“Science Fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.”[1]

When most people think of science fiction, they think of the genre’s hallmark novums of the strange and alien: time travel, flying cars, spaceships, etc. James Gunn’s definition of science fiction, as written above, presents it as a genre that is much more profound than that. Science, technology and faraway visions are features of sci-fi, but they do not comprise the core of it. Instead, as Gunn and advocates for science fiction claim, the hopes and fears embedded in the observations of a changing world are truly at the root of the genre.

Right now, in this moment in human history, we are facing several changes that seem straight out of science fiction. Arguably, these issues are greater than the individual, and arguably, our civilization is in danger. I believe that right now, science fiction is more valuable than Gunn ever thought it would be. Science fiction stories set a precedent for different ways, good and bad, in which individuals and communities can deal with a radically changing world like ours. We can look to these stories for a valuable precedent that can help us determine a course of action and guide humanity out of danger.

First, it is imperative to define the nature of our current crisis. I believe that the most salient threat to humanity right now is the unchecked proliferation of technology that has sucked us into a virtual fantasy world. This is the fantasy world of Amazon, where any item on the market can be conjured in a second. It is the fantasy world of Instagram, where everyone’s life is on full display and appears much more amazing than mine or yours. It is the fantasy world of Twitter, where users fight with cruel words over politics and social minutiae, and the rest of us pick tribes to root for. We have been given access to all the information that has ever been known or processed by humanity, as well as a steady flow of new information through a 24/7 instant news cycle. The result is a deeply connected society of depressed, angry, disengaged, unfocused, bored, scared, and unhappy people.

Simultaneously, recent events threaten to destroy the real, tangible world around us. The year 2020 has been marked by a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people across the world while infecting millions. World leadership has begun to turn towards the far-right, as bigotry and xenophobia have also spread unchecked. We live in fear of nuclear warfare, environmental disaster, and economic ruin. Young people look to the future with a bleak outlook.

The structure that we have become embedded in is deeply disturbing. We believe that technology and the natural advancement of time would make us more in control, happier, and less selfish, but reality has demonstrated that in fact, the opposite is true. Now, technology and world events have combined to put us at a distinct crossroads. Our decisions in this moment will determine the trajectory of ethics, culture, and our society’s overall growth in the future.

But is this a world we can change? Is it one worth changing? I have often been tempted to simply hide away from it. To seek refuge from this dire state is to let go, to reject the wrong in the world, to release oneself from the desires driving our demise. Many would say that this is an act of cowardice. However, if enough people can do the same, perhaps it would become the norm instead of an act of rebellion.

What does this “letting go” mean in practice? It could mean removing oneself from society by rejecting the things we used to value and think comprised the path to prosperity. Releasing oneself from society is a conscientious decision done by hermits who venture off into the Maine woods for decades[2] and Buddhist monks in Japan who strip themselves of their comfortable habits to live a life of discipline and rigor.[3]

These, of course, are the extreme examples. One can still derive benefits from the principles driving these people to abandon everything and remove themselves from a greedy, oppressive world while still retaining the good parts of it. There are small things in most people’s everyday routine that are meaningful: the ability to travel, to take care of a neighbor, to love someone, to grow closer to family and friends. Alternatively, some people commit suicide or turn to drugs and alcohol as a way to escape. That is not what I am advocating. Instead, there must be some kind of compromise, a middle path that allows people to strip themselves of weight and baggage common to our world today, while not completely removing themselves from it.

What we need is something to shake us up. Something to give us a bit of a reminder that the things we value are perhaps not the ones we should. Something to remind us that we are smaller than we think we are, but that’s okay. To engage with this feeling would provide us with an affective experience to help us reconfigure the directions in which we participate in human society.

Returning to Gunn, there is a medium that exists today with the power to do just this. At this moment, it is science fiction.

Science fiction has always had a tradition of challenging the status quo and looking toward the future. Sci-fi past and present has evaluated this idea of “letting go,” of release and self-obliteration, of accepting our inevitable fading away. This core theme of science fiction must be synthesized to create a rubric for good action in this newly-changed world. The Manifesto of Letting Go aims to do just that.

1. The Manifesto of Letting Go declares intentional self-dissolution as its ultimate goal.
   1. The literature and films informing this manifesto follow a consistent trajectory. Protagonists of these stories stand at crossroads, and they have a decision to make: either continue to suffer within an arbitrary value system, or release themselves from it.
   2. This self-obliteration may occur in many ways. It can take place in a dramatic sacrificial suicide, as shown in Ken Liu’s Mono No Aware.[4] It can take place as embracing an anti-climactic act of defiance, such as in Alastair Reynolds’ Zima Blue.[5] Or, it can take place by simply allowing memory and identity to dissolve, such as in World of Tomorrow.[6]
2. The Manifesto of Letting Go positions science fiction not in opposition to, but concordant with religion.
   1. To deal with sublime truths, one must first engage with sublime literature, as the quotidia of our normal lives does not typically provide space for profound consideration of human existence.
   2. Before human beings had a vocabulary of science, religion was the medium through which they considered their ultimate place in time and space. They conceptualized cosmic rewards and punishments in heaven and hell, reincarnation, gods, rites, dogmas, faith, and more in order to cope with their feelings of powerlessness and confusion over their place in the universe.
   3. Many Americans now embrace science as the arbiter of the sublime over religion. They consider religion to be something vestigial to society and antithetical to science. They are convinced that science has the ultimate power to lead us to a happier, healthier life.
   4. However, before works of science fiction began to conceptualize this “letting go,” religion did so first. For example, Buddhist tradition emphasizes that existence is suffering, and the release from suffering is Enlightenment.
   5. Science fiction works following the Manifesto of Letting Go allow religion and science to blend in optimistic new ways. Take, for example, the short South Korean film Heavenly Creature in the anthology Doomsday Book: the protagonist of that story, an artificial robot, embraces Buddhism in a monastery. It achieves total Enlightenment, and subsequently ceases its suffering via self-destruction. It removes itself from existence and simply dissolves.[7]
3. The Manifesto of Letting Go rejects that ultimate human experience comes from worldly pleasures and superficial goals.
   1. For some biological reason, humans are wired to want more. More and more and more, all the time. This leads us to suffer needlessly as we spend our lives chasing a carrot at the end of a stick. We will never reach it, and we will never be satisfied.
   2. But what happens if someone almost reaches this impossible goal? Alastair Reynolds’ Zima Blue evaluates such an idea. The art of his story’s protagonist, Zima, has grown in influence to literally encompass whole galaxies. Where else is there to go from there? Reynolds contends that the only place to go is back to the beginning. Zima strips himself of his fame, his prestige, and his physical body as he reverts back into his original form, a simple pool-cleaning robot. This pool comprises the robot’s entire world, and the pool becomes all the robot is able to know. When it knows the pool, its existence is completed: as Reynolds writes, “There was no capacity left in his mind for boredom. He had become pure experience. If he experienced any kind of joy in the swimming of the pool, it was the near-mindless euphoria of a pollinating insect. That was enough for him.”[8]
4. The Manifesto of Letting Go accepts that human experience is not ultimate.
   1. Science fiction, especially sci-fi following the Manifesto of Letting Go, does not have to be anthropocentric. It is open to the possibility that the way humans do things is not necessarily normative.
   2. Take, for example, one of the earliest science fiction stories that engaged with these ideas: Desertion by Clifford Simak. The humans in this story want so badly to fit a square peg into a round hole. They want to transform humans in such a way as to make them suitable for Jupiter’s harsh atmosphere. Their perspective, however, is only inhibited by their humanity; they find peace and satisfaction on Jupiter’s surface by ceasing to be human. In relinquishing their humanity, both via their physical bodies and the norms that come from them, they are able to see “that here lay a life of fullness and of knowledge” on Jupiter.[9]
5. The Manifesto of Letting Go suggests that such a feeling of dissolution is equal parts optimistic and bittersweet.
   1. For those who embrace the Manifesto of Letting Go, a release from structure does not have to be a wholly negative experience. Instead, it can be beautiful, melancholy, and liberating.
   2. Take, for instance, Sam Lundwall’s Take Me Down the River. The story introduces the novum of the literal edge of the world, a cliff leading out into oblivion. Those who have not embraced Letting Go scoff at those who throw themselves off the edge, embracing the Letting Go. The protagonists of the story, an older man and a young woman, bond as they both embrace their own transience. In the days leading up to their self-dissolution, they form a beautiful new relationship, a core component of which is its inherent impermanence, before they leap together into the unknown.[10]
6. The Manifesto of Letting Go contends that following its principles leads to a more humble, respectful, and selfless society.
   1. It is through the recognition of the smallness and meaninglessness of oneself within the vastness of space and time that one comports in the most ethical way.
   2. One example of this is in the story Mono No Aware by Ken Liu. “Mono No Aware” is a Japanese term with no direct translation. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, it basically “refers to a ‘pathos’ (aware) of ‘things’ (mono), deriving from their transience.”[11] This melancholy feeling is evoked in a person through their recognition of the impermanence of all things. The encyclopedia provides as an example the feeling one gets when they see Japanese cherry blossoms for the first time in the spring. They are beautiful, but they fall only a week after they first bloom.[12]
   3. In this story, “Mono No Aware” pertains to the impermanence of a man instead of a cherry blossom. The narrator travels across a vast solar sail to repair a hole. He realizes he does not have enough fuel to patch the hole, so he uses the fuel in his jetpack, his only means of returning to the ship, to fix it. In order to save humanity, he releases himself into the horror of space’s void.[13]
   4. Some may call this simple martyrdom, but the incorporation of “Mono No Aware” into the story’s plot deeply complicates the protagonist’s actions. This is not a simple sacrifice of ego, but a logical action done squarely out of recognition of the smallness of one person between the vastness of humanity, space and time. [14]
7. The Manifesto of Letting Go accepts that resources in the universe are limited and will someday expire.
   1. From my brother taking more soda than me when we used to split them, to the growing global oil shortage, to the scientific concept of universal entropy, resources are limited on every conceivable level. It is only through accepting that fact that one can attain genuine insight into their own impermanence.
   2. An example of this idea comes from Ted Chiang’s Exhalation. The story places humanoid robots amid the dilemma that their mere existence is leading to their demise. When they inhale gas, they live; when they exhale, they equalize the gas pressure around them, leading to their slow deaths. This universe’s resources of space and materials are finite, and the use thereof comes at the consequence of their elimination.[15]
   3. We, like the species of robots in this story, are slowly killing ourselves every day. We drive huge trucks that ruin our atmosphere, overconsume from fisheries and hunt animal populations out of existence. In our quest for more, we end up with less. The narrator of Chiang’s story urges the reader at the story’s end to appreciate the fact that we have such resources in the first place: he writes, “Contemplate the marvel that is existence, and rejoice that you are able to do so. I feel I have the right to tell you this because, as I am inscribing these words, I am doing the same.”[16]
8. The Manifesto of Letting Go is cognizant of its intersectional themes with common tropes in science fiction and other genres.
   1. The principles of this Manifesto are not unique to the stories named here, nor science fiction in general. Instead, these ideas have arisen in a variety of literary genres across time periods.
   2. The Bittersweet Ending – present in every single one of the stories referenced in this Manifesto, the bittersweet ending is a hallmark of countless classic journeys documenting the human experience, from The Bible to Forrest Gump to The Matrix Trilogy to The Lord of the Rings.[17]
   3. To Face Death with Dignity – a classic trope present in the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare, it is also popular in modern science fiction and fantasy like Star Trek and Game of Thrones.[18]
   4. Peaceful in Death – superficially similar to the theme of this Manifesto, this trope portrays characters coming to terms with their demise, often depicting death as bittersweet or even optimistic. Recent examples include the conclusion of the Harry Potter Saga and American Beauty.[19]
   5. The Humble Goal – outsiders may project great ambitions and expectations onto characters, but those characters may have smaller aspirations. This can be emotionally stirring, like in Zima Blue, or comedic, like the goals of The Dude in The Big Lebowski or Sims with the “Grilled Cheese” Lifetime Aspiration in The Sims 2.[20]

It is apt to conclude this Manifesto with another definition of science fiction, this one from Mark Bould and Sherryl Vint, who say “There is no such thing as science fiction.”[21] There is no such thing as science fiction in this Manifesto because these themes are real and relevant to every person on Earth. In creating this Manifesto, I have aimed to show that science fiction speaks volumes to the human experience as we live it now and as we will live it in our near future. Science fiction is not a genre merely engaging in the absurd and fantastical: it is a genre that can serve as a template—or a warning—for how we can proceed, as a species, into the future.

[1] Quoted in Arielle Saiber, “WSF 2020 Class 2 Defintions, Wells, Asimov, Simak” (Powerpoint, Bowdoin College, January 27, 2020).

[2] Simon Worrall, “Why the North Pond Hermit Hid From People for 27 Years,” National Geographic News (blog), April 9, 2017, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2017/04/north-pond-hermit-maine-knight-stranger-woods-finkel/.

[3] Clark Strand, “There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here,” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Winter 2009, https://tricycle.org/magazine/there-must-be-some-kind-way-out-here/.

[4] Ken Liu, “Mono No Aware,” in The Future Is Japanese: Stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun, ed. Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington (San Francisco: Haikasoru, 2012), 11–32.

[5] Alastair Reynolds, “Zima Blue,” in Zima Blue and Other Stories (London: Gollancz, 2010), 429–51.

[6] Don Hertzfeldt, World of Tomorrow (Bitter Films, 2015).

[7] Kim Jee-woon and Yim Pil-sung, Doomsday Book (Lotte Entertainment, 2012).

[8] Reynolds, “Zima Blue,” 449.

[9] Clifford Simak, “Desertion (1944),” in The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, ed. Arthur B. Evans et al. (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 188.

[10] Sam Lundwall, “Take Me Down the River,” in Terra SF: The Year’s Best European SF, ed. Richard Nolane (New York: DAW Books, Inc., 1981), 146–54.

[11] Graham Parkes and Adam Loughnane, “Japanese Aesthetics,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2018 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2018), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/japanese-aesthetics/.

[12] Parkes and Loughnane.

[13] Liu, “Mono No Aware.”

[14] As Liu is Chinese but speaking from a Japanese perspective, there is an interesting anthropological reading of Mono No Aware.

[15] Ted Chiang, “Exhalation (2008),” in The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, ed. Arthur B. Evans et al. (Middletown, Conn: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 742–56.

[16] Chiang, 756.

[17] “Bittersweet Ending,” TV Tropes, accessed May 16, 2020, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BittersweetEnding.

[18] “Face Death with Dignity – TV Tropes,” accessed May 16, 2020, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FaceDeathWithDignity.

[19] “Peaceful in Death,” TV Tropes, accessed May 16, 2020, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PeacefulInDeath.

[20] “Humble Goal,” TV Tropes, accessed May 16, 2020, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumbleGoal.

[21] Quoted in Saiber, “WSF 2020 Class 2 Defintions, Wells, Asimov, Simak.”

The Goya work was even more beautiful in person.

Bobby stood alone in the principal gallery of the Museo del Prado. He had occupied the empty, cavernous room for a good half hour now, staring at Goya’s masterpiece, as if his character could only be saturated from his prolonged exposure to the painting. The gallery, of course, was empty of both people and other art pieces by Bobby’s request; he had upgraded to the premium ticket to have all of those things removed. The last thing he would have wanted was some mohawked orc or Da Vinci-clone wannabe drawing his gaze away from the piece.

Saturn Eating His Son is what Goya had called it. A monstrous piece. Goya had painted the Titan with broad brush strokes. Blood poured from the appendages of the child the god devoured; Neptune, or Pluto? Bobby’s art education was expansive, but clearly not expansive enough. He wished he had known which future Olympian he was. He could ask Lorenzo, his old tutor at Sapienza; he would certainly know.

With great care, Bobby approached the painting, the gentle pats of his Italian leather loafers the only sound echoing through the room. He was face to face with Saturn, bloodthirsty mad with greed and paranoia, ripping his progeny to shreds. Beautiful. Bobby lifted his fine fingers up to the painting and gently grazed them along the brushstrokes that comprised Saturn’s savage eyes. Goya’s brushstrokes. To enjoy art was not just to see it. Artists like Goya put all of their souls into these pieces, leaving no sensory experience behind. Yes, seeing was critical, but to feel the painting is to feel it as Goya did.

He knew he wanted more of such a sensory experience than he could get. The workers at the Prado had not yet tracked and digitized the flavor profile of their paintings yet, so Bobby had to stop just short of licking the painting to get its taste. A damn shame.

Adjusting the lapels of his violet silk-blend suit, Bobby moved away from Saturn’s rage and stretched, feeling his lower back pop. He was not a young man anymore, and his back had taken the brunt of his aging. He reasoned it was time for a break from standing; he hankered for a real Turkish coffee. After all, Bobby had just downloaded the Istanbul package, and it had not disappointed. Perhaps a friend would be around to share some with him.

Who to call? He looked at his watch and scrolled through the contacts list. Bokko-Chan? She was probably out at a Tokyo club, flirting with her many suitors. But coffee was probably not a good idea with her. He didn’t want to spend most of their date waiting for her to come back from the bathroom; drinks usually went right through her.

Perhaps Zima was around? Likely not. He was out on a far galaxy, painting one of his masterpieces, and Bobby didn’t want to distract him from his work. He made a mental note to invite him over for a glass of wine in Venice when he reasoned Zima had finished the piece.

Ah, Lorenzo? Of course. A coffee would be the perfect moment to discuss Goya with him.

Still standing in the gallery, Bobby’s finger hovered over Lorenzo’s contact on his watch when suddenly his stomach lurched as the Prado gallery suddenly became a blurry, distorted mess. A feeling of vertigo washed over him. A millisecond later, there was a flash of blinding light.

Then blackness.

And for the first time he could remember, Bobby entered the other world.

With no power to his skin-tight haptic body suit, it shrank to its normal size. Bobby’s silk threads had turned suddenly into tight mesh that now squeezed against his body, pushing the air out of his chest. But he faced a worse problem. His haptic mask, which extended deep into his mouth and nose for full flavor and nasal effect, now suffocated him as it suddenly stopped feeding air into lungs. Bobby, trying hard not to panic, tried to pull his hand in to remove the mask, but it was stuck in the now-crystallized web of wires that suspended him in the V-Are.

Bobby tried to scream, but no words came out.

He would die if he didn’t extract himself from the V-Are immediately.

He tugged at his hand, now immobilized both within the suit and paralyzed by the mesh of wires that had suspended him for so long. He pulled and pulled and pulled, and finally, a few wires snapped with a twang, like guitar strings. Hope filled his body, but he still struggled for air. How long had it been since the power had gone out? A minute, maybe more?

With a burst of energy, he freed his hand from the wires, and lifted his haptic mask from his face, gasping for air as he pulled the mouth extension from his nose and throat.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, he took a look at his studio apartment. Pale pinkish light flowed in through the shutters of the one window in the apartment, filling the sole room with a dusty glow. Dusty, in fact, would be an understatement. The few items still left in the room were covered with a thick layer of dust, the accumulation of years of neglect. It was a drab, grey place, whose sole functioning object was the V-Are in which Bobby now floated in stasis.

It was a massive machine, a great big orb of metal and mesh and wires, filling the room to its ceiling. The suit in which Bobby was now trapped was usually able to move with complete freedom, allowing him to simulate being in any environment, in any place. The haptics on the suit applied pressure to the soles of his feet when he walked on a surface, allowed him to feel as though we were grasping objects, and provided the exact tastes and smells of whatever he consumed. The wires connected to the suit suspended him like a marionette, allowing no limits for his movement.

For as long as he had owned the V-Are, there had never been any need for him to remove himself from the suit. When he purchased the machine with the remainder of his savings, he had opted for the deluxe model that featured a feeding valve to his stomach, through which rich nutrients would be distributed whenever he ate in his virtual world. Further attachments flushed out his waste without him noticing. The suit even cleaned itself through a complex system of hydraulics that removed sweat and odor.

But now, it was a prison, a useless piece of junk keeping him suspended and immobilized.

With his mask removed, Bobby was able to breathe a bit, but the suit still pressed against his lungs, suffocating him. With great effort, he slowly started to move each of his appendages, trying to force some pliability into the crystalized wires. They had been so delicate and fine, able to work with his suit to create every sensory experience imagineable for Bobby over the last how-many-years, but he ruined them as he cracked and snapped their now crystalized fibers.

At last, Bobby tumbled out of the machine, falling onto the polyester carpet with a sad poof of dust. Dressed only in his secondskin now, he turned on his side and looked back at the V-Are. The towering, vaguely orb-like structure now sputtered and hissed, a useless mess. When he had purchased it, however many years ago, the V-Are techs who installed it had ensured Bobby that these machines were guaranteed failsafe.

“Trust us. We’re putting in like three of these a day. Been doing so since the virus got real bad,” one of them had told Bobby, taking a break to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead. “Ain’t nobody had any issue with one of these things, ever. The V-Are HQ always got somebody monitoring each and every machine from remote. Not gonna be a problem.”

Bobby had been standing in the corner, drinking a freshly-delivered cappuccino from his favorite place on the corner. He thought he would miss that quaint little coffee shop, which used to bustle with throngs of people before the governor imposed the first stay-at-home orders.

By that time, it had been nearly a year since those first orders, and the virus still rampaged through the streets. San Francisco had quickly become the epicenter of the virus on the West Coast, but it wasn’t difficult for the national guard to close off the city; all they had to do was shut down the two bridges leading into the city and set up a seven-mile patrol along the north end of Daly City, and the city was completely locked down.

It was fortunate that San Francisco had already been so well-equipped for a life of isolation. Videoconferencing companies had a field day selling their services to each and every citizen, at a premium of course. The self-driving cars had their moment as they transported basic supplies around the city. For the tasks that required human attention, the tech companies in the city simply recruited undocumented migrants, recently laid off from work at restaurants and hotels throughout the city. Facing the threat of deportation, these migrants had no choice but to sign exploitative labor contracts with these companies. The services companies hardly needed to pay them anyway; they just set up barracks on Treasure Island and let them do the work.

But for people like Bobby, the isolation took its toll with time. When the virus first hit, Bobby lived alone; he and his last boyfriend had split up only two weeks before the first stay-at-home orders. Initially, quarantine had been fun; as a writer for a fine arts magazine, staying at home essentially constituted a free vacation. He worked minimally, ordered in his favorite pizza, and chatted with his friends online.

But that had only been for a moment. Weeks turned into months; months turned into more months. And Bobby felt his grip on reality slipping away into boredom and stir-craze. Every movie to stream online, he had streamed; every book to read, he had read. His magazine had shut down, so he lived off his family’s trust and the minimal unemployment check he received from the government each month.

Those who would have died for fresh air decided to do so. Bobby watched from his window as those who had given up stepped out into the open air. He could hear their grunts and cries of pain as the airborne pathogen filled and eviscerated their lungs. He watched as they laid down and died in the streets, at least until the gangs arrived and stripped them of whatever valuables they still had left on their bodies.

Bobby heard screams coming from other rooms in his apartment at night. He heard crashes and banging and yelling and yelling back. He worried of robbery. He ordered copious amounts of frozen and canned food and blocked the door to his apartment with his remaining furniture. Anything he could do to escape this hell.

But as it tends to happen, the elite had just found an escape. Before the pandemic, a young upstart company out of Germany called V-Are was experimenting with fully immersive virtual reality via haptics and orbital suspension. The company claimed that this was not an experience, but a new way of life; one could fully immerse themselves within the machine as a new permanent existence. The machine could provide nearly any imaginable experience for the user by activating every one of their senses, and all other bodily functions would be taken care of by the machine as well.

After the virus started and worsened, desperate San Francisco venture capitalists channeled billions into the start-up. And the little company came through. V-Are machines, supported by its teams of migrant technicians, gradually flooded the city. The rich, of course, got theirs only a month or two after the pandemic started; soon, everyone else scrambled for one. Bobby got on the waitlist as soon as he could, but it still took seven months for the two gas-masked technicians to show up at the door on what would become his last full day in this world.

Now, sitting alone in the neglected room, Bobby couldn’t remember how long ago that day was.

After the confusion subsided, the anger set in. His body still raging with adrenaline after his escape, Bobby quickly jumped to his feet and slammed his hand against the machine.

“Fucking—” His insult to the vacant machine was cut off by a nasty cough. He leaned over and coughed some more, hands on his knees, the dust around him caught up in his retching. He needed some water.

Still gasping, Bobby crept over to his old sink, cranking up the tap. Nothing. Of course.

He started to panic again. Where could he get some water? He remembered; he could open up the food and water pipes that led into the machine. Bobby hauled himself over to the box sitting in the corner of his room, which he thought was the one the techs said would hold the sustenance.

It was locked tight. Of course.

At this moment, Bobby noticed something dripping down his hip. He looked down as a reddish-green mucus oozed out of a hole in his stomach.

How could he have forgotten the feeding tube? It hadn’t occurred to him that extracting himself from this machine would leave a gaping wound.

Stunned, he looked for something to cover the hole. Looking around the apartment, he found nothing. When he entered the machine all those years ago, he simply dumped everything he hadn’t wanted out of the window to make space.

Now Bobby was really panicking. He had no means of eating or drinking. He needed medical attention, and he needed it now. But with no power and his only means of communicating with the outside world now laying in a massive broken heap in the center of his studio, he would have to go outside. For the first time.

Bobby limped over to the window again, now emanating a pink light from the Pacific sunset. The rays of warm light coming through the window were made tangible by the dust that had been stirred up in his frenzy. He looked outside, hoping to find a sentry or patrol or anybody he could remember who would help him.

But he saw something else instead.

Instead, he saw clean, freshly-paved streets. He saw shops closing up for the night. He saw an older man pedaling a rickshaw through the bustling streets, looking for a fare. He saw a young couple, peeking out of an alley and sheepishly stealing a kiss. He saw bamboo baskets overflowing with empanadas, and a woman selling dragon sugar skulls. He saw young boys and girls kicking a soccer ball through the legs of passersby, dodging swats from aggravated shoppers.

It was not a surviving city, but a thriving one. A different one. This was not the San Francisco he remembered. But after a moment of shock, his heart filled with hope. The pandemic was gone! He could get help for his wound! And most importantly, somebody would be able to fix his V-Are!

In a new joy, he rushed to the apartment door and undid the four locks, swinging it open for the first time in what, decades? The scene in the hallway did not match the scene outside. A halogen light flickered pathetically in the dirty, drab grey hallway. Piles of trash and belongings laid outside each door, and Bobby gingerly stepped around each of them as he rushed downstairs. But why was the light in the hallway on? He assumed that all power to the building had gone out. Was it just his room?

He pushed the button for the elevator, and it lit up in a pale glow. He felt the rumble of the ancient elevator rise, but doubting its structural integrity, decided to take the stairs instead.

He scooted down the staircase as quickly as he could, the pink light flowing in through the windows glowing richer and brighter. At last, he arrived in the building’s dilapidated lobby. Feeling emboldened, he inhaled deeply, smiled, and opened the front door.

The light hit his face for the first time in ages as he stepped onto the concrete of the building’s front step. The real concrete. He had been back to his building many times in V-Are (solely for its nostalgic quality), but this time his real soles were touching the real concrete.

He was going to take a moment to let that sink in when suddenly, a woman screamed.

He turned his head and saw the screamer. She was screaming at him. In fright.

“What- what’s wrong?” Bobby asked dumbly with another cough, noticing that most people on the street had turned to catch a glimpse of him. In his peripherals, he saw their eyes widen too.

Of course he knew what was wrong. He had a hole in his stomach.

“Oh, I’m really— really— hurt,” Bobby said, between coughs. He approached the closest woman, who had not screamed, but she only gaped at him with wide eyes instead. She had a child with her. Maybe she could help him.

The woman said something Bobby didn’t understand.

“What? Could you repeat that?” He rasped.

She said something else, which was when Bobby realized she wasn’t speaking English. Bobby knew a few languages, but she was speaking something he had never heard before.

She grabbed her child by the wrist and pulled him back. The crowd now stood in a semi-circle around Bobby, staring, but not helping. He fell to his knees and began to beg their assistance.

“Please. Someone. Help me, please.” Bobby coughed some more. Deeper, dry coughs. It was becoming harder to breathe; perhaps his wound was worse than he thought.

“Anyone, please help me.”

But they just stared and moved back.

“Please, someone—“ he coughed harder “—help me.”

When he tried to speak again, only coughing came out. He sputtered blood on the concrete in front of his building. A few people gasped.

“I—“

That’s the last word Bobby ever said.

The report written later by the Re-zoning and Redevelopment Commission of the National City State of Latino-Asiatic America acknowledged that the error of the Bobby Maldonado incident on April 4, 2200 had been their own. While it was standard protocol for years to shut off power to the remaining San Franciscans housed in V-Are capsules at a rate of twenty-three a day, these shut offs were meant to occur only in the early hours of the morning. The reason for this is that shutting down these machines was an unpleasant task. Usually, when the Commission shut off power to these individuals, they did one of three things: they would 1) stay trapped in their machines until they suffocated or died of hunger or thirst, 2) leap to their deaths from their apartment windows or 3) venture outside, where the still-present airborne pathogen would kill them immediately. Nightly cleanup crews patrolled the streets picking up the dead San Franciscans. To save money and resources, their bodies were brought to an organic matter recycling plant, where they were transformed into nutrient-rich matter that was subsequently given to the remaining V-Are residents.

Bobby Maldonado’s power was meant to be shut off at 3 AM that morning. A mistake in his programming let him out at 5 PM that afternoon. The Commission regrets the error.

The ethicality of such a practice was widely-disputed in international courts, but the citizens of the new nation had little obligation to the San Franciscans. The San Franciscans, now uniformly isolated in their pods, had subjected their ancestors, the builders of this new nation, to death. The parents and grandparents and great-grandparents of those who had rejuvenated a dead city were the sacrificial lambs of the Great Pandemic, forced to put their own health in danger in order to serve the safer and more privileged. Most of them died. Some did not; they had, or developed, a natural immunity to the pathogen, allowing them to roam freely. So, with time, they leveraged their immunity to escape corporate rule and build a new society, organically. They lived and loved and played. They shared with one another and broke down walls of racial prejudice that had haunted them for generations before. Their immunity to the pathogen was a shared characteristic among them that became a badge of national pride, and a protection against foreigners who did not share their natural immunity.

But foreigners still remained within the city confines, incarcerated in their self-made prisons, stacked high in the otherwise abandoned sky rises throughout the recovering city. In 2180, the City Council decided that the expense of keeping this foreign population alive within their country was simply too much. The V-Are machines required substantial power, and jobs were wasted keeping the sustenance machines full. Some had advocated simply letting those in the V-Are to simply die naturally, but others were keener to accelerate the process. The city was expanding, and they needed these people gone to make way for new development.

Did it amount to execution? Yes. But all they were really doing was just cutting off the powe

LINK TO FINAL VOYANT

On the most superficial level, my Voyant pretty much turned out how I expected it to. In fact, funny enough, the words “World,” “Science,” and “Fiction” were three of the four most-used words throughout my searching (“story” was the #3 word, used 74 more times than “world,” which was #4). I found that I took a pretty anthropocentric approach as well. I found this out by seeing that “people” was my #5 most common word through my searches. I found that “people” was kind of an umbrella for some of my other primary focus: human religion. Finally, other unheralded words indicated some interesting trajectories in my web searching that I think reflects my interests:

• “great” — I like great sci fi
• “characters” — I think I’m interested by character-driven narratives
• “human” — sci-fi challenges our conception of what it means to be human
• “love” — also part of what makes us human
• “space” and “future” — traditional sci-fi tropes
• “place” — recognizing the importance of setting
• “home” — other part of what makes us human: where do we come from? Where do we return to?
• “become” and “going” — words signifying change
• “horror” — I do love my sci-fi horror
• “real” — what is real? What’s not?

A lot of terms came up only in specific posts (e.g. “romance,” “coronavirus,” “hell,” etc.) Interestingly, some unusual ones spiked up in a lot of different ones. Listed below are some terms that spike up and down throughout the 97 documents I uploaded to Voyant

• “life”
• “way”
• “human”
• “think”
• “star”
• “work”
• “things”
• “use”
• “going”

If science fiction is a meditation on any of these things, then it’s pretty damn introspective.

Beyond the cirrus cloud, Voyant seemed to struggle quite a bit with document terms, contexts, and the “terms berry.” I’ll continue trying to troubleshoot that.

Cirrus:

Last summer, I read a really good book: Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett. I’m a sucker for a good adventure story, and this one definitely got it going. The story takes place in dark and grimy Tevanne, a city described as having elements of an antiquated Italianish city set deep within a fictional tropical jungle. The city is ruled by four trading companies, headquartered in “campos,” who exert extreme political will over the city’s society. It follows Sancia, a cat burglar with the ability to talk to “scrived” objects, ones that have been inscribed with ancient runes that alter their perception of reality. Sancia slowly uncovers a vast conspiracy that will change Tevanne forever.

Foundryside cover, courtesy of Bookaria.com

It was so, so good. Other people thought it was excellent too, and it currently rocks a whopping 4.3 reading on Goodreads. It was so good, I pre-ordered the sequel, Shorefall, which came in the mail last week(!)

Reviewers had a difficult time categorizing this book. Many, like The New York Times, classified it as fantasy. A Barnes & Noble review refers to it more comfortably as science fiction. A Tor review says it’s a mix of both. One reviewer from the Verge, citing Foundryside’s gritty urban atmosphere and human modification theme, classified it as cyberpunk.

In trying to put this strange but wonderful book in a box, it forces one to consider the boundaries and limitations of two similar genres. In spite of their similarities, it is their differences that allow each of them to shine and challenge the status quo in new ways.
I always thought the differences between the two genres fell onto one difference: in sci-fi, the arbiter of the surreal is based on technology, where in fantasy, it’s based on magic. As a result, science fiction typically looks to the future, where such a technology may be possible, and fantasy typically looks to the past, where more wondrous things existed before they were ruined by technology.

Other people cite other elements as defining the limits of the two genres. They cite the mystical setting of fantasy as a defining characteristic of that genre, which I don’t like, because usually that means there has to be elves or dragons and some shit like that to be real fantasy (see: Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc.) . Such limits leave out awesome works that are definitely fantasy, like American Gods and His Dark Materials. Other people cite the “hero’s journey” as a trademark of fantasy, but awesome sci-fi works follow the same trajectory (The Matrix, Mad Max).

Honestly, it’s kind of a mess. This line is blurry and confusing and my only conclusion is that if someone says they know the difference, through and through, they’re probably lying.There ought to be a section between the sci-fi and fantasy at Barnes and Noble: call it scifantasy. That’s where Foundryside would lie.

I feel comfortably classifying the Foundryside series as something liminal and transient. Yes, the arbiter of the strange and surreal in the series comes from the world’s technology, but yes, the mechanisms under-girding that technology is unknowable. But, counterpoint: aren’t the mechanisms that make the computer that I’m writing this, or the website to which I’m going to publish this, also as magical and unknowable to me? I could drop out of Bowdoin, go to a state university with an awesome computer science program, potentially get a lucrative job at a dumb tech company (the kind that has Nerf guns in the office and caters lunch and talks about “disrupting industries” and all that stupid shit) and do their dumb internet shit and I STILL probably wouldn’t understand how any of it works fully. So what makes ancient runes that alter reality any stranger than the microchip in my phone?

But it’s a great book.

Other things that blend science fiction with fantasy

• Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, 1938-present
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle, 1962
• Dune by Frank Herbert, 1965
• Star Wars, created by George Lucas, 1977-2019
• Tron, directed by Steven Lisberger, 1982
• Donnie Darko, directed by Richard Kelly, 2001
• Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve, 2001
• Avatar, directed by James Cameron, 2009
• Pretty much all the Marvel movies in the past ten years

Cirrus Cloud

LINK TO VOYANT

“I regard romantic comedies as a subgenre of sci-fi, in which the world operates according to different rules than my regular human world.”

– Mindy Kaling (The New Yorker, 2011)

Okay, bear with me on this one.

Science fiction and romantic comedies are perfectly compatible with one another, and several recent movies have shown this to be true.

Many of the articles I found this week discuss the science fiction genre as something that needs to “save” the romantic comedy genre. From this, it seems that the only way that rom-coms can find fresh tracks is through science fiction. But what is it about science fiction that drives rom coms forward? This week, I’m reflecting on four of the small handful of rom-com sci-fi movies I’ve seen to draw out similarities between them.

Her (2013), dir. by Spike Jonze

Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore in “Her”

This movie is like the gold standard of sci-fi rom-com. It’s funky, adorable, and awkward in all the best ways. What I love about this movie is its totally unique view of futuristic Los Angeles. Compared with the bleak and depressing future visions that we have seen in classic films like Blade Runner, Alien, and Total Recall (as well as most science fiction, to be honest), we have such a wholesome vision of the future. People have not been ruined by technology, but they live comfortably within a deeply-technological world; new technology has enabled them to be better humans, both kinder to themselves and others. Everyone appears to be wealthy, healthy, and extremely comfortable. This setting works perfectly for the romance at the core of the film. The relationship between Theodore and Samantha new and unusual, but that doesn’t make it any less real or authentic.

About Time (2013), dir. by Richard Curtis

Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams in “About Time”

About Time is definitely the most rom-commy rom-com flick on this list, and I’m not sure if it totally qualifies as science fiction. Because it relies on a novum that is not actually based in science, it’s probably more along the lines of magical realism than science-fiction. But regardless, it’s a wonderful departure from both genres. Really, nothing bad happens in this movie, and there isn’t really a plot either except a time-traveler dude just trying to find love. It features great chemistry between the well-matched leads, as well as the best father-son movie relationship I have ever seen in a movie. It’s just so damn cute.

The Lobster (2015), dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos

Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz in “The Lobster”

I saw this movie with my parents. They hated it. Absolutely despised it. I think the reason why they hated it is because it is weird. So, so, so weird. I don’t really know if it’s science fiction or a romantic comedy. But it’s too odd to not be science fiction, its plot centers around romance, and for some reason it made me laugh so we are gonna call it a sci-fi rom-com.

But I think you just have to kind of embrace the weird in this movie. There is so much that you have to accept when watching this movie, from the bizarre novum of animal transfiguration to the awkward and too-direct comportment of every single one of the characters. However, once you put yourself in that mindset of “okay, this is weird,” there’s a really sweet undercurrent to this film. It’s an epic tale of going to extreme lengths to deny destiny and do insane things in the name of love (best summarized in a dramatic and ambiguous final scene). This film is weird, but that’s what I kind of love about it. In order to make a romantic comedy this strange, I believe the director had to draw from science fiction as a medium to facilitate it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), dir. by Michel Gondry

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet (in a Barnes & Noble without any titled books) in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

This is a little bit more of a romantic tragedy, but tragedy and comedy are still on the same spectrum, and the film has bits of both. I feel like this movie is both subtle and totally bombastic, where everything that makes sense is flipped on its head. This is embodied in both the understated but disorienting special effects used throughout the film. It’s also expressed in the odd pairing of the two leads, with the usually low-key Kate Winslet playing the aloof and flighty Clementine, and the usually over-the-top Jim Carrey playing the quiet and temperamental boyfriend Joel. In short, everything you think is normal is made abnormal in this movie, which lends itself well to both its rom-com and sci-fi elements. The result is incredibly powerful, melancholy, confusing, and thought-provoking film that is unique enough to make an impact on the viewer without being too pretentious as to alienate them.

Conclusion:

I have a bit of a confession to make. I implied that I picked these four movies at random because they had romantic elements in them. But in reality, I absolutely love all three of these movies.

In considering these films looked at together, I see two salient themes common to all of their endings: they all end on a very bittersweet note, and it’s unclear what is going to happen to the lead(s) after the film ends. The sense of melancholy undergirds the endings of all of them so strongly, but in such different ways. The melancholy comes from a deep-seated emotion imploring the character and the viewer, what comes in store? In The Lobster, will David blind himself to be with the woman he loves? Will Theodore move on from the loss of Samantha in Her, and will Tim move on from the loss of his father in About Time? In Eternal Sunshine, will Joel and Clementine reconcile their broken relationship, or are they doomed to repeat their same mistakes.

Traditional romantic comedies replay the same narrative, over and over again. They don’t usually look to the future because that betrays the perfection of the present, which is usually the appeal of the rom com. Science fiction is a genre that necessarily looks to the future, so its injection into the rom-com genre forces it to go beyond its traditional boundaries.

Other movies I didn’t get around to writing about

• Wall-E (2008), dir. by Andrew Stanton
• Groundhog Day (1993), dir. by Harold Ramis
• Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012), dir. by Lorene Scafaria

Cirrus Cloud!

LINK TO VOYANT PAGE

When I began writing this post, I started by ranking my top ten favorite stories from this course. It went like so:

1. “Zima Blue” by Alastair Reynolds
2. “In the Hereafter Hotel” by Bob Shaw
3. “Think Like a Dinosaur” by James Patrick Kelly
4. “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler
5. “Desertion” by Clifford Simak
6. “Cardboard Box” by Hanmura Ryō
7. “Opportunities Galore” by Gabriel Bermudez Castillo
8. “Bokko-Chan” by Shinichi Hoshi
9. “Readymade Bodhisattva” by Park Seonghwan
10. “Take Me Down the River” by Sam Lundwall

Looking at this list, the most salient theme I can detect is something I would call self-obliteration. By this, I mean that the protagonists of the stories decide to intentionally erase themselves from existence in some capacity or another, through suicide, transformation, or spiritual enlightenment. The stories where self-obliteration comprise essential plot points are:

• Zima Blue
• Think Like A Dinosaur
• Desertion
• Cardboard Box
• Readymade Bodhisattva
• Take Me Down the River

Other stories that have a loose connection to this theme could be:

• “Hereafter Hotel”: the protagonist accidentally kills himself (gently) after putting so much thought into his self-preservation
• “Opportunities Galore”: the gambling behaviors of the protagonist are certainly self-destructive

This is sort of a difficult theme to track down. I could only find one monograph on the subject: Suicide and Contemporary Science Fiction by Carlos Gutierrez-Jones at the University of Santa Barbara. But I’m not just talking about suicide; I’m talking about transcendence from normal reality and into something more sublime, or just, or enlightened.

I think this is a particularly fascinating theme in science fiction because it takes qualities of religion and brings it into a sci-fi context. Attainment of something greater than possible in normal life is particularly religious, whether it be in salvation or nirvana. This erasure from existence may comprise an ascension not possible through means of technology, so in these stories.

For this week’s post, I went through and tried to tie a rope around this subject. It was a bit of a struggle. However, I did come up with five sci-fi movies that also deal with this subject. I’ll think of more in the near future. Maybe this could be something to write my manifesto about.

Other works with this theme (that I’ve found so far)

• Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus
• Frankenstein (1818)
• Arrival (2016)
• The Discovery (2017)
• Annihilation (2018)
• Upstream Color (2013)
• Looper (2012)
• The Cabin in the Woods (2011)
• Predestination (2014)

Cirrus Cloud

LINK TO VOYANT PAGE

So it’s been a long time since I’ve done one of these posts. I was going to write one over spring break and then the apocalypse happened.

Sitting alone in my house all day, I am shocked by how difficult it has become to get simple tasks done. I leave the house exactly one time every other day to go on a run. I try not to think about my friends too often, especially the ones living in and around New York City, as my fear for their safety is compounded by my missing them dearly. I miss the safety and quaintness of collegiate life, which I will never experience again. These thoughts have returned me to a depressed stupor. I was having my best semester ever at Bowdoin; loving my classes, loving my friends, and just being happy. Now, it’s hard to find any motivation to do anything. It’s a struggle to get out of bed in the morning.

But everyone has had to sacrifice something now. Having been stripped of the final months of an unmatched college education is only a condition of having received that education in the first place. I am extremely fortunate.

Accordingly, my family and I have taken a recent interest in apocalyptic science fiction. In doing so, we have watched three excellent movies, which I will review now:

Contagion (2011), dir. Steven Soderbergh

I feel like this is the quintessential pandemic movie now. After “Tiger King,” I bet this is the most-watched thing nowadays. Nevertheless, there’s a lot to break down in this movie
The disturbing thing about Contagion is just how freaking realistic it is. It’s a bleak, sad movie which was marketed as a thriller when it came out in 2011. The characters are sympathetic, relatable, or just realistic. For example, Jude Law plays the conspiracy theorist who exploits the situation for his own gain by promoting a bullshit homeopathic solution. People desperate for help still follow him devotedly. I feel like it’s only a matter of time until we see a profiteer like Law’s character come about.

Matt Damon’s character tries to escape his home in Minneapolis, but faces more extreme “stay in home” orders

Also relatable in this movie is Matt Damon’s teenage daughter, who is constantly tempted to kindle her relationship with her boyfriend. With social distancing, the loneliness that she faces feels extremely relatable. I have just three people with whom I have face to face conversations now: my mother, my father, my brother. It’s challenging to maintain these relationships and stay cool even together, but it’s harder to build relationships with those you don’t live with. Several of my friends live just down the highway and we can’t even see each other.

The final part of this movie that I see a lot of parallels to reality with is Kate Winslet’s character. I’m struck by the bravery of medical professionals who are putting their safety and the safety of their loved ones on the line to protect us. Bravo to them.

28 Weeks Later (2007), dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo

This film, the sequel to Danny Boyle’s 2003 smash hit 28 Days Later, gives a really good refresh on the whole overplayed zombie movie genre. While completely unrealistic, it is definitely a much more realistic zombie movie, at least over goofy takes like World War Z.

What’s interesting about this movie is it is mostly concerned about the fallout of a zombie apocalypse in Britain. Following the events of its prequel, where humans were turned into zombie-like beasts, the movie begins with NATO-led efforts to repopulate England. By now, most of these zombie things have died due to starvation. However, the damage is done. It gives a good sense of how much these people have lost. The father in the movie is constantly haunted by his betrayal of his wife, as he left her behind in a swarmed shelter at the beginning of the movie. His children are stunned by her loss and struggle deeply. I see some of this anger and confusion in the world right now, as our lives have been completely upended and we are struggling significantly to just get by and return to some sense of normalcy.

The film’s realism, at the end, is established by the realism of its characters. More often than not, these characters make dumb decisions, and are actually frequently unlikeable. However, most people are frequently unlikeable in the real world, and the film is not afraid to display these characters’ traits. For example, the father figure in the film commits two extraordinary sins that propels much of the movie’s action: he betrays his wife and leaves her for dead, but when she is found alive (as a carrier for the disease), he kisses her, contracting it himself. This unleashes the new outbreak and reignites/spreads the pandemic. At the conclusion of the film, an American soldier insists that the father’s two children (one of them a carrier for the disease) be taken to mainland Europe, or they would otherwise face execution. It is implied that this results in an outbreak in France and beyond in a post-credits scene.

In times of disaster, we always think that we will make the right decisions. We will be just and unselfish. However, we have no idea how we will act when put under extreme stress. I think Fresnadillo and Boyle wish to say that we will not be as altruistic and rational as we think we will be.

Unrelated to the quality of the film, the cast includes people named Mackintosh Muggleton, Beans Balawi, and Imogen Poots. Those names are too good to not include in a review of the film.

The Survivalist (2015) dir. Stephen Fingleton

This movie is one of those hidden gems on Netflix. Concerned with ethics in times of desperation, it’s a really interesting dive into what separates humans from mere animals.

The Survivalist and Kathryn in the film.

The eponymous protagonist of the film is referred to only as “The Survivalist”, a man in Ireland who lives alone in a remote cabin following an unexplained worldwide blight or famine. He lives a basic, subsistence lifestyle, trapping animals for meat and growing a small garden for additional food. He is shown having little interest or tolerance for the superfluous; never engaging in recreation or anything pleasurable, a short scene shows him blowing into a harmonica and confusedly throwing it away. This changes, however, when a woman and her mother (Milja and Kathryn, respectively) arrive at his doorstep. After initially threatening to shoot them, he takes them in in exchange for sex with Milja. Gradually, the three of them must develop a mutual trust that ends with a few stunning twists.

This movie is likely the most realistic of the three of the ones I have reviewed in this post. If you allow the novum of the world blight, it is very realistic that a man such as the Survivalist would behave in the way he is justified. His paranoia is understandable, as his only objective at that point is to merely survive. However, his desire for touch and sexuality come about because he is human. Beyond that first ingiving, he develops a real relationship with these two women, and a real affection for Milja that culminates in an extraordinary act of altruism at the end of the film.

The Survivalist’s paranoia is the thing that I track most back to reality. He is pretty much an animal; he has his territory and he will kill anyone to defend it or be killed in the process of doing so. As of today, roughly four billion people–half the world’s population–is under “stay at home” orders. I hope we do not turn into creatures like the Survivalist, and we retain some measure of our humanity as we face greater pressure and strife. I hope our desire to keep ourselves safe will not come at the expense of looking out for our neighbors too.

Conclusion:
These are strange times. Really strange times. We are living in something straight out of a sci-fi story. These stories feel relevant because they feel realistic, but they feel realistic because they are now so similar to reality. It’s a strange world when the worlds that used to entertain us become the worlds that we live in.

Cirrus Cloud:

Link to Weekly Voyant

Taken from the point of view of a common disposable vessel, Hanmura Ryō’s short story “Cardboard Box” presents the “life” story of the eponymous box. The story recounts the box’s journey from its “birth” (in this case, the physical construction of its body), to its literal fulfillment with tangerines and corresponding fulfillment of its life purpose, and finally to its ultimate crisis of reckoning with the impermanence of its purpose and identity. Central to the meaning of this story is the correspondence between purpose and the physical form of the body. In anthropomorphizing an object whose entire purpose is a sole function of its body, Ryō explores the connections between body, soul, and meaning of life.

The beginning of the story conveys that the box exists solely as a physical vessel without inherent purpose apart from its capacity to contain more meaningful objects. Ryō introduces the box through its birth, writing, “Suddenly, I perceived myself. If that’s what you call birth, it was pretty disappointing.”[1] In noting the box’s disappointment with its birth, Ryō explains, “Perhaps I felt forlorn because I wasn’t used to an independent existence.”[2] The emotional distance that comes with the creation of the box’s body expresses that its form, structure, and body yield no inherent meaning independently. It is only through the box being filled with other objects that it will derive physical and emotional fulfillment.

Ryō conveys that filling the box constitutes both fulfillment of the body and of the soul. When the boxes realize that they will be filled, they celebrate wildly. The narrative box joins in, adding, “In a few moments I’d be filled. This body of mine would be filled completely. That was my vindication for living. That was my purpose in life.”[3] Ryō describes the narrative box’s fulfillment as an extremely carnal pleasure, writing, “For the first time since my birth I was numb with the pleasure driven into my body.… I will never forget the pleasure of that moment, mounting higher and higher, leaving me no time to even breathe.”[4] In correlating physical and emotional fulfillment, Ryō demonstrates that the “purpose in life” of these boxes is solely materialistic. The emotional and physical pleasure is derived not from their bodies themselves, but from their bodies in relation to something else. Unlike the empty box in its own right, the filled box is made content and satisfied by its fulfillment. Thus, the box’s purpose and soul become side effects of the use of its body.

Shortly after the fulfillment of the narrative box and its “comrades,” an older box challenges this materialistic fulfillment. The boxes are stuffed into a truck and taken away. During their transportation, the voice of an older box, called the “Hoarse Voice,” warns the boxes that their fulfillment is temporary. It warns that these boxes will be doomed to become useless after their contents, tangerines, are emptied. It describes the fickleness of their existence: “You were made to put tangerines in. They stuff tangerines into your bodies, and after they’ve all been taken out, not one left behind, nobody cares what’ll happen to you.”[5] In this bitter statement, the Hoarse Voice reflects on the necessarily dependent nature of the box’s body, as its purpose is only related to its material content.

As the narrative box’s journey continues, it slowly begins to embrace the impermanence and imperfection of its condition. The box is brought to a market, where it awaits the agony of having its tangerines slowly removed. As one of its comrades gives up its final tangerine and is taken away, it warns the narrative box, “Farewell! It was an empty life!”[6] However, the main box’s luck continues. After losing its tangerines, it becomes filled with trash and realizes that it does not have to only be filled with tangerines in order to feel complete; the physical relation of its body to its content is enough to keep the box content. The box claims, “…I was satisfied. It doesn’t matter what’s inside. Just so long as its body is filled, a box is satisfied.”[7] The box then is picked up as a plaything for some children, who wear it down. In becoming used as a toy, the box’s body is used not solely as a container, but as a toy. In that way, its body finally yields an inherent and independent purpose. It acquires this new purpose despite the fact that its original purpose of being a box is lost, as it is too worn out to be an effective container.

Despite these challenges to its identity and purpose, the box’s ultimate fulfillment is not recognized until the very end of the story. In a moment of despair after the children leave it, the box is blown over towards a lake, an “object of terror”[8] for cardboard boxes. Its avoidance of water is due to the fact that if it gets wet, it can no longer hold things in the way it was intended, and its foundational purpose is lost. However, upon being blown into the water, the box experiences a brand-new form of pleasure, as its body became filled in a new way for the first time. The box says, “It was an ecstasy like melting. Indeed, my body would no doubt dissolve in the water. Yet wasn’t that the same as dissolving in the ecstasy of being filled?”[9] This ending presents a significant diversion of purpose and body from before. As water invades the physical body of the box, it both ruins its initial purpose and fulfills its new one. The box holds water, but it does more than that; it becomes completely inundated with its content and fails to uphold the form and structure it prided itself on before. In the dissolution of the body as it fulfills its purpose, purpose becomes cleaved from the body, but unified with the soul.

There are clear anthropocentric ideas that coalesce in this story. One major comparison to be drawn here is with that of Zen Buddhism. One of the most salient aspects of Zen Buddhism is relinquishing connection to material objects and releasing the self from its separation as a distinct entity from its environment. In this spiritual sense, it recognizes the feebleness and impermanence of the body. As the body of this box from this story dissolves into the water, it dies through the act of completing its final purpose, content and free from its material base.

[1] Hanmura Ryō, “Cardboard Box,” in Speculative Japan: Outstanding Tales of Japanese Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Gene Van Troyer and Grania Davis, trans. Dana Lewis (Fukuoka: Kurodahan Press, 2007), 183.

[2] Ibid., 184.

[3] Ibid., 184.

[4] Ibid., 185.

[5] Ibid., 188.

[6] Ibid., 190.

[7] Ibid., 191.

[8] Ibid., 191.

[9] Ibid., 192.

(contains spoilers, duh)

This week, I turned to something of a very morbid topic: hell, and how it comes up in science fiction. As I think I have said before, I am a huge fan of horror. Science fiction has the ability to imagine any sort of fate, including ones following (or worse than) death, located in a place best described as hell.

This was a topic I could find very little information about online, as someone has yet to trace a comprehensive study of “Hell” in Science Fiction. However, I think it’s a fascinating theme, and one that comes up in three of my most favorite pieces of science fiction ever. Though there are probably a lot of different pieces of science fiction that explore these ideas, I want to evaluate these images of hell below:

“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison (1967)

Fan tribute to Ellison’s story (credit /u/GreyAreaInbetween on Reddit)

Not gonna lie, this story fucked me up when I read it in high school. The gist of it is, humanity created a supercomputer some time in the future, called “AM” in the story (initials standing for a bunch of different meanings). AM developed sentience and killed all of humanity, except for five people. AM, furious about its own existence and the prospect of its immortality, tortures these five via superficial playing with their emotions. AM controls all aspects of these humans’ worlds: their bodies, their environment, their future (it somehow keeps them immortal and incapable of killing themselves).

At the conclusion of the story, after undergoing epic odyssey to find canned food in what turns out to be a ploy of AM’s torture. Ted, the narrator and protagonist, realizes that he must murder his four partners in misery in order to cease their suffering. He stabs them with icicles, but now bears the torment and hatred of AM on his own. AM turns him into an amorphous blob, and the story ends with the being that was once Ted contemplating his miserable future, no different than the present.

I believe there are two hells here. The original hell containing the five remaining humans was horrible, about as awful as it can get. However, the brilliance of Ellison’s story is not the progression created by the five characters’ odyssey; the progression is the evolution of unthinkable torture to something even worse, pain beyond imagining.

This is a unique hell because it is fundamentally created and thus related to human hubris. Humanity created a devil, whose evil and omnipotence led to humanity’s demise. This devil created its own hell with the express purpose of torturing humans. It is so outrageously foreign, so evil, that there is no reasoning with it: in the fact that it is not a human, it has absolutely no capacity for empathy. The terror here is that humanity has never encountered everything so evil, and it has unthinkable power over every component of Ted’s existence.

Event Horizon, dir. Paul W. S. Anderson (1997)

Sam Neill in “Event Horizon”

Honestly, this movie gets so much shit, and I don’t know why. It was panned by critics when it first came out, but it’s absolutely amazing. Understandably, it’s gained a cult following since its release.

In Event Horizon, a new ship was given a motor that can make portals open in order to travel vast distances across space. When it tried to actually do this, it disappeared, reappearing only a years later. A crew, led by Sam O’Neil and Laurence Fishburne, visit the ship only to find that the portal it had opened was actually one to hell; the ship itself is now possessed by manifested evil.

In short, this movie is just an absolute trip. It brilliantly unites fears both held in science and religion about what is beyond the unknown, creating a sick new image of Hell that I haven’t seen on screen before. By making the ship itself not just a dynamic setting but also a character in and of itself, the film creates an atmosphere more claustrophobic than Alien and just as horrifying as “I Have No Mouth”.

“White Christmas“, “USS Callister”, “Black Museum”, and “San Junipero”, Black Mirror (2011 – 2019)

Hell as an arctic outpost in “White Christmas” (credit ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore)

Black Mirror is insanely innovative on a number of fronts, and is some of the best science fiction on screen today. It’s Christmas special, introduced in 2014 as “White Christmas”, brought things to the next level. The technological novum introduced in this episode is the “cookie,” which allows consciousness to be transported into a digital world. In “White Christmas”, Jon Hamm’s character explains that he worked for a company that copied people’s consciousnesses to serve as virtual assistants who would know their masters tastes and interests. These consciousnesses, fully autonomous as individuals, are effectively enslaved by their masters; in one scene, when Hamm’s character is training one of these assistants, he punishes her refusal to work by speeding up time, leaving her for several months in this purgatorial space with nothing to do. The episode concludes with the protagonist, who has confessed to the murder of a child, being punished by having his cookie sped up, making his consciousness exist in this hellscape for thousands and thousands of years.

The “cookie as an entrance to hell” theme resurfaced primarily in two later episodes of the show. In “USS Callister,” a cast-aside computer programmer copies the consciousnesses of his coworkers and transports them to a Star Trek-like world where they are tortured at random, forced to do his bidding, and beg for death. This programmer, played by Jesse Plemmons, gets his lot; his game crashes and his consciousness is presumably left stranded in his virtual spaceship forever. This similar type of hell is also summoned in “Black Museum”, in which the consciousness of an innocent man on death row is put into a museum, where his consciousness can be tortured with a virtual electric chair for eternity. Visitors can also copy a full rendering of this consciousness onto keychains, where this man can be tortured by the electric chair forever.

The horror of these episodes is clear, but their salient themes are important to note. Black Mirror is keen to show the injustice and exploitation of the “condemned” innocent. They also show that technology can give people extreme power on Earth, but also the power to rule souls; they have full autonomy to take innocent souls and torment them for pleasure in fictional hellscapes. Through this hubris, the evilness of their humanity is also revealed.

From these examples, it is clear that Black Mirror strikes a balance between the Hells presented in “I Have No Mouth” and Event Horizon. Like Ellison’s short story, Hell in these episodes is an instrument of torment by a malicious entity. This comparison to Ellison is best shown in “Black Museum”, where hell is manifested small token of musing, a souvenir and a knick knack, from which small enjoyment is derived. However, these episodes also bear similarity to Event Horizon in that technology serves as the direct entrance to hell, and is thus fundamentally intertwined with it. In Event Horizon, the spaceship itself both summons hell and becomes hell itself; in Black Mirror, technology takes on this dual role as well.

Conversely, Black Mirror also presents a beautiful vision of heaven in “San Junipero”. In this story, older people transplant their consciousnesses (via the same cookie) into a digital world of a utopian California town, where they can live forever. It’s interesting that Black Mirror is ambitious enough to tackle post-life issues on both sides of the spectrum. Perhaps the comparison necessarily drawn between the heavenly “San Junipero” and its hellish counterparts shows the fundamentally ambivalent nature of technology. More simply, it may just serve to provide a vision of a perfect afterlife–a heaven–to show how horrible this hell truly is.

Conclusion

As I’ve shown, the idea of Hell is a recurring motif that has come up in science fiction a number of times and explored in different ways. Hell, used loosely, can be seen as a combination of three distinct components 1) pain, 2) a cruel overlord and 3) eternity. It’s interesting to see how people in science fiction worlds end up in Hell, whether it be through a man-made creation. Usually, these tend to involve hubris and cruelty, but whether or not those who enter hell deserve it is a huge question. In further pursuing this study, it would be interesting to look at whether portrayals of Hell in science fiction are related to or portray concerns about morality eternity — I’d be willing to posit that it does.

Other cool science fiction dealing with Hell that I didn’t have time to get to:

Inferno, in Divine Comedy by Dante (14th century)

“It’s a Good Life” from The Twilight Zone (1961)

Doom series by id Software (1999 – today)

Hell is the Absence of God by Ted Chiang (2001)

The Cabin in the Woods, dir. by Joss Whedon (2011)

The Good Place (2016 – 2020)

Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson (2019)

Portal by Valve (2007)

“Beyond the Aquila Rift” from Love, Death and Robots (2019)

LINK TO FULL VOYANT!

Cirrus:

This week, I began (in earnest) my Voyant tracking web journey for the semester. I began the place that seemed most logical: with my all-time favorite movie, Alien (1979).

I was captivated by Alien from the first time I saw it because it’s Just. So. Sick. Like, physically revolting. The creature from this film (and the whole perfunctory franchise it spawned) is so horrifying and disgusting that it obviously feels so foreign and eponymously alien. However, it also freaks out the viewer on a strange, body level.

I dived deeper into the world of Alien. It turns out, other people thought it was horrifying too. I collected some important links and collected them in a Voyant page. Notable words that stand out on this page are “original” (it was a revolutionary film), “blade” (probably part of Blade Runner, another bleak sci-fi film that came out a bit later, and “women” (Alien was evidently a watershed moment for images of women in sci-fi).

Link to the Voyant page

Cirrus

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