The most powerful works of SF don’t describe the future - they change it.
— Annalee Newitz of io9
Science fiction has a unique place in our culture. A literary genre that embraces scientific fields for humanistic purposes, it offers hypothetical worlds and possibilities, lives and spaces changed by human-technological interactions. This hybrid genre explores the exhilaration and the existential issues brought about by scientific and technological revolutions from an emotional, humdrum point of view, and aesthetically evaluates the alternate and changed realities for the value they add to, or subtract from, the quality of everyday life.
Our lives are so inextricably intertwined with both science and fiction that they are hardly tangible to our senses. Whether we worship at the altar of science and technology or not, today's world is increasingly governed by them. No matter how much some of us deplore the intrusive nature of smartphones, not many of us can pass a day comfortably without one. Modern gadgets and machines have become embedded — literally, in the case of some aspects of human medicine — in our lives. This has happened to such an extent that they have become virtual extensions and almost a part of us.
In daily life Likewise, most of us do not realise how influential fiction is in our daily lives. Fiction involves a variety of narratives that range from the tales our grandparents tell us, the anecdotes we hear through our social network, to the dramas we see on television and in films.
And then there is the outright category of fiction we read for pleasure. Fiction has a strange power in our lives; just as in the case of science, such works have become so intertwined that it has become difficult to extricate fact from fiction.
Escape through fiction
Some narratives give us a window into better and happier lives attained after a spell of trials and tribulations; perhaps that is why the human mind craves that imaginative escape through fiction. Some fiction also gives us a glimpse of the underbelly of humanity, a cautionary mirror that warns us of the pitfalls of life. If one attempts to define the indefinable concept of fiction, it would be to characterise it as something of a combination of the notion of “art imitating life” and “life imitating art”, the latter a claim made by the fantastically flamboyant Oscar Wilde.
In such a context, imaginary narratives that deal with varying versions of scientific advancements and technological developments — from the heightened to the real — become significant. They become real and hyper-real mirrors that hold up to society what its engineers, technologists, biologists, physicists, and chemists create and perpetuate in the world and the level to which the human psyche and value of life become altered.
One of the best-known subtexts to the genre of science fiction is a topos of perceiving science, or the scientist, as a potential threat that has to be reined in to sustain the normal functioning of society. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), often considered the first science fiction novel, viscerally illustrates and perpetuates this belief about such works.
Such a perceived threat to society need not be the last word or the general purview about the powers of science in imaginative literature. In fact, liberating science from such an unfair reputation is essential.
This will become possible only by means of widening the readership and viewership of this genre. The space thriller film Interstellar (2014) shows how science and technology ultimately do come to the rescue of humanity in spectacular fashion.
In a world that is increasingly dependent on research in science and technology to decipher the problems of human society, it is not surprising to witness the efflorescence of engineering and technological educational institutions, especially in developing countries such as India.
They cater to, and support, the industrial and manufacturing sectors nationally and globally by grooming hundreds and thousands of potential experts and innovators in these fields.
It is in such a scenario that I think the study of humanities for the science, engineering and technological students becomes especially significant. If one wants to offer a bite-sized version of humanities education to a science and technology student, it would be through the genre of science fiction.
The impact Any education is ultimately for the benefit of society. Any scientific and technological innovation is also for the progress of humanity. Therefore, students actively engaged in innovations in various fields might want to think deeply about the impact of their novel designs and creations on the human psyche.
While the nature of the science component in science fiction is malleable — ranging from the actual, the plausible and the far-fetched — the best narrative in the genre is one that viscerally offers readers the changes that innovators bring on to socio-cultural and physical landscapes and attempts to protect humanity from disasters, both man-made and natural.
divyaa@iiitdm.ac.in
