# Emergence of Science Fiction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y76FU4RLkHI

[00:02] Well, welcome all.
[00:05] We are really excited to have you here for the emergence of Science Fiction, our conversation with Anastasia Clemchinskaya.
[00:14] She is a postdoctoral researcher at The Institute of the formation of Knowledge from 2019 to 2022 and now we are proud to call her a Graham school instructor.
[00:23] And we will be exploring the big questions around how the genre of Science Fiction emerged.
[00:32] Before we do that, I just want to briefly introduce myself.
[00:35] I'm Seth Green and on an afternoon like this one, I'm especially grateful to say that I'm dean of the Graham school here at the University of Chicago.
[00:46] Welcome virtually to our campus.
[00:49] It is as beautiful today as it looks like in this picture.
[00:51] The sun is shining and we do not need to imagine alternate realities today to be absolutely in love with our environment.
[00:59] But we will, because we'll be diving into science fiction momentarily.
[01:04] I'll just say, for those who are not familiar with the Graham school, that we are the home for more than 130 years of lifelong learning at this great University.
[01:14] And what that means is that we help people across all ages and stages of their life to engage in deep inquiry to better understand the world and to live examined lives of purpose.
[01:27] We have four program areas that we bring that mission through.
[01:30] We have a master of liberal arts that is among the most respected and rigorous in the world, where you can see across all of the University's divisions through a intensive graduate degree.
[01:44] We have a basic program of liberal education for adults where you can read the great books in a great environment.
[01:49] And then where we have Anastasia teaching this course in the summer is through our open enrollment, where you can peek across all of the disciplines of the university.
[01:59] And then we're grateful to have annual programs where you can do anything from better get to know Chicago to look at.
[02:05] The future of Museum publishing, but you are not here to hear about the Graham School.
[02:10] You are here to hear from Anastasia, and so I will bring her up on screen and just share that her research brings together a literary, theater theory, sociology, and neuroscience to study how storytelling and narrative shape what we believe we know about the world.
[02:28] She received her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing on the way science fiction emerged as a literary form in the 19th century.
[02:39] So this is a topic that she knows well, and she has a book project right now that extends this work into the 21st century, using the two periods as foils for each other to examine how our fictions shape the innovation, use, and understanding of techno-scientific advancements.
[02:57] And so, Anastasia, I think that is actually a perfect place to start because you talk about how we have.
[03:06] Science fiction coming to light in the 19th century.
[03:08] The 19th century is, even as we compare it to the many things happening today, a uniquely turbulent moment in history.
[03:17] We have big revolutions, including in this country.
[03:22] We also have big inventions.
[03:25] And so, before we jump into how science fiction emerges, I'm curious if you can bring us back to that time and place and just kind of remind us what is happening in the 19th century.
[03:33] And maybe use as a foreshadowing of what we'll then discuss: how might the turbulence and inventive nature of this moment have set the conditions that science fiction then comes out of?
[03:47] So tell us what's happening in this moment in history.
[03:49] Yeah, absolutely, although I have to add the caveat that I think if you ask a scholar of any century, they will say their period is the most turbulent or the most exciting.
[04:00] I mean, if you talk to a Renaissance historian, they will say, you know, that they were constantly fighting wars or was.
[04:07] Constantly just turbulence happening.
[04:10] Um, but it is a 19th century, I, I, you know, I say my period is the most exciting, of course.
[04:18] Um, so of course, uh, you have, uh, I think it's best summarized by the word revolution and revolution in many different senses of the word.
[04:28] So, uh, you have, of course, political revolutions, um, in the American Revolution, in the French Revolution, which, uh, it's really hard to express the way that they broke with the old order because they not only sort of overthrew the monarchy, but they created a new order in which, uh, they did away with the idea that there was this special person who was born to rule and he had the specific qualities he needed to rule.
[04:59] Um, so a completely different kind of social organization.
[05:02] Uh, there was, of course, the Industrial Revolution and, uh.
[05:08] You know well we've always had technological innovation of different sorts.
[05:12] The Industrial Revolution is the moment where you really see um the dissemination of those technologies on a broad scale where they're rebuilding cities, reshaping cities, reshaping people's daily lives um.
[05:28] And at the same time you have a number of almost revolutionary discoveries in fields like uh geology and paleontology and evolutionary science um which since the middle of the 18th century just kind of accumulate and and build on each other.
[05:46] So uh it starts with people like Erasmus Darwin who is the grandfather of the Charles Darwin that we know and love um who suggested that the Earth was not 6,000 years old as had previously been believed according to biblical narratives.
[06:03] And he suggested that species changed over time so uh to kind of.
[06:11] Briefly summarize this, uh, you have suddenly this idea that firstly the Earth is so much longer than we had previously believed, uh, and that there had been species that existed on this Earth, uh, prior to us, you know, uh, dinosaurs and other species that had that gone extinct.
[06:35] And then with Evolution you also had the suggestion that we might also go extinct because, you know, these are processes of change we can't control; they just happen over extremely vast spans of time, you know, so vast that we can't even imagine them.
[06:51] And so what all of this did is almost kind of dethroned humanity from our special place where previously we were sort of we were God's creation, we were at the top of this natural world, uh, to the planet is very, very old and we've existed for a very small portion of that.
[07:12] Very long time and we might not always exist so that this really was troubling and discomforting and and kind of intellectually and cognitively revolutionary.
[07:29] Wow, that is fascinating, and even as someone who knows the period I had never thought of it in those terms of the dethroning of kind of humankind as the center, right?
[07:39] And so you set that scene for us and I can see how that raises existential questions and maybe then leans into this new creativity.
[07:50] Um, talk us through, now that you've set the scene, what are some of the early works of Science Fiction that emerge?
[07:57] And then how do you distinguish those from what came before, because obviously there were fictional works before and I imagine some of them were imaginative in you know a way that might connect, but there's a distinction that you're drawing in terms of the genre really developing.
[08:12] So what are those works?
[08:13] Then how would you distinguish them from what had come before?
[08:17] Yeah, um, so I think you're asking almost two questions there, so I will, I will take them in parts.
[08:24] Um, in terms of, uh, uh, what distinguished them from what came before, I, I have to admit that here I'm leaning on the work of some previous critics of science fiction who have suggested that, uh, science fiction emerged in the 19th century.
[08:40] And, uh, not all science fiction scholars agree with this, but many of them do, and, and so I have sort of taken that as my starting point.
[08:51] Um, and so what I suggest is that these works kind of, um, um, captured this new sense of being, these new kind of existential understandings.
[09:05] Um, uh, and, and reframed understandings of humanity's place in the world.
[09:11] So, uh, I, I can name a few works, you know, Mary.
[09:16] Shelley's Frankenstein and she also has a um an apocalyptic novel called the Last Man.
[09:22] Um, I know Jules Verne's novels from the Earth to the Moon, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
[09:27] Uh, Edgar Allan Poe wrote some lovely science fiction um that we'll read in the course.
[09:33] Uh, HG Wells, of course, uh, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau.
[09:38] So these these ones that I've named are really kind of the the most famous ones that are the ones that you can go to the bookstore and pull them off the shelf in like a Penguin Classics Edition.
[09:50] Um, but I really want to emphasize that these are kind of only the most famous works out of a vast vast landscape.
[09:57] Because what I really want to get across is there really was this uh shift in how humanity understood its place in the world because of all of these kind of transformations and revolutions that I've just enumerated.
[10:12] And um so these authors, they were just sort of uh wholesale inventing something.
[10:20] Incredibly prescient with this kind of prophetic power, what I argue is rather they were capturing something that was kind of in the air.
[10:31] They were capturing this new sense of what humanities' place in the world was, what our relationship to the natural world was.
[10:40] And they were building on each other, that they were kind of circulating due to all of these new communication and transportation technologies like the telegraph, and just really sort of building and capturing all of these new ideas.
[10:56] Can you go a little further on that last point about this conceptual shift where, you know, the emergence of science fiction leads to almost a different paradigm for how the humanities sees its relationship to the natural world?
[11:12] Okay, can you say more about that in particular?
[11:16] Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and that kind of almost contradiction is actually at the core of.
[11:20] My book, which is at the foundation of this course, so uh, on the one hand with industrialization, uh, you have this really increased scope of power over the natural world.
[11:36] And here I'm borrowing, um, from a wonderful, uh, scholar and historian of science named Rosalind Williams who uses, um, Francis Bacon's phrase, the Triumph of human Empire.
[11:48] And really suggests that with industrialization, with the dissemination of these Technologies, with the way that they entered into people's domestic spaces, there was really this sense that the natural world was something that we could conquer and control, um, and go past boundaries that we had previously experienced.
[12:12] So, uh, with the phonograph for example, which we, you know, call the gramophone today, um, there was a sense that, you know, you could bring the dead back to life in a.
[12:20] Way you could make the dead speak.
[12:23] Um, Lord, there was all of this, you know, exploration and resource extraction which is unfortunately tied up with Western colonialism and imperialism.
[12:35] But looking from the kind of Western point of view, there was a sense that by the end of the century the entirety of the globe had been mapped, had been sort of, um, I don't want to say conquered, but in many senses it was.
[12:52] So there was a sense of mastery over the natural world in every sense.
[12:57] Um, but on the other hand, at the same time, there was, as I mentioned, all of these kind of geological, paleontological discoveries that opened up vast swaths of time.
[13:11] Um, it's something that historians call deep time, which is this idea that, you know, the history of the earth is as vast as space out there.
[13:22] Um, you know, too big for us to imagine.
[13:25] And if you look at that vast, vast timeline of the history of the earth, we're just one tiny blip.
[13:31] They're like, we're a little bit on that vast, vast timeline.
[13:37] And there's nothing saying we won't eventually go extinct.
[13:40] I mean, you know, according to all of these processes and everything that the historical record suggests about space going extinct and how evolution works, we might as well go extinct just like the dinosaurs before us.
[13:57] So, it's this contradiction which I think is almost like a paradigmatic shift to where, on the one hand, you have this incredible sense of power over the natural world.
[14:12] But on the other hand, you have this sense of human insignificance and the ephemeral nature of humanity's very existence.
[14:22] And so what I suggest is that science.
[14:26] Fiction is really interested in capturing this contradiction, this dichotomy between these two vastly different understandings of what is our place within the natural world, what is our place within kind of on the planet.
[14:45] So there are two questions that come to mind.
[14:47] I'll start with this one, but then I want to come over to AI in a moment because I think what you're grappling with in that is very similar to what we grapple with today: our ability to create and literally indent this future, but then fear it because we can't control it, right?
[15:00] So we'll come back to that; let me put a pin in it.
[15:04] Where I want to go at the moment, though, the Anthropocene is an idea that has gained great significance.
[15:11] And it's one that in many ways I see kind of in some ways coming out of this shift that you just described; it helps us to better understand it.
[15:20] Can you just talk a little bit about what is the Anthropocene for those who aren't familiar, and then maybe how this?
[15:26] Shift helps us to better understand it as a concept.
[15:30] Yeah, um, so the Anthropocene is this, um, term that at this point I think is a little over 20 years old.
[15:40] And, uh, what it really suggests is anthropogenic change over the entirety of the planet.
[15:49] So, uh, it's this idea that we, with our industry, are kind of a resource extraction, our use of the planet and its resources, have fundamentally changed the planet and its environment.
[16:02] And, you know, set into motion all of these, uh, forces.
[16:05] So we can see that with, um, now climate change, or the climate crisis at the moment, uh, where, you know, we have, uh, hurricanes that are much, um, coming much more often and are much more violent than what has happened.
[16:27] Previously we have all of these wildfires, and of course we've had wildfires before, but these are coming more often, coming out of season.
[16:36] These are more powerful, kind of the temperature, you know, the temperature of the planet is rising.
[16:42] So, we've set it in motion all of these processes through resource extraction, through in kind of our desire to dominate the planet, through our desire to be able to, you know, fly across the world in a day or to mine and extract resources so that we all have technologies that are beck and call.
[17:06] So, it's just interesting kind of continuation of the contradiction I spoke of, where on the one hand we have fundamentally reshaped our planet.
[17:18] I mean, that's an incredibly powerful thing to do, to set in motion these processes and fundamentally reshape the planet and the environment that we live on, and yet.
[17:30] At the same time, that has sort of placed us at the mercy of all of these processes.
[17:36] You know, when hurricanes happen, we can't stop them; all we can do is evacuate.
[17:42] When forest fires happen, all we can do is evacuate.
[17:48] We're doing our best to sort of preserve the temperature of the atmosphere where it is and not make it go higher.
[18:02] But part of conversations about climate change and the climate catastrophe is this idea that if we don't do something, then the very human race is in danger.
[18:13] And that's also why we're talking about going to Mars and terraforming Mars and having a planet B.
[18:20] It's all of these ideas; it all comes from this idea that, well, we might have messed up this planet beyond a point of no return, so we need to make a backup.
[18:31] Planet, so you see how there's this contradiction between we've been able to fundamentally change this planet with a great amount of power and yet what that has done is place us at the mercy of these planetary forces that we can't control.
[18:48] Um, and I think that's what makes conversations about the Anthropocene so challenging because, you know, are we powerful or are we powerless?
[18:59] Do we have the power to fix the problems we have created, or have we unleashed a monster that is bigger than us?
[19:08] Well, so one more parallel I want to draw, and then we're going to come to your questions in order to see some of them in the chat, but please throw more into the chat if you have them.
[19:16] Um, let's come to AI, because I think a lot of what you just described conceptually on climate—we unleash this, but we may not be able to manage it—we are now wondering about whether that sort of challenge may emerge in the AI space.
[19:30] We've been incredibly inventive.
[19:32] We've, you know, made now, uh, these, you know, ChatGPT and other examples where we've given what we would have, I think, previously thought of almost as human intelligence to, you know, an artificial source.
[19:45] And, you know, there are questions now about how do we approach it?
[19:47] You've probably heard Bill Gates comment on this this week that, you know, well, he does have some concerns, he really wants to make sure the good guys, as he called them, are able to keep pace and be ahead of the bad guys in this domain.
[20:03] Um, yeah, I imagine they're they're women too that are involved in this, but that was his term.
[20:07] In any case, let me come back to you then.
[20:09] How do you think, as we look at the past and how we've grappled with these issues, how do you think that gives us insight into how science fiction may help us to better understand the ethical and other dimensions that are at play in this emerging debate over AI?
[20:25] Like, how do you see the science fiction that's happening and this policy and societal discussion?
[20:33] how do those interact in your
[20:34] imagination yeah uh well so science
[20:38] fiction has been a tool for kind of
[20:41] moral and ethical thinking and as a
[20:44] resource to imagine our futures before
[20:47] we make them for a very long time and
[20:49] and I could give you many many examples
[20:51] from
[20:53] um the military even occasionally hiring
[20:55] science fiction authors and bringing
[20:56] them to conferences that they have to
[20:59] talk about the future of warfare or
[21:01] companies like Google and AI hiring
[21:04] science fiction authors to um
[21:07] uh kind of Envision certain Futures so
[21:10] that they can make r d divisions so uh
[21:13] and and most recently what comes to mind
[21:17] is a wonderful edition of Frankenstein
[21:19] put out by MIT press uh annotated uh for
[21:24] engineers and scientists and creators of
[21:26] all kinds and the idea is precisely
[21:28] let's use Frankenstein to kind of think
[21:30] about moral and ethical issues and
[21:32] science particularly with genetic
[21:34] engineering so uh science fiction as
[21:37] always and will always be a powerful
[21:39] resource it
[21:41] um I've even given a talk previously
[21:43] this is many many years ago about um how
[21:47] we might be able to use science fiction
[21:49] to create policy around uh new
[21:53] technologies because I think with
[21:54] technological innovation is it happens
[21:57] very very fast
[21:59] um so if if maybe we had a tool that
[22:01] could let us imagine these scenarios
[22:04] before they came to be so that we could
[22:07] start thinking about what kind of laws
[22:09] and policies we and regulations we might
[22:11] enact before this this problem or this
[22:15] technology appears that might be useful
[22:18] um
[22:19] with that said uh I am not one of the
[22:23] kind of I guess uh
[22:26] sentient AI doomsday kind of prepper
[22:30] type people I mean uh technology
[22:34] artificial intelligence has made a lot
[22:36] of steps it really has but
[22:39] um I really want to caution us that from
[22:41] my understanding it's not it's not
[22:44] thinking the way we do it doesn't have
[22:46] intelligence it doesn't have a mind all
[22:49] it's doing is pattern recognition and
[22:51] when we say you know wow this almost
[22:54] talks like a person or wow it can write
[22:57] this essay or Draw Art I mean that's
[23:01] pattern recognition you gave it a lot of
[23:03] data like a lot of data and traded on
[23:05] that data and it's
[23:07] spitting out things that look like the
[23:09] data that you gave it but there's no
[23:12] mind behind it there's no thinking it
[23:15] can't it can spit out an image that
[23:17] looks like the ones you trained it on
[23:19] but it can't tell you why those two
[23:21] images are similar there's no it to tell
[23:25] you
[23:26] um there's kind of like no consciousness
[23:28] so
[23:29] um
[23:30] my concern with AI is is sort of less of
[23:34] the kind of Skynet Terminator it'll
[23:36] become sentient and we've opened
[23:38] Pandora's Box uh my concern with things
[23:42] like AI is uh you know much more
[23:45] practical concerns for example right now
[23:48] there's a regular strike happening in
[23:50] Hollywood and one of the reasons those
[23:52] writers are on strike is they don't want
[23:55] to be replaced by artificial
[23:57] intelligence they they don't want to be
[23:59] out of the job because they argue that
[24:02] meaningful creative labor cannot be
[24:05] replaced by AI so those are the kinds of
[24:08] changes I'm concerned with rather than
[24:11] the kind of apocalyptic Terminator style
[24:14] war game style you know this sentient AI
[24:18] will wake up and start sending nukes
[24:20] kind of scenario
[24:22] um that that is kind of my take on it
[24:27] um obviously you know uh there's many
[24:29] very smart people who disagree with me
[24:31] on this
[24:32] um but but that's kind of uh my two
[24:36] cents I suppose
[24:37] wonderful well I'm going to come now to
[24:39] some of the questions Maureen Connolly
[24:42] asked for the title of your book and
[24:45] then Liz follows up with whether she
[24:47] could get a link to it and potentially
[24:49] buy it but I think it may still be
[24:51] forthcoming but tell us about your book
[24:53] and when we can expect it
[24:56] oh boy it's well it's so it's in
[24:58] progress and one thing you have to know
[25:00] is that if regular publishing is slow
[25:04] then academic publishing is twice as
[25:06] slow it's a very long process so um
[25:09] it's currently in progress I'm sort of
[25:12] nearing completion on the manuscript and
[25:15] I'm in conversation with some presses
[25:17] about publishing it
[25:19] um I unfortunately can't name the
[25:20] presses in this context
[25:23] um but I you know hopefully knock on
[25:27] wood in the next couple of years
[25:30] um that will see the light of day and I
[25:33] apologize that I can't give you you know
[25:34] a closer date uh but uh with academic
[25:40] publishing it really does have to go
[25:41] through so many rounds of peer review
[25:43] that it's um
[25:45] it's a long process but uh I'm very
[25:48] excited about it uh and when it does
[25:52] sort of have a publication date and a
[25:56] contract I will you know announce it on
[25:58] all of my social media channels and
[26:01] things like that uh
[26:04] and I think the the other part of your
[26:06] question is if I could say a little bit
[26:08] more about the book
[26:10] um
[26:11] so the the book is essentially the basis
[26:13] for this class so the kind of thing I
[26:15] articulated about
[26:17] uh this paradigm shift and this
[26:20] contradiction in Humanities place in the
[26:24] natural world and how science fiction
[26:25] captures that that really is the thesis
[26:29] of the book so what you guys are getting
[26:31] if you take the class is sort of a
[26:34] preview of that argument it's I guess
[26:38] um you will be the first to know maybe
[26:41] I'll even share a few little bits from
[26:44] the book as some of the readings
[26:46] wonderful well that only adds to the
[26:49] excitement then of the the possibilities
[26:51] the summer should people make your class
[26:54] I'm going to come to other questions uh
[26:56] Edward shupat says how would you relate
[26:59] Bellamy's Looking Backward and his
[27:02] socialist Paradise to existentialism
[27:06] to existentialism yes yeah I I
[27:10] acknowledge this is beyond my knowledge
[27:12] that but you may be familiar with
[27:14] Bellamy and existentialism as a paradigm
[27:18] uh I I I'm I'm familiar with Bellamy and
[27:22] he does appear in the book I don't know
[27:25] if I could speak to uh his relationship
[27:28] to that uh existentialism as a
[27:30] philosophy uh but I could speak to his
[27:33] context in in terms of 19th century
[27:35] science fiction
[27:38] um which so his book came out in 1877
[27:42] and it kind of launched this um
[27:45] almost micro genre of futuristic utopian
[27:49] fictions and what was really interesting
[27:51] about those is the utopian tradition is
[27:54] very old you know you have uh Thomas
[27:57] Moore's Utopia you have Plato talking
[28:00] about Atlantis you know there's this
[28:02] whole genre
[28:04] um of speculation about other societies
[28:07] and alternate ways of being but what
[28:09] happens in the 19th century is that that
[28:12] speculation moves
[28:14] um from elsewhere in space to elsewhere
[28:17] in time so it's no longer some island in
[28:21] the sea like Atlantis or some kind of
[28:23] city in a distant land it's the future
[28:27] that is the potential utopian society
[28:30] and
[28:31] there's many reasons for this that I
[28:34] think are beyond the scope of this talk
[28:36] but a lot of it has to do with
[28:39] evolutionary thought and the way that
[28:41] evolutionary thought got applied to
[28:43] sociological thought and ideas about
[28:47] Social Development to the point where if
[28:49] you wanted to think about Utopias
[28:51] realistically you had to set them in the
[28:53] future and
[28:55] um
[28:56] Bellamy was kind of um again the the
[28:59] first of this uh
[29:02] many many kind of trend or many many
[29:05] utopian movement that was doing that at
[29:08] the end of the 19th century
[29:10] so our next question comes from Michelle
[29:12] and she asks how seriously were novels
[29:15] like island of Dr Moreau regarded when
[29:18] they first came out in terms of
[29:20] launching dialogue as cautionary tales
[29:23] were they ever part of Academia or
[29:26] disregarded more as Pope reading
[29:30] so science fiction only became sort of
[29:34] part of the pulps in about 1926 in
[29:37] America when Hugo gernsbach launched a
[29:40] magazine called amazing Stories and he
[29:43] said we're going to publish scientific
[29:46] Shin which is the H.D Wells Jules Verne
[29:50] Edgar Allan Poe type of story that's
[29:52] when science fiction entered the pulps
[29:54] and and
[29:56] um became kind of almost ghettoized a
[29:59] little bit
[30:01] um
[30:01] with before that
[30:04] um you didn't necessarily have this
[30:07] category of Science Fiction as like this
[30:11] pulp genre for kids that we shouldn't
[30:13] take seriously uh with the island of Dr
[30:16] Moreau specifically uh the critical
[30:20] response to it was
[30:22] uh negative in many ways because it is
[30:26] very very Blasphemous you have this
[30:30] scientist who is
[30:31] creating these man beasts and having
[30:35] them treat him like a God and recite a
[30:39] parody of a prayer to him because he he
[30:43] is their kind of Creator God so it was
[30:46] seen as incredibly Blasphemous and that
[30:48] was what so many of the reviewers
[30:51] um
[30:51] pointed to but then if you look at
[30:54] somebody like uh Jules Verne for example
[30:57] who was incredibly popular a bestseller
[31:00] he sold really well not just in France
[31:03] but in Imperial Russia in the United
[31:05] States in England everywhere uh he was
[31:09] read very widely and he was referenced
[31:12] really widely in newspapers of the day
[31:15] you know people would write
[31:17] um kind of they were right into a
[31:20] newspaper and they would write a kind of
[31:22] op-ed I guess we could call it and say
[31:24] you know this is the future heavier than
[31:27] air flights as Jules Verne imagines in
[31:31] this novel called Roper the Conqueror is
[31:33] the future or look we've invented an
[31:37] electrically powered submarine just like
[31:39] the one that Captain Nemo had so he was
[31:42] really you know a touchstone for
[31:45] understanding technological change uh
[31:48] but but also the you know technological
[31:51] change within a social context
[31:53] well that's actually a perfect segue to
[31:55] Michael praise this question who asks
[31:58] what is the relationship of Science
[32:00] Fiction and prediction examples he
[32:04] mentions of the military listening to
[32:07] scientific fiction authors and maybe
[32:10] foretelling the future or he says is it
[32:14] simply entertaining and encouraging
[32:15] brainstorming and then a final question
[32:19] from him did the scientific fiction
[32:21] authors who failed to predict the future
[32:24] meaning you know authors who came up
[32:26] with something that doesn't end up
[32:28] coming true in any respect do they go
[32:32] the way of the dodo meaning you know how
[32:34] much of you know your Effectiveness long
[32:37] term or your you know visibility is
[32:40] dependent on you actually having some
[32:42] prediction ability so coming back to
[32:44] that big picture question the
[32:45] relationship in your mind and now that
[32:48] you've looked over hundreds of years of
[32:49] Science Fiction and prediction
[32:52] yeah uh so that's that's a complicated
[32:55] question for uh many reasons so let's
[32:58] see if I can make my way through them
[33:00] um so the first thing I would say is
[33:03] that I look at science fiction as almost
[33:05] like cultural evidence or as I guess you
[33:08] could call them like seismographs that's
[33:10] a term I borrow from a wonderful critic
[33:13] named John trash so I'm interested in
[33:17] how do these Works capture the way that
[33:20] people were thinking about Humanities
[33:21] place in the world
[33:23] um
[33:24] just following all of these uh
[33:27] revolutionary changes
[33:30] and so in that sense the the prediction
[33:33] part isn't really important to me
[33:35] because you know I I it doesn't matter
[33:38] whether they correctly predicted the
[33:41] particular technology what matters is
[33:44] um how did they think about the
[33:45] relationship of technology in uh and the
[33:48] natural world how how did they think
[33:49] about Humanities a new place in in the
[33:53] world you know for example
[33:55] um H.G Wells As Time Machine you know
[33:58] obviously as far as we know we have not
[34:01] invented a time machine uh but with that
[34:04] novel reveals so powerfully is
[34:08] how people at the time thought about
[34:12] uh sort of the ephemeral and contingent
[34:16] nature of human existence because you
[34:19] have this Creator uh the scientists
[34:21] create this time machine which is this
[34:23] very powerful technology and it's a
[34:26] machine so specifically a technology
[34:28] through which he can Traverse time is if
[34:31] it were space you know is it as if he
[34:33] were taking a train on a railroad
[34:36] um but he uses it to go to the end of
[34:38] time and see a moment in time when
[34:41] humanity is extinct when we have turned
[34:44] into these like crab-like creatures and
[34:47] there's no Oxygen left on Earth so he
[34:49] literally can't breathe so so
[34:52] um
[34:53] Earth is uninhabitable for human beings
[34:55] uh and again that's there's no
[34:59] prediction there in the sense of you
[35:01] know the technology there is is
[35:03] irrelevant uh but in terms of
[35:08] how he combined this incredibly powerful
[35:12] technology so again that you know tribe
[35:15] of human Empire uh with this revelation
[35:19] of
[35:20] Humanities and significant humanity is
[35:23] ephemeral we might well go extinct in
[35:25] the in the future is going to just be
[35:27] kind of the Twilight of planet Earth the
[35:30] combination of those two things I think
[35:32] really aptly captures
[35:35] um how people were thinking and and
[35:37] feeling about uh this new Moment In Time
[35:42] that's fascinating and I love the idea
[35:44] that science fiction tells us about who
[35:45] we are today even as it projects uh this
[35:49] future right it's a reflection of where
[35:52] we are
[35:53] um Richard oh yeah I mean I so I wanted
[35:57] to add that you know science fiction can
[35:59] have also powerful predictive capacities
[36:01] and that's why we draw on it that's why
[36:04] you know again Google hires sci-fi
[36:06] authors that's why the military hires
[36:09] sci-fi authors so
[36:11] um there is value to that but I think
[36:13] that when we kind of play the game of
[36:16] what technology did this science fiction
[36:19] author or uh invent wholesale that then
[36:23] came into being like what what did he
[36:26] kind of predict I I think that gets us
[36:30] away from the complexity of what science
[36:32] fiction can do of the way that works of
[36:35] Science Fiction are really embedded in a
[36:37] cultural and social and material context
[36:41] and in the way that they they reflect
[36:43] just like any work of literature they
[36:45] reflect how people were uh thinking and
[36:49] dreaming and fearing at a particular
[36:51] Moment In Time
[36:53] so Richard Tuttle asks how does the
[36:55] science fiction genre differ between
[36:57] American and British literary Traditions
[37:00] historically and I don't know you could
[37:02] draw a contrast and it might fit into
[37:04] you know especially in the 19th century
[37:08] there are very different contexts
[37:10] between you know where an American
[37:13] author may be in a British author to
[37:15] that conversation you had at the
[37:16] beginning
[37:18] yeah um so with the caveat that um I
[37:22] focus just a little more on the British
[37:24] side of the Atlantic and the American
[37:26] side I will say that uh but the
[37:29] difference is emerged from
[37:31] uh very different social context in the
[37:34] sense of if you think about the early
[37:35] 19th century the United States is a
[37:39] brand new country I mean it's decade
[37:40] it's decades old at the most uh it's
[37:44] scientific institutions are brand new uh
[37:48] whereas in places like France and places
[37:51] like Britain uh these are older nations
[37:54] with
[37:55] old established respected scientific
[37:58] institutions you know the Royal Society
[38:00] the French academies the French Academy
[38:03] phone says so uh on one side of the
[38:08] Atlantic of the United States you have
[38:10] this country that is trying to establish
[38:13] all of these scientific institutions
[38:15] that's trying to establish sources of
[38:18] scientific Authority and that also has a
[38:20] very vibrant
[38:22] um
[38:22] for us a very vibrant publishing culture
[38:25] that isn't necessarily
[38:27] subject to you know the journalistic
[38:30] standards that we have today and so you
[38:33] have uh if if you look at the Press of
[38:36] the period in America you have all of
[38:38] these scientific hoaxes you know you may
[38:41] have heard of the Great Moon hoax or
[38:44] pose Moon hoax or you know about half a
[38:48] dozen others so
[38:50] um it's just very chaotic environment
[38:53] when it comes to scientific discovery
[38:56] and scientific Authority uh whereas in
[39:00] in France and Britain you have sort of
[39:02] these more established institutions uh
[39:06] and these uh kind of more established
[39:10] newspapers and and literary categories
[39:13] and during some periods
[39:16] um forms of censorship during during
[39:20] um particular periods of Empire and
[39:22] monarchy
[39:24] um and so that I think that plays a big
[39:26] role in terms of uh
[39:30] scientific hoaxes like pose and like the
[39:33] Great Moon hoax uh I think really
[39:36] influenced the development of Science
[39:38] Fiction because they were translated
[39:39] they they circulated you know you had to
[39:42] Telegraph you you've had communication
[39:44] Technologies but
[39:46] um it's just
[39:47] chaotic kind of scientific and impressed
[39:52] environment of America that I
[39:54] um had of really interesting influence
[39:56] on the development of these genres uh in
[40:00] other in other countries
[40:02] I'm Ronco asks what is your reaction to
[40:05] the work of Samuel Delaney and where do
[40:07] you think he stands in the pantheon of
[40:10] Science Fiction writers
[40:12] I I don't know that I have a particular
[40:15] sort of uh stance on Delaney I I wish I
[40:19] had a better answer to that question but
[40:21] I must admit that I spend more time in
[40:23] the 19th century than than the 20th so I
[40:26] don't know that I'm familiar enough with
[40:28] the work of Delaney to or given the kind
[40:31] of nuanced answer that that you might be
[40:33] looking for
[40:35] uh Joseph Baron uh points out that there
[40:38] are these hero Journeys in epics you
[40:42] know the union The Odyssey
[40:44] um how might they embody some of that
[40:47] Spirit of Science Fiction and then you
[40:49] know how do you separate them and I
[40:51] heard some of that earlier obviously
[40:53] amuse books maybe humanity is at the
[40:55] center and there's not some of these
[40:57] existential questions but yeah I mean as
[40:59] you think about those Journeys and
[41:02] ethics you know how do you separate to
[41:05] where you see science fiction beginning
[41:08] yeah I also just wanted to give a quick
[41:11] shout out to the job because somebody
[41:12] noticed my poster of data from Star Trek
[41:15] in the back so thank you thank you for
[41:17] noticing
[41:18] um in terms of Heroes Journeys and and
[41:21] that kind of
[41:22] um more broadly I think that the travel
[41:25] Tale the Odyssey I think that's
[41:28] a really big influence on science
[41:30] fiction for numerous reasons one is that
[41:34] science fiction is so often about the
[41:36] discovery of the unknown it's about the
[41:38] encounter with the unfamiliar or the
[41:40] alien you know in Star Trek It's the
[41:43] final frontier uh in Jules Vern's his
[41:47] series of science fiction novels is
[41:49] called the extraordinary voyages into
[41:53] known and unknown worlds that's kind of
[41:55] the title of of his
[41:57] um of his works and they're always a
[42:01] journey they're always a journey to
[42:04] somewhere that Humanity has not
[42:06] discovered or mapped so at the bottom of
[42:08] the sea or the moon or um the heart of
[42:12] Africa which
[42:14] um obviously there were people living
[42:16] there at this moment in time in in
[42:18] previously as well but
[42:20] um to Western Europeans it was this kind
[42:22] of Blake space on the map
[42:25] um so in a lot of ways science fiction
[42:27] does this continue this idea of
[42:31] um
[42:32] the hero journeying into the unknown and
[42:35] discovering the unknown and the
[42:37] unfamiliar and confronting it and and
[42:40] confronting potentially the the monsters
[42:44] you find there except that in in science
[42:46] fiction
[42:47] um those monsters often turn out to be
[42:50] uh
[42:51] aliens or
[42:54] um unfortunately this this is an
[42:57] unfortunate kind of side of uh 19th
[43:01] century science fiction uh could uh
[43:04] encountering confronting what these
[43:06] white Western explorers see is uh more
[43:10] primitive and therefore dangerous human
[43:13] beings
[43:14] um so that's very much in the DNA of of
[43:17] Science Fiction and something that the
[43:20] genre you know still grapples with
[43:23] well so we only have a couple minutes
[43:25] left
[43:27] um there's a question from Denise Turner
[43:28] could you talk a little bit about
[43:31] science fiction outside of Europe and
[43:33] the U.S and I don't know uh how much you
[43:36] are able to focus on this but how it may
[43:39] have emerged in Africa Asia Latin
[43:41] America
[43:42] um or you know any um General thoughts
[43:45] there on comparison between the kind of
[43:47] Western and other traditions
[43:51] yeah so uh I'll start by saying uh that
[43:55] there's a very rich science fiction
[43:57] Traditions around the world and recently
[44:00] in science fiction studies there's been
[44:02] a really great focus on writing uh these
[44:08] non-anglicentric or non-eurocentric
[44:10] histories of Science Fiction so
[44:12] histories of Indian science fiction of
[44:14] Chinese science fiction
[44:16] um
[44:16] of uh Latin American Science Fiction uh
[44:21] but the other thing
[44:22] um that it's really important to
[44:23] understand is because of Europe's kind
[44:27] of colonial and Imperial might in the
[44:29] 19th century so much of their literature
[44:32] and of their ideas got so vastly
[44:34] exported uh so even while we're studying
[44:40] um these wonderful Traditions from
[44:42] around the world
[44:43] um the the really great Scholars who are
[44:46] writing those histories
[44:48] um are also noting that
[44:51] European science fiction or Western
[44:53] science fiction has had a significant
[44:56] influence on these um Traditions so to
[45:00] give the example of Japan
[45:03] um one of the novels we read in the
[45:05] class is Albert robidas 1882 novel the
[45:08] 20th century which is published in
[45:10] France in 1882 and was translated into
[45:14] Japanese that very same year it
[45:18] um
[45:19] so so just immediately you know Japan
[45:22] had just opened to the West a couple of
[45:24] decades ago and so you had this
[45:27] um export of Western text including
[45:29] science fiction texts and obviously that
[45:33] was an influence on on what was being
[45:36] written there
[45:37] um I'll say my my greatest familiarity
[45:40] with science fiction outside of you know
[45:42] the the Western European and anglophone
[45:45] tradition is uh with Russian science
[45:48] fiction with um well there there's a
[45:52] number of wonderful films and novels by
[45:55] the brothers strugotsky uh which I
[45:59] almost like to think of as
[46:03] um they're they're very star trekkian
[46:05] but from the other side of what we call
[46:07] the Iron Curtain in the in the sense
[46:09] that they have um this kind of
[46:12] positivistic optimistic view of um
[46:15] Discovery and exploration and the
[46:18] scientists are the cool guys but but uh
[46:21] origin from a completely different
[46:22] cultural perspective
[46:24] well we are fully out of time but Alaska
[46:26] says maybe a power round ending question
[46:28] uh Stuart Baum asks what are you reading
[46:31] now and I take it as a question of what
[46:34] should people be reading until they can
[46:36] read your book uh so what what are you
[46:38] reading right now
[46:40] oh boy okay uh we'll actually have it
[46:43] um right there but um it doesn't have a
[46:47] I took off the dusk jacket so you can't
[46:49] see the cover uh but I've been reading
[46:51] Babel by RF Quang which is actually more
[46:55] of um
[46:57] fantasy than science fiction but it's
[47:00] it's this interesting novel where the
[47:02] magic is actually a metaphor for
[47:03] technology so it takes place in
[47:07] um Oxford in the 1830s and it's it's
[47:10] focused on translation magic but again
[47:13] that magic is a metaphor for the
[47:16] industrialization for all of the
[47:18] resource extraction
[47:20] um and other cultural change that
[47:22] happened as a result of that so uh it's
[47:26] it's science fiction under under the
[47:29] guise of fantasy I guess in some ways
[47:33] well that is fascinating and as a school
[47:36] that has a travel study program that
[47:39] goes to Oxford every year uh this is a
[47:42] chance I guess through literature to
[47:43] travel to Oxford in the 1830s so it
[47:46] certainly sounds fascinating and very up
[47:48] the alley of many of our lifelong
[47:50] Learners uh thank you Anastasia for a
[47:53] fascinating conversation there's still
[47:55] nearly a dozen questions left because of
[47:57] how many you sparked for us and most of
[48:00] all thank you for teaching we're so
[48:01] excited about your course this summer
[48:02] and for everyone here we'll be sharing
[48:04] the video and also sharing the
[48:06] opportunity to register for the course
[48:08] this summer I hope everyone enjoys if
[48:10] you're in the Chicago area I know many
[48:12] of you are around the world but enjoy
[48:14] the gorgeous day it is uh as pleasant as
[48:17] could be in Chicago usually I have
[48:19] jealousy when I see all the other
[48:20] geographies and today is a rare day
[48:22] where we feel very fortunate here
[48:25] um have a great day everyone bye oh I
[48:28] just wanted to add um
[48:30] there's just somebody asking for a
[48:32] booklet list in the chat so I wanted to
[48:34] really quickly say that that the
[48:37] syllabus should be up on the course page
[48:40] where you can register
[48:42] perfect and we'll make sure we send the
[48:43] follow-up we included as well
[48:46] all right well uh thank you so much uh
[48:48] to all of you for attending and thank
[48:50] you Seth for a wonderful conversation
[48:53] that's this has been really great and
[48:55] I'm very much looking forward to the
[48:58] course
[48:58] we are too um thank you again and
[49:01] excited for the summer
[49:03] bye everyone