Heather McCallum
Professor Ugoretz
MHC 333: Science Fiction: Visions and Universes
25 February 2015
Man in Future Tense: Lawless Lands and Firm Control
Space is depicted with a kind of raw brutality, subject to frontier law in perhaps a pattern to historical American frontierism. The exploration and settlement of space extends beyond a system of authority and provision, and where traditional law ends, something must fill the void. The laws of nature are cruel, and the imposition of order upon chaos is inherently unnatural, struggle constant and requisite to maintain that order. We continuously see a juxtaposition of the romanticism of this freer lifestyle from those who never had to endure it, and the bleak, inalienable realities of the natural order. Out of man-made order comes a kind of mechanical law, composed of the same cold facts, the same unavoidable logic, and it extends beyond human order, beyond compassion or sympathy or humanity itself. Man is bound by either system, constantly in a balancing act between the two.
It’s easy to romanticize the ‘Other’ when one becomes complacent, for complacency betrays a kind of stagnancy, itself a form of entrapment. The couple from ‘It’s Great to be Back’ long for the Other as long as it’s out of reach, memories of the unenjoyable realities subsumed by fondness and nostalgia. They fortunately had the resources to maintain their indecisiveness, to be able to act upon their impulses and enjoy life beyond their current conditions, but not the fortitude to weather their conditions where they were settled. Likewise, the stowaway Marilyn had no way to receive or understand the severity of frontier life; her position on Earth had shielded her from the dangers of the universe beyond Earth itself. In ‘The Cold Equations’, she pays for that ignorance with her life. Self-reliance and man’s ingenuity comes off as a romantic depiction of establishing dominance and superiority over nature, but when faced with Nature and Mechanization, Man is depicted as being more contented with the familiar comforts of the control and mechanization working for them.
It is impossible to write Science Fiction without drawing from the past and present experiences. Outside of literary archetypes, tropes, and the universality of story constructs, the questions that Science Fiction considers and the creation of background, setting, and conflict can only be drawn from what has come before. Exploration of robotic agency perhaps provides a medium for the discussion of minority, or an examination of what constitutes humanity. With the short stories we dealt with in Module 2, we see three depictions of Earth in contrast to the settlement of space: a pleasant, ‘cushy’ Earth protected from a very harsh frontier in ‘The Cold Equations’; a normal, recognizable Earth given more negative intonations against the controlled environment of Luna City in ‘It’s Great to Be Back’; and a ruinous, desperate Earth that travelers do their best to escape from, even at risk of illegal activities, in ‘Down and Out on Ellfive Prime’. Each version of Earth and colony is subject to human manipulations; the comparison in the first two examples suggests the power tipped in favour of Nature, with mankind preferring their smaller, more controlled environments, while the third version suggests that man’s alteration of their environment and over-burden through population has destroyed the balance, and the singular haven from an unfortunate Earth is an artificial human construct that proves equally ill-planned. The characterization of these future-dwellers cannot help but be patterned off the character of humanity in the time of writing, each betraying the author’s impression of man’s reaction to these new horizons, and their alteration of their landscape to make the universe more suitable for their preferences and habitation. It speaks less of adaptation to their environment, and more to man’s natural inclination to tame, conquer, and manipulate in response to the alien and lawless lands beyond.
