Sci_Fi

Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A space odyssey” is arguably the most culturally and socially influential sci-fi film to date whilst William Gibson’s 1984 novel “Neuromancer” revolutionised the world of sci-fi. Both texts attacked the constraints on people’s imagination and speculation compelling them to new heights. The social contexts in which each was produced laid the foundations for the subsequent development of their astonishing and audacious foresights; the values explored in each text present prospects of core ideals from a futuristic society; the prophetic nature of both texts challenged society’s technical predictions of the future, elevating expectations; and its eccentricity instigated drastic changes in the genre conventions of sci-fi. Kubrick”s film was produced shortly after America launched Apollo 8, the first piloted American mission to the moon. It’s most profound cultural impact is unquestionably its influence on the visualisation of space exploration and the innovative and diverse perceptions people had of it due to America’s recent achievement; it allowed people to conceive and believe that humanity will inevitably transcend the limitations of the present. The Space historian Howard McCurdy noted, “2001 established the popular image of what a space station should look like”. When Americans were asked to illustrate a space station, they almost inevitably portrayed this as a giant spinning wheel in orbit, undoubtedly based upon their exposure to 2001. Perhaps more subtly, 2001 insinuated, into the audience, the idea that the United States would continue to aggressively pursue space exploration after Apollo and would soon develop giant orbiting space stations and bases on the Moon as depicted in the film. Furthermore, the presence of the supercomputer HAL and the spinning artificial gravity station heightened the anticipations for what technology would be in the future. Kubrick”s film was able to generate an extensive impact due to society’s lack of technology and the outstanding accomplishment (Apollo) relative to that period of time. Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer is the product of America in the 1980s, a time of ever increasing anxiety regarding the ramifications of the escalating quantity of scientific discoveries and the rapid rate of technological development. As such, the derivation of the future as one in which humanity has been unsuccessful in providing a solution to the moral dilemmas posed by the exponential advances of technology is based on this. The notion of the internet (World Wide Web) had already been established prior to Gibson’s novel however the notion of a global network of millions of computers, described by Gibson in astonishing detail, did not. Gibson seized the concept of the World Wide Web and expanded it further beyond; with his introduction of the idea of “cyberspace, a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billons of legitimate operators” he transformed computing into a potential form of experience that engaged all five senses of the user. Without the solid foundations of the social context of the time these ideas could not have come to be. Artificial intelligence (AI), eugenics, cloning and even the possibility of alien life forms appeared to progress hastily from the imaginative prose of science fiction to cold hard facts of reality. For the vast majority of 2001, the primary focus resides in the notion of evolution; it conveys to the audience the roots of humankind followed closely by their future; the two are juxtaposed to emphasise the enormity of the evolution. The core values explored relate to the journey of humans, as a species, towards what the film suggest is “the reaching of a higher plane”. The linear narrative structure re-enforces the importance of the journey of discovery, evolution and the pursuit of knowledge. HAL represents the limits of human’s current evolutionary paradigm. What begins with a bone transforms into a super-computer whose intellect is far superior to that of any human’s. It becomes so that the very tools created by civilisation in an attempt to progress is actually constrictive rather than supportive. HAL sabotages the mission and this sabotage is indicative of the fact that humans have lost control of what once aided them in their endeavours; this emphasises the need to evolve as tools have become too powerful. These implications altered the perceptions of society’s expectations in what future values would become and projected the future values of society based on the fluctuating observations in core ideals present at the time. Whilst 2001 projects technology’s ramifications on society, Neuromancer discusses the direct effect of technology on the people. In a world defined by both an absence of the natural and a potent sense of decay and lifelessness due to the dominance of technology, as shown with the line “The sky is no longer the conventional blue, but instead the colour of television tuned to a dead channel.”, humanity has lost their spiritual constituent. The characters of Neuromancer are narcissistic and indifferent, and repudiate the need to construct bonds in trepidation that such may render them vulnerable. Molly and Case, for example, engage in a rather intense relationship, however, neither of them displays any significant emotion for the other after the establishment of this connection. Furthermore, everything is associated to business and as a replacement for the essence of human emotion which inserts flair into life are the monotonous and robotic attitudes of an oppressed and post-apocalyptic world. Such a state of human alienation and deceptive affiliation depicts the miserable state of such a society and its inevitable doom. The thorough exploration of these notions was highly implicative of what the future might hold and encouraged the audience to reflect upon their state of technological dependence at the time. Kubrick's depiction of a gleaming white antiseptic future served as both a prophecy and a stimulus for the present towards the construction of such future. For the numerous people fascinated by the evolution of space exploration and its potential, this film provided innovative ideas on how humanity should go about realising their prospects for the future whilst heightening the expectations of technological development. When the movie was made, space travel mostly consisted of putting people on top of a massive missile, and then setting fire to the bottom of it. Kubrick's film evocatively captures the routine tedium that regular space travel would no doubt develop into, and makes it closely resemble the aircraft travel experience. The shuttle craft resembles an airplane design; the back of the head-rests in the shuttle feature small TV screens, something that undoubtedly had a significant impact on subsequent designs in airplanes and which would not actually be introduced to airplanes until the 1980s. This along with various other ultramodern gadgets was the result of highly inventive speculations based on the present forms of technology; it challenged what science of the day deemed seemingly impossible and as a result, expectations for new technology rose drastically. The futuristic world of Neuromancer also became the inspiration for development; its comprehensive insight on technology with no specified date as to when such would become tangible allowed these expectations for the future to be realistic. People in Neuromancer constantly use, wear, think about, and talk about technology in its various forms in addition to having physically integrated human and man-made tissues. Molly, for example, has mirrored cybernetic eyes built into her sockets that constantly show her the time and other data, and enables her to see in the dark; despite this seeming ridiculously idealistic, it is impossible to know what the future has installed and so such an ideas become reasonable; similar to the speculations in 2001, this too was based off what the time period offered, in this case plastic surgery. Furthermore, Gibson identifies the main form of entertainment as “simstim” a recording of the sensory experience of one person that can be re-created exactly in the brain of another; the pedestal for this prediction being the notion of data transfer. Again, society’s expectation for the future of technology is elevated by inventive foresights which challenged the constraints of the science present at the time. 2001 was an exceedingly unusual film due to its lack of dialogue; it attempted to tell a story via a barrage of imagery and music and its viewers were left to experience the non-verbal, mystical vastness of the film, and to subjectively reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning. The music is not used to emphasize a character’s action, emotion or dialogue, it supplements the intense imagery, and together they act as a dialogue. The first appearance of the monolith introduces a very challenging and hypnotic quality to the film. The music in this scene is almost too profound for the clumsy and trepid kinaesthetic response of the hominids to the alluring black surfaces of the monolith; it is an expression of the inexpressible and symbolizes the alien intelligence that dwarfs prehistoric man. It can be seen that Kubrick is trying to converse more to the audience’s subconsciousness and feelings rather than to their intellect. The breathtaking, richly eloquent, and visually-poetic film was praised for its visual inventiveness, originality and symbolism. Its distinction from ordinary sci-fi allowed it to seize much attention from critics and revolutionised the conventions of the genre. Neuromancer also created a sensation in the genre of sci-fi; it is a work that played an invaluable role in the reinvigoration of the science fiction genre. Its highly innovative structure rendered normal sci-fi obsolete; Gibson’s prose was excessively tangled and dense and its enormous amount of allusion to contemporary technology set a new standard for sci-fi prose. An especially intriguing feature of the novel is that its approach in telling the story is more if not as stunning as the plot itself. Throughout the text, there are often parts which employ the various elements more conventionally present in noir. The noir tone is established in the very early stages of the book with the introduction the protagonist, Case, a small time hustler in desperate need for money and a solution for his scars. This tone if further emphasised with the description of Ratz, the bar man “his prosthetic arm jerking monotonously…his teeth a webwork of steel and brown decay”. It is this style of writing within the science fiction genre that launched the cyberpunk generation. Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A space odyssey” and William Gibson’s 1984 novel “Neuromancer” are texts which have impacted society to a profound extent. Their incredible predictions of the future of technology and the values of society corresponding to this future in amalgamation with its unorthodox manner of presentation were a shock that demanded attention. This greatly altered the perspectives people had on technology, compelling their imaginations to new heights and increasing the level of anticipation.