Alterity in Science Fiction
RICHARDL. MCKINNEY 64
II. The Practice of Prophecy
6. Future City Toyko: 1909 and 2009
SHARALYNORBAUGH 84
7. Rebooting “A Logic Named Joe”: Exploring the Multiple
Influences of a Strangely Predictive Mid–1940s Short
Story
DAVIDL. FERROANDERICG. SWEDIN 104
v
vi Table of Contents
8. Victims of a Globalized, Radicalized, Technologized
World, or, Why the Beatles Needed Help!
LYNNE LUNDQUIST 120
9. “A Journey Beyond the Stars”: 2001: A Space Odysseyand
the Psychedelic Revolution in 1960s Science Fiction
ROBLATHAM 128
10. The Endless Odyssey: The 2001 Saga and Its Inability to
Predict Humanity’s Future
GARYWESTFAHL 135
11. Intercultural and Interface: Kung Fu as Abstract Machine
WONGKINYUEN 171
12. Post-Genre Cinemas and Post-Colonial Attitude: Hong
Kong Meets Paris
VÉRONIQUEFLAMBARD-WEISBART 189
13. Writing, Weaving, and Technology
AMYKIT-SZECHAN 198
14. The Technological Contours of Contemporary Science
Fiction, or, The Science Fiction That Science Fiction
Doesn’t See
BROOKSLANDON 213
15. Thinking About the Smart Wireless World
GREGORYBENFORD 220
Bibliography of Works Related to Science Fiction and the
Prediction of the Future 229
Bibliography of Other Works Cited in the Text 241
About the Contributors 253
Index 255
Introduction
Of Futures Imagined, and
Futures Inhabited
GARY WESTFAHL
In 1954, anthropologist Kalervo Oberg introduced the term “culture shock”
to describe the severe discomfort felt by people who move into a culture very
unlike the one they were raised in. By the 1970s, futurist Alvin Toffler was
provocatively arguing that a similar sense of unease was now affecting almost
everyone in the contemporary world—because scientific and social innovations
arriving at an ever-accelerating rate were changing societies so much that, in
effect, all citizens were distressingly finding themselves in a culture significantly
different from the one they were familiar with. To describe this condition,
Toffler built upon Oberg’s insight to coin the term “future shock” and analyzed
this novel form of anxiety in a best-selling book with that title (1971). In the
decades since Toffler’s concept became prominent, his term has not entered
everyday discourse, but virtually all commentators embrace his central con-
clusion: that our civilization is today in a state of constant flux, and numerous
people are struggling because they cannot readily adjust to constantly changing
conditions.
Of course, new technologies and customs will be less upsetting if people
have been informed about their coming appearance and probable effects—
which means that some people should have been relatively immune from
difficulties in calmly accepting the various novelties being introduced into their
lives—namely, readers of science fiction. For supporters of the genre long argued
that one of science fiction’s primary purposes, and virtues, is that it enables
people to better prepare for the future with its plausible predictions of things
to come. This belief can be traced back to pioneering author and editor Hugo
Gernsback, whose original argument was even stronger: science fiction, he
claimed, not only predicted the future, but actually created it—by providing
scientists and inventors with imaginative ideas that they could proceed to trans-
1
2 Introduction
form into reality. As he explained while introducing a contest in his magazine
Amazing Stories,
The author who works out a brand new idea in a scienti fiction plot may be hailed
as an original inventor years later, when his brain-child will have taken wings and
when cold-blooded scientists will have realized the author’s ambition.
An author may not know how to build or make his invention of a certain apparatus
or instrument, but he may know how to predict, and often does predict, the use of
such a one. The professional inventor or scient ist then comes along, gets the stimulus
from the story and promptly responds with the material invention.1
As an unstated but obvious side-effect of this process, science fiction readers
were, by absorbing these stories, getting an advance look at coming scientific
developments.
Still, there were limitations in Gernsback’s expansive argument, since sci-
ence fiction was seen as only offering isolated predictions of future inventions,
not broader pictures of how these innovations might affect society or consid-
erations of possible changes in social conditions outside the realm of scientific
progress. Gernsback offered little more than hints that science fiction might
fulfill such wider goals when noting, for example, that science fiction “widen[s]
the young man’s horizon, as nothing else can” and “keeps [children] abreast of
the times.”2It would be left to his most noteworthy successor, writer and editor
John W. Campbell, Jr., to present a fuller explanation of the nature and value
of science fiction prediction, largely in his magazine Astounding Science Fic-
tion.
To be sure, Campbell happily accepted Gernsback’s notion that science
fiction might directly lead to new scientific innovations, maintaining in “The
Science of Science-Fiction” that “Science-fiction has the interesting character-
istic of causing its own predictions to come true” because future scientists “will
have read the magazines, seen the stories, and recognized the validity of the
science-fiction engineering!”3However, Campbell went beyond Gernsback first
in explaining that science fiction predictions merited scrutiny because writers
were not simply using their imaginations, but relying upon the scientific tech-
nique of extrapolation: “Science-fiction, being largely an attempt to forecast
the future, on the basis of the present, represents a form of extrapolation.”4
Furthermore, in envisioning scientific advances, science fiction writers were
considering “what the results look like when applied not only to machines, but
to human societies as well,” making their prophecies more likely to be both
more accurate and more helpful.5As a result, whenever major scientific break-
throughs were in the headlines, Campbell enjoyed pointing out that science
fiction readers, having read predictions of those developments, could immedi-
ately accept and understand them, unlike their startled and disoriented con-
temporaries. After the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945, he speculated in
“Atomic Age” that science fiction readers were now being consulted by neighbors
as experts on the subject, since science fiction stories had long featured such
Introduction (Westfahl) 3
weapons.6 When another spectacular demonstration of science fiction’s
prophetic powers emerged—the launch of Sputnik in late 1957, beginning the
era of space travel—Campbell again gloated that science fiction readers had
already known it was coming:
I think the people of the United States thought [science fiction writers] were kidding
[....] That nuclear weapons and space flight were amusing ideas to play with [...]
Apparently, they thought that science fiction wasan escape literature, and read it as
such.
It happens that science fiction’s core is just about the only non–escape literature
available to the general public today.7
Certainly, one might concede Campbell’s points that, in the cases of atomic
energy and space travel, science fiction had been prophetic, and that science
fiction readers for that reason were less surprised, and less concerned, when
these phenomena came into being than others who had not read science fiction.
However, since over half a century has passed since those triumphs of science
fiction prediction, we must now reconsider the overall accuracy and usefulness
of science fiction predictions as we move further into the twenty-first century.
Actually, it is easy to argue that science fiction has conspicuously failed to
anticipate the world we are now living in. Commentators routinely lament the
absence of predicted innovations as flying cars and rocket jets strapped on peo-
ple’s backs, though one must note that such naive visions were more common
in popular culture than the science fiction stories of pulp magazines and paper-
back novels. More significantly, science fiction, with few exceptions, predicted
that humanity would advance into space far more rapidly than has been the
case, while failing to envision the ways that computers would be developed,
miniaturized, and incorporated into all aspects of contemporary life—leading
to extravagant projections of a colonized solar system in the future with absurd
scenes of spaceship pilots frantically manipulating slide rules in order to recal-
culate their courses. Further, technological advances in fields ranging from bio-
engineering to nanotechnology that are now transforming our world rarely
figured in writers’ depictions of Earth’s future, and widely anticipated catas-
trophes like nuclear war and ruinous overpopulation have never materialized.
Overall, it seems, we now live in a twenty-first century which is very different
from the twenty-first centuries of earlier science fiction—which means that
the genre, despite the expansive promises of its champions, did not really pre-
pare people for a contemporary civilization of computer networks, terrorism,
and identity theft. Science fiction readers, in other words, may be just as vul-
nerable to the agonies of “future shock” as anyone else.
This volume will endeavor to address a number of questions raised by
what one might wryly describe as this unforeseen situation. If science fiction
writers, despite their celebrated expertise and abilities, have persistently faltered
in their efforts to predict the future, why has that been the case? Are there, in
fact, overlooked or rarely cited texts that did succeed in providing accurate