The Western World: “I grow fatigued”
Posted by Ron Coleman on April 16, 2007
Mary Madigan writes, in a great post:
A few weeks ago, I was watching an original series Star Trek episode, “Space Seed”, which originally aired in 1967. The vision of the future in “Space Seed” assumed that by the 1990’s we would:
1. Have a reasonable space program
2. Have lived through a eugenics war
3. Have lived through a nuclear holocaust and an attempt by Ricardo Montalban to take over the world.
From what I’ve seen of science fiction from ’60’s, (and I’ve seen a fair amount) most
people assumed that we’d be living in some sort of nuclear-wasted mutant-populated dystopia by now.
It’s kind of funny to see how they got it wrong, but it’s not funny to see that they may have gotten some things right. Would the folks who made up the Greatest Generation have called an attempt to dialogue with fascists ‘realism’?
It’s hard to have any optimism on this point.
craig mclaughlin said
I take the point she’s making, but it doesn’t follow from the ’60s science fiction example she cites. What did they get right? I’ve seen and read a fair bit of that stuff myself and I can’t think of a single damn thing. Everyone of those Star Trek episodes that I’ve seen were thinly veiled references to current or past events. Unless it’s just the notion that we’re not living in utopia. But any dystopian vision is by definition correct if you set the bar that low. One thing that all of them had in common, this includes Vonnegut (RIP) and Orwell is they all predicted massive catastrophic change that didn’t happen. Things rot, they don’t typically explode.
She writes: “Would the folks who made up the Greatest Generation have called an attempt to dialogue with fascists ‘realism’?”
I would say that depends on which of them you ask.
Ron Coleman said
Oh, I excerpted her piece about Star Trek because it’s something we’ve all noticed, but her focus on the Ricardo Mantalban angle makes it particularly entertaining.
mary said
But any dystopian vision is by definition correct if you set the bar that low. One thing that all of them had in common, this includes Vonnegut (RIP) and Orwell is they all predicted massive catastrophic change that didn’t happen. Things rot, they don’t typically explode.
Actually, I was thinking more of postwar sci fi, which usually assumed that all scientific or political experiments were proto-apocalyptic; A society eliminates illness and suffers from horrific overpopulation. Drugs are developed to cure mental illness or violence, and this leads to a decadent, doped society. Privatization and technology lead to a anarchic cyberpunk universe…
A lot of these writers took these ideas to extremes because that makes for more interesting reading, but most had the central idea that the path to dystopia is paved with good (or not explicitly evil) intentions.
I’d guess that a lot of the mistakes we’ve been making lately are based on our fear of our own military power and our desire for peace. So far, this dystopia is more rot than bang.
Exit Zero said
Paved with good intentions.
Ron Coleman liked Hope vs. the Post West’s focus on the Ricardo Montalban angle, so he posted this: