SCIENCE FICTION AND MEDIA (SFM)
Roberts (2016) – From Medieval Romance to Sixteenth-Century
Utopia
MEDIEVAL
- Literature from the end of the Dark Ages to the Renaissance consisted of either
explicitly religious texts, or else of religiously-inflected chivalric romance
- More often in the form of poetry rather than prose
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
[Thomas More] Utopia: stories of ideal societies; goods are held in common; education
is widespread; the population are well ordered, productive and happy
- he attempted to imagine a better society systematically; he approached the
question 'how could things be better?’ by world- building à the whole structure of
society must be re-imagined
Four modes of utopian writing
§ Paradise
§ Externally altered world: in which a new kind of life has been made possible by
an unlooked for natural event
§ Willed transformation
§ Technological transformation
Science Fiction & Utopia
- Utopia: rooted, stay-at-home; The Utopians themselves are not travelers or
explorers
- SF: voyage extraordinaire
[Copernicus] Revolution in cosmology: the Earth and other planets actually rotate
around the Sun
- The Copernican re-evaluation is a crucial event in the development (or re-
development) of science fiction; any fantastic voyage beyond the Earth necessarily
took place in a realm understood to be divine rather than material, and therefore
within a theological context. After Kopernik the cosmos not only expands
tremendously in scale and scope, it becomes necessarily materialized
The 16th century was the start of the age of exploration: Europeans crossed the ocean
- The discovery of ‘new worlds’ especially in the continents of North and South
America, resulted in the writing of a great many travelers’ tales
- These, a rich combination of factual account and speculation, were the originary voyages
extraordinaire, and the textual logics of such works directly informed their fantastical
descendants
- Many of the most influential of these books were by individuals who themselves did not
travel and rendered distant lands in a structurally estranged and compelling manner
- The persistent science fictional trope that alien life would take the form of a more-
or-less monstrously modified humanoid shape takes its cue from this
, Week 1. Introduction
Science fiction is about futures
Predicting the future
Astrology: attempts to predict destinies of individuals, groups, or nations through
interpreting the influence of planets and stars on earthly affairs
Ichthyomancy: divinations by means of the heads or the entrails of fishes
Bibliomancy: the practice of foretelling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen
passage from a book, especially the Bible
Haruspication: (in ancient Rome) the interpretation of omens by inspecting the entrails
of sacrificial animals
Alectryomancy: divination by means of a rooster encircled by grains of corn placed on
the letters of the alphabet which are ten put together in the order in which the grains
were eaten
Paul the Psychic Octopus: world cup prediction
Crystal ball
Cassandra: cursed by Apollo who for not consenting to have sex with him; would you
like to know when you die?
Designing the future: Science Fiction
Enlightenment: European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which
ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview
that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in
art, philosophy, and politics
- Central to enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason, the
power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition
- The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and
happiness
- Saving humankind with reason and technology
‘Father’ figures of SF
§ Jules Verne – From Earth to Moon (1865); rocket ship
§ H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds (1898)
§ Orson Welles: man and legend; reading The War of the Worlds on the radio,
people thought it was real and ran away
§ Mary Shelley – Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus (1818): warning to us
about playing gods, science and technology is going to lead to the doom of
humans
§ Isaac Asimov – Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953) + Robot series
§ Arthur C. Clarke – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
§ Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953): dystopia about possible future where
books are burned
§ Norman Spinrad – The Iron Dream (1972)
Roberts (2016) – From Medieval Romance to Sixteenth-Century
Utopia
MEDIEVAL
- Literature from the end of the Dark Ages to the Renaissance consisted of either
explicitly religious texts, or else of religiously-inflected chivalric romance
- More often in the form of poetry rather than prose
SIXTEENTH-CENTURY
[Thomas More] Utopia: stories of ideal societies; goods are held in common; education
is widespread; the population are well ordered, productive and happy
- he attempted to imagine a better society systematically; he approached the
question 'how could things be better?’ by world- building à the whole structure of
society must be re-imagined
Four modes of utopian writing
§ Paradise
§ Externally altered world: in which a new kind of life has been made possible by
an unlooked for natural event
§ Willed transformation
§ Technological transformation
Science Fiction & Utopia
- Utopia: rooted, stay-at-home; The Utopians themselves are not travelers or
explorers
- SF: voyage extraordinaire
[Copernicus] Revolution in cosmology: the Earth and other planets actually rotate
around the Sun
- The Copernican re-evaluation is a crucial event in the development (or re-
development) of science fiction; any fantastic voyage beyond the Earth necessarily
took place in a realm understood to be divine rather than material, and therefore
within a theological context. After Kopernik the cosmos not only expands
tremendously in scale and scope, it becomes necessarily materialized
The 16th century was the start of the age of exploration: Europeans crossed the ocean
- The discovery of ‘new worlds’ especially in the continents of North and South
America, resulted in the writing of a great many travelers’ tales
- These, a rich combination of factual account and speculation, were the originary voyages
extraordinaire, and the textual logics of such works directly informed their fantastical
descendants
- Many of the most influential of these books were by individuals who themselves did not
travel and rendered distant lands in a structurally estranged and compelling manner
- The persistent science fictional trope that alien life would take the form of a more-
or-less monstrously modified humanoid shape takes its cue from this
, Week 1. Introduction
Science fiction is about futures
Predicting the future
Astrology: attempts to predict destinies of individuals, groups, or nations through
interpreting the influence of planets and stars on earthly affairs
Ichthyomancy: divinations by means of the heads or the entrails of fishes
Bibliomancy: the practice of foretelling the future by interpreting a randomly chosen
passage from a book, especially the Bible
Haruspication: (in ancient Rome) the interpretation of omens by inspecting the entrails
of sacrificial animals
Alectryomancy: divination by means of a rooster encircled by grains of corn placed on
the letters of the alphabet which are ten put together in the order in which the grains
were eaten
Paul the Psychic Octopus: world cup prediction
Crystal ball
Cassandra: cursed by Apollo who for not consenting to have sex with him; would you
like to know when you die?
Designing the future: Science Fiction
Enlightenment: European intellectual movement of the 17th and 18th centuries in which
ideas concerning God, reason, nature, and humanity were synthesized into a worldview
that gained wide assent in the West and that instigated revolutionary developments in
art, philosophy, and politics
- Central to enlightenment thought were the use and celebration of reason, the
power by which humans understand the universe and improve their own condition
- The goals of rational humanity were considered to be knowledge, freedom, and
happiness
- Saving humankind with reason and technology
‘Father’ figures of SF
§ Jules Verne – From Earth to Moon (1865); rocket ship
§ H.G. Wells – The War of the Worlds (1898)
§ Orson Welles: man and legend; reading The War of the Worlds on the radio,
people thought it was real and ran away
§ Mary Shelley – Frankenstein or, the Modern Prometheus (1818): warning to us
about playing gods, science and technology is going to lead to the doom of
humans
§ Isaac Asimov – Foundation Trilogy (1951-1953) + Robot series
§ Arthur C. Clarke – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
§ Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451 (1953): dystopia about possible future where
books are burned
§ Norman Spinrad – The Iron Dream (1972)
