The Future is Not Bright: The Dystopian Question
When Christian Bale finally takes over the world and issues an edict banning 'fun', none of us SCiFi Junkies will be surprised. This is because SCiFi has been touting this vision of the future (watch that phrase, it will reoccur often) since the dawn of the Fiction of the Science.
Huxley, most likely one of the first to write a SCiFi novel, put this vision into words back in 1931 in his novel Brave New World. Since then there have been many imitations, or if I'm being kind 'homages'.
There are plenty of other articles that deal with Huxley's legacy, but what I would like to discuss is why SCiFi continues down this dystopian path?
The future is not bright we all know that. Well... that is, we all know that the next SCiFi film to come out will most likely say that it isn't. So why are we caused to exist, at least in the near future, with stories of future woe?
The history of SCiFi is interesting. To look at a film or television program made in the past that depicts the writer and directors vision of the future. It's fascinating to me to pick up a movie made prior to the last ten years and see what exactly the filmaker's view of tomorrow would be. Even more fascinating are those stories regarding the times we are now living in.
Inevitably, what we write about tomorrow is effected by two things: Our past and our present. Most heavily by the times and place that we live in. So the future we spin is just a reflection of what is going on in and around us at the time of writing. SCiFi releases us to freely write about what we need to say in a setting that we feel most able to do so.
In that sense I guess SCiFi is just the same as any other genre. Good creators use the right setting for the story. Whether present day, historical or future.
Just trying to think of the last optimistic SCiFi I saw... maybe SF just doesn't lend itself to such a story. But, then what genre does?
