Functions and effects of science fiction and fictional narratives ...

Some thinking around the functions and effects of science fiction and narratives, and its relationship to or from reality, via science fiction novelist William Gibson, Critic and writer Umberto Eco, and new media professor and multi-platform producer Ramona Pringle.

Science fiction (henceforth SF), a sub-genre of speculative fiction, predominantly explores the impacts of speculative or existing science and technologies on individuals, societies and Earth.[1] SF'’s scientific and technological plausibility is fundamental to its separation from other speculative fiction genres such as fantasy. [2] Science fiction references scientific facts, theories, and principles as support for its settings, characters, themes, and plot-lines, granting SF greater perceived plausibility than fantasy. [3]

SF’s narrative, aliens, technologies, and alternative time and space gives SF the facade of being abstract from reality, when in fact, SF is an abstraction derived from reality itself. SF’s perceived fantasy creates an illusionary separation between its context and the audience’s modern context or social reality. [4] This perceived separation of SF from reality sustains the facade that the viewer is escaping accepted social realities when in fact, these realties have merely changed form or context - not content or meaning - and are still present. Science fiction writer William Gibson notes, "In my early teens, I assumed science fiction was about the future....By the time I began to write science fiction, I took it for granted that what I was doing was writing about the present." [5] In transposing concepts from reality into a fictional realm, SF disguises the reality. This disguise makes concepts appear foreign and new, refreshing humanity’s gaze on itself evoking critical reflection. This shift of context in SF scenarios allows people to imagine and rehearse alternative possibilities. Thus, challenging people’s interventions, the cause, effects and consequences evoke reflective thinking about the implications of human mediation, both ethically and ontologically via burgeoning technological advancements. [6] Additionally, Science fiction’s adjacency to reality creates a reserve space where social critique seems less daunting to confront. [7] Specifically, narrative can be pinpointed as a fundamental aspect of SF, which frees the creator from the prejudice of humanity but not the critique of global issues. Within Six walks in the Fictional Woods (1994), semiotician, critic, philosopher and novelist, Umberto Eco notes that critiques of reality veiled by fictionality are easier to proclaim and receive,“By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative.” [8]

Within “Life Imitates Art: Cyborgs, Cinema, and Future Scenarios” (2013), new media professor at Ryerson University and multiplatform producer, Ramona Pringle discusses how humankind's adoption of narrative is imperative to our ability to store memories, process new information and communicate. [9] In turn, helping humans understand the world that surrounds them now, or could in the future. Narrative as a tool for existential understanding is reinforced by Umberto Eco, utilising “fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world.” [10] Here, “play a game” references the concept of rehearsal, which allows a hypothetical exploration of a thing, for example technology, and its consequences without real-world repercussions. As Eco notes, the explorative act (game playing) of narrative helps to give “sense” or to understand the role such things have had, do have or will. [11] Therefore, via modes of rehearsal or game-playing of narrative, SF helps its audience to understand (possible) stages of its evolution and thus encourages it’s audiences into subversive socio-political critique.

Palaeolithic cave paintings of Dordogne, France, known as the Lascaux caves, suggest that narrative as a tool of self-understanding and critique is fundamental to humankind’s evolution. [12] Lascaux cave paintings delineate how past and present have been employed to inform the future utilising the narrative or experience. Paintings of hunting expeditions show that storytelling and its narratives do not exclusively document and retell the past but display an endeavour to improve the future success of hunting expeditions via strategic and ritual depictions. [13] There is some evidence that narratives of the past and present can be utilised to not only to evoke an introspective understanding of humanity’s evolving species and make sense of an uncertain future trajectories, but also inform or improve it.

Alternatively, SF’s narratives and its evocation of future trajectories and modern critique can be created from informed speculation and pure imagination. Speculative Fiction writer Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (1992) anticipated the rise of virtual and augmented reality via technologies such as mobile computing, virtual reality, wireless Internet, digital currency, smartphones, and augmented-reality headsets. [14] Snow Crash follows the character Hiro Protagonist, a hacker, who recurrently logs into a virtual reality matrix called the ‘Metaverse.’ In which, humans have online avatars, and can interact with other users and explore a plethora of virtual environments. [15] Stephenson notes that Snow Crash was published in 1992, when the internet was in its infancy and had not yet proliferated the domestic sphere, especially when compared to today. [16] To contextualise, in 1990, Sir Tim Beres-Lee, a computer scientist, created the first web browser (WorldWideWeb) and server (a computer which stores, runs and distributes HTTP information as they are conceived to users). [17] [18] Additionally, softwares which contemporary users are familiar with such as Microsoft Windows, Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, Internet Explorer and Java weren’t initiated until 1995 - one year after Snow Crash’s publication release. Stephenson has discussed that Snow Crash and it’s metaverse was just him “making shit up.” [19] Thus, the concept of Stephenson’s technological inventions were largely fantastical, and derived from his imagination.

Within Snow Crash Stephenson not only prophesied future technologies and how we could experience different realities but additionally, the consequences of digitised human relationships and technological dependence. Within Snow Crash, Gargoyles are humans who use augmented reality devices to remain logged onto the metaverse 24/7, “Gargoyles are no fun to talk to...They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions . . . You think they’re talking to you, but they’re actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead.” [20] Here Stephenson notes that a specific set of users of the Metaverse have become over-engaged and dependent on augmented reality, and the complexity of its contents, that they are no longer an active participant in the real-world reality.[21] In a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair Stephenson, noted that technological codependency was no longer a speculated consequence but a reality specifically referencing smartphones. [22] The practice of continuously using cellphones has become ingrained in our behaviour and subsequently our physiology, affetheir posture. It’s what we’ve turned into because of the particular way that we’re connected through technology.” [23] Stephenson noted that preventing technological dependency was thus irrelevant, and the question shifted to how technological relationships could be improved to be more social, elegant and conductive to a healthy society and healthy interactions. [24] And so, Snow Crash can be seen to create ethical continuums between plausibility and responsibility, between idealisations of innovation and the potential implications of our actions.

[1] - B. Sterling, "Science fiction," Encyclopedia Britannica, November 12, 2020.

[2] - ibid.

[3] - “Science Fiction” Literary Terms. June 1, 2015. Accessed November 3, 2016. https://literaryterms.net/

[4] - Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians,Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181.

[5] - Richard Trenholm, “Future Shocks Past and PRESENT: William Gibson on the Big Screen's Fear of Technology,” July 17, 2020, https://www.cnet.com/news/future-shocks-past-and-present-william-gibson-on-fictions-fear-of-tech/.

[6] - Lizzie Muller, "Speculative Objects: Materialising Science Fiction", in Proceedings Of The 19Th International Symposium On Electronic Art (repr., Sydney: ISEA International, 2013), 499-502, https://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/bitstream/handle/2123/9628/speculativeobjects.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

[7] & [8] - Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (USA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

[9] - Ramona Pringle, “Life Imitates Art: Cyborgs, Cinema, and Future Scenarios,” Futurist 47, no. 4 (2013): 31–34.

[10] & [11]- Umberto Eco, Six Walks in the Fictional Woods (USA: Harvard University Press, 1994).

[12] & [13] - Ramona Pringle, “Life Imitates Art: Cyborgs, Cinema, and Future Scenarios,” Futurist 47, no. 4 (2013): 31–34. [13] - Joanna Robinson and Nick Bilton, “The Sci-Fi Guru Who Predicted Google Earth Explains Silicon Valley's Latest Obsession,” Vanity Fair, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/neal-stephenson-metaverse-snow-crash-silicon-valley-virtual-reality.

[14] - Adam Smith, “Future Perfect: How One Sci-Fi Novelist Predicted Virtual Reality, Memes, Avatar Chats, 3D Printing, IPads and More,” LinkedIn, 2019, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-perfect-how-one-sci-fi-novelist-predicted-virtual-adam-smith. [15] - Adam Smith, “Future Perfect: How One Sci-Fi Novelist Predicted Virtual Reality, Memes, Avatar Chats, 3D Printing, IPads and More,” LinkedIn, 2019, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-perfect-how-one-sci-fi-novelist-predicted-virtual-adam-smith. [16] - Jefferson Online, “An Internet History Timeline: From the 1960s to Now,” Jefferson Online, March 10, 2020, https://online.jefferson.edu/business/internet-history-timeline/.

[17] - Definition of web client: “Definition of Web Client,” PCMAG, accessed April 8, 2021,https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/web-client.

[18] - Definition of server: “Learn Web Development: What Is a Server?,” MDN Web Docs (Mozilla, January 2021), https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Common_questions/What_is_a_web_server.

[19] - Joanna Robinson and Nick Bilton, “The Sci-Fi Guru Who Predicted Google Earth Explains Silicon Valley's Latest Obsession,” Vanity Fair, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/neal-stephenson-metaverse-snow-crash-silicon-valley-virtual-reality.

[20] - Stephenson, Neal, Snow Crash, 1993, New York: Bantam Books.

[21] - [24] Joanna Robinson and Nick Bilton, “The Sci-Fi Guru Who Predicted Google Earth Explains Silicon Valley's Latest Obsession,” Vanity Fair, 2017, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/neal-stephenson-metaverse-snow-crash-silicon-valley-virtual-reality.