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Science fiction is the literature of change. What happens to a fictitious scientist who discovers an entirely new automobile technology? He or she should be able to predict the likely repercussions of this new technology. Science is governed by certain laws, which are proven to hold under certain conditions, which are testable.
How do these laws happen? Somebody somewhere must have enormously dreamed about such likelihood of such natural relationships. This presents science as the result of science fiction despite the fact that science fiction is also dependent on certain established laws of science.
Going by the words of Hopkins “science of fiction is a genre of fiction in which the stories often tell about science and technology of the future- these stories involve partially true-partially fictions laws or theories of science” (2005, p.13). Perhaps more critical is that the endeavor of science is to provide an explanation for the nature of the world as it appears.
On the other hand, its corollaries aim at deploying these established explanations to create technologies that aid in the improvement of the human condition.
Therefore, when people fantasize about technologies of future through science fiction, they merely do not infer for the improvement of science. Rather, they tend to deploy the existing knowledge in science to predict certain future discoveries that would take the human condition concerns to even greater heights.
The plot development of science fiction takes a different route recounting both the past and present. The genre also incorporates various elements related to the human condition in future because of exploitation of the science related technologies among them the effects of latest discoveries, science developments and happenings.
As Ramachandran Reckons, “science fiction texts are often set in the future, in space, in a different world, or in a different universe or dimension” (2006, p.51). In this context, it has little interest in the development of future actual scientific laws but rather focus on impacts of imagined or even actual present science on individual or even the wider society. Arguably, this focus is more ardently inclined on the human condition.
Human condition here refers to fostering the maintenance of the well being of mankind states of “being as moderately smart, moderately conscious, moderately creative, physically weak, emotional, social, and mortal animals participating in an ongoing evolutionary process absent any grand purpose or design” (Hopkins 2005, p.13). This way, the consequential purposes of man creation are needed be enhanced by science without curtailing any of the purpose.
People have different things that they need to accomplish when alive. Science, therefore, needs to help man realize all this without their impairment. In Hopkins’ terms, these things are reflected by reason that “We are born to live, eat, excrete, think, feel, create, emote, organize, rank, compete, cooperate, and die” (2005, p.13).
When science fiction genres recount certain scientific failures, are they not attempting to give a standoff of evident scenarios behind the curtailing and or interfering with the reasons of why humankind is born? Critics of science fiction argue and pose questions seeking responses as to why proponents of the fiction genre need to write things that are “unpublishable”.
They claim, “more harm has been done in science by those who make a fetish of skepticism, aborting ideas before they are born than by those who gullibly accept untested theories” (Ramachandran 2006, p.48).
Perhaps with this skepticism, a clear distinction between the endeavors of science and fiction science comes out, further amplifying the fact that Science fiction has less to do with science and more to do with an endless reworking of the human condition.
When a culture undergoes transformations because of scientific developments coupled with new technological innovations, perhaps people also need to undergo more even advanced sophistication. In fact, this is the basis of science fiction.
Many people would tend to contend with this argument since it is crucial for people to manage such technologies in an attempt to reserve the noble role of humankind: to control the world or even have an ample understanding of it. Now, it is may be crucial to Deviate from the highly defended branch of human knowledge: Science.
Arguably, inclusions of the human elements in the Science fiction perhaps also adds weight to the argument that science fiction has little to do with science but rather on the continuous endeavor to improve the human condition. Take for instance some of the post holocaust tales. Consistent with Ramachandran argument, these tales “portray cultures that understand and control less of the world than we do; the scientific element consists of our understanding of their world, and of how it arose out of our world” (2006 p. 49).
Fantasizing a world of the holocaust in future entails crediting ample time at present to ‘hallucinate’ about a more worse holocaust world of the future to take prerequisite measures to avoid the re-occurrence of such a scenario. The chief purpose for this is not the generation of facts, as science would demand, but rather in an effort to protect and improve the human condition in the future.
This means that the main chore in the science fiction is prevent things from getting out of hand; always ensuring some way of monitoring and controlling science discoveries and technologies by provoking man to think more than the technologies or even the discoveries or rather making him or her remain superior to the former two.
The world fantasized by George Orwell’s in the Nineteen Eighty Four is dystopia tantamount to the world that he lived in 1948. In this world, instances of both passive and active forces of coercion and oppressive control systems are dominant.
People abuse or rather misuse technology with almost everybody having incapacities to take control of the technology, which advances more rapidly than the rate of people’s evolution in terms of their mental knowhow. This state is analogous to the police force body existing in a nation of citizens who overpowers it.
In this context, George Orwell’s perhaps well illustrates that the goal of science fiction is far isolated from being concerned with science but more to do with an endless reworking of the human condition. In George Orwell’s essence, the best human condition is fostered when people hail in utopia world. In Nineteen Eighty Four, perhaps similar to conditions of technology outdoing human capacity “children organize themselves with intents of spying their parents (Orwell 2003, p.195).
This creates a feeling of a world that is harsh to motherhood. Looking at less famous novels done by George Orwell’s among them Catalonia and homage, his opposition to the totalitarian regimes is evident: something extended to Nineteen Eighty Four. “The ministry of truth” (Orwell 2003, p.87), reframes stories to suit the continued existence of Doublethink: who are a menace to the life of humankind condition.
From the supporting evidence explored by consideration of instances where the various branches of science existing knowledge overpowers the human capacity or realism, The Physics of Star Trek places questions on the interrelationships of science fiction and science.
While biological science attempts to explain earth inhabited by living organisms by scrutinizing their differences through moving from general to particular, such particulars are found to pose threats to the human condition in the fiction science which tends to overlook beyond the current scientific approaches. In The Physics of Star Trek, some technological innovations are impractical even to the most sophisticated civilizations.
For instance, Krauss (2007) claim that “dematerializing” a person for transport would require about as much energy as is released by a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb” (p.67). The challenge is how to contain such technologies to suit human conditions: this being the main concern of fiction science.
Thinking of it differently, The Physics of Star Trek takes us to the concerns of technology overtaking human capacity. As a way of example, bringing Newton’s laws into perspectives, their relation is acceptable in science. They bind any physical object in motion. This is science knowledge based on what people already know.
Though fiction science will employ such knowledge, it extends into the future to question how technologies through deploying these laws would affect human conditions. For instance, it is common for people to clear off roads when they see an automobile approaching. In science, it is perhaps possible to calculate the rate of deceleration to avoid hitting a pedestrian who fails to clear the road.
On the other hand, in fiction science, we think of super speed automobile that perhaps travels at a speed of light that people have invented because of technology and science advancements. Most likely, humankind would not have evolved to the extent of managing to respond to stimuli in such a quick speed to initiate the process of decelerating the automobile before hitting the pedestrian. This is where technology exceeds human capacity.
Arguably, consequently, science fiction has less to do with science but more to do with to do with an endless reworking of the human condition. Putting a factor of advancement in technology perhaps to increase the rate of may be typing speed due to the advancement in technology and science puts human capacity in paradox.
However, science can permit it as evidenced by microchip production technology. The question is whether advancement in future technology will suit humanity in terms of bettering his or her condition. This is the concern of science fiction!
Think of science fiction genre scholars such as George Orwell’s in his ‘classic tale of a future world gone horribly wrong’ or simply’ Nineteen Eighty Four. When he fantasizes of the future world in 1948, he perhaps attempts not to criticize science and its failures he claims among them the demise of the patient with advanced Parkinson state or even the 1928 St Francis dam break (Orwell 2003, p.47).
Rather he dreams of a future world free from communism, totalitarian leadership such the one practiced by big brother, political authority and with characters like Hitler buried deep never to rise again.
From a different perspective point of view, science fiction makes use of quite new terminologies, perhaps indicative of imaginary visions, as opposed to already existent state of scientific knowhow, which has well defined terminologies. George Orwell’s provides ample examples of this line of thought in the selection of terminologies such as Ocenia, Eurasia, Eastasia amongst others.
References
Hopkins, P., 2005. Transcending the Animal: How Transhumanism and Religion Are and Are Not Alike. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(2), pp. 13-29.
Krauss, L., 2007. The Physics of Star Trek. New York: Basic books.
Orwell, G., 2003. Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: Plume publishers.
Ramachandran, V., 2006. Creativity versus Skepticism within Science. Skeptical Inquirer, 30(6), pp. 48-51.
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