On my drive home from church Sunday I caught a really interesting installment of Studio 360 on NPR; the title: ‘Will Sci-Fi Save Us?” The episode dealt primarily with how science fiction literature influences scientists.
A few points of note: One was the pushback against science fiction to present positive narratives about science rather than traditional dystopias. I couldn’t help but think that this is related to something I mentioned a while back: the narrative of scientist as hero (read about that HERE). This is what really caught my attention. In today’s Western culture of Technopoly (as Postman called it), should it really surprise us that there is a pushback against literature that makes us consider the possible negative ramifications of scientific ‘progress.’ I hope the dystopias keep coming, and more than dystopias, we need all sorts of literature making us question our unswerving allegiance to technological progress as the barometer of progress in general. The very title of the episode points us to the fact that we still need dark dystopias. We will be needing them as long as we are asking questions relating to science and salvation.
Second, the show dealt with how science fiction serves as fuel for the imagination of actual scientists. They note an example of an element in a fictional story that has led to the theorizing of a possible way of traveling to the nearest star. This is quite long shot, since we can’t even travel to Mars yet (and to say that would be a pretty big achievement is an understatement). The scientist interviewed on the program noted that at the current speed of space travel it would take about 80 thousand years to get to the nearest star. That’s humbling.
Third, they discuss a class at MIT that reads science fiction and develops plans to actually create some of the contraptions they read about; but in the process they discuss not only how things could be made, but whether they should be made at all. It’s nice to hear that intelligent people are still asking that question.
All in all, it was quite interesting; you can listen HERE.
