Spotlight - in praise of the fictional work / Uri Aviv

Three tasks, important to our lives, rest on the shoulders of science fiction

We live in a wonderful world. Robots on a human mission are exploring the vastness of the universe for us while private entrepreneurs from many countries, including Israel, are making their way into space; An amputee sprinter competes in the Olympic races; Computers that are everywhere allow us access to a cybernetic space that generates personal, economic and political revolutions and the revolution of information spreads to the physical world through XNUMXD printers; Medicine, genetics and synthetic biology extend our lives by decades but at the same time blur the boundary between health and illness, animal and machine, birth and health; And while the flying car isn't here yet (see link), a driverless car is already driving California roads.

In a world where yesterday's dreams are already reality, what is the place of science fiction? I think it is more important than ever.

to imagine the unthinkable

The fictional work as a whole, including the science fiction, imagines the hitherto unimagined, conjures up the unthinkable. The fictional text is the avant-garde, the cutting edge of the art of storytelling. Writers, designers, animators, filmmakers and recently also game designers create whole worlds for their living, inventing new ways of expression and new possibilities for telling stories that have not yet been told. Creators such as George Orwell ("1984"), Frank Herbert ("Sand"), and Connie Willis ("The Bumper"), James Cameron ("Terminator", "Avatar") and Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner" , "The Eighth Passenger") gave substance to new ideas that had never been imagined before.

In the fictional creation laboratory, thought experiments are carried out with big ideas and in diverse fields: science, technology, society and philosophy. The State of Israel itself stands alongside many other great ideas that have changed the face of history, primarily through fiction. The journey to the moon, exploration of the depths of the ocean, cyberspace, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and even television sets, mobile phones and tablets - all first appeared in the minds of writers, filmmakers and artists.

An excellent example of this is the space elevator, an idea that came up for many but gained considerable resonance thanks to its inclusion in the book "The Fountains of Paradise" (The Fountains of Paradise) by Arthur C. Clark (1979). The construction and existence of such a massive facility will have far-reaching social, economic and cultural consequences, in addition to being a huge technological challenge. Clark was asked when he thought such a facility would be realized, his answer was "probably about fifty years after everyone stops laughing at the idea". And here, following impressive developments in the field of nanotechnology and nanomaterials, in the last decade various bodies began to take a serious interest in the subject.

The space elevator continues and resonates with the project presented in 2012 by science fiction writer Neal Stephenson at Google's Solve for X conference, where he presented the "20 Kilometer Tower" project, a multidisciplinary science fiction project within the framework of the University of Arizona, where students and researchers from diverse fields of research and practice compete With the realization of a 20 kilometer high tower: how will it be built, how will it be designed inside and out, how will it be used, how will the lives of the people around it, within it and under its influence, what will its consequences be on society, politics, the economy and more. The thought experiment on the eve of a complete university and its results were works in architecture and design, materials and mechanical engineering, public policy and government, literature and art.

It is important to note that it is not the role of science fiction creators to predict the robot, the atomic bomb or virtual reality even if they did. The task of science fiction creators is even more difficult. They must keep in touch with the scientific community, know the moods and trends and learn the latest technologies. But this is only the beginning of their work. They must also understand government and society, history and ethics, and the most elusive task of all: they must understand human beings. To use the famous quote of Fred Pohl, a science fiction writer himself and the editor of the legendary science fiction magazine "Galaxy": "A good science fiction writer should be able to predict not the car, but the traffic jam". They must be aware of the cultural and social zeitgeist, study the wonders of science and technology of their time and understand how these will come to fruition.

When the creators do this well, and sail in their imagination following the latest scientific discoveries, innovative technological developments and current social attitudes, they lead us all on a journey into the unknown and every kilometer in the journey expands the boundaries of imagination and thought. The creators of fiction are discoverers, researchers and thinkers no less than the NASA engineers or the scientists at CERN working today and no less than the explorers of the continents in the Middle Ages or the philosophers of antiquity. They expand thought and consequently language and offer possibilities that we could not imagine until now. We need them to help us understand what the "traffic jams" will be 50, 100 and 150 years from now - as this issue also tries to do.

Visit the modern Prometheus

Science fiction has many fathers: Jules Warren, H. J. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft and others, but it has one mother, who preceded them all, and that is Mary Shelley. In 1816, during a summer vacation on the shores of Lake Geneva, Shelley began writing her best-known book. At the age of 21, two years later, she published "Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus", one of the most well-known works in science fiction literature, and in general, the Doctor and the Monster that accompanied us in numerous adaptations to this day. In doing so, Shelley brought to the world a long-standing tradition, a genre that critically discusses the place and influence of modern science and technology on society.

Shelley herself discusses the moral limits of science; In "The War of the Worlds" (1898) H. J. Wells discusses the European colonialist conduct in Africa; The play "Rossum's Universal Robots" by Karl Chapek (1921, where the word "robot" was born) deals with the issue of industrialization and the place of man next to the machines he creates; George Orwell's "1984" (1948) warns of a dictatorial regime and the power of any regime over its subjects; In "The Left Side of Darkness" (1969) Ursula Le Guin discusses the distinction between male and female; In "Solaris" Stanislav Lem (1961) deals with the limitations of science to understand our world, the essence of true foreignness and our ability to communicate with a foreigner, our physical limitations and our philosophical limits in understanding the world around us.

There are few techno-utopists who write in praise of science, such as Gene Roddenberry describing a wonderful future of "Star Trek", or Jules Warren before him about his wonderful journeys to the moon, under the sea or around the world. Contrary to these, the criticism is numerous and sharp. Regarding Didi, most of the science fiction writers do so with the full belief that science and technology are positive and essential for progress and that it improves the lives of more and more people all over the world. Such are the creators of science fiction, this is how they express their love and faith. Like devil's advocates, their criticism is often not of science itself but of society, and the distorted, spoiled and corrupt use that may be found for any discovery or invention.

Science fiction is the first and main critical text that directly responds to the presence of science and technology in our lives. The processual, broad and in-depth view gives the creators of science fiction an important seat in the critical discourse about science. They are the ones who oblige us to discuss values ​​not only in the past, but also in the future, that is, in the different futures that science makes possible. Science and technology are now everywhere and are slowly becoming not just a part of our lives, but a part of us. Books, movies, comics and even games that present critical thinking about the impact of science and technology and the way we use them are therefore of great importance, and it is equally important that the scientific establishment itself be open and invite criticism, also of this kind.

to inspire

There is nothing like science fiction movies, spaceships and robots, aliens and dinosaurs, to inspire children and teenagers to engage in science and technology, and there is nothing like fiction to lead to literacy, critical reading and thinking outside the box - the building blocks of a good scientist and some would say, of a good person.

At the base of the fictional work is the question "What if?", which leads to the development and encouragement of curiosity, thought and creativity. The demand to imagine and illustrate ideas that are not only not everyday, but have not yet been thought of, leads us to new ideas, new language, new art and new technologies, asking questions that have not yet been asked, and countless innovative answers.

Robert P. Kennedy, remember, among other things, in his famous quote "There are those who look at things as they are and ask why... I dream of things that are not there and ask - why not?" We need among us those who dare to dream, because, as another dreamer said, "If you want, it's not a fairy tale."

These are the thoughts, values ​​and ideas that we promote in "Utopia - the Tel Aviv International Festival of Science Fiction, Imagination and the Future", because in our opinion the role of the fictional work remains relevant and important more than ever.

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About the author
Uri Aviv - cultural entrepreneur. Artistic consultant, producer and project manager. Directs "Utopia - the Tel Aviv International Festival of Science Fiction, Imagination and the Future" which takes place every year in Sukkot at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. (www.utopiafest.org.il). at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Produced the "Viral Science" workshop for science communication in collaboration with Hamada and the British Council and participated in the production of "Singularities Week" in Israel in collaboration with the Ramon Foundation and The Marker magazine. deals with his events in the middle between science and technology and between society, culture and art.

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