Utopian and dystopian fiction.....The way our own future is going?...Or just fantasy created by imagination?.. The utopia and its offshoot, the dystopia, are genres of literature that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction is the creation of an ideal society, or utopia, as the setting for a novel. Dystopian fiction (sometimes referred to as apocalyptic literature) is the opposite: creation of an utterly horrible or degraded society that is generally headed to an irreversible oblivion, or dystopia. Many novels combine both, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take in its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other speculative fiction genres, and arguably are by definition a type of speculative fiction... But I do believe as many do that were controlled by certain groups, and quite possibly it could all go that way....Look at H.G. Wells and the Scientific Imagination that man had.....“the Shakespeare of science fiction”. His preoccupation in all this work was the impact on civilization of the dizzy progress of science and technology. Time and again, Wells was among the first to fathom the implications of a given advance, and the first to cheer its coming or foresee grim consequences that others, less acquainted with the human condition, failed to grasp. Not surprisingly, he started early in his career to call for a science of the future, a disciplined inquiry into the shape of things to come, that would enable humankind to gain control of its own destiny. All contemporary futures inquiry traces its origins to Wells’s The Discovery of the Future, a little book first published in 1902 and cited almost reverently in the work of various present-day futurists. Much later, Wells even suggested the appointment of “Professors of Foresight,” indeed “whole Faculties and Departments of Foresight,” doing their best to anticipate and prepare for the consequences of the abolition of space and time made possible by modern technology. In the struggle to safeguard humankind from the dark dangers lurking in the unchecked growth of science, the only efficacious weapon available was science itself, the rational planning of the human future by scientifically trained experts. It was Wells’s way—and he knew it—of bringing up to date Plato’s ancient dream of philosopher-kings. No one will be flabbergasted to learn that many of Wells’s most devoted fans throughout his long literary career were scientists themselves. Quite a few were personal friends and occasionally colleagues, notably in the writing of The Science of Life (1930), a handsome survey of the biological sciences, which he produced in collaboration with the marine biologist, G.P. Wells (his own eldest son), and the great evolutionist Julian Huxley. Among Wells’s admirers in the scientific community, two stand out in particular. Both were physicists and both were directly inspired by the science fiction of Wells to make fateful contributions in their fields of expertise. Both men exhibit, as did Wells himself, the astonishing fertility of the scientific imagination. Both men were, like Wells, idealists with an abiding concern for human welfare and the arts of peace. Both men also uniquely share, with Wells, the distinction of having helped to usher in the nuclear age and make possible the swift annihilation of all life on earth. The first is Leo Szilard, the Hungarian-born nuclear physicist who emigrated to the United States in the 1930’s, worked with Enrico Fermi to develop the first self-sustained fission reactor fueled by uranium, and persuaded Albert Einstein to take the initiative that led to the first atomic bombs of 1945. The story has been told more than once, but bears repeating. Szilard was familiar with Wells’s writings in his earlier years and met Wells briefly in 1929. He admired both the fiction and Wells’s plans for world reconstruction. In 1932 while living in Berlin, he happened on a new German edition of one of Wells’s least successful science-fiction novels, The World Set Free. Written in 1913 and published early the next year in book form, The World Set Free had taken as its central premise the speculation that radioactivity could provide a source of unlimited energy and also the means of destroying the human race. The novel was dedicated to a book by Frederick Soddy, in which the British chemist had recounted his research on radioactive isotopes, research that eventually earned him a Nobel Prize.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 13:40:52 +0000
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