Author: Dr Lothian

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“Racism is Dead.”

“Racism is dead.”

This is a sentiment that is held among quite a number of people in today’s society. To them, America as a whole has moved past its racist history and is moving forward. To the latter, I agree – America is better than it was prior to the Civil Rights Movement. However, that doesn’t mean that there is no racism in America. Racism is not dead.

Racism also extends beyond believing one’s own skin color is superior over another’s. Racism embodies cultural or ethnic superiority complexes as well. Furthermore, everyone harbors racist thoughts from time to time, to a certain degree. This is referred to as an implicit bias and does not necessarily make someone a bad person for having them. However, that being said, it is how we choose to act on those implicit biases that measures the character of who we are.

For my visionary fiction, I chose to conceive a story in which these implicit biases are apparent and held accountable. I also wanted to write a story that touched on recent events so that it would be relevant to the times we live in. In doing so, I decided to focus on the consequences of Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency. In the time before, during, and after Trump’s appointment as President of the United States, we have already seen instances in which bigotry has been exemplified and even celebrated. A few examples include the controversial “Muslim ban” and his defense of white nationalists. As a result of Trump’s actions, more and more people are becoming less afraid to show their racist views in public. In order to reflect this rise of overt racism, I chose to center the events of my story in a climate that would further escalate tensions.

The setting of my story takes place in 2024, around the time of the presidential elections. The current president, a Democrat, spent a majority of his tenure undoing the divisive actions of Trump’s presidency through reform that encouraged more immigrants to come to the United States, in an effort to attract more talent to the country and boost its affluence. However, just before the presidential elections of 2024, a string of terrorist attacks strike America at its core. News breaks out that the group responsible for the attacks has strong ties to a radical Islamic terrorist organization. As a result, a lot of Americans are outraged for the current President’s lax policy on immigration, essentially stating that he allowed these attacks to happen. When it comes time to the elections, a new contender to the presidency ends up winning the election, largely due to his platform of increasing security in America. Once the new President is elected to office, he passes an executive order that allows him to overstep certain constitutional boundaries for the sake of national security. He names it the Nationalist Act. This act spells bad news for a number of people who belong to minority groups, including the main character, Musa Al-Haqq.

Musa is a Black, Muslim teenager living in Chicago, Illinois during the events of the story. Musa becomes alarmed when the President announces that every person must wear an implant under their skin. The President claims that the artificial intelligence, or AI, housed within the chip will be able to analyze a person’s behavioral and demographic data in order to spot a potential terrorist and prevent the attack from happening, with a success rate of 95%. However, Musa isn’t surprised to hear that a large majority of the America was not opposed to the President’s declaration, given the public’s fear of what happened in the previous months regarding the terrorist attacks. Ever since the attacks, Islamophobia has increased by 400% over the past year. Musa has no choice but to submit to the President’s declaration, because if he doesn’t, then he will be thrown in jail for his dissent.

A few months pass and Musa continues to live his life as he normally would. In fact, the news outlets proclaim that the implant has successfully thwarted 11 terrorist plots before they could be carried out. The public seems to be generally pleased with the President’s plan if it meant that their security was better. However, one day out of the blue, Musa’s implant flags him as a potential terrorist. As a result he is thrown into jail and interrogated by the authorities even though Musa has done nothing wrong.

As it turns out, the AI was predisposed to harbor suspicions against certain “traits.” These included Musa’s race and religion, as he was a Black Muslim. Upon clearing Musa, the authorities free him, but it is not without consequence. The media puts his story on spotlight, as they question the veracity of the AI within the implant. A huge controversy spills over the nation as people argue whether or not it’s okay for one person to suffer if it means that the majority of the people flagged are actually terrorists. After numerous hate mails and racist diatribes directed to him, Musa commits suicide.

The story is supposed to highlight the dangers of implicit biases, especially in a technological setting such as in artificial intelligence. If these systems are not monitored closely, then false positives such as the one in Musa’s case could prove to be harmful, or even deadly. Furthermore, the story is supposed to call attention to the idea that the actions of a handful of people don’t dictate the intentions of the whole group – a concept that many people overlook in today’s society.

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Whoooo’s There?

I found a bird in my house the other day. I saved it from my cats and got it to fly out of a window after a while. The next day, my parents found a baby bird (alive) in the house. I thought about how distressed the larger (assumed mother?) must have been while I was trying to get it out of the house. I couldn’t figure out why the bird wouldn’t fly out of the window. However, now I realize that it didn’t want to leave its baby behind. Does the bird think the humans will kill her baby? Does she think the baby will starve to death? Does she think the cats got her baby? Will she find the baby if we put it back outside?

This made me think of how humans would react if roles were reversed. What if we ventured into someone/something’s house where we didn’t belong. What if the beings we invaded we stronger and more powerful than us?

My idea for a piece of visionary fiction would explore the ideas of humans constantly venturing where we don’t belong and doing so with entitlement/selfishness.

The setting:

An abandoned city located in the United States. There was an atomic bomb that wiped out the entire city population. Because of radiation, nobody was allowed into the city or even within the state surrounding the city. Even government officials were too scared to go into the city because of all the fear the attack generated. People tried to forget that the city even existed, and it hadn’t been seen or spoken of in years.

Characters:

Don: He was poor and tried to get money to buy a house for his pregnant girlfriend and future child at the time. He lied to his girlfriend about finding a real job. He became desperate and decided to rob a nice house in the next neighborhood. Little did he know that the homeowner was inside while he was trying to steal. The homeowner attacked him. Don hit the homeowner with a bat to free himself. However, he accidentally killed the homeowner. After being in jail for 12 years, he is released. Now that he is free, he wants to make a better life for himself and his son. His son’s mother won’t let him see his son because she thinks he is a bad influence.

Jacob: Don’s son. He is quiet and timid. He misses his father and blames his mother for not allowing him to see his father. He does not know the full story of his father’s incarceration. He knows that his father robbed someone’s house, but he does not know that he also killed the homeowner. Don’s father thinks he knows the whole story, but Jacob’s mother kept it from Jacob to spare his feelings.

Plot:

Don tried unsuccessfully to get a job. Nobody will hire him because of his criminal history. He decides to kidnap his son and go to live in the abandoned city. He believes that the radiation will no longer harm them and that there are probably valuable items left behind in the rubble.

Jacob is nervous, but excited to get to know his father and go on an adventure. After exploring the city for a while, they notice a bunch of buildings in great condition. They wonder how the bomb managed to not harm these specific buildings. Maybe they didn’t survive the bombing. Maybe they were built by humans. Were there other people living there?

The buildings are inhabited by giant owls. Don and Jacob hide from them and see a group of them kill and eat a deer. They are incredibly intelligent and speak to each other in scary, chilling voices. They know about human societies and can even mock human speech. They are angry at how humans treat other birds and hunt them for sport. They only kill other animals for food. Don notices that they have some special device that they all seem to worship. He plans on stealing it and selling it to the US government.

Don and Jacob are hiding from the giant owls, when Don accidentally mentions how he regrets killing the homeowner. Jacob is angry and scared to be around his dad after hearing this. He runs away from his dad, farther into the bird’s territory. Don can’t find Jacob. Don sees a giant owl faced with his back toward him. He accidentally trips, and the owl turns his head around to face Don. It chases Don out of the building because he knows that the other owls will want to hurt him. Don leaves his son behind and tries to think of a plan to get him back.

The owl that chased Don finds Jacob. He doesn’t know what to do. Did Don leave for good?  Will the other owls accept Jacob since he’s only a kid? Should he just leave Jacob there to die and not get involved?

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Challenge Yourself to Question Everything

“The decolonization of the imagination is the most dangerous and subversive form there is: for it is where all other forms of decolonization are born. Once the imagination is unshackled, liberation is limitless.” – Walida Imarisha, Octavia’s Brood.

The ability to be able to think critically and challenge what is believed to be concrete is a truly dangerous ability. It allows us to challenge authority, to spark change, and to break the ways of old. Maybe that’s why we were told to fall in line while growing up. Because change is often an unpredictable thing – but often times it’s also necessary.

Social progress has always been a byproduct of change. Without change, we wouldn’t be living in the world we’re in right now. Martin Luther King created social progress in the Civil Rights Movement when he challenged the systemic racism that persisted in America during the mid-20th century. Mohandas Gandhi created social progress in decolonizing British rule in India when he challenged the imperialistic grip placed on his nation. For social progress to occur, it takes a period of time before change takes place. With the development of science fiction and visionary fiction, as Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown call it, social change is able to take place even faster than before.

Science fiction and genres like it help to expedite social progress and change because they actively question current power structures and environments. As Brown puts it, “Science fiction is the perfect “exploring ground,” as it gives us the opportunity to play with different outcomes and strategies before we have to deal with the real-world costs.” Imagination flourishes in literature and thus we are exposed to these revolutionary ideas that question the very nature of human society as it stands. It also expedites social progress by broadening the scope of activism.

Science fiction allows for the dissemination of ideas to people that might not normally be able to access those thoughts, whether it’s because of educational barriers or some other obstacle. Streeby puts it best when she writes, “At a time when many despair that climate change science is too difficult for people without advanced science degrees to understand, Butler’s critical archiving activity as well as her imaginings of forms of symbiosis beyond possessive individualism are especially illuminating.” Streeby is commenting on the fact that Octavia Butler’s work allows people to process scientific ideas without getting lost in the technical jargon that a lot of scientific papers possess.

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Practice What You Preach

You speak as though religion was created to unite humanity as a collective – yet, you espouse words of division and hatred. You speak of spreading peace amongst the land – yet, you attack those who do not share the same beliefs as you. You speak against the evils of hypocrisy – yet, you struggle to admit that you conspire in the very act you condemn. To the religious zealots of the world, I implore you to cease the messages of hating or looking down upon people who do not share the same view as you. By treating others with malice, you only serve to weaken the very foundation of your religion and drive the people you aim to convert away from you.

Hate begets hate begets hate. By preaching violence unto those who do not believe in the same faith, you are only perpetuating more violence. In propagating the act of violence, you are actively working against the notion of peace that you claim your religion creates. Take the novel Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor for example. In the novel, the protagonist, Adaora, criticizes the abusive advice given by the bishop of her husband’s church. She says, “How does him slapping me in the face bring peace, Father? Eh? How can a man slap his wife ‘in the name of Jesus’?” (Okorafor, 56). Adaora is right. How can peace be brought upon by violence? Simple. It cannot. The very act of harming another individual goes against the nature of peace itself. Similarly, violence cannot be justified through the verses of a scripture because there exist other verses that forbid such violent acts.

Justifying violence through scripture is also unacceptable because there are other verses in scripture that condemn that very behavior. In a research journal written by Henry Munson, he writes, “The same Gospel of Matthew that declares ‘His blood be on us, and on our children’ (27:25) also declares ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you’ (5:44). Similarly, the same Quran that states ‘slay the idolaters wherever you find them’ (9:5) also states ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion’ (2:256).” Just as there are verses that can be interpreted as justifying violence, there are verses that prohibit committing acts of violence. Munson goes on to say that “one often has to wrestle strenuously with ancient sacred texts to make them tolerant and tolerable in an age when the slaughter of the Other is no longer generally deemed an act of righteous zeal.” Munson is saying that because these scriptures were revealed long ago in a different context than today, the interpretation of these verses becomes difficult to truly understand at face value. That being said, it is imperative to interpret these texts in a modern day context – one where senseless acts of violence are not acceptable by any standard. Furthermore, maintaining an “Us versus Them” mentality only serves to drive away others from your belief.

Maintaining an “Us versus Them” mentality only serves to divide people and further drive a wedge between the followers of your faith and those who do not follow. The divide created by such a divisive mentality is seen in Lagoon when Okorafor writes about the relationship between Adaora and her husband Chris: “Neither of them had ever called the other evil or illogical … until the last year after Chris had had the scare on the airplane from Lagos to Owerri and became born again. Since then, things had unraveled,” (Okorafor, 170). Chris’s abusive behavior towards Adaora only began after he became religious to the point of extreme devotion. While there is nothing wrong with being devoted to your personal beliefs, there is something inherently wrong when those beliefs force you to ostracize and even harm those who do not share the same ideals. As a result of Chris’s abuse, Adaora strayed further and further from the religion that Chris believed in and Father Oke preached about. Nnedi Okorafor even wrote in her blog about Lagoon that what she fears the most about certain forms of Christianity is not the bizarreness of them, but rather that too often they promote the hate of indigenous traditions and spiritualties of Nigeria. Consequently, Okorafor highlights these extreme sects in a negative light within her book, essentially dispelling her readers from even considering about following such a hateful ideology. If your duty as a representative of your religion is to bring as many people into your fold, then there is a clear dissonance when your actions lead others away from your guidance.

As a devout believer, your goal is to present your religion in a way that attracts others to your cause. How can you achieve this goal if your actions contradict the teachings of your belief? How can you expect to draw people in if at the same time you push them away? You cannot. Therefore, you must abandon the hateful rhetoric and instead embrace compassionate teachings. For if you continue to burn those around you, what will be left except ashes?

Continue reading “Practice What You Preach”

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Listen to All Sides of the Story

A concept that I found to be important while reading the beginning of Lagoon and watching the subsequent TED talk by the author, Nnedi Okorafor, was the notion that there are multiple viewpoints to a single story and how crucial it is to be able to understand and listen to all the different facets surrounding that story.

Nnedi Okorafor opens up her novel Lagoon with a short introduction about how the name for the city of Lagos in Nigeria came from the Portuguese word for “lagoon”. She then goes on to criticize the naming of the city, for the Portuguese “could not come up with a more creative name.” Okorafor then comments about how the colonizers were so ignorant as to not even think of asking the natives for suggestions of what to call their own land.

This short excerpt from the novel fascinated me because of the way Okorafor describes the nature of colonization in the past. She does so in a way that exemplifies the innate ignorance of history as we know it today. Simple constructs such as city names like that of Lagos were made without the consideration of the very people who had lived their whole lives there. This notion of a “white history” is important because it is what differentiates traditional science fiction texts from those rooted in Afrofuturism.

Traditional science fiction, whose authors include the likes of Isaac Asimov, George Orwell, and H.G. Wells, are rooted in a predominantly white, male context. Afrofuturism differs in the sense that it imagines a historical context that hasn’t been influenced by white colonialism – a “what-if” scenario that hypothesizes the advancement of African civilization without the consequences of outside influence.

Nnedi Okorafor makes references back to this difference between the sub-genres in her TED talk. What’s interesting is that in the TED talk, she doesn’t outright put one sub-genre over the other. She merely explains that the two are different in some regards, but that both have merits in the way they form their speculations. A commentary that I appreciated was the octopus analogy she mentioned in her talk.

The octopus analogy goes by saying that, like humans, octopi are among some of the most intelligent creatures on earth. The difference between octopus and human intelligence is that they diverged down different paths in the evolutionary line, and therefore the very foundation of that intelligence is different. I took this to mean that just because the foundation of some ideas are inherently different, it doesn’t mean that there can’t be something to take from it.

To put things into a more modern perspective, we can’t be so ignorant as to not consider viewpoints that might be different than ours. Doing so only limits our understanding as a whole and serves to diminish critical thinking in its entirety. Instead, we should strive to try and understand where the opposition or other side is coming from and try to learn from a viewpoint that is different from our own.

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When Helping Hurts

While it is important to look out for others, it is also important to recognize when help can turn into hurt. Too often it is easy to accept an easy lie than to swallow a hard truth. A pivotal moment in The Space Traders by Derrick Bell calls attention to this phenomenon.

The dilemma faced in the story surrounds an event in which aliens come down to the United States and offer to exchange unforeseen bounties in return for the turnover of all Black people in America. The aliens do not give a reason for their demand, only that they will not enforce it, e.g. the choice is completely up to the leaders of the United States. Forced to consider the option of relinquishing the Black population of America for incredible treasures, the President of the United States convenes with his all-white cabinet plus an esteemed Black professor, Gleason Golightly, of the same party as his. Although Professor Gleason had agreed with many of the policies enacted by the conservative President, including those that seemed to be targeted against Black people, he remains opposed to the proposal that the American government should hand over the Black population to the aliens. In his address to the Anti-Trade Coalition, a group of black and liberal white politicians, Golightly explains his stance on the matter.

During his speech, Golightly says to the crowd, “I realize that our liberal white friends continue to reassure us. ‘This is America,’ they tell us. ‘It can’t happen here.’ … For them, liberal optimism is smothered by their life experience.” This quote resonated to me because it highlights a very important concept that stands in the way of social progressive moments – complacency. Golightly claims that the white liberals who are reassuring the Black people are not contributing to the cause which they claim to be in support of. Instead, they serve to dismiss any genuine worry and fear that stems as a result of what essentially is a representation of the systematic oppression that Black people have endured for years and years in America. Golightly continues on to say that it is easy for the white liberals to be so optimistic because they are clouded by their own positive life experiences when it comes to their interaction with Black people. In other words, they can’t fully experience what it’s like to experience life as a Black person living in America, and therefore struggle to fully empathize to their struggles.

This notion of ‘helping to hurt’ is significant because of the social implications it has in modern day society. You have people on social media reassuring other people who are disadvantaged in some form or another not to worry about the injustices that are occurring to them on the daily. What this serves to do is to create a false sense of hope for the disadvantaged people who may actually be adversely effected and to create an aura of complacency amongst the outsiders looking in. If outsiders are convinced that the issues occurring in society do not warrant reason for genuine worry and fear, then they are less likely to become involved in the matter and will instead ignore what could be a serious injustice.

While it is important to be able to empathize with a group of people who are in need of help, it is also crucial to understand what actions will hurt and which will help. Instead of appeasing the concerns of those who are deprived by society, we must seek to understand their concern and to aid them in overcoming it.

As Martin Luther King Jr. put it, “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

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A Contemporary Film on the Concept of Autocritique

 

The purpose of an adaptation of an older work is to convey ideas and/or themes of the previous work towards a different audience in a more contemporary setting. I chose to adapt Ursula Le Guin’s essay, Is Gender Necessary? Redux, into a film in order to express the concept of autocritique in a way that would resonate with a younger audience in today’s society.

I chose film as my medium because I believed that it was a great way to get the audience more emotionally invested with the story if they could process the message visually and aurally as opposed to just reading off of text. Similarly, using film as a medium would appeal to a broader audience as more people today tend to watch in the form of film or TV rather than reading textual sources like books or essays. I decided against using TV as a medium because just as Le Guin’s essay was relatively brief and succinct, the adaptation should be as well. Having a prolonged TV series would also pose a risk of having viewers tune out of watching a serial production, whereas a movie or film can be digested within one setting.

Furthermore, I would change certain elements from the original essay in my film adaptation to make it more relevant to today’s society. One way in which I would change the original script is to have the main character’s point of view be that of a teenager in high school, instead of a POV from someone older like Ursula Le Guin. Doing so would also make the film more relatable to a younger audience, which is what I intend to focus my film around. I chose to appeal to a younger audience because I believe that they are more impressionable and are the future of the world. If I can convince them to embrace the process of autocritique and being able to keep an open mind, then my hope for a brighter, more inclusive future is that much more attainable. Another change would be to incorporate a more digital culture in the story; chiefly the concept of online anonymity and the ability to freely express opinions or beliefs with less apprehension towards an immediate consequence. In my film, the act of hiding behind a computer monitor is brought into question when the main character experiences a traumatic event which forces him to reflect and reanalyze his actions – essentially a form of autocritique. Finally, I intend to incorporate the current political/cultural atmosphere of today in which arguments are becoming more and more polarized to the point where neither side is listening to each other. A key element in my film that drives the main character down the path he takes involves the pack mentality that envelops both opposing viewpoints on a point of contention – the treatment of people that identify as LGBTQ+. While I believe that these changes are necessary to an adaptation of Le Guin’s essay, there are also some features that I would maintain.

The most important aspect of Le Guin’s essay that I would maintain is the main character’s journey in the process of autocritique itself. In Le Guin’s essay prior to the redux, Le Guin defended the choices she made in her novel The Left Hand of Darkness. She was heavily criticized for a variety of choices, from having used a male pronoun to describe the androgynous characters to ignoring the possibility of homosexual relations between people in kemmer and instead only showing heteronormative relationships. In response, Le Guin defended her choices in creating the novel and offered statements such as, “I call Gethenians ‘he’ because I utterly refuse to mangle English by inventing a pronoun for ‘he/she,’” or that the sexual setup was a “thought-experiment” rather than a projection of her personal beliefs. It wasn’t until the redux of her original essay that she went back and corrected her stance on the matters. The important lesson to take away from Le Guin’s autocritique was that it exemplified how a person could be open to criticism from an opposing POV and use that vulnerability to spark discussion and change. In order to keep my film true to the nature of Le Guin’s original essay, I would structure the plot of the film to take after a similar series of events with the main character.

The general structure of my film would follow the POV of Mike, a teenage boy living in the southern United States set in 2018. Growing up in the South, Mike had very traditional views of sexuality and gender believing that anything outside of the established norm was no different than a mental illness of some sort. One day, Mike decides to make an anonymous online post about his beliefs on sexuality and gender. His post receives both criticism and praise from the online community. He personally receives scathing remarks and threats from various people online telling him to take down the offensive post. His supporters tell him not to delete the post and to ignore the “snowflakes” telling him otherwise. Angered by his critics, Mike decides to post again, this time with even more vitriolic speech in his response to the people that opposed his views. Sometime later, Mike finds out that one of his closest childhood friends committed suicide for an unknown reason. Upon further investigation, it turns out that his friend was a closeted gay who saw Mike’s post and decided that it was the tipping point for him and committed suicide. Upon finding this out, Mike is fraught with grief knowing that he was the cause of his friend’s suicide. Mike realizes his wrongdoings and tries to make amends by deleting his old posts. Knowing that he will never be able to make full reparations, Mike becomes devoted to facilitating civil discourse between his peers on various topics, such as gender and sexuality, all the while keeping an open mind to viewpoints different than his.

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What Does it Mean to be Equal?

A scene that I thought was profound occured in Chapter 13 of The Left Hand of Darkness. The event took place shortly after the main protagonist, Ai, was arrested by guards and taken to Kundershaden Prison. En route to the prison, Ai was forced to take refuge inside a dark, decrepit van with twenty-five other prisoners.

The tone was set as the journey began when one of the prisoners died from hemorrhaging due to previous injuries inflicted upon by the guards, presumably. More importantly, it was noted that once the prisoner was decided to no longer be of saving, the rest of the prisoners disregarded his suffering as “there was nothing to be done.” The only person who offered some semblance of care was Ai, who took the grieving man’s head onto his knees so that he may die more peacefully. Upon reading this passage, I immediately thought of how careless the other prisoners were to not even try to ail the man in any way. Going forward, I thought that this apathetic behavior was all that would be shown from these prisoners. Therefore I was shocked when I found out that they could be cooperative and kind to one another a few paragraphs later.

When the van got too cold, the prisoners would huddle together for warmth – even going as far as to note who was more susceptible to the cold and to put them in the middle. When the meager jug of water was passed around inside the van, “no one ever tried to get much more than his share,” which exemplified how they were unselfish on some accords. However, in that same paragraph, it is said that when one prisoner kept missing his opportunity to get a share of the water, nobody bothered to see that he got a portion. It occurred to me that the prisoners only showed kindness if it didn’t get in the way of their own needs and ambitions, so to say.

This concept is underlined even more when Ai says, “It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have.” An interpretation of this quote could be seen as humans only act out of kindness when they have nothing else to lose for it. That if caring for a sickly person meant that you had to exert more energy than you needed to, then it wasn’t worth helping them; but if you had something to gain from cooperation, like warmth or water, then it was the time to act kind.

After reading this scenario, it made me think back to more recent times when people who were privileged grew frustrated when affirmative action was given to people who were relatively disparaged to themselves. They thought that affirmative action meant unfair treatment, when in fact the playing ground was never the same to begin with. So, if giving aid to those who are disadvantaged is an act of inequality, then what does it truly mean to be equal?

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Science Fiction or Real Life?

One of the most interesting ideas of the first chapter in Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction was the prospect that science fiction can predict the future. In the reading, Hugo Gernsback, one of the great sci-fi magazine publishers, describes science fiction (or commonly known at the time as scientification) as enabling scientific change, whereas most people believed that scientific advancements allowed for science fiction texts to be made at all. What especially stood out to me was the fact that inscribed above each editorial of his magazines was the phrase, “Extravagant Fiction Today – Cold Fact Tomorrow”.

To me this is a very powerful saying because it displays the very power that science fiction has in influencing reality. A common theme in many of the science fiction works we’ve read in class so far is the concept that science fiction’s purpose is to get us thinking critically, to spark new innovations in society and technology. Furthermore, science fiction is incredible because of its ability to inspire creativity and imagination in others.

Some real-life technologies that were first conceived in science fiction. http://images.mentalfloss.com/sites/default/files/styles/insert_main_wide_image/public/sci-fi-transport-technology.jpg

A quote in the reading from Jack Williamson, a science fiction writer in the 20th century, states that after he started reading classical science fiction novels from older writers like Verne and Wells, he “began dreaming up and writing on [his] own.” Following that quote, another science fiction writer, Frederik Pohl, described the genre as an
“irremediable virus.” Both sentiments play into the idea that science fiction is an infectious source of energy for creativity and imagination.

The creative nature of many science fiction novels are often what keeps readers invested in the genre. For example, in the science fiction series Red Rising by Pierce Brown, there is a weapon called the razor which can transform from a two-meter long whip into a one-meter long rigid blade that can cut through anything with the flick of a bioelectric impulse. To many people, the inner mechanisms of how such a technology could work is beyond the scope of comprehension, but when introduced to us in a science fiction setting, we are forced to contemplate about how it might. This brings me to my final point: the allure of science fiction also allows for a more widespread audience to become exposed to more technical or scientific concepts that normally would be too hard to digest alone.

A crucial aspect of science fiction is its ability to condense a plethora of information into a form that is more easily digested to the ordinary person. Hugo Gernsback describes science fiction as “instructive” and great for “supplying knowledge that we might not otherwise obtain … in a very palatable form.” This depiction of science fiction as a form of enlightenment to concepts and terminologies unbeknownst to us is important because it ultimately broadens the appeal for the subject matter inside a given work of science fiction. An example of this phenomenon includes the film Interstellar in which there is a considerable amount of scientific understanding embedded into the plot, but not too much to where the reader can still understand the main plot, which is that humanity needs to find another planet to live on because climate change on Earth has made life unsustainable. The sci-fi film therefore allows a lay watcher to comprehend the issues of why climate change is an issue in an entertaining fashion.

A poster for the film “Interstellar” directed by Christopher Nolan. https://therealsasha.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/interstellar-main-one-sheet.jpg

The ability of science fiction to create such an influence in real life makes the genre so much more interesting and powerful.

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Is It Really for the Best?

Often we find ourselves wanting to believe that the choices we make are truly the right choices. We want to believe that the causes we believe in are righteous and that we are just in trying to uphold them.

But are we really?

Sometimes we’re so eager to achieve our goals that we never stop to think about the repercussions of our actions. A central motif in Octavia Butler’s short story, The Book of Martha, is that of myopia – characterized by nearsightedness or a lack of foresight.

In The Book of Martha, God selects our protagonist, Martha, to devise a plan in which humanity will be saved from themselves. However, every time Martha contrives of a solution to a problem that is afflicting humanity, God introduces scenarios in which the solution may actually bring more harm to certain people. For example, when Martha decides to solve the issue of overpopulation by restricting couples to only having two children at most, God asks her what will happen to the people negatively affected by the edict; such as couples who have seriously disabled children, or women who give birth as a result of rape, etc. Martha’s failure to understand the implications of her actions could prove to be disastrous had God not intervened to enlighten her of what may happen. Another work of science fiction that explores the theme of myopia is the Red Rising series by Pierce Brown.

The Red Rising series takes place in the future where most of our solar system has been colonized by humans. However, the dark nature of how humanity ascended to such heights lies in the fact that the Reds, the lowest caste in the Society, slave away in horrible conditions for the benefits of everyone above them, including those of the highest caste, Gold. The protagonist of the story, Darrow, is a Red from Mars who embarks on a mission to dismantle the Society’s structure and release the chains that have been placed upon the lower castes in an effort to bring equality to the solar system. At the end of the first trilogy, he eventually succeeds in his mission and liberates the inner rim of the solar system.

The caste system of “Red Rising”. Each pair of rows starting from the top to the bottom comprises of the highColors, midColors, and lowColors, respectively. https://pennydreadfulbooks.files.wordpress.com/2014/03/pyramid-allcolors.png

Sounds like a perfect ending right?

Well, not everything is all fine and dandy in the aftermath of the collapsed Society. In the first book of the second trilogy that picks up ten years after the ending of the previous book, we begin to learn of the various consequences of Darrow’s actions. The recently liberated Reds are placed into refugee camps that aren’t too much better than their old townships in the mines below the surface of Mars. On top of that, the disintegration of the hierarchy means that the Obsidian caste who were bred for war are let loose, terrorizing civilian ships in the outer reaches of the inner rim. Furthermore, we find out that the lowColors of the outer rim live contentedly because the highColors respect the lower castes and give a sense of purpose to their duty.

All these consequences force us, the readers, to question whether or not Darrow’s “righteous” quest of liberating the solar system was truly for the best. Similar to Martha, Darrow failed to see the entire picture of what they were trying to do. But unlike the first story, people died.

These works of science fiction warn us to be more cognizant of our actions. Sure, we can deport countless families from our country because we fear the actions of a few. But what becomes of the innocents who bear the brunt of these callous actions?

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