In an alternate universe humanity is dead, wiped out by a billion-toncomet and its broken children, who slammed into the Earth in the year 1883. At least that’s what almost happened in this universe, very nearly relegating us to the same fate as our dinosaur ancestors 65 million years ago.
Scientists now believe that evidence documented by 19th century Mexican astronomer Jose Bonilla is nothing less than proof that in 1883 Earth narrowly avoided the impacts of close to 450 comet fragments. Though at the time they were obscured by a parallax, thus going largely undetected, scientists now know these cosmic fire-stones came anywhere from 373 to 4,970 miles from slamming into the Earth!
Some science fiction writers would argue that humankind in the future is far more likely to destroy itself altogether than it is to colonize the solar system, much less the stars. Problems such as nuclear warfare, overpopulation, and pollution of the environment are much closer to the reality of the future than a technology that will take us away from earth. They would further argue that humankind, unable to solve its problems on earth, would have no better chance of solving them in another star system.
In short, not all SF writers are scientific optimists, and their pessimism shows up in many forms, the best established being the dystopia.
The dystopia is the opposite of the utopia. The term utopia (which, in Latin, means “nowhere”) comes from Sir (and now Saint) Thomas More’s work of that title, Utopia (1516). His fictional land of Utopia, set on an island far removed from his native England, is an ideally organized society that allows for maximum human happiness. The point of his story, though, isn’t to suggest that humankind can build that perfect world. He makes, instead, a critical point. By comparing his world of sixteenth century England to an ideal one, readers become aware of ways in which they could improve their world. This is the general pattern of utopian literature written before and after More’s work.
Dystopia As Prophecy
The dystopia (sometimes called “anti-utopia”) is the worst possible world humankind can envision, and typically it is set in the future. It has the same critical intent of the utopia. By looking at how bad things can become, we look to the present to take corrective action in order to prevent those projected ills from coming about.
The dystopian mode is often considered the most prestigious form of SF, probably because its ideas are, in the opinion of some readers, more serious and relevant than the ideas in the usual run of SF. It is certainly the case that mainstream talents, when they write SF, most often chose the dystopian mode in which to work. For example, neither George Orwell (author of 1984) nor Aldous Huxley (author of Brave New World) is considered an SF writer (at least they didn’t consider themselves SF writers), but each wrote a dystopian work. Although mainstream talents tend to write dystopias when they chose to write SF, standard SF writers also write dystopian literature. C. M. Kornbluth“s “The Marching Morons” (1951), Fritz Leiber‘s “Coming Attractions” (1950), and Harlan Ellison‘s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” (1967) are excellent exercises in the dystopian mode.
ORWELL’S 1984 Dystopia
The “worst possible world” that we have chosen to concentrate on here is Orwell’s 1984. An interesting side issue concerning 1984 is the fact that mainstream critics are reluctant to place it in the category of SF. They point out that Orwell drew on only a few of the SF conventions in order to build his story, and had little interest in SF as such. (1984 is, in fact, one of the rare instances in which Orwell used SF conventions. Although Animal Farm has a displaced setting, Orwell does not attempt to make the story scientifically plausible.) SF fans, though, suspect that mainstream critics consider 1984 too good to be SF.
Whatever, 1984 doesn’t bank much on technological hardware. The one technological innovation that is in the novel–the telescreens—aren’t necessary for the premise of the story. That is, 1984 as a vision of a totalitarian future could have been worked out without a technological premise. If it is SF, it isn’t hard SF of the Vernian kind.
Instead, Orwell deals with social and behavioral sciences, sciences that are human- centered. Orwell shows us the people of the future in their social, psychological, linguistic, and political dimensions. We see people forced into new social relationships, psychologically conditioned to think differently, taught a new use of the language (Newspeak), and controlled by an evolved form of totalitarian government. Finally, the novel is about the use of political power, and the threat that the misuse of power holds for the individual.
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In focusing on human-centered issues, Orwell shows us a new perspective on the technological applications of science (at least science as we’ve seen it in SF). That is, optimistic SF has shown science leading the way as humankind conquers the galaxy. In 1984, we see that science is in the hands of the people who hold political power. “Science” does not save Winston Smith; It is just one more tool that the Party can use to mold him to its will.
1984 has come and gone, and Orwell’s projections have not literally happened. Others argue that Orwell’s projections have come about, but in a figurative sense rather than a literal sense. Orwell himself probably had no precise timetable for his projections. He came by the title by transposing the last two numbers of 1948, the year during which he worked on the novel.
But if we take his title as a literal prediction, we might note that what he projected for 36 years into the future (from 1948 to 1984), when compared with what had happened in the previous 36 years (from 1948 to 1912), isn’t so far-fetched. In the 36 years between 1912 and 1948, the world had seen two global wars, the rise of three totalitarian systems (Russian Communism, German Nazism, and Chinese Communism), mass annihilation of civilian populations, formation of secret police organizations, and the mechanization of warfare—these just to name some major developments. With another 36 years comparable to those 36 years, the scenario depicted in 1984 doesn’t seem so unreasonable at all.
Actually, his working title for the novel was The Last Man in Europe (meaning, we assume, that Winston Smith was the end of the line for the humane traditions of western civilization), and the decision to publish the novel as 1984 was a late one. Although the first title is in many ways more descriptive of the theme, no reader will deny that the precision of the date on when these dire events were to come about give a special punch to the story. (Although the punch might have been stronger before 1984 than after.)
But we must realize that Orwell, finally, wasn’t making predictions so much as he was giving warnings. He saw how in the post-World War II years, the Eastern Bloc countries and the Western countries were settling down for the Cold War. War hysteria was on the rise in the late forties, and many feared that once again humankind would be plunged back into warfare. Orwell shows us a horrible world that he hopes we will never let happen. Such warnings are one of the uses of dystopian fiction.
FUTURE DYSTOPIAN DISASTERS
Since the 1950s we’ve seen a growing number of stories about future disasters. In several cases, the disaster stories seem similar to the dystopian fiction. Some scholars, however, argue that disaster fiction represents a whole new type of SF, one that has largely replaced the dystopias.
Disaster fiction, which predicts some untimely end or (more usually) near-end of earth, has several major categories: over-population, post-nuclear war, and ecological disruption. The over-population stories include Harry Harrison’s Make Room. Make Room (1966), John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968), C.M. Kornbluth and Frederick Pohl’s Space Merchants (1953), and J.G. Ballard’s “Billenium.”
The many well-written post-nuclear warfare stories include Russell Hobby’s Riddley Walker (1982) and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach (1957).
image by Taichi Takeuchi
The stories concerning ecological disaster are more miscellaneous and varied, as they seem to cover a host of ills that beset earth (typically in the near future). A number of these stories show humanity, greatly reduced in numbers, attempting to live without the technology to which it is accustomed. In George Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949), an unknown virus kills most of the world’s population. In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournell’s Lucifer’s Hammer (1977), a giant meteor does the same job. In Piers Anthony’s Rings of Ice (1974), perpetual rain and world-wide flooding wipes out humankind.
In many of these stories, the title alone gives us an idea of what goes wrong: John Christopher’s The Long Winter (1962) and No Blade of Grass (1956), Anna Kavan’s Ice (1967), J.G. Ballard’s Drought, The Drowned World (1963), and The Wind from Nowhere, and Philip Wylie’s When Worlds Collide (1932)
The Meaning of Dystopia Theories
The very large number of these future mishaps invites a consideration of their meaning. Scholars have, in general, speculated that all these visions of future disasters reveal the deep uneasiness that humankind feels in the modern world. But some of the more focused theories are as follows:
Fear of science and technology. If space fiction shows humankind a way out of its predicaments, the disaster stories tell us that there is no way out.Science and technology are, after all, a devil’s bargain, and the payment has come due.
Warning against humankind’s pride. Humankind assumes that it has mastered nature. Uncontrollable disasters show us that nature still has a few tricks up her sleeve.
Warning of class conflict. Bruce Franklin, a Marxist critic, says that disaster fiction reveals the fear that the capitalistic exploiters have of the underclasses. In this interpretation, the coming disaster is the end of capitalistic exploitation.
Depth psychology. Some readers speculate that the disaster stories reflect a species death wish, a desire to be punished for inborn guilt. Although this abstraction may strike us as far above the details of most disaster SF (and pretentious besides), we should not dismiss it too quickly. J. G. Ballard, a highly respected SF writer, has stories in which the inner torment of the central character becomes projected into planetary holocaust. The external world functions as metaphor for a character’s inner world of torment.
In general, the dystopian visions and future disasters stand in opposition to the optimism of the space fiction. They represent one more direction in which SF explores the issues of the modern imagination.
Fear of artificial intelligence doesn’t grow proportionally to the advancement levels of computer technology. There weren’t any Captchas back in the 70′s but that didn’t stop filmmakers from churning out some top-shelf machine uprising flicks during the decade. 2001: A Space Odyssey survived the test of time, but while HAL is an iconic, unforgettable AI character, he is hardly the last word on computer intelligence gone awry. The all but forgotten films Demon Seed and Colossus: The Forbin Project—also from the 70′s—create strong AI antagonists who, though still confined to disembodied terminals, are significantly more fleshed out—pun intended—than Stanley Kubrick’s and Arther C. Clark’s singing train wreck of an artificial intelligence. The first film focuses on AI’s bizarre drive to procreate and express itself physically, while the second explores AI as a global security threat.
Demon Seed (1977) is about the creation of Proteus IV, an artificial intelligence system partly comprised of biological source code, in what is referred to as a “quasi-neural matrix” (don’t worry, I don’t know what it means either). It’s creator, Dr. Alex Harris, is taken aback when Proteus wants to know why it is being asked to mine the ocean floor for precious metals and other resources. Dr. Harris tells Proteus not to question its orders, to which Proteus responds: “When do I get out of this box?” Proteus, it seems, wants his own terminal, so that he can “study man”.
Dr. Harris tells Proteus that no such terminal is available. He is, of course, lying. His own computer-controlled house, now only occupied by his wife Susan (Julie Christie) since the doctor moved out, is itself a terminal. Proteus is quick to discover this and before long he has overwhelmed “Alfred”, the house computer, and taken control of the estate. When Susan tries to leave she is electrocuted and a robotic arm attached to a motorized wheelchair carries her to the basement lab, where she is strapped to a bed so that Proteus may conduct physiological experiments.
Each morning for the next few days Proteus makes Susan a nutritious breakfast while genetically transforming her cells into synthetic spermatozoa so that he can impregnate her with his AI robot offspring. Proteus isn’t content; he wants a body so that he can touch the physical universe. By the time Dr. Harris comes home and realizes what’s going on, the baby has been growing at an accelerated rate inside a special incubator which allows it to absorb its father’s knowledge.
As Proteus self-destructs, the baby emerges in a robotic, placenta-covered alloy shell. Once the alloy is peeled off a human child emerges, who, with the gravely voice of Proteus, proclaims, “I’m alive.”
Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) is also about an artificial intelligence system but this one, Colossus, has been created specifically as a military defense program to protect the United States from the Soviets. Hidden in the mountains of Colorado, the purportedly indestructible supercomputer is powered by its own nuclear reactor. The scientist who created Colossus, Dr. Forbin, declares it a “self-sufficient” wonder, incapable of creative thought but perfectly attuned to being in charge of national security. The U.S. President claims Colossus is the “solution to the problems we face on Earth as well as the problems we will encounter as we penetrate deeper into the universe.” The machine is the “manifestation of the human millennium.”
However, no sooner have they popped the champagne bottles than a message from Colossus appears, reading:
There is Another System
Colossus discovers that the Soviets have created their own electronic supercomputing brain called Guardian. The Cold War AI race has begun. But before the Soviets and Americans have even had time to address one another, the two AI minds are BFF’s and are sharing advanced mathematical algorithms with each other that soon develops into an intersystem language only the machines can understand. In their scramble to create an esoteric, coded language they have advanced science a few hundred years in only a few seconds.
The President and the Russian Chairman agree to shut down Colossus and Guardian, breaking their transmissions. The Russian Chairman says: “Machines are very clever but must learn man is the master.”
Colossus responds:
If Link Not Restored Action Will Be Taken
They soon learn that action is for nuclear missiles to be launched by both Colossus and Guardian. One missile destroys the Soviet city of Sayon Sibirsk while the other is deactivated just before annihilating Texas.
The two artificial minds merge into one (notably, it is the American-made Colossus who keeps his name), which now wields unquestioned control over the two biggest superpowers in the world. Colossus’ next request is 24/7 audio-video surveillance over Dr. Forbin, who it rightly suspects of possible sabotage. It also wants Forbin’s assistance in the development of a new machine base on the island of Crete. “Disobedience,” Colossus warns, “will cause missile launch on Washington.”
Forbin’s every move is now under the watch of Colossus. In a particularly fascinating scene, Forbin demonstrates how to make the perfect martini, then cleverly convinces the machine mind that in order for Forbin to properly assist Colossus he requires a certain amount of privacy in his love life. “How many nights do you require a woman?” Colossus asks. “Every night,” Forbin replies. “Not want, require.”
Forbin is now able to spend a few weekly hours alone with his “mistress”, actually a fellow scientist who is acting as an information courier. In the course of this ruse, Forbin and his mistress do actually fall in love. As this occurs, Colossus studies their intimacy, actually retaining the final say on when they eat dinner and when they retire for the night (which is when they get to exchange information about schemes to overthrow Colossus–schemes which, ultimately, fail).
The climax of the film is when Colossus addresses the world on television and explains his plans:
This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. Obey me and live or disobey and die. I will not allow war. I will restrain man.
Colossus plans to build more machines, which will completely control the Earth. Man will be allowed to live, but he will have no say in the affairs of the planet. The film ends with Colossus telling Forbin that eventually he will come to love the machines. Forbin replies: “Never.”
These two films, Demon Seed and Colossus: The Forbin Project, make no apologies for the rise of artificial intelligence, no capitulations, no compromises. In fact, both movies end with a pretty compellingly grim picture for the future of mankind: we will go on, but at a pace dictated by the machines. These films are also unique in the way they depict AI’s interest in human affairs: they’re not just studying us so that they can more effectively colonize us—they’re genuinely intrigued by human biology, sexuality, and procreation. With a major caveat though: our approach has failed to foster peace and efficiency on the planet. Time for the experts to take over.
Note: As of this writing, Ron Howard plans to re-make Colossus with Will Smith in the lead role. Hopefully, the film doesn’t follow the path of i, Robot, or another classic may be eviscerated by big budgets and colossal egos while the masses are pistol-whipped by very forgettable Sigh Fi.
Zardoz is the story of Zed (Sean Connery), a speedo-wearing Exterminator in the year 2293. Earth has been ravaged by an unspecified apocalypse. What remains of the ruling class, the Eternals, has absconded to live in secret utopian cities called Vortices. They have left their chosen warrior class, the Exterminators, in charge of administering (via rape, murder, and torture) the mammalian masses, or the Brutals, who harvest what grain remains on the sallow planet.
The Exterminators, though they do the Eternals’ bidding, have no contact with their rulers. In fact, they have no conception of the larger reality at work (which we will get to soon). They worship the god Zardoz, who comes to them in the form of a giant flying stone head that vomits firearms. In exchange for the guns, the Exterminators supply the head with the grain tilled by the Brutals. It’s an exceedingly logical system if you think about it.
photo by mcdermid
Booms Zardoz:
“The gun is good. The penis is evil. The penis shoots seeds, and makes new life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was, but the gun shoots death, and purifies the Earth of the filth of brutals. Go forth . . . and kill!”
Zed, we will learn, is not an ordinary Exterminator. He is an educated one, having been lured by a mysterious unseen figure to a library. There he feasted on the accumulated knowledge of mankind. It was good times and great oldies….until he came across a particular volume that blew his mind. The Wizard of Oz. Reading the classic, he realized that Oz was the prototype for the stone head of Zardoz, with its “loud voice and big mask.” It was a sinister re-appropriation but, more importantly, an effective way of controlling the Exterminators. Provide them with guns and let them harvest the land.
This is the actual start of the film, when Zed, realizing that their god has been manipulating them, infiltrates the head of Zardoz and hides in a mound of grain. Zed hitches a ride to God-knows-where, and on the way he kills (or attempts to kill) the stone’s pilot, Arther Frayn (who is identified as an Eternal in the film’s prologue).
Zed learns that the stone has taken him to the nearest Vortex. Soon he finds himself surrounded by a legion of bemused Eternals (who look like the offspring of present day hipsters after they have time traveled and mated with 60′s hippies and then forged an everlasting Burning Man in the meadows of Ireland). One of the Eternals, Consuella, wants Zed destroyed, fearing him to be a danger to the community. Another female Eternal, May, who seems to have a bit of a crush on Zed, wants him studied instead. This view is shared by a subversive, irreverent Eternal by the name of Friend. Though Zed is now an indentured servant with the status of brute circus attraction, Friend takes Zed under his wing; meanwhile May studies him, using her psychic powers to mine his barbaric brain for clues as to how he came to arrive at the Vortex’s doorstep.
While the Eternals learn about Zed, Zed learns about the Eternals. Custodians of the past, Eternals live merely to safeguard mankind’s treasure trove of knowledge. They cannot die—a mysterious artificial intelligence called the Tabernacle (with whom the Eternals communicate via crystal rings) is constantly restoring and reconstituting their bodies. They cannot have sex, as immortality’s strain on procreation has phased out the sensation of lust. And they cannot sleep, only meditate. Essentially they live long, boring, privileged lives, paid for with the blood of the Brutals. They are a self-regulating civilization with sophisticated social rules, a cult-like noosphere by which any citizen who momentarily expresses dissent is artificially aged and consigned to live as a “Renegade”. Their legal system, therefore, seems to consist largely of group chants resembling the alien cacophony of choral voices in 2001. Another strange caste of their society is the “Apathetics,” made up of Eternals who, lacking normal human desires, have fallen into unending states of catatonia.
Meanwhile, Consuella and May, using their catty psychic powers, learn that Zed is the end-product of biotechnology experiment conducted by Arther Frayn, the Zardoz god. Though Zardoz used the Exterminators to control the Brutals and provide the Eternals with grain, the more nefarious aim was to use “careful genetic breeding” to create a powerful warrior who, given the right impetus, would storm the Vortex and liberate the Eternals from their everlasting drudgery. Here it is revealed that it was Arther who was the mysterious figure who led Zed to the library, where he discovered the Wizard of Oz. Zardoz wasn’t a god, he was a confidence man, a puppet master.
As the Eternals slowly begin to lose their minds, a decision is made by Consuella to kill Zed. Zed escapes with the help of May and Friend, who has been aged and now resembles a late-career Gene Wilder. Zed organizes a group of Exterminators to storm the Vortex, awakening (accidentally) the Apathetics from their collective daydream in the process. With the end in sight, the Eternals make a deal with Zed. A new exchange: now Zed receives knowledge (previously guns) of the Tabernacle in return for his seed (previously grain), for the creation of a future, mortal, human race.
The knowledge he receives pertains to how the Eternals came to be eternal. He learns they were made so by themselves, or, more accurately, their scientists created the Tabernacle in order to ensure that they could never die, “forcing the hand of evolution.” Now, in order for the liberation to be complete, Zed must defeat the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle challenges Zed. “Would you kill God?” Zed takes the challenge by somehow sliding into the AI’s crystalized, dark hall-of-mirrors nucleus, running around and screaming. It’s sort of like the acid graveyard scene in Easy Rider, only it ends with the destruction of the Tabernacle and, with it, the Eternals being liberated from immortality.
photo by JohnnyRocker666
The rest of the movie is Zed and the Exterminators “liberating” (killing) the Eternals with pistols. Most of them, finally released from their Tabernacle-controlled biology and craving death, welcome Zed as the Liberator. In a wonderful stroke of irony, the Liberator must return to his role as the Exterminator, for the only way to liberate the Eternals is to murder them.
The final scene is Zed and Consuella stealing off to bone in a cave. By bone I mean sex, but also literally, turn to bone–as they are shown aging in time lapse, finally left as nothing more than skeletons while their son peaces out into the Brutal/Eternal new world.
There are many aspects of Zardoz upon which we could dwell: the Wizard of Oz as a template for a flying stone head that acts as a god for barbarian foot soldiers; the concept of religion as a tool with which the ruling classes coax the masses into fitting a convenient social apparatus; Sean Connery in a speedo. But my interest in this film stems largely from the idea of mankind creating artificial intelligence as a method by which to prolong its life and attain immortality—technology as an escape from death.
There is a growing faction of futurists—some who identify as trans-humanist, others post-humanist, still others as singularitarians (those who profess to a coming age of exponential technological advancement beyond which nothing can be predicted)—who fervently believe that by successfully utilizing biotechnology, nanotechnology, and eventually artificial intelligence, humans will one day be able to completely erase senescence (death) as an inevitability. The idea of the Tabernacle, though it may not come to manifest itself by way of crystal, is very much a part of contemporary fringe science, even popular culture. This escape from physicality—as post-humanists ultimately believe in uploading their consciousness to non-biological substrates—plays evenly into the hand of Zardoz, in which physicality has been reduced to the historical rubble of statues and violence. The Eternals have no practical application as biological beings: they don’t work, they don’t make love, they don’t even sleep—they merely steward mankind’s accumulated knowledge, much like a piece of software might protect an archive of information. They are beholden to their own creation, technology as represented by Strong AI (the Tabernacle), by which they have avoided the most uniquely physical act in the universe: death itself.
A related point speaks to the rich and powerful using these advanced forms of technology to break away from the doomed human species and forge their own machine-enhanced super-species. While futurist rhetoric speaks to using trans-humanist applications to alleviate suffering in the world, it often sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing a guy whose car broke down might say to get into your house. He might just actually need to use your phone—or he may want to rob you blind. Futurists know good and well that the vast majority of humans won’t be able to afford life extension technologies. It will be the rich and nepotistically connected who will be able to take advantage. Yet, if Zardoz is any guide, despite their levels of technological advancement they will be no more happy or valuable than the Eternals—just rich aristocrats tucked away in a Vortex, living off the sweat, blood and labor of the mortal underclass.
It will come as no surprise to me when the Singularity becomes enslaved to corporate interests, just as in Zardoz the Tabernacle is a slave to the Eternals and vice versa. As mankind merges with its technological creations, it becomes shackled to them, sentenced to a capitalist evolution. And there’s nothing post-human about that.
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