Sci-fi: Is it the ode to the future?
Mar 15, 2022
I like traveling on my rooftop at night whenever I have something sitting heavy on my chest. When I gaze at the stars, sitting a thousand galaxies far away, I feel oddly relaxed. My presence in this universe is akin to a mere blip and the problems with me are even more so of a minuscule speck. I can assume that most of us at one point in time must have been fascinated by the workings of the vast space spread across thousands of light-years ahead of us. As a child, I always chastised the sun and moon for following me wherever I went. Coming to the angsty rebelling teenage phase, and pitching up a tent in an alien’s house was always at the forefront of my mind whenever things were(and still) not going my way.
And no I am not yet another person to say that aliens have to exist. But we will slowly ease our way into the question: how much does the world of science fiction affect us?
When I was a young teen sci-fi movies were my go-to jam. Movies like The Matrix, the x-man series, marvel, and DC comic books were all my favorites and made me so excited to think there is a jaw-dropping astounding life of mutants and crop circles outside the monotonous daily chores, and the dreary cycle of eating, sleep, study and repeat. Sure then, I was consuming it at an alarming rate because I didn’t want to live in my reality but it has had an impact on my current life.
When I see a star move from the corner of my eye, my first instinct is, is it a UFO?
Jokes aside it is always an overwhelming question to ask ourselves are these things just an otherworldly phenomenon or is there more to what the situation holds?
Conventionally, Science fiction is a way of letting loose and indulging in a fantasy escape world. As Arthur Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) once said, "There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact, you might say that science fiction is an escape into reality... It's a fiction that does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact, I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality." I too think that the genre of sci-fi makes us think and more importantly feel. Feel about the question of how humanity today is going to shape tomorrow. It could be bad like the Netflix series Xlife in Pithha Kathalu; the harmful effects of VR destroying our existence or it could be for the better to reside on a giant starliner in space as seen in Wall-E. Who knows?
Science fiction like other genres of entertainment is imperative for voicing our thoughts, sometimes even in revolutionary eras. In 1972, when the US was still fighting the Vietnam War. In the same year, Le Guin offered her own “distanced” version of social reality in The Word for World is Forest, which depicts the attempted colonization of an inhabited alien planet by a macho, militaristic Earth society intent on conquering and violating the natural world – a semi-allegory for what the USA was doing at the time in South East Asia. the possibility of something new while staying close to reality is what makes it an even more liked genre. Topics like deforestation, waste mismanagement, pollution, water crisis, and nuclear wars, are the backbones of what inspires the filmmakers to depict the carelessness of humanity in a satirical way.
Sci-fi films have significantly impacted the current technology that people use today, from Star Trek's communicator inspiring the first cell phones to Total Recall inspiring driverless cars and Minority Report inspiring gesture-based UI's. Not forgetting Star Wars that have inspired innovative technological advancements such as AI in online Kazino, 3D chess boards, and holograms. The tech geniuses pick a few of the idealist technologies and bring them to life.
Our views on scientific progress indeed have a strong likelihood of getting transformed into a full-fledged creation in the future. I once read a comic strip of the late 20th century where the artist demonstrated various scenarios to be implemented with the advent of the 21st century. It included the students in a classroom wearing a cap connected to a machine to learn everything in an instant without needing books. We’ve not reached that stage but we’ve managed to make visors that do take us on a virtual reality tour. The sci-fi movie Contagion (2011) gives us a glimpse of what living in a pandemic could be like so many years before the deadly coronavirus even decided to break havoc on society. We can see that the sci-fi genre opens the door to future possibilities by triggering the human mind to think out of the box.
Let’s have a look at the cases of hoax news as a result of the idealization of the concept of aliens. These things are considered a plausible case in the bizarreness of the Bermuda Triangle. when any shiny thing in the universe is considered a UFO without looking for a clearer scientific explanation. We have to sketch a clear line between reality and fantasy.
In the end, I would like to quote Isaac Asimov (I, Robot, Nightfall) who said, “Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction -- its essence -- has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.” The question persists does sci-fi promote the advent of society or does it prove the presence of extraterrestrial elements in the universe and spread a worldwide disillusionment of the present generation?
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