tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/sci-fi-29651/articlesSci-fi – The Conversation2024-03-06T00:42:23Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2248542024-03-06T00:42:23Z2024-03-06T00:42:23ZBagpipes in space: how Hans Zimmer created the dramatic sound world of the new Dune film<p>Industrial. Mechanical. Brutal. These are the words acclaimed electro-acoustic composer Hans Zimmer uses to describe his music for <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15239678/">Dune: Part Two</a>, released in Australia on Thursday.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1160419/">Dune: Part One</a> (2021) showcased Zimmer’s expertise in manipulating sound to create timbres that uniquely fit an onscreen environment. The new film is no exception. </p>
<p>By carefully considering the Dune universe and drawing on a range of audio production and editing techniques, Zimmer creates a rich score that breathes life into author <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Herbert">Frank Herbert’s</a> fantasy world.</p>
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<h2>Creating a rich, textured sound world</h2>
<p>Zimmer looks to the film’s visual world – such as the costume colour palette, or the way the cinematographer shoots the film – to inform his sound and instrument choices. </p>
<p>“It starts off with creating that sonic world that I want the tunes or the motifs to live in,” Zimmer said <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/art/dune-part-two-hans-zimmer-designs-the-sound-of-sand-exclusive-interview">in an interview</a>.</p>
<p>He uses several tools to achieve this, drawing on plugins and audio editing tools to fragment, granulate, stretch, shorten, reverse, repeat and feature certain parts of a sound’s frequency range. He also processes distinct sounds such as metallic scrapes, or <a href="https://www.wallpaper.com/art/dune-part-two-hans-zimmer-designs-the-sound-of-sand-exclusive-interview">sand falling</a> into a metal bowl.</p>
<p>The result is a unique soundscape in keeping with the war-footing narrative at the heart of the film. The militaristic feel of the score is created through the use of deep drums and percussion, repetitive (and at times delicate) vocals and ominous synthesisers that range from warm tones to uncomfortable screeching metallic tonalities. </p>
<p>All combine to draw the viewer into both a deep human narrative and the treacherous environment in which the tensions play out. </p>
<h2>Unrelenting and otherworldly</h2>
<p>Zimmer is very familiar with processing sound to design unique sound worlds – an approach that stems from his lifelong fascination with electronic music. For Dune: Part Two, he composes a sonic landscape that feels as unrelenting as the planet Arrakis itself. </p>
<p>There are several familiar components, such as synthesised real-world elements, vocals and a repeat of melodies used in the first film. Both Paul’s and the Kwisatz Haderach melodies are repeated, as is the House Atreides theme. </p>
<p>In the track Eclipse – which repeats elements of the Holy War cue – ominous deep brass, deep percussion, unnerving vocals and synthesisers work to create a sinister mood.</p>
<p>Added on is an evocative blend of bagpipes, synthesisers and processed sounds invoking an otherworldly atmosphere. Combined with soloist <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/hans-zimmer-dune-score-explained-newsupdate/">Loire Cotler’s ethereal vocals</a>, these disparate musical elements intertwine to build a memorable ambience. </p>
<p>The lines are blurred between the soundtrack and the film’s sound design to create moments of building tension. For the viewer, the dynamic use of these musical elements creates an almost visceral experience.</p>
<h2>A masterful soundtrack</h2>
<p>Compared to the first film, Dune: Part Two expands the atmospheric musical world in a far more foreboding and dramatic style – brought to life by woodwinds and synths. </p>
<p>The soundtrack, which is worth listening to as a complete album, is both a dynamic continuation and expansion of the first film’s quieter, moodier score. There’s a significant shift in tone and a deliberate weaving of melodic themes from the first film. </p>
<p>The first track, Beginnings Are Such Delicate Times, expands on a theme we hear briefly in the first film – played in the bagpipes as the Atreides first arrive on the landing fields of Arrakis. In Dune: Part Two, this theme stands out as Zimmer has transformed it from a military announcement to a moment of pure emotion.</p>
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<p>A Time of Quiet Between the Storms develops this same bagpipe melody with a new purpose: as the romantic love theme between Chani and Paul Atreides. </p>
<p>The track opens with a single wind instrument, synthesisers and percussion. The percussion transports the viewer back to Zimmer’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc8RTc6vKPE">Dream of Arrakis</a> from the first film’s opening. The weaving of this foreboding theme contrasts with a feeling of hope.</p>
<p>The new <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syusOjpEl0w&ab_channel=WaterTowerMusic">Emperor</a> and the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpR4ySXm5f0&ab_channel=WaterTowerMusic">Bene Gesserit</a> themes are threaded with a return of the first film’s Holy War theme, which has now been transformed into the theme we hear at the point of Paul’s victory in the film. </p>
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<p>By exploring the relationship between a film’s soundtrack and sound design, Zimmer creates a sound world full of personality and new timbral possibilities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224854/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Cole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Zimmer creates a sound world full of texture, personality and new timbral possibilities.Alison Cole, Composer and Lecturer in Screen Composition, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2134362023-09-29T12:23:41Z2023-09-29T12:23:41ZSci-fi books are rare in school even though they help kids better understand science<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551054/original/file-20230928-25-qakotc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=61%2C33%2C4462%2C3953&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sci-fi books are popular choices.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/surprised-boy-watching-colorful-characters-fly-out-royalty-free-image/546821353?phrase=sci+fi+books+kids&adppopup=true"> John M Lund Photography Inc./Stone via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Science fiction can lead people <a href="https://doi.org/10.22323/2.18040208">to be more cautious about the potential consequences of innovations</a>. It can help people <a href="https://theconversation.com/sci-fi-movies-are-the-secret-weapon-that-could-help-silicon-valley-grow-up-105714">think critically about the ethics of science</a>. Researchers have also found that sci-fi serves as a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244018780946">positive influence on how people view science</a>. Science fiction scholar <a href="https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/csicsery-ronay_istvan">Istvan Csicsery-Ronay</a> calls this “<a href="https://www.weslpress.org/9780819570925/the-seven-beauties-of-science-fiction/">science-fictional habits of mind</a>.”</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.2008.1450450345">Scientists</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1115/1.2015-Feb-1">engineers</a> have reported that their childhood encounters with science fiction framed their thinking about the sciences. Thinking critically about science and technology is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1742-6596/1175/1/012156">an important part of education in STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics</a>.</p>
<h2>Complicated content?</h2>
<p>Despite the potential benefits of an early introduction to science fiction, <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/E/Equipping-Space-Cadets">my own research on science fiction for readers under age 12</a> has revealed that librarians and teachers in elementary schools treat science fiction as a genre that works best for certain cases, like reluctant readers or kids who like what they called “weird,” “freaky” or “funky” books. </p>
<p>Of the 59 elementary teachers and librarians whom I surveyed, almost a quarter of them identified themselves as science fiction fans, and nearly all of them expressed that science fiction is just as valuable as any other genre. Nevertheless, most of them indicated that while they recommend science fiction books to individual readers, they do not choose science fiction for activities or group readings.</p>
<p>The teachers and librarians explained that they saw two related problems with science fiction for their youngest readers: low availability and complicated content. </p>
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<img alt="A girl sits in a library reading a book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551057/original/file-20230928-27-822zw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Realistic fiction books outnumber sci-fi books.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/portrait-of-a-young-school-child-black-reader-in-a-royalty-free-image/1496939521?phrase=sci+fi++kids+library&adppopup=true">Lorado/E+ via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Why sci-fi books are scarce in schools</h2>
<p>Several respondents said that there simply are not as many science fiction books available for elementary school students. To investigate further, I <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/E/Equipping-Space-Cadets">counted the number of science fiction books available</a> in 10 randomly selected elementary school libraries from across the United States. Only 3% of the books in each library were science fiction. The rest of the books were: 49% nonfiction, 25% fantasy, 19% realistic fiction and 5% historical fiction. While historical fiction also seems to be in low supply, science fiction stands out as the smallest group.</p>
<p>When I spoke to a small publisher and several authors, they confirmed that science fiction for young readers is not considered a profitable genre, and so those books are rarely acquired. Due to the perception that many young readers do not like science fiction, it is not written, published and distributed as often.</p>
<p>With fewer books to choose from, the teachers and librarians said that they have difficulty finding options that are not too long and complicated for group readings. One explained: “I have to appeal to broad ability levels in chapter book read-aloud selections. These books typically have to be shorter, with more simple plots.” Another respondent explained that they believe “the kind of suppositions sci-fi is based on to be difficult for younger children to grasp. We do read some sci-fi in our middle grade book club.”</p>
<h2>A question of maturity</h2>
<p>Waiting for students to get older before introducing them to science fiction is a fairly common approach. <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/author/susan-fichtelberg/">Susan Fichtelberg</a> – a longtime librarian – wrote a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/encountering-enchantment-9798216079095/">guide to teen fantasy and science fiction</a>. In it, she recommends age 12 as the prime time to start. Other children’s literature experts have speculated whether children under 12 <a href="https://keywords.nyupress.org/childrens-literature/essay/science-fiction/">have sufficient knowledge to comprehend science fiction</a>.</p>
<p>Reading researchers agree that comprehending complex texts is <a href="https://greatminds.org/english/blog/witwisdom/the-science-of-reading-what-is-prior-knowledge-and-why-is-it-important">easier when the reader has more background knowledge</a>. Yet, when I read some science fiction picture books with elementary school students, none of the children struggled to understand the stories. The most active child in my study often used his knowledge of “Star Wars” to interpret the books. While background knowledge can mean children’s knowledge of science, it also includes exposure to a genre. The more a reader is exposed to science fiction stories, the <a href="https://christopher-mckitterick.com/Essays/protocol.htm">better they understand how to read them</a>.</p>
<h2>A matter of choice</h2>
<p>Science fiction does not need to include detailed science or outlandish premises to offer valuable ideas. Simple picture books like <a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/60590019">“Farm Fresh Cats” by Scott Santoro</a> rely on familiar ideas like farms and cats to help readers reconsider what is familiar and what is alien. <a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/1122792103">“The Barnabus Project” by the Fan Brothers</a> is both a simple escape adventure story and a story about the ethics of genetic experimentation on animals.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A small girl on a foot stool reaches for a book on a library shelf." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=804&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/551058/original/file-20230928-15-abzpvk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1011&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Some educators are hesitant to introduce sci-fi books to young children.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/african-school-girl-taking-library-book-off-shelf-royalty-free-image/81715011?phrase=sci+fi++kids+library&adppopup=true">Dave & Les Jacobs/DigitalVision via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The good news is that elementary school students are choosing science fiction regardless of what adults might think they can or cannot understand. I found that the science fiction books in those 10 elementary school libraries were checked out at a higher rate per book than all of the other genres. Science fiction had 1-2 more checkouts per book, on average, than the other genres.</p>
<p>Using the lending data from these libraries, I built a statistical model that predicted that it is 58% more likely for one of the science fiction books to be checked out in these libraries than one of the fantasy books. The model predicted that a science fiction book is over twice as likely to be checked out than books in any of the other genres. In other words, since the children did not have nearly as many science fiction books to choose from, their readership was <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/E/Equipping-Space-Cadets">heavily concentrated on a few titles</a>.</p>
<p>Children may discover science fiction on their own, but adults can do more to normalize the genre and provide opportunities for whole classes to become familiar with it. Encouraging children to explore science fiction may not guarantee science careers, but children deserve to learn from science fiction to help them navigate their increasingly high-tech world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213436/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Midkiff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite their scarcity, science fiction books are highly sought after by elementary school students.Emily Midkiff, Assistant Professor of Teaching, Leadership, and Professional Practice, University of North DakotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1578432021-04-22T12:25:43Z2021-04-22T12:25:43ZLab-grown embryos and human-monkey hybrids: Medical marvels or ethical missteps?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396376/original/file-20210421-23-1cklx15.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1198%2C808&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Researchers have grown mammal embryos later into development than ever before in an artificial womb.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Geometric_Progression.jpg#/media/File:Geometric_Progression.jpg">Vitalii Kyryk/WikimediaCommons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “<a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095525181">Brave New World</a>,” people aren’t born from a mother’s womb. Instead, embryos are grown in artificial wombs until they are brought into the world, a process called ectogenesis. In the novel, technicians in charge of the hatcheries manipulate the nutrients they give the fetuses to make the newborns fit the desires of society. Two recent scientific developments suggest that Huxley’s imagined world of functionally manufactured people is no longer far-fetched.</p>
<p>On March 17, 2021, an Israeli team announced that it had grown mouse embryos for 11 days – about half of the gestation period – in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03416-3">artificial wombs</a> that were essentially bottles. Until this experiment, no one had grown a mammal embryo outside a womb this far into pregnancy. Then, on April 15, 2021, a U.S. and Chinese team announced that it had successfully grown, for the first time, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.020">embryos that included both human and monkey cells</a> in plates to a stage where organs began to form. </p>
<p>As both a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=wQsQxFoAAAAJ">philosopher and a biologist</a> I cannot help but ask how far researchers should take this work. While creating chimeras – the name for creatures that are a mix of organisms – might seem like the more ethically fraught of these two advances, ethicists think the medical benefits far outweigh the ethical risks. However, ectogenesis could have far-reaching impacts on individuals and society, and the prospect of babies grown in a lab has not been put under nearly the same scrutiny as chimeras.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Mouse embryos were grown in an artificial womb for 11 days, and organs had begun to develop.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Growing in an artificial womb</h2>
<p>When in vitro fertilization first emerged in the late 1970s, the press called IVF embryos “test-tube babies,” though they are nothing of the sort. These embryos are implanted into the uterus within a day or two after doctors fertilize an egg in a petri dish.</p>
<p>Before the Israeli experiment, researchers had not been able to grow mouse embryos outside the womb for more than four days – providing the embryos with enough oxygen had been too hard. The team spent <a href="https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abi5734">seven years</a> creating a system of slowly spinning glass bottles and controlled atmospheric pressure that simulates the placenta and provides oxygen.</p>
<p>This development is a major step toward ectogenesis, and scientists expect that it will be possible to extend mouse development further, possibly <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/17/1020969/mouse-embryo-grown-in-a-jar-humans-next/">to full term outside the womb</a>. This will likely require new techniques, but at this point it is a problem of scale – being able to accommodate a larger fetus. This appears to be a <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/10822/547926">simpler challenge to overcome</a> than figuring out something totally new like supporting organ formation.</p>
<p>The Israeli team plans to <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/17/1020969/mouse-embryo-grown-in-a-jar-humans-next/">deploy its techniques on human embryos</a>. Since mice and humans have similar developmental processes, it is likely that the team will succeed in growing human embryos in artificial wombs. </p>
<p>To do so, though, members of the team need permission from their ethics board. </p>
<p>CRISPR – a technology that can cut and paste genes – already allows scientists to manipulate an embryo’s genes after fertilization. Once fetuses can be grown outside the womb, as in Huxley’s world, researchers will also be able to modify their growing environments to further influence what <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/134.9.2169">physical and behavioral qualities these parentless babies exhibit</a>. Science still has a way to go before fetus development and births outside of a uterus become a reality, but researchers are getting closer. The question now is how far humanity should go down this path.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of a half–eagle, half–horse griffin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=634&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396377/original/file-20210421-21-17un52t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=797&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Chimeras evoke images of mythological creatures of multiple species – like this 15th-century drawing of a griffin – but the medical reality is much more sober.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Martin_Schongauer,_The_griffin_(15th_century).jpg#/media/File:Martin_Schongauer,_The_griffin_(15th_century).jpg">Martin Schongauer/WikimediaCommons</a></span>
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<h2>Human-monkey hybrids</h2>
<p>Human–monkey hybrids might seem to be a much scarier prospect than babies born from artificial wombs. But in fact, the recent research is more a step toward an important medical development than an ethical minefield.</p>
<p>If scientists can grow human cells in monkeys or other animals, it should be possible to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">grow human organs</a> too. This would solve the problem of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56767517">organ shortages</a> around the world for people needing transplants.</p>
<p>But keeping human cells alive in the embryos of other animals for any length of time has proved to be extremely difficult. In the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.020">human-monkey chimera experiment</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56767517">a team of researchers implanted</a> 25 human stem cells into embryos of crab-eating macaques – a type of monkey. The researchers then <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">grew these embryos</a> for 20 days in petri dishes.</p>
<p>After 15 days, the human stem cells had disappeared from most of the embryos. But at the end of the 20-day experiment, three embryos still contained human cells that had grown as part of the region of the embryo where they were embedded. For scientists, the challenge now is to figure out how to maintain human cells in chimeric embryos for longer.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A drawing of test tubes with embryos inside." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/396400/original/file-20210421-17-162zdc2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ability to grow true test–tube babies raises many ethical questions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/conceptual-image-of-human-cloning-royalty-free-image/1287023975?adppopup=true">Carol Yepes/Moment via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Regulating these technologies</h2>
<p>Some ethicists have begun to worry that researchers are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">rushing into a future</a> of chimeras without adequate preparation. Their main concern is the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56767517">ethical status of chimeras</a> that contain human and nonhuman cells – especially if the human cells integrate into sensitive regions <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">such as a monkey’s brain</a>. What rights would such creatures have?</p>
<p>However, there seems to be an emerging consensus that the potential medical benefits justify a step-by-step extension of this research. Many ethicists are urging <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">public discussion</a> of appropriate regulation to determine how close to viability these embryos should be grown. One proposed solution is to limit growth of these embryos to the first trimester of pregnancy. Given that researchers don’t plan to grow these embryos beyond the stage when they can <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.03.044">harvest rudimentary organs</a>, I don’t believe chimeras are ethically problematic compared with the true test–tube babies of Huxley’s world.</p>
<p>Few ethicists have broached the problems posed by the ability to use ectogenesis to engineer human beings to fit societal desires. Researchers have yet to conduct experiments on human ectogenesis, and for now, scientists lack the techniques to bring the embryos to full term. However, without regulation, I believe researchers are likely to try these techniques on human embryos – just as the now-infamous He Jiankui <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/422891-how-we-proceed-with-human-gene-editing-will-be-the-debate-of-the-future">used CRISPR to edit human babies</a> without properly assessing safety and desirability. Technologically, it is a matter of time before mammal embryos can be brought to term outside the body. </p>
<p>[<em>Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=100Ksignup">Sign up today</a>.]</p>
<p>While people may be uncomfortable with ectogenesis today, this discomfort could pass into familiarity as happened with IVF. But scientists and regulators would do well to reflect on the wisdom of permitting a process that could allow someone to engineer human beings without parents. As <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/j.1552-146x.2011.tb00098.x">critics have warned</a> in the context of CRISPR-based genetic enhancement, pressure to change future generations to meet societal desires will be unavoidable and dangerous, regardless of whether that pressure comes from an authoritative state or cultural expectations. In Huxley’s imagination, hatcheries run by the state grew a large numbers of identical individuals as needed. That would be a very different world from today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sahotra Sarkar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Researchers have grown the first human-monkey hybrid embryos as well as mouse embryos in artificial wombs late into development. These biomedical breakthroughs raise different ethical quandaries.Sahotra Sarkar, Professor of Philosophy and Integrative Biology, The University of Texas at AustinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1533792021-01-27T18:52:43Z2021-01-27T18:52:43ZOccupation: Rainfall review: Australia is primed for a well-made alien invasion film. This is not it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380382/original/file-20210125-15-krzp2c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C2%2C1599%2C1061&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monster Pictures</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Occupation: Rainfall, written and directed by Luke Sparke</em></p>
<p>Historically, when a sequel to a film was greenlit, you could rest assured this was because the first film made a tidy profit for its investors. With the advent of streaming services like Netflix, this is no longer necessarily the case. And Occupation: Rainfall shows us this. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6774786/">Occupation</a> (2018) made barely anything at the box office or through international sales, and yet became a surprise hit on Netflix in the US. Writer-director Luke Sparke was able to leverage this success to fund this sequel. </p>
<p>Although it has a much bigger budget, Occupation: Rainfall is marginally worse than its predecessor. </p>
<p>Occupation was able to make the most of its dramatically compelling narrative of a group of survivors banding together to resist an alien invasion, and the new film takes off where Occupation ended. It’s two years after the first film, and the war between “the resistance” and the “greys” (the aliens) rages on. </p>
<p>Its main narrative follows Matt Simmons (Dan Ewing) and alien Gary (Lawrence Makoare) as they travel from Sydney to Alice Springs to find out about “Rainfall,” an alien super weapon sent to Earth eons earlier. On the way, they pick up Peter Bartlett (Temuera Morrison) who presides over a rural community established in the first film. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f8tofjqqrV8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Wing Commander Hayes (Daniel Gillies) oversees a giant underground resistance compound, performing secret evil experiments on captured aliens in order to develop a weapon that will win the war. </p>
<p>Virtuous Amelia Chambers (Jet Tranter) takes up her own war against Hayes, and the epic existential war between aliens and humans is mirrored in these internal tensions within the resistance. </p>
<p>The whole thing is bookended by two drawn out, noisy battle sequences between the humans and aliens.</p>
<p>If you haven’t seen the first film, it all seems fairly shrill and incomprehensible. </p>
<h2>A failure of spectacle</h2>
<p>There are fantastic alien invasion films that make the most of the conflicts between different species, and, in this, say something interesting and original about life on Earth. </p>
<p>John Carpenter’s cult hit <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096256/">They Live</a> (1988) brilliantly critiques American class inequality through its exploration of invasion, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043456/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">The Day the Earth Stood Still</a> (1951) says more about the atomic age at the beginning of the Cold War than virtually any other film of the period. </p>
<p>Then there are the more tedious variety: epic war films in which the antagonists happen to look weird and talk in a weird way. These can be effectively done, as in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120201/">Starship Troopers</a> (1997), but Occupation: Rainfall just does not have the budget to fulfil its premise. </p>
<p>And without a sufficient budget, this kind of epic cinematic spectacle inevitably fails. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380386/original/file-20210125-13-1erlrq8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The visual effects used don’t stand up to 2021 standards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monster Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A budget of A$25 million makes it, by Australian standards, a very well resourced film (Occupation was made for A$6 million). But Occupation: Rainfall tries to emulate its much bigger-budgeted brethren like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/">Avatar</a> (2009), made for US$237 million, rather than making its own mark. And this will always be a losing game when it comes to economies of scale.</p>
<p>The visual effects here may have been passable 25 years ago (and look at about the level of the Australian TV show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112174/">Spellbinder</a> (1995-97) in places), but are laughably bad by contemporary standards. </p>
<p>The spaceships attacking Sydney in the opening battle sequence look like they’ve been rendered using Paint 3D, and we can never suspend our disbelief when looking at the alien companion animals accompanying Matt and Gary on their trip. </p>
<p>For some projects this wouldn’t matter, but building a convincing and immersive world is absolutely critical for this kind of fantasy narrative. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C1898%2C789&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A spaceship battle" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C2%2C1898%2C789&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380381/original/file-20210125-21-5dke0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Occupation: Rainfall tries for a visual spectacular — but doesn’t have the budget to pull it off.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monster Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Occupation: Rainfall just doesn’t use its budget creatively or effectively – unlike, for example, Leigh Whannell’s superb Australian science-fiction film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6499752/">Upgrade</a> (2018), with a budget of less than a third of Occupation: Rainfall. </p>
<h2>Light and dark</h2>
<p>The narrative is unclear and underdrawn. The relationships between the humans and the aliens is never clearly delineated. There are no clear back stories to the characters that might anchor viewers to the world (unlike a film like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094631/">Alien Nation</a> (1988), which treads similar territory). </p>
<p>It’s not all bad. Aspects of the design are good – there’s an appealing colourfully kitsch quality to the lighting – and the main narrative structure of a pair of mismatched buddies travelling across country facing numerous hazards will always be a winner. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An alien." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380383/original/file-20210125-23-sfkvdz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The alien costumes ‘look like objects your mum might have made you for book week in the 1980s.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monster Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The look of the greys is appealingly bodgie – their costumes and laser guns look like objects your mum might have made you for book week in the 1980s – and Dan Gillies and Temuera Morrison give strikingly assured performances. </p>
<p>But the strength of these actors backfires in terms of the film as a whole, as we become acutely aware of the Home and Away-ish acting of most of the supporting cast. This was a big enough film to throw Ken Jeong in at the end once they reach Pine Gap, but even his comic relief seems lame, doing little to improve the film. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Temuera Morrison, Ken Jeong and an alien." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380384/original/file-20210125-19-15uu7t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The strength of Temuera Morrison’s performance unfortunately highlights the weaknesses in the rest of the cast.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Monster Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The bigger-than-usual budget for an Australian film also plays against Occupation: Rainfall: it makes one painfully aware of the waste. Imagine how many better films could have been made with this money! </p>
<p>It is great to see a sincere genre film coming out of Australia. But Occupation: Rainfall becomes tedious pretty quickly. Given its colonial history, it would seem Australia is primed for a thoughtful, well-made film about alien invasion. This is not it.</p>
<p><em>Occupation: Rainfall is in Australian cinemas now</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153379/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The sequel to 2018’s Occupation, this new alien invasion film is overly ambitious, both incomprehensible and shrill.Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1460602020-09-16T11:20:45Z2020-09-16T11:20:45ZWhy San Francisco felt like the set of a sci-fi flick<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358184/original/file-20200915-20-19fcg73.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=642%2C0%2C2353%2C1419&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the morning of Sept. 9, San Franciscans woke up to a transformed cityscape.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Wildfires-Smoky-Skies/37b2b6fb5f384f4e8c1f48ac09f05171/36/0">AP Photo/Eric Risberg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Sept. 9, many West Coast residents looked out their windows and witnessed a post-apocalyptic landscape: silhouetted cars, buildings and people bathed in an overpowering orange light that looked like a jacked-up sunset.</p>
<p>The scientific explanation for what people were seeing was pretty straightforward. On a clear day, the sky owes its blue color to smaller atmospheric particles scattering the relatively short wavelengths of blue light waves from the sun. An atmosphere filled with larger particles, like woodsmoke, scatters even more of the color spectrum, but not as uniformly, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2020/09/10/the-science-behind-mysterious-orange-skies-in-california/#52bc361f6cab">leaving orangish-red colors for the eye to see</a>.</p>
<p>But most city dwellers weren’t seeing the science. Instead, the burnt orange world they were witnessing was eerily reminiscent of scenes from sci-fi films like “<a href="https://twitter.com/Klee_FilmReview/status/1303748616507531264">Blade Runner: 2049</a>” and “<a href="https://twitter.com/Prince_Kropotkn/status/1303761059887550464">Dune</a>.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1303748616507531264"}"></div></p>
<p>The uncanny images evoked sci-fi movies for a reason. Over the past decade, filmmakers have increasingly adopting a palette rich with hues of two colors, orange and teal, which complement one another in ways that can have a powerful effect on viewers.</p>
<h2>Writing color into the script</h2>
<p>When we dissect movies in my design classes, I remind my students that everything on the screen is there for a reason. Sound, light, wardrobe, people – and, yes, the colors.</p>
<p>Actor, writer and director Jon Fusco <a href="https://nofilmschool.com/2016/06/watch-psychology-color-film">has suggested</a> “writing color as an entire character in your script,” since colors can subtly change the way a scene can “resonate emotionally.”</p>
<p>Set and costume designers can influence color palettes by sticking to certain palettes. But art directors can also imbue scenes with certain hues via “color grading,” in which they use software to shift colors around in the frame.</p>
<p>In her short film “Color Psychology,” video editor Lilly Mtz-Seara <a href="https://vimeo.com/169046276">assembles a montage</a> from more than 50 films to show the emotional impact intentional color grading can lend to movies. She explains how different palettes are used to emphasize different sentiments, whether it’s pale pink to reflect innocence, red to capture passion or a sickly yellow to denote madness.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Frames from Lilly Mtz-Sear's 'Color Psychology' that highlight emotional effects of different palettes." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=256&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/357774/original/file-20200913-16-yc0lvy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=321&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Different color palettes are used to evoke different emotional responses in viewers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://vimeo.com/169046276">LidiaSeara/Vimeo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The most powerful complement of them all</h2>
<p>So why orange and teal? </p>
<p>In the 17th century, Isaac Newton created his “<a href="http://web.mit.edu/22.51/www/Extras/color_theory/color.html">color wheel</a>.” The circle of colors represents the full visible light spectrum, and people who work in color will use it to assemble palettes, or color schemes.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.canva.com/learn/monochromatic-colors/">A monochromatic palette</a> involves tints from a single hue – <a href="https://www.schemecolor.com/monochromatic-blues-color-scheme.php">lighter and darker shades of blue</a>, for example. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_color">A tertiary palette</a> divides the wheel with three evenly spaced spokes: bright reds, greens and blues. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="The color wheel." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=792&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358219/original/file-20200915-14-46b5nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=995&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A version of the color wheel created by Isaac Newton.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-color-circle-to-symbolize-the-human-mind-and-soul-life-news-photo/917742598?adppopup=true">Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Among the most striking combinations are two hues 180 degrees apart on the color wheel. Due to a phenomenon called “<a href="https://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2006/bridges2006-517.pdf">simultaneous contrast</a>,” the presence of a single color is intensified when paired with its complement. Green and purple complement one another, as do yellow and blue. But, according to German scientist, poet and philosopher <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2013/09/goethes-theory-of-colors-and-kandinsky.html">Johann Wolfgang von Goethe</a>, the strongest of the complementary pairings exist in the ranges of – you guessed it – orange and teal.</p>
<p>For movie makers, this color palette can be a powerful tool. Human skin matches a relatively narrow swath of the orange section of the color wheel, <a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/3b/2f/7e3b2fbcfa0baae19047f54d8f97dd40.jpg">from very light to very dark</a>. A filmmaker who wants to make a human within a scene “<a href="https://cdn.onebauer.media/one/empire-tmdb/films/76341/images/tbhdm8UJAb4ViCTsulYFL3lxMCd.jpg?quality=50&width=1800&ratio=16-9&resizeStyle=aspectfill&format=jpg">pop</a>” can easily do so by setting the “orange-ish” human against a teal background.</p>
<p>Filmmakers can also switch between the two depending on the emotional needs of the scene, with the oscillation adding drama. Orange evokes heat and creates tension while teal connotes its opposite, coolness and languid moodiness. For example, the orange and pink people in many of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGTkgB62754">the chase scenes</a> in “Mad Max: Fury Road” stand out against the complementary sky-blue background. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=249&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/358257/original/file-20200915-16-102qfex.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=313&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The chase scene from ‘Mad Max: Fury Road.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Warner Bros. Pictures</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Oranges and teals are not the sole province of sci-fi movies. David Fincher’s thriller “Zodiac” <a href="https://youtu.be/tnFSymJ3Qgg">is tinged with blues</a>, while <a href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTlhNmVkZGUtNjdjOC00YWY3LTljZWQtMTY1YWFhNGYwNDQwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc1NTYyMjg@._V1_UY1200_CR85,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg">countless</a> <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/horrormovies/images/c/cf/1002004000000704.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20190314174712">horror</a> <a href="https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?set=path%5B6%2F7%2F2%2F0%2F6720372%5D&call=url%5Bfile%3Aproduct.chain%5D">movies</a> deploy a reddish-orange palette. There’s even been some backlash to orange and teal, with one filmmaker, Todd Miro, <a href="http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html">calling their overuse</a> “madness” and “a virus.”</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Nonetheless, given the frequency with which sci-fi films wish to subtly unsettle viewers, the palette continues to find frequent application in the genre.</p>
<p>As for West Coast residents unnerved by the murky air and bizarre landscapes, they’re probably wishing their lives felt a lot less like a movie.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146060/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Johndan Johnson-Eilola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The eerie San Francisco skyline evoked sci-fi movies for a reason. Filmmakers are increasingly using color grading to tinge their films with two hues, orange and teal, to unsettle viewers.Johndan Johnson-Eilola, Professor of Communication and Media, Clarkson UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1427112020-07-22T04:55:29Z2020-07-22T04:55:29ZTurning to the Code 46 soundtrack: bearing solitude in a time of sickness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347813/original/file-20200716-15-4kdee2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Samantha Morton in Code 46.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC Films, BBC, Kailash Picture Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>In our <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Art+for+trying+times">Art for Trying Times</a> series, authors nominate a work they turn to for solace or perspective during this pandemic.</em></p>
<p>My ten-year marriage came to an end on the cusp of lockdown. It was amicable – we were “saving the friendship”, we were “taking care of each other” – but it was gut wrenching all the same. We have a beautiful 8-year-old daughter, and little did I know back in early March, but we were about to spend 12 long weeks apart. You see, the in-laws have a property in Portland on the far-flung south west coast of Victoria. Perfect refuge from the plague.</p>
<p>And so, after much discussion, it was decided. They bundled up and got outta Dodge and I moved into one of those concrete cubes in the sky on the outer rim of the city. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=374&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/348165/original/file-20200717-25-ukqc5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitch Goodwin</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>I’m also one of your “vulnerable community members”. Not just because I’m an <a href="https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/756098-mitch-goodwin">arts academic</a>, but because I have a co-morbidity.</p>
<p>Back in 2006, I was doing a lecturing stint in the UK when I was struck down by an acute case of pneumonia. I spent 13 days in ICU in a Birmingham hospice with an abscess the size of a tennis ball in the burrows of my left lung. They killed off the infection and atomised the Slazenger with a fierce dose of drip-fed antibiotics. All I remember was the endless coughing of men – they were all men – many decades my senior, and the horrid stench of ammonia and piss. </p>
<p>I fully recovered and got on with it. But complications occurred in 2012 when the scar tissue from the abscess ruptured and became septic. I was on research in New York, coughing up rancid blood with a stench akin to yesterday’s meat. Two weeks later I had a chunk of lung removed at the Royal Melbourne. Doctors assured me I would have a full and unencumbered life but to this day I require an annual cocktail of jabs to ward off the nastiest of flu variants.</p>
<p>Enter COVID-19.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/art-for-trying-times-reading-richard-ford-on-a-world-undone-by-calamity-142816">Art for trying times: reading Richard Ford on a world undone by calamity</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Dylan, wicked jester</h2>
<p>If we are going to tip our hat to cultural markers for 2020, this article should be about Bob Dylan. Plague, pestilence, the idiocy of men, playing the minutia of life against some ancient stereoscopic vista. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/mar/27/bob-dylan-murder-most-foul-review-jfk-assassination-john-f-kennedy">That’s his bag</a>. Dylan, the wicked jester of mortality and love. </p>
<p>His 17-minute song <a href="https://youtu.be/3NbQkyvbw18">Murder Most Foul</a>, which appeared as if by magic during the depths of Lockdown 1.0, is a genius work of reflexive historical authorship. It spoke perfectly to the perverse conspiracies of our times but also proffered a way out through art and muse. While any Dylan scholar might well cite the lilting dread of <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/1qbn6QrHG8XfnqVFKgNzKP?si=KrXRJ-shQuSSUM1lStW7GA">Not Dark Yet</a> as perhaps COVID-19’s most ominous theme songs. </p>
<p>But Dylan sets heavy in the bones, catches you second guessing things; as with all good art, he makes you gulp hard. Like a mad uncle he weasels into your thoughts, skipping about in his pointy leather boots; that joker’s grin. I just can’t do that now. I’m too close to the edge.</p>
<p>What I need now is space. Sometimes you just need some room to fill in your own maudlin lyric. For me, right now, it feels necessary to tap out my own eulogy to the “time before”. </p>
<p>Enter Belfast boy, David Holmes. <a href="https://youtu.be/TMDXTRwAZQ0?t=125">DJ</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/dQdTem-tz9E">band leader</a>, <a href="https://youtu.be/0T2MHyyXoVM?t=32">producer</a>.</p>
<h2>Soundtrack to an alternative present</h2>
<p>The setting is a somewhat obscure science fiction film from 2003 by the prolific <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Winterbottom">Michael Winterbottom</a>. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0345061/">Code 46</a> is one of those uncanny dystopias – a familiar not-too-distant future – a dream perhaps of an alternative present. Its design consists of a mash-up of locations, from Shanghai to Dubai to Rajasthan, slithers of silver reaching into the sky, interiors framed by neon and chrome, dusty cars sprinting across the savanna. </p>
<p>I won’t go into the plot machinations: themes of surveillance, statelessness and bio-ethics abound. Suffice to say that Tim Robbins and Samantha Morton are <a href="https://youtu.be/9B5_9Hv1-K4">perfectly cast</a> in a story that could be the <a href="https://youtu.be/XPKO7C543ls">Lost in Translation</a> of genetic engineering.</p>
<p>My key takeaway however is the <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/3WS2ZC2lD3g4e8pXgu68qT?si=hMk7Jqd7Q82v0VVWwm90Mw">soundtrack</a>.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>On the eighth floor, in my concrete cube, I have been listening to plenty of electronica and lo-fi lately – <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/5oOhM2DFWab8XhSdQiITry?si=CKcY-PNeQjeWadDNvRGN4g">Tycho</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/2VAvhf61GgLYmC6C8anyX1?si=2gMUw61pSzq9dQ6rqx9Mlw">Boards of Canada</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/47e7SP8MtzYKK8Lm3gEK2i?si=22uL2ntCS9KHRwQybTE4dg">Eno</a>, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/17vHPMmoxN5B8cdhCDeMTe?si=CMDQNjn2QB2JZ0q7AVHxog">Aphex Twin</a> – they’re all in my COVID well-being playlist, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4DGpmCMXO0XuZ3QNKY6yUC?si=k11YzXh-TfWczpq44kOaGg">Calm the f..k down</a>.</p>
<p>It is Holmes’ work on Code 46 (under the moniker the Free Association) that resonates the most. It pings off the blank, bleach-white walls and adds a certain shimmer to the quiet brooding of the city beyond. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/347663/original/file-20200715-15-4250o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitch Goodwin</span></span>
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<p>From the opening moments it is both mournful and redemptive. The rhythmic elements are compulsive, evoking escapist thoughts, while mercifully pushing others away. Like the looping hours of quarantine, memories appear, fade and repeat. At once you are riding the sustained echo of a synth progression and then rescued by a melodic chime or a spiky guitar line. </p>
<p>Oh, how I need that room to breathe. To go there and just be, without tracing the progression or measuring the gaps.</p>
<p>David Holmes <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/0yuMGKMei19rQtngxPK4lg?si=9mfBIuhyRTSBJ7tJYtJL1A">has form</a>. His sophomore album from 1997, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/5CVZGhLQA0ndG1tV1G3se1?si=LWN5VFl8S_mWI_Qp_R-XRw">Let’s Get Killed</a>, with its in-your-face <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3tS0GwJmDoPgQaidNPMnLq?si=Vxoik1bETTe6oSqyAobXIQ">field recordings</a> from the streets and clubs of New York city, mixed with crack instrumentation and frenetic break beats is an absolute classic of the genre.</p>
<p>His bold, brash, instrumental remix of U2’s <a href="https://youtu.be/Hu91B_yY2Go">Beautiful Day</a> and his reworking of Rodriguez’s <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3KzjVgb0rHw9LTwBKaPShi?si=gaP29v-fQoWxomqEYYnd8Q">Sugarman</a> are indicative of his fearless alchemy at the mixing desk.</p>
<p>But Code 46 is that rare compositional work of ambient luminosity. Perhaps I am sentimental, knowing that it tracks the seductive themes of state conspiracy and forbidden love. </p>
<p>And it might be playing to my weaknesses during a time when there is no time. Days seeping into nights like the slow fade of celluloid. A car cuts a course across the desert, the door flings open, a stranger awaits. Sometimes you just have to get in.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/142711/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mitch Goodwin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A somewhat obscure 2003 science-fiction film has a luminous soundtrack, which brings surprising solace to a locked down world.Mitch Goodwin, Faculty of Arts, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1403412020-06-21T20:06:58Z2020-06-21T20:06:58ZFrom HAL 9000 to Westworld’s Dolores: the pop culture robots that influenced smart voice assistants<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341383/original/file-20200612-38691-1o44b26.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C8%2C1500%2C988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://voicebot.ai/2019/03/19/australia-leaps-past-u-s-in-smart-speaker-adoption-google-home-establishes-dominant-market-share/">Last year</a>, nearly one third of Australian adults owned a smart speaker device allowing them to call on “Alexa” or “Siri”. Now, with more time spent indoors due to COVID-19, smart voice assistants may be playing even bigger roles in people’s lives. </p>
<p>But not everyone embraces them. In <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1461444820923679">our paper</a> published in New Media Society, we trace anxiety about smart assistants to a long history of threatening robot voices and narratives in Hollywood. </p>
<p>The warm and solicitous female voices of smart assistants contrast with cinematic robot archetypes of the “menacing male” or “monstrous mother”, with their highly synthesised voices and dangerous surveillant personalities. </p>
<p>Instead, smart assistants voices have been strategically adapted by companies like Google, Apple and Amazon to sound helpful and sympathetic. </p>
<h2>‘Menacing males’ and ‘monstrous mothers’</h2>
<p>In the early 20th century, robots were marvels of futuristic technology. The first voice given to a robot was Bell Labs’ “<a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/meet-pedro-voder-first-electronic-machine-talk-180963516/">the Voder</a>” in 1938. This was a complex device (typically played by Bell’s female telephone operators) that could generate slow and deliberate speech, composed of various manipulations of generated waveforms. </p>
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<p>While they appeared in <a href="https://hyperallergic.com/260735/the-bumbling-robots-and-awkward-automatons-of-silent-cinema/">earlier movies</a>, in the 1950s robots truly came into their own on screen.</p>
<p>With distinctive sounds that gave the robots a sense of otherness, they became associated with narratives of science gone out of control, such as in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/">Forbidden Planet</a> (1956) and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051484/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Collossus of New York</a> (1958). HAL 9000, the infamous computer in Stanley Kubrick’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062622/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">2001 A Space Odyssey</a> (1968), becomes murderous as the computer shows its allegiance to the mission at the cost of the crew. </p>
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<p>Later, film makers started exploring robots as maternal figures with misplaced instincts. </p>
<p>In the Disney movie <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192618/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Smart House</a> (1999), the home turns into a controlling mother who flies into a rage when the family refuses to cede to her demands. In <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">I, Robot</a> (2004), the computer VIKI and her robot hordes turn against people to protect humanity from itself.</p>
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<p>But perhaps the most enduring vision of robots is neither a menacing male nor a monstrous mother. It is something more human, as in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Bladerunner</a> (1982), where the replicants are hard to distinguish from humans. These humanoid robots continue to predominate on the small and big screen, showing increasingly more psychologically complex characteristics.</p>
<p>As the robots Maeve and Dolores achieve more sentience in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0475784/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Westworld</a> TV series (2016), their behaviour becomes more natural, and their voices become more inflected, cynical and self-aware. In <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4122068/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Humans</a> (2015), two groups of anthropomorphic robots, called “synths”, are distinguished by one group’s ability to more closely resemble humans through features of natural conversation, with more animation and meaningful pauses.</p>
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<h2>From fiction to reality</h2>
<p>In these films the voice is a crucial vehicle with which robots express a persona. Smart assistant developers <a href="https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484241240">adopted</a> this concept of developing persona through voice after recognising the value in getting consumers to identify with their products </p>
<p>Apple’s Siri (2010), Microsoft’s Cortana (2014), Amazon’s Echo (2015) and Google Assistant (2016) were all introduced with female voice actors. Big tech companies strategically selected these female voices to create positive associations. They were the antithesis of the menacing male or monstrous mother cinematic robot archetypes. </p>
<p>But while these friendly voices could steer consumers away from thinking of smart assistants as dangerous surveillant machines, the use of female-by-default voices has been criticised.</p>
<p>Smart assistants have been described as “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1329878X17737661">wife replacements</a>” and “<a href="http://www.transformationsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Transformations29_Phan.pdf">domestic servants</a>. Even UNESCO <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000367416.page=1">has warned</a> smart assistants risk entrenching gender bias.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/theres-a-reason-siri-alexa-and-ai-are-imagined-as-female-sexism-96430">There's a reason Siri, Alexa and AI are imagined as female – sexism</a>
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<p>Perhaps it is for this reason the newest smart-voice is the BBC’s <a href="https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/1-7-june-2020/beeb-bbcs-male-voice-assistant-has-a-northern-accent-and-can-tell-jokes/">Beeb</a>, with a male northern English accent. Its designers say this accent makes their robot more human-like. It also echoes traditional media practices using the masculine voice of authority.</p>
<p>Of course, it’s not all in the voice. Smart assistants are programmed to be culturally competent in their relevant market: the Australian version of Google Assistant knows about pavlova and galahs, and uses Australian slang expressions. </p>
<p>Gentle humour, too, plays a significant role in humanising the artificial intelligence behind these devices. When asked, "Alexa, are you dangerous?”, she replies calmly, “No, I am not dangerous.”</p>
<p>Smart assistants resemble the humanoid robots in latter-day pop culture – sometimes nearly indistinguishable from humans themselves.</p>
<h2>Dangerous intimacy</h2>
<p>With voices that are apparently natural, transparent and depoliticised, the assistants give only one brief answer to each question and draw these responses from a small range of sources. This gives the tech companies significant “<a href="https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/joseph-s-nye/soft-power/9780786738960/">soft power</a>” in their potential to influence consumers’ feelings, thoughts and behaviour.</p>
<p>Smart assistants may soon play an even more intrusive role in our everyday affairs. Google’s experimental technology <a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-can-book-a-restaurant-or-a-hair-appointment-but-dont-expect-a-full-conversation-96720">Duplex</a>, for instance, allows users to ask the assistant to make phone calls on their behalf to perform tasks such as booking a hair appointment. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ai-can-book-a-restaurant-or-a-hair-appointment-but-dont-expect-a-full-conversation-96720">AI can book a restaurant or a hair appointment, but don't expect a full conversation</a>
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<p>If it/she can pass as “human”, this might further risk manipulating consumers and obscuring the implications of surveillance, soft power and global monopoly. </p>
<p>By positioning smart assistants as innocuous through their voice characteristics – far from the menacing males and monstrous mothers of the cinema screen – consumers can be lulled into a false sense of security.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>That gentle voice coming from your smart speaker is more complex than she seems.Justine Humphry, Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of SydneyChris Chesher, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1313422020-02-18T10:26:09Z2020-02-18T10:26:09ZFan of sci-fi? Psychologists have you in their sights<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315915/original/file-20200218-11023-1k78m5f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C0%2C3988%2C1706&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Liu zishan via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Science fiction has struggled to achieve the same credibility as highbrow literature. In 2019, the celebrated author Ian McEwan <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/14/ian-mcewan-interview-machines-like-me-artificial-intelligence">dismissed science fiction</a> as the stuff of “anti-gravity boots” rather than “human dilemmas”. According to McEwan, his own book about intelligent robots, Machines Like Me, provided the latter by examining the ethics of artificial life – as if this were not a staple of science fiction from <a href="https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2020/01/02/asimov-at-100/">Isaac Asimov’s robot stories</a> of the 1940s and 1950s to TV series such as Humans (2015-2018).</p>
<p>Psychology has often supported this dismissal of the genre. The most recent psychological accusation against science fiction is the “<a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651513/">great fantasy migration hypothesis</a>”. This supposes that the real world of unemployment and debt is too disappointing for a generation of entitled narcissists. They consequently migrate to a land of make-believe where they can live out their grandiose fantasies.</p>
<p>The authors of <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142200">a 2015 study</a> stress that, while they have found evidence to confirm this hypothesis, such psychological profiling of “geeks” is not intended to be stigmatising. Fantasy migration is “adaptive” – dressing up as Princess Leia or Darth Vader makes science fiction fans happy and keeps them out of trouble. </p>
<p>But, while psychology may not exactly diagnose fans as mentally ill, the insinuation remains – science fiction evades, rather than confronts, disappointment with the real world.</p>
<h2>The case of ‘Kirk Allen’</h2>
<p>The psychological accusation that science fiction evades real life goes back to the 1950s. In 1954, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1956/02/28/archives/robert-lindner-psychologist-41-author-of-rebel-without-a-cause-must.html">psychoanalyst Robert Lindner</a> published his case study of the pseudonymous “<a href="https://harpers.org/archive/1954/12/the-jet-propelled-couch/">Kirk Allen</a>”, a patient who maintained an extraordinary fantasy life modelled on pulp science fiction. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C613%2C459&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315793/original/file-20200217-11000-1bm8o10.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Case studies from the edge.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Schnoodles blog</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>Allen believed he was at once a scientist on Earth – and simultaneously an interplanetary emperor. He believed he could enter his other life by mental time travel into the far-off future, where his destiny awaited in scenes of power, respect, and conquest – both military and sexual.</p>
<p>Lindner explained Allen’s condition as an escape from overwhelming mental anguish rooted in childhood trauma. But Lindner, himself a science fiction fan, remarked also on the seductive attraction of Allen’s second life, which began to offer, as he put it, a “fatal fascination”. The message was clear. Allen’s psychosis was extreme, but it showed in stark clarity what drew readers to science fiction: an imagined life of power and status that compensated for the readers’ own deficiencies and disappointments.</p>
<p>Lindner’s words mattered. He was an influential cultural commentator, who wrote for US magazines such as Time and Harper’s. The story of Kirk Allen was published in the latter, and in Lindner’s book of case studies, <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2013-40852-020">The Fifty-Minute Hour</a>, which became a successful popular paperback.</p>
<h2>Critical distance</h2>
<p>Psychology had very publicly diagnosed science fiction as a literature of evasion – an “escape hatch” for the mentally troubled. Science fiction answered back, decisively changing the genre in the following decades.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=948&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315504/original/file-20200214-10985-1lgrnuq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1191&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">What if Hitler had written science fiction?</span>
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<p>To take one example: Norman Spinrad’s The Iron Dream (1972) purports to reprint a <a href="http://airshipdaily.com/blog/06052014-the-iron-dream">prize-winning 1954 science fiction novel</a>. The novel is apparently written, in an alternate history timeline, by Adolf Hitler, who gave up politics, emigrated to the US, and became a successful science fiction author and illustrator. A fictional critical afterword explains that Hitler’s novel, with its “fetishistic military displays and orgiastic bouts of unreal violence”, is just a more extreme version of the “pathological literature” that dominates the genre.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/1/leguin1art.htm">her review of The Iron Dream</a>, the now-celebrated science fiction author Ursula Le Guin – daughter of the distinguished anthropologist Alfred Kroeber – wrote that the “essential gesture of SF” is “distancing, the pulling back from ‘reality’ in order to see it better”, including “our desires to lead, or to be led”, and “our righteous wars”. Le Guin wanted science fiction to make strange the North American society of her time, showing afresh its peculiar psychology, culture, and politics.</p>
<p>In 1972, the US was still fighting the Vietnam War. In the same year, Le Guin offered her own “distanced” version of social reality in The Word for World is Forest, which depicts the attempted colonisation of an inhabited alien planet by a macho, militaristic Earth society intent on conquering and violating the natural world – a semi-allegory for what the USA was doing at the time in south-east Asia.</p>
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<span class="caption">The Vietnam War reimagined.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikipedia</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<p>As well as repudiating the worst parts of the genre, such responses implied a positive model for science fiction. Science fiction wasn’t about evading reality – it was a literary anthropology which made our own society into a foreign culture which we could stand back from, reflect on, and change.</p>
<p>Rather than ask us to pull on our anti-gravity boots, open the escape hatch and leap into fantasy, science fiction typically aspires to be a literature that faces up to social reality. It owes this ambition, in part, to psychology’s repeated accusation that the genre markets escapism to the marginalised and disaffected.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131342/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gavin Miller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Psychologists have stigmatised science fiction fans as losers who retreat into fantasy worlds. This is unfair.Gavin Miller, Senior Lecturer in Medical Humanities, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1282202019-12-09T19:02:09Z2019-12-09T19:02:09ZHow our screen stories of the future went from flying cars to a darker version of now<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305795/original/file-20191209-90597-1u7c07j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=359%2C21%2C1688%2C1307&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Years and Years begins with the re-election of Trump in the US, and the election of unconventional populist Four Star Party in the UK.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/HBO</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fans of Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/">Blade Runner</a> returned to cinemas last month for an unusual milestone: history catching up with science fiction.</p>
<p>Blade Runner opens in Los Angeles, in November 2019. Furnaces burst flames into the perennial night and endless rain. Flying cars zoom by. The antihero film-noir detective, Deckard (Harrison Ford) has seen too much, drinks too much, and misses his mother between “retiring replicants”.</p>
<p>As in “<a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/why-october-21-2015-was-the-chosen-date-in-back-to-the-future-part-ii-2015-10?r=US&IR=T">Back to the Future day</a>”, (October 21, 2015), which marked Marty McFly’s journey into the future in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_Part_II">the 1989 film</a>, the Blade Runner screenings came with a flurry of discussion about what the filmmakers <a href="https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/3083388/blade-runner-november-2019-tech-accuracy">got right and wrong</a>. Environmental collapse, yes. But where are our flying cars?</p>
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<p>So: what now that the future is here? </p>
<p>Our current versions of near future stories - namely the television series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Black Mirror</a> (now on Netflix) and SBS’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8694364/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Years and Years</a> - explore more extreme versions of the present.</p>
<p>Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror is an anthology of standalone episodes, produced between 2011 and 2019, each set in a slightly different, undated, near future. </p>
<p>Years and Years, written by Russell T. Davies, bravely spans 2019 to 2034 with each episode leaping forward a few years through striking montages of fictional news events: the collapse of the European Union, the US leaving the United Nations, catastrophic flooding, mass migration, widespread homelessness.</p>
<p>We are in a very familiar world. The “near” is depicted in a realistic way through identifiable locations, documentary-style visuals, news footage, and lifelike dialogue. </p>
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<h2>Technology: good and bad</h2>
<p>Back in the real world, the future in the 21st century is unfolding in the palm of our hands. Elections are <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/vote-2019-social-media-is-emerging-as-the-newest-political-battlefield">won and lost on social media</a>, Sydney is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-03/sydney-air-quality-smoke-haze-worse-this-bushfire-season/11755546">covered in smoke</a>. The rate at which technology is altering our lives is rivalled only by the rate we’re transforming our planet. </p>
<p>These shows explore these rates of change. In a 2016 episode of Black Mirror, “Nosedive”, every interpersonal interaction becomes a transaction: an extreme version of Uber Ratings with <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-social-credit-system-puts-its-people-under-pressure-to-be-model-citizens-89963">China’s Social Credit System</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-social-credit-system-puts-its-people-under-pressure-to-be-model-citizens-89963">China’s Social Credit System puts its people under pressure to be model citizens</a>
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<p>Lacie (Bryce Dallas Howard) is an ambitious young professional excited by the opportunities higher ratings open up, such as discounts on luxury apartments, but being pleasant to her barista and workmates only gets her so far. So begins a perilous spiral of trying too hard to be liked, echoing the personality-as-product phenomenon of social media influencers around the world. </p>
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<p>The standalone episode format of Black Mirror means it can be challenging to develop empathy for characters, consequently the interest often rests on the single concept or final twist. The episode “Striking Vipers” explores the possibility of extra-marital love between best mates in Virtual Reality; “Hang the DJ” envisions dating apps as an authoritarian apparatus. </p>
<p>Most episodes are neatly wrapped up for viewers to escape to for pure entertainment – but also to escape from each dystopian possibility. </p>
<p>In Years and Years, we follow one Mancunian family over 19 years. The series opens with Trump re-elected for a second term. In the UK, the unconventional populist Four Star Party, led by straight-speaking Vivienne Rook (Emma Thompson), rides to success on the back of social instability. </p>
<p>Sci-fi concepts are introduced early on so we can explore their evolution and implications. In the first episode, teenager Bethany declares herself “trans”. As progressive parents, Stephen and Celeste immediately comfort their child, who they presume is transsexual. </p>
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<p>Bethany shrugs, “I’m not transsexual … I’m transhuman”. A concept not lost on Blade Runner fans who may be aware of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/11/us/futurist-known-as-fm-2030-is-dead-at-69.html">transhumanist</a> gatherings in Los Angeles in the 1980s, transhumanism is premised on the idea that humans have breached evolutionary constraints through science and technology. Biology is a restriction to the possibility of eternal life. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/super-intelligence-and-eternal-life-transhumanisms-faithful-follow-it-blindly-into-a-future-for-the-elite-78538">Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism's faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite</a>
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<p>Disgust and dismay ensue from parents unable to comprehend why their child wants to rid her flesh and live forever as data. Through the course of the series we see how Bethany’s transhuman ambitions influence her personal relationships, health, career trajectory, and political activism. </p>
<p>It even starts to feel normal.</p>
<p>Years and Years delicately resists portraying a dystopia, allowing room for technology to demonstrate a positive influence on society. “Señor”, the ubiquitous virtual assistant, connects the Lyons family whenever they wish. Like Alexa or Siri, Señor is always at hand to answer questions – but more importantly, facilitates an intimacy that could easily be lost to technological isolation.</p>
<p>In 2029, grandmother Muriel digs up the dusty digital assistant Señor because she misses its company. By now, virtual assistants are embedded into the walls and omnipresent digital cloud but the Luddite grandmother resists. </p>
<p>“I like having something to look at, I’m not talking to the walls like <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098319/">Shirley Valentine</a>,” she says. </p>
<p>It’s moments like these that remind us of our agency over technology and hint at its revolutionary potential to connect us all. </p>
<h2>Lessons for the present</h2>
<p>While classics like Blade Runner looked to the future to ignite our technological desires, near-future fiction reveals how new technologies are injected into our lives with little choice as to whether we should adopt them and little thought to their long-term appropriateness and sustainability. </p>
<p>These shows ask us to be critical of what might seem like minor developments in technology and politics. In an age of rapidly changing political landscapes and the climate catastrophe, it can feel like we are approaching the final frontier. In creating stories set in the near, instead of the far, future, science fiction provides valuable lessons for the present. </p>
<p>In other words: the choices we fail to stand up for in the near-future may prevent us from having a distant future at all.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Aaron Burton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Blade Runner’s vision of the future didn’t quite eventuate. Current TV shows such as Years and Years and Black Mirror explore more extreme versions of the present.Aaron Burton, Lecturer in Media Arts, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1228112019-09-02T16:18:32Z2019-09-02T16:18:32ZStar Wars: the evolution of the Death Star reflects Hollywood’s growing fears of a climate apocalypse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290555/original/file-20190902-175673-g210na.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C1323%2C988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucasfilms/Twentieth Century Fox</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Science fiction films are rarely about the future. Their distant planets and remote time periods instead seem to reflect upon the concerns and anxieties of the contemporary moment. For instance, 1978’s Invasion of the Bodysnatchers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3661172">played on the US public’s fear of communism</a> at the height of the Cold War. Terminator 2: Judgement Day capitalised on <a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/08/22/terminator-2-judgment-day-is-still-a-deeply-upsetting-blockbuster/">concerns of a nuclear apocalypse</a> and the fears associated with escalating artificial intelligence. </p>
<p>In the 21st century, in this era being referred to as <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/">The Anthropocene</a>, fears of environmental disaster seem to have eclipsed those of a cold war, nuclear apocalypse or technological singularity. Rising temperatures, melting sea ice, ocean acidification, deforestation, soil erosion, overpopulation, biodiversity loss and the general degradation of ecosystems worldwide are an escalating threat to all life’s survival on Planet Earth. How then does contemporary sci-fi respond to these pressures and demands of living on a dying planet? </p>
<p>Many recent sci-fi films seem to reflect this shift in concern. Interstellar, Snowpiercer, After Earth, IO: Last on Earth, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Wall-E, Avatar, Geostorm, Annihilation and Okja, seem to situate a climate catastrophe – or more specific environmental concerns – as the dystopic impulses driving their narratives.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/environmental-storytelling-can-help-spread-big-ideas-for-saving-the-planet-107621">Environmental storytelling can help spread big ideas for saving the planet</a>
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<p>This ecological imagination of disaster can also be seen in sci-fi films that are not ostensibly about the environment. Star Wars stands out in particular here. The transformations between the original 1977 Death Star in the Star Wars trilogy to the Death Stars found in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens and 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, succinctly chart a movement from a technological to an ecological imagination of disaster in the genre.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290557/original/file-20190902-175691-zhgu33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Design for the ultimate Death Star – Star Wars: Rogue One.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucasfilms/20th Century Fox</span></span>
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<h2>Death Stars then and now</h2>
<p>The potential devastation in the original Death Star is akin to a nuclear strike. The device’s advanced technology is front and centre of its representation – there are plenty of shots of buttons being prodded and levers being pulled prior to its laser firing. More obviously, this weapon’s total and instantaneous destruction of Princess Leia’s home planet of Alderaan neatly connects with fears of a huge atom bomb’s almost unimaginable destructive power.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=373&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/290558/original/file-20190902-175710-s49r44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Destroyer of worlds: the original Death Star in the 1977 Star Wars.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lucasfilms/20th Century Fox</span></span>
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<p>By contrast the “new” Death Star of The Force Awakens – called “Star Killer Base” – is solar powered. It is a planet with a weapon in it, as opposed to the original, a weapon shaped like a planet. </p>
<p>Where the destruction of Alderaan by the Death Star felt like a massive explosion, when Star Killer Base’s lasers land on their target planets it is instead as if they go through some sort of geological catastrophe. This geological imagery is echoed when Star Killer Base is itself destroyed. It does not blow up immediately, as the original Death Star did, but undergoes what’s referred to as “a collapse”. </p>
<p>During this collapse two of the central characters, Kylo Ren and Rey, have time for a climactic lightsaber duel among the tectonic chaos, dodging great chasms that open in the ground as the snowy forest landscape is slowly engulfed. This drawn-out collapse sits in stark contrast to the instantaneous explosion of the 1977’s Death Star, wherein no such luxury of time was afforded to Grand Moff Tarkin.</p>
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<p>The Death Star in Rogue One also draws on environmental imagery and a longer timescale of destruction. Rogue One is a prequel to 1977’s Star Wars – and the plot partly revolves around the Empire’s construction of this iconic battleship. So it is interesting that – despite a need to ensure continuity with the original film – Rogue One’s Death Star aesthetically operates rather differently to the Death Star first seen in 1977.</p>
<p>When its laser strikes the film quickly ignores the device’s technological underpinning. Instead a Frankenstein stitching of unruly weathers approaches on the target of Jedha City: part mudslide, part storm, part Earthquake, part pyroclastic flow. What once appeared as dangerous technology now manifests as dangerous weather.</p>
<h2>Shifting crises</h2>
<p>Star Wars’ Death Stars are not alone in this representational shift. In Independence Day (1996), aliens blow up the White House with a laser. By 2016’s Independence Day: Resurgence, the aliens are reinvented as intergalactic miners who use this laser to drill into the Earth’s core to extract energy.</p>
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<p>At the end of the original Planet of the Apes, Charlton Heston gets down on his knees and exclaims: “You maniacs! You blew it all up” – implying humans bombed themselves into near extinction. By the time <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11885257">Dawn of the Planet of the Apes came along in 2014</a>, we were on the side of an environmentally situated and self-subsisting ape colony, who simply wish to be left alone in the forest. As with Star Wars, the technological seems to give way to the ecological in 21st-century iterations of 20th-century franchises.</p>
<h2>Anthropocene anxieties</h2>
<p>Susan Sontag’s 1965 article <a href="https://americanfuturesiup.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/sontag-the-imagination-of-disaster.pdf">The Imagination of Disaster</a> revolves around her belief that sci-fi films imagine the disaster narrative of the time in which they are made. These examples suggest that the disaster that is being imagined today is environmental, with these films situating the ecological concerns of a warming climate above and beyond that of nuclear Armageddon. </p>
<p>Such a shift in attention is timely and pertinent to the pressures of a rapidly warming climate, and at the time of writing the Amazon rainforest is still burning fiercely.</p>
<p>Through the mirrored unruly environments found in sci-fi cinema and our contemporary moment alike, we are reminded that the worst effects of ecological collapse are continually unfolding. And this crisis is not only happening on fictitious planets and in far-flung time periods – but right here and now on Earth.</p>
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<img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249588/original/file-20181210-76968-jfryp4.png?h=128">
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<header>Toby Neilson is the author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://online.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3828/sfftv.2019.14?mobileUi=0">Different Death Stars and devastated Earths: Contemporary sf cinema’s imagination of disaster in the Anthropocene</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
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</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/122811/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Toby Neilson receives funding from AHRC. </span></em></p>If sci-fi films mirror the world’s contemporary dystopian anxieties, then over the years Star Wars has gone from nuclear war to environmental collapse.Toby Neilson, PhD Film Researcher, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1140072019-03-27T18:42:04Z2019-03-27T18:42:04ZThe Matrix 20 years on: how a sci-fi film tackled big philosophical questions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265723/original/file-20190325-36279-4c3u3u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1599%2C967&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Matrix was a box office hit, but it also explored some of western philosophy's most interesting themes.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/mediaviewer/rm1677073664">HD Wallpapers Desktop/Warner Bros</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Incredible as it may seem, the end of March marks 20 years since the release of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/">first film</a> in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise)">Matrix franchise</a> directed by The Wachowski siblings. This “cyberpunk” sci-fi movie was a box office hit with its dystopian futuristic vision, distinctive fashion sense, and slick, innovative action sequences. But it was also a catalyst for popular discussion around some very big philosophical themes. </p>
<p>The film centres on a computer hacker, “Neo” (played by Keanu Reeves), who learns that his whole life has been lived within an elaborate, simulated reality. This computer-generated dream world was designed by an artificial intelligence of human creation, which industrially farms human bodies for energy while distracting them via a relatively pleasant parallel reality called the “matrix”.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real?’</span></figcaption>
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<p>This scenario recalls one of western philosophy’s most enduring thought experiments. In a famous passage from Plato’s <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/republic/">Republic</a> (ca 380 BCE), Plato has us imagine the human condition as being like a group of prisoners who have lived their lives underground and shackled, so that their experience of reality is limited to shadows projected onto their cave wall. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-matrix-and-bullet-time-105734">The great movie scenes: The Matrix and bullet-time</a>
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<p>A freed prisoner, Plato suggests, would be startled to discover the truth about reality, and blinded by the brilliance of the sun. Should he return below, his companions would have no means to understand what he has experienced and surely think him mad. Leaving the captivity of ignorance is difficult. </p>
<p>In The Matrix, Neo is freed by rebel leader Morpheus (ironically, the name of the Greek God of sleep) by being awoken to real life for the first time. But unlike Plato’s prisoner, who discovers the “higher” reality beyond his cave, the world that awaits Neo is both desolate and horrifying. </p>
<h2>Our fallible senses</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/265719/original/file-20190325-36276-4zht1r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1132&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Matrix recalls several philosophical thought experiments.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/mediaviewer/rm525547776">Warner Bros</a></span>
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<p>The Matrix also trades on more recent philosophical questions famously posed by the 17th century Frenchman <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/descarte/">René Descartes</a>, concerning our inability to be certain about the evidence of our senses, and our capacity to know anything definite about the world as it really is. </p>
<p>Descartes even noted the difficulty of being certain that human experience is not the result of either a dream or a malevolent systematic deception. </p>
<p>The latter scenario was updated in philosopher Hilary Putnam’s 1981 “<a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/brainvat/">brain in a vat</a>” thought experiment, which imagines a scientist electrically manipulating a brain to induce sensations of normal life.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-do-you-know-youre-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation-60704">How do you know you're not living in a computer simulation?</a>
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<p>So ultimately, then, what is reality? The late 20th century French thinker Jean Baudrillard, whose <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation">book</a> appears briefly (with an ironic touch) early in the film, wrote extensively on the ways in which contemporary mass society generates sophisticated imitations of reality that become so realistic they are mistaken for reality itself (like mistaking the map for the landscape, or the portrait for the person). </p>
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<span class="caption">Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving in The Matrix.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/mediaviewer/rm3229122816">Warner Bros</a></span>
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<p>Of course, there is no need for a matrix-like AI conspiracy to achieve this. We see it now, perhaps even more intensely than 20 years ago, in the dominance of “reality TV” and curated identities of social media.</p>
<p>In some respects, the film appears to be reaching for a view close to that of the 18th century German philosopher, <a href="https://www.iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/">Immanuel Kant</a>, who insisted that our senses do not simply copy the world; rather, reality conforms to the terms of our perception. We only ever experience the world as it is available through the partial spectrum of our senses. </p>
<h2>The ethics of freedom</h2>
<p>Ultimately, the Matrix trilogy proclaims that free individuals can change the future. But how should that freedom be exercised? </p>
<p>This dilemma is unfolded in the first film’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Pill">increasingly notorious</a> red/blue pill scene, which raises the <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-belief/">ethics of belief</a>. Neo’s choice is to embrace either the “really real” (as exemplified by the red pill he is offered by Morpheus) or to return to his more normal “reality” (via the blue one). </p>
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<p>This quandary was captured in a 1974 thought experiment by American philosopher, Robert Nozick. Given an “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09515089.2017.1406600">experience machine</a>” capable of providing whatever experiences we desire, in a way indistinguishable from “real” ones, should we stubbornly prefer the truth of reality? Or can we feel free to reside within comfortable illusion? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-virtual-reality-cannot-match-the-real-thing-92035">Why virtual reality cannot match the real thing</a>
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<p>In The Matrix we see the rebels resolutely rejecting the comforts of the matrix, preferring grim reality. But we also see the rebel traitor Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) desperately seeking reinsertion into pleasant simulated reality. “Ignorance is bliss,” he affirms. </p>
<p>The film’s chief villain, Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), darkly notes that unlike other mammals, (western) humanity insatiably consumes natural resources. The matrix, he suggests, is a “cure” for this human “contagion”. </p>
<p>We have heard much about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/careful-how-you-treat-todays-ai-it-might-take-revenge-in-the-future-112611">potential perils of AI</a>, but perhaps there is something in Agent Smith’s accusation. In raising this tension, The Matrix still strikes a nerve – especially after 20 further years of insatiable consumption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/114007/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Colledge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Cult film The Matrix was released 20 years ago this month. From Plato to Baudrillard, the film explored philosophical dilemmas we are still wrestling with today.Richard Colledge, Senior Lecturer & Head of School of Philosophy, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1121172019-03-19T12:33:22Z2019-03-19T12:33:22ZThe Wandering Earth: why you need to see China’s latest sci-fi blockbuster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264446/original/file-20190318-28468-1bvp1p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C0%2C1771%2C984&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wandering Earth poster.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As China demonstrated its space credentials by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/03/china-probe-change-4-land-far-side-moon-basin-crater">landing a lunar probe</a> on the far side of the moon in January 2019, a science fiction movie was hitting mainland cinemas that could also redefine China’s credentials as a maker of global cinema.</p>
<p>The Wandering Earth, directed by <a href="http://chinafilminsider.com/cfi-interview-director-frant-gwo-exploring-sci-fi-with-a-wondering-earth/">Frant Gwo</a> is <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=thewanderingearth.htm">the world’s highest-grossing film</a> so far in 2019 with box office takings of almost US$700m at last count – mainly from China itself. The film is based on the novela of the same title, written in 2000 by Chinese science-fiction author Liu Cixin, about Earth’s migration to a new solar system to escape annihilation.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=902&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264417/original/file-20190318-28471-2131by.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1134&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Liu Cixin (left) and Frant Gwo at a promotional function for The Wandering Earth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
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<p>Liu was at the forefront of Chinese science fiction in the 1980s, an era where China reconnected with the world after its long internal political struggles of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and the 1970s. Liu’s first full-length novel China2185, written in 1989, combines a utopian futuristic vision with critical commentary on the social and political issues facing China. China2185 was never officially published but it was <a href="https://www.kanunu8.com/book3/6655/">distributed free</a> via multiple online reading platforms and is <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283525889_The_Political_Imagination_in_Liu_Cixin's_Critical_Utopia_China_2185">considered by critics</a> as the foundation novel for Chinese science fiction. </p>
<p>Liu has continued to write and publish stories which share similar ideas, a vision for a better world through scientific fantasy. These novels include The Devil’s Bricks (2002), The Era of Supernova (2003), Ball Lightning (2004) and The Three-Body Problem trilogy. The latter trilogy, which was given rave reviews <a href="https://medium.com/@jafrank09/when-obama-and-zuckerberg-are-your-fan-boys-on-cixin-lius-remembrance-of-earth-s-past-trilogy-97944ac11c0e">by both Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg</a>, was adapted as a screenplay for a film under the same title, but has yet to see the light of day. Amazon also reportedly <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/the-three-body-problem-tv-adaptation-show-amazon-a8278066.html">has plans</a> for a three-part, US$1 billion TV series. </p>
<p>Liu won a fistful of awards including the 2015 Hugo Award for best novel for the English translation of The Three-Body Problem trilogy and the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke Award for Imagination in Service to Society as well as various nominations.</p>
<h2>Love letter</h2>
<p>Clarke is one of Liu’s idols, as well as George Orwell – who, he said: “showed me that science fiction can reflect and critique reality from an angle that does not exist in mainstream literature”. His great <a href="http://chinafilminsider.com/cfi-interview-director-frant-gwo-exploring-sci-fi-with-a-wondering-earth/">filmic influences</a> include Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), James Cameron’s Terminator 2 (1991), and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014).</p>
<p>Liu’s Wandering Earth is meant as a love letter – not only to his literary and cinematic idols but also his ideal of humanity. But the film is also a demonstration to a global audience what the modern Chinese film industry can achieve. It is an epic on the scale that can comfortably compete with Hollywood blockbusters, the first real break-out success for China’s sci-fi industry after several failures, including Future X-Cops (2010) or <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/film-review-bleeding-steel-fails-to-cut-it-as-latest-vehicle-for-jackie-chan-20180101-h0bxid.html">Bleeding Steel (2017) neither of which made a mark internationally</a>. </p>
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<p>The film was released on February 5, 2019 – the New Year holiday in China – and was marketed as emblematic of national pride. Catching up with Hollywood has long been a state-driven ambition for the Chinese film industry – which has been given the hopeful tag of “<a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/1909294/hello-huallywood-chinese-studio-hopes-monkey-king-fantasy-sequel">Huallywood</a>”. It’s a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/03/13/how-china-is-using-science-fiction-sell-beijings-vision-future/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4e9eda2a9c22">massive production</a> – a total budget of $50m involving more than 7,000 cast and crew. Special effects and post-production featured international companies such as Base FX, Bottleship VFX, Dexter Studios, Macrograph, More VFX, Pixomondo and Black Nomad and the end product has a similar look to films such as Gravity (2013) or The Martian (2015). It’s a story of growing confidence and sophistication among Chinese filmmakers.</p>
<h2>Manifesto for a new China</h2>
<p>It’s also a story which reflects China’s growing geopolitical importance. Earth faces annihilation at the hands of an ageing and rapidly expanding sun. A United Earth Government takes the decision to propel the planet to another system by using enormous thrusters running on fusion power built across the planet but coordinated by China – now the dominant global power. China’s leadership qualities are encapsulated in a sequence where a speech delivered by a Chinese schoolgirl turns global despondency about the dangers of the mission into hope for the future.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/264412/original/file-20190318-28492-1x2tqaa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Jin Mai Jaho as Han Duoduo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
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<p>Like so many Hollywood sci-fi movies in the past have promoted American values, the film delivers a manifesto of Chinese exceptionalism. Only China has engineers capable in solving this complex problem. Only China has the will and the leadership to see the world through a crisis so huge that even the artificial intelligence that has been harnessed to help has told the rest of the world to just give up. I will leave it to you to draw your own conclusions about the message this aims to deliver about global crises faced by our own world today.</p>
<p>As well as China itself, the film has been released in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand where it is doing <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=thewanderingearth.htm">brisk box office</a>. A UK theatrical release date has yet to be announced, but Netflix <a href="https://media.netflix.com/en/press-releases/the-wandering-earth-lands-on-netflix">has acquired the film’s global digital rights</a> (apart from China). It will be a chance for non-Chinese audiences to get a feel for the sort of themes that mainstream film audiences are used to now in China, themes that reflect a new world order that is developing at an ever-more rapid pace.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hiu Man Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A Chinese sci-fi epic is breaking box office records and exporting a vision of a new world order as it does so.Hiu Man Chan, PhD Researcher, School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057142018-11-15T11:45:18Z2018-11-15T11:45:18ZSci-fi movies are the secret weapon that could help Silicon Valley grow up<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244833/original/file-20181109-116820-1dd6y55.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If you don't want to be facing down an angry dinosaur, pay attention to what happens on screen.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/mediaviewer/rm2687618048">Universal Pictures</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>If there’s one line that stands the test of time in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/">Jurassic Park</a>,” it’s probably Jeff Goldblum’s exclamation, “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” </p>
<p>Goldblum’s character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, was warning against the hubris of naively tinkering with dinosaur DNA in an effort to bring these extinct creatures back to life. Twenty-five years on, his words are taking on new relevance as a growing number of scientists and companies are grappling with how to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/12/tech-humanities-misinformation-philosophy-psychology-graduates-mozilla-head-mitchell-baker">tread the line between “could” and “should”</a> in areas ranging from <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6414/527">gene editing</a> and <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-scientists-bringing-extinct-species-back-from-the-dead-1539093600">real-world “de-extinction”</a> to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-19/biohackers-are-implanting-everything-from-magnets-to-sex-toys">human augmentation</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/16/17978596/stephen-hawking-ai-climate-change-robots-future-universe-earth">artificial intelligence</a> and many others. </p>
<p>Despite growing concerns that powerful emerging technologies could lead to unexpected and wide-ranging consequences, innovators are struggling with how to develop beneficial new products while being socially responsible. Part of the answer could lie in <a href="https://mango.bz/books/films-from-the-future-by-andrew-maynard-458-b">watching more science fiction movies</a> like “Jurassic Park.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244822/original/file-20181109-36763-1x9u650.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Just because you can….</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.throwbacks.com/jeff-goldblum-talks-jurassic-park/">Universal Pictures</a></span>
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<h2>Hollywood lessons in societal risks</h2>
<p>I’ve long been interested in how innovators and others can better understand the increasingly complex landscape around the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=b8NhWc4AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">social risks and benefits associated with emerging technologies</a>. Growing concerns over the impacts of tech on jobs, privacy, security and even the ability of people to live their lives without undue interference highlight the need for new thinking around how to innovate responsibly. </p>
<p>New ideas require creativity and imagination, and a willingness to see the world differently. And this is where science fiction movies can help.</p>
<p>Sci-fi flicks are, of course, notoriously unreliable when it comes to accurately depicting science and technology. But because their plots are often driven by the intertwined relationships between people and technology, they can be remarkably insightful in revealing social factors that affect successful and responsible innovation. </p>
<p>This is clearly seen in “Jurassic Park.” The movie provides a surprisingly good starting point for thinking about the pros and cons of modern-day genetic engineering and the growing interest in <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130310-extinct-species-cloning-deextinction-genetics-science/">bringing extinct species back from the dead</a>. But it also opens up conversations around the nature of complex systems that involve both people and technology, and the potential dangers of “permissionless” innovation that’s driven by power, wealth and a lack of accountability.</p>
<p>Similar insights emerge from a number of other movies, including Spielberg’s 2002 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/">Minority Report</a>” – which presaged a growing capacity for <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/artificial-intelligence-is-now-used-predict-crime-is-it-biased-180968337/">AI-enabled crime prediction</a> and the ethical conundrums it’s raising – as well as the 2014 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/">Ex Machina</a>.”</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244824/original/file-20181109-37973-1eh9qw0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Movie geniuses always have blind spots that viewers can hopefully learn from.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/mediaviewer/rm1897135872">Universal Pictures International</a></span>
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<p>As with “Jurassic Park,” “Ex Machina” centers around a wealthy and unaccountable entrepreneur who is supremely confident in his own abilities. In this case, the technology in question is artificial intelligence. </p>
<p>The movie tells a tale of an egotistical genius who creates a remarkable intelligent machine – but he lacks the awareness to recognize his limitations and the risks of what he’s doing. It also provides a chilling insight into potential dangers of creating machines that know us better than we know ourselves, while not being bound by human norms or values.</p>
<p>The result is a sobering reminder of how, without humility and a good dose of humanity, our innovations can come back to bite us.</p>
<p>The technologies in “Jurassic Park,” “Minority Report” and “Ex Machina” lie beyond what is currently possible. Yet these films are often close enough to emerging trends that they help reveal the dangers of irresponsible, or simply naive, innovation. This is where these and other science fiction movies can help innovators better understand the social challenges they face and how to navigate them. </p>
<h2>Real-world problems worked out on-screen</h2>
<p>In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, journalist Kara Swisher asked, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/opinion/who-will-teach-silicon-valley-to-be-ethical.html">Who will teach Silicon Valley to be ethical</a>?” Prompted by a growing litany of socially questionable decisions amongst tech companies, Swisher suggests that many of them need to grow up and get serious about ethics. But ethics alone are rarely enough. It’s easy for good intentions to get swamped by fiscal pressures and mired in social realities.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=693&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244961/original/file-20181111-39548-r1p8kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=871&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elon Musk has shown that brilliant tech innovators can take ethical missteps along the way.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/SpaceX-Moon/f67fc5d84eb149ba8c1a3c3f059165ea/1/0">AP Photo/Chris Carlson</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Technology companies increasingly need to find some way to break from business as usual if they are to become more responsible. High-profile cases involving companies like <a href="https://theconversation.com/facebook-is-killing-democracy-with-its-personality-profiling-data-93611">Facebook</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/uber-cant-be-ethical-its-business-model-wont-allow-it-85015">Uber</a> as well as Tesla’s <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/27/17911428/sec-lawsuit-elon-musk-tesla-funding-tweet">Elon Musk</a> have highlighted the social as well as the business dangers of operating without fully understanding the consequences of people-oriented actions. </p>
<p>Many more companies are struggling to create socially beneficial technologies and discovering that, without the necessary insights and tools, they risk blundering about in the dark.</p>
<p>For instance, earlier this year, researchers from Google and DeepMind <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1807.05162.pdf">published details of an artificial intelligence-enabled system</a> that can lip-read far better than people. According to the paper’s authors, the technology has enormous potential to improve the lives of people who have trouble speaking aloud. Yet it doesn’t take much to imagine how this same technology could threaten the privacy and security of millions – especially when coupled with long-range surveillance cameras.</p>
<p>Developing technologies like this in socially responsible ways requires more than good intentions or simply establishing an ethics board. People need a sophisticated understanding of the often complex dynamic between technology and society. And while, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/12/tech-humanities-misinformation-philosophy-psychology-graduates-mozilla-head-mitchell-baker">as Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker suggests</a>, scientists and technologists engaging with the humanities can be helpful, it’s not enough.</p>
<h2>Movies are an easy way into a serious discipline</h2>
<p>The “new formulation” of complementary skills Baker says innovators desperately need already exists in a thriving interdisciplinary community focused on <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/responsible-innovation-31243">socially responsible innovation</a>. My home institution, the <a href="http://sfis.asu.edu">School for the Future of Innovation in Society</a> at Arizona State University, is just one part of this. </p>
<p>Experts within this global community are actively exploring ways to translate good ideas into responsible practices. And this includes the need for <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.196">creative insights into the social landscape around technology innovation</a>, and the imagination to develop novel ways to navigate it.</p>
<p>Here is where science fiction movies become a powerful tool for guiding innovators, technology leaders and the companies where they work. Their fictional scenarios can reveal potential pitfalls and opportunities that can help steer real-world decisions toward socially beneficial and responsible outcomes, while avoiding unnecessary risks.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=459&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/244826/original/file-20181109-34102-1kuntvu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=576&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People love to come together as a movie audience.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalarchives/3002426059">The National Archives UK</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And science fiction movies bring people together. By their very nature, these films are social and educational levelers. Look at who’s watching and discussing the latest sci-fi blockbuster, and you’ll often find a diverse cross-section of society. The genre can help build bridges between people who know how science and technology work, and those who know what’s needed to ensure they work for the good of society.</p>
<p>This is the underlying theme in my new book “<a href="https://mango.bz/books/films-from-the-future-by-andrew-maynard-458-b">Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies</a>.” It’s written for anyone who’s curious about emerging trends in technology innovation and how they might potentially affect society. But it’s also written for innovators who want to do the right thing and just don’t know where to start.</p>
<p>Of course science fiction films alone aren’t enough to ensure socially responsible innovation. But they can help reveal some profound societal challenges facing technology innovators and possible ways to navigate them. And what better way to learn how to innovate responsibly than to invite some friends round, open the popcorn and put on a movie?</p>
<p>It certainly beats being blindsided by risks that, with hindsight, could have been avoided.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Maynard is author of the book "Films from the Future: The Technology and Morality of Sci-Fi Movies" (published by Mango), on which this article is based. </span></em></p>As fictional inventors make terrible choices on the big screen, real-world tech innovators can learn from their example how not to make the same kinds of ethical mistakes.Andrew Maynard, Director, Risk Innovation Lab, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1057342018-11-04T19:21:08Z2018-11-04T19:21:08ZThe great movie scenes: The Matrix and bullet-time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242395/original/file-20181026-71029-1gm2yks.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=22%2C17%2C2973%2C1464&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from 'The Matrix', 1999</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this video series, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/297210294" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Matrix, 1999.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most films represent the world as we know and perceive it. Even when portraying alien worlds or super heroes, there are certain rules of perception that films adhere to. Which is why, when I first experienced bullet-time during the opening scene of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0133093/">The Matrix</a>, I had to turn to my partner and ask: “what was that?”.</p>
<p>Bullet-time broke the common rules of perception as I knew it. How can a film freeze-frame and move during the still image, where the entire visual frame rotates on an axis? It was stunning, bold and new. And it has become one of the most influential special effects in the history of cinema.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">Steven Spielberg’s Jaws</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">Hitchcock’s Psycho</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The Godfather</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-sofia-coppolas-marie-antoinette-101893">Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-darren-aronofskys-requiem-for-a-dream-103916">Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105734/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When it was released in 1999, The Matrix introduced a new type of image: bullet-time. Bruce Isaacs explains why it has become one of the most influential special effects in the history of cinema.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1001702018-08-05T20:11:35Z2018-08-05T20:11:35ZThe great movie scenes: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229550/original/file-20180727-106521-1x487ec.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C4%2C2986%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Still from '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this column, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
<hr>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/280301448" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>2001: A Space Odyssey was released 50 years ago but it remains as relevant today as it was in 1968. </p>
<p>The film was a collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke. Both were determined to make a science fiction film that would not date. They succeeded brilliantly. 2001 has not only stood the test of time, but remains one of the greatest films ever made.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stephen-hawking-blending-science-with-science-fiction-93430">Stephen Hawking: blending science with science fiction</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In this video, we analyse two scenes that highlight the film’s use of cinematic techniques to explore the evolution of human consciousness. The scenes bookend 2001: A Space Odyssey - they are the dawn of man sequence at the beginning and the final sequence, showing the next evolutionary leap in human consciousness.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">The great movie scenes: Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">The great movie scenes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">The great movie scenes: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Psycho</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The great movie scenes: The Godfather</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100170/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey broke all the rules of science fiction cinema, and allowed the audience to experience a uniquely philosophical film about the evolution of human consciousness.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/920852018-04-10T09:03:09Z2018-04-10T09:03:09ZHow Philip K. Dick redefined what it means to be (in)human<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/213819/original/file-20180409-114105-c6it7a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">I think, therefore I am human?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/3d-rendering-android-robot-thinking-office-644724364?src=lf_CL1HcHY4gTz4WjEbANA-1-4">Phonlamai Photo/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Fifty years ago, Philip K. Dick’s novel <em>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</em> questioned what it means to be human in ways that have an immense lasting influence. </p>
<p>The action of the novel – and <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-science-and-fiction-behind-blade-runner-46459">the Blade Runner films</a> based on it – largely revolves around the central tension and struggle between biological humans and artificially constructed androids. Arguably, however, the story’s greatest continuing relevance is in the way it challenges a particular image of the human that has come to dominate in modern Western culture. This image portrays certain qualities – whiteness, masculinity, heterosexuality, rationalism, professional success and physical prowess – as the ideal symbols of humanity’s success.</p>
<p>The novel revolves around the efforts of bounty hunter Rick Deckard, in his quest to identify, track, and destroy androids posing as biological humans. Unsurprisingly, he repeatedly meets violent resistance. Both his livelihood and his life depend on his ability to tell the difference between humans and androids. Ultimately, however, Deckard is forced to face the possibility that there may not be any fundamental difference. This causes him to undergo a deep existential crisis, finding both his sense of identity, and his literal survival, severely threatened. </p>
<p>Deckard’s primary means of distinguishing between humans and androids is <a href="http://nautil.us/blog/the-science-behind-blade-runners-voight_kampff-test">the Voight-Kampff test</a>. Combining psychological analysis with a measurement of physiological reactions, the test seeks to determine whether a subject is capable of empathy. If the subject adequately demonstrates concern for the lives of others, they are deemed human, and allowed to live. If not, they are deemed non-human, and must be destroyed. Deckard’s transformation begins when he realises that some newer androids are capable of passing the test, and so passing for human.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/philip-k-dicks-androids-looked-like-humans-but-real-world-robots-may-soon-feel-empathy-too-92084">Philip K Dick's androids looked like humans – but real world robots may soon feel empathy, too</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A likely response to this dilemma would be to regard the test as fundamentally flawed. A better test would be needed, one based on identifying another trait as the essential feature to distinguish androids from humans. However, Deckard, and the reader with him, is ultimately led to a far more radical conclusion – that the test is accurate after all. That is, the capacity for empathy is the only value that should ever be used to determine the worth of another being. </p>
<h2>Being human</h2>
<p>This revelation is a kind of update on Descartes’ influential “cogito ergo sum”. In place of “I think, therefore I am,” Dick implicitly suggests, “she loves, therefore she is (human/worthy)”. (It is no coincidence that Rick Deckard’s name somewhat echoes that of René Descartes.) </p>
<p>This “posthuman” gesture abandons any scientific, ontological or material basis for distinguishing between humans and non-humans. Yet it continues to capitalise on the widespread human sense that there is something special and valuable about humans. Such a sense is often referred to as a defining feature of “humanism”. What the novel offers us, then, is a kind of posthuman humanism.</p>
<p>On this basis, there is no being – whether mammal, robot, computer, bird, slug, stone, or star – that is excluded from the category of humanity on the basis of its physical nature. Conversely, each and any being may qualify as human by demonstrating empathy for other beings. Meanwhile, the term “human” has by this point come to mean nothing more than “worthy of existence”.</p>
<p>This is far from a mere philosophical or science-fictional game. To see its radical social and political significance in our world, we need only consider the range of ways people have been dehumanised over the millennia of (so-called) humanity’s existence. Slavery, colonialism, alienation, patriarchy, racial inequality, and virtually any form of systemic social injustice you can think of, involve presenting some beings as “less than human” in order to justify their exploitation.</p>
<p>For this reason, it is crucial that Deckard’s entire outlook and sense of self – rather than simply his understanding of the distinction between humans and machines – is thoroughly challenged. His (hetero)sexuality, his commitment to the values of marriage, family, legal and police justice, the importance of professional, financial and social success, all intact at the novel’s outset, have been radically undermined by its end. Seemingly a broken man, he is, nevertheless, left with an enduring sense of the primary importance of an unrestricted, non-prejudiced care or love for other beings.</p>
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</figure>
<p>Admittedly, Dick could have pushed this dimension further, as <a href="https://www.npr.org/programs/specials/racism/010830.octaviabutleressay.html">Octavia Butler</a>, <a href="http://journal.finfar.org/articles/opposing-forces-and-ethical-judgments-in-samuel-delanys-stars-in-my-pocket-like-grains-of-sand/">Samuel Delany</a> and a host of more recent science fiction authors have done. But at least it is an integral part of the narrative. The recent film, Blade Runner 2049, in contrast, downplays this dimension, while retaining the central concern with the relationship between biological humans and artificial androids. </p>
<p>This may be one possible reason why the latest film has attracted <a href="https://theconversation.com/blade-runner-2049-no-hope-in-this-dystopia-85582">great praise as well as intense critique</a>. While Blade Runner 2049 continues to blur the boundary between human and machine, it seems to uphold the notion that, in the end, the goal of either would equate more-or-less to the supposed values of the average white, Western, heterosexual, bourgeois male. This, ultimately, risks undermining the radical political potential of the posthumanist experiment that drives the original story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92085/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This article is based on a talk originally given at a Cardiff BookTalk event in December 2017 (<a href="https://cardiffbooktalk.org/">https://cardiffbooktalk.org/</a>). </span></em></p>Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not just a story about realistic robots.James Burton, Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Cultural History, Goldsmiths, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/834172017-10-26T12:58:23Z2017-10-26T12:58:23ZStranger Things is the Upside Down to Disney’s cute and cuddly universe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191726/original/file-20171024-30556-yf94wo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gone and forgotten: Barb.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since it appeared on Netflix in July 2016, Stranger Things has attracted a cult following. From the outset, the show – which is set in 1980s Indiana – uses the <a href="https://theconversation.com/stranger-things-inventiveness-in-the-age-of-the-netflix-original-84340">toys, games and fashions</a> of the decade to draw in its young adult viewers. It is the perfect nostalgic throwback for a generation which grew up on a diet of Steven Spielberg-style fantasy films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/">ET</a>, The Goonies and Jumanji – films where children go on epic adventures to return an alien to his home planet, dig up missing pirate treasure, or complete a magical board game.</p>
<p>As with these films, Stranger Things’ group of leading child characters have an adventure thrust upon them. The <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2016/7/22/12236884/stranger-things-netflix-dungeons-and-dragons">Dungeons and Dragons-playing</a> middle schoolers are geeky outsiders – members of the audio-visual club, whose schooldays are plagued by bullying. And yet when one of their number goes missing they take it upon themselves to find him – and in the process uncover supernatural secrets in their hometown. </p>
<p>The plot is all-too familiar – thanks to many a movie from Disney. The animation giant has told of the plight of the lost child in its movies for decades now. Films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110357/">The Lion King</a> – along with older animations such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034492/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Bambi</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033563/?ref_=nv_sr_2">Dumbo</a> – urge the viewer to identify with a child deprived of (or separated from) one or both parents. </p>
<p>But Stranger Things is not a show for kids – and its creators the Duffer Brothers have not set out to be the new Disney. With a terrifying demo-gorgon on the loose and the prospect of spending eternity in the Upside Down – a parallel universe where monsters roam – Stranger Things has instead taken this plot theme in a very different direction, pushing grown-up viewers to relate instead to the adults of the story.</p>
<p>It feels familiar, but it is not the same: Stranger Things is the Upside Down to Disney’s saccharine universe.</p>
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</figure>
<h2>Strange things, familiar formulas</h2>
<p>In Disney’s The Lion King, we follow young Simba after he is told to flee the pridelands by uncle Scar after the death of his father Mufasa. In Stranger Things, on the other hand, when 12-year-old Will Byers is taken into the Upside Down, we follow the story in equal measures from the perspective of his mother and his young friends and older brother. In fact it is the adult characters that are either temporarily or permanently separated from their children who transform the well-used plight from old trope to fresh take. </p>
<p>Will’s mother Joyce Byers, police chief Jim Hopper, scientist Dr Martin Brenner – we are told that all of these characters have lost children and are either engaged in a struggle to be reunited with them or are defined by their grief. The characters and plot are all motivated by the hole left by an absent child – a void which cannot be filled by anything but the child itself.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/191727/original/file-20171024-30558-eqbyku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A mother will stop at nothing to find her son.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The missing number</h2>
<p>During the first series, viewers felt the familiar fear of being the lost child, but were given a new, almost schizophrenic identification, as they also related to the bereft parents. And though there is a sense of relief in Will Byers’s reunion with his mother, the same cannot be said for Eleven, who Will’s friends team up with her as they search. Eleven is a girl with supernatural abilities who was taken from her biological mother Terry Ives and brought up in a secret laboratory where her powers were pushed to the limits by Dr Brenner. </p>
<p>Throughout the series we want Eleven to find a new family, for her pain to be assuaged and for her to be welcomed into a human society from which she has always been alienated. The series demands that the horror of the lost child be put to an end. It is the reason we watch. Yet we are handed a peculiar and frustrating ending. Eleven vanishes into the Upside Down – and though Will is returns, he has brought some of its terrors back with him. </p>
<p>We sympathise with parents separated from their children, yet at the last moment Eleven is deprived of her new family, unable to return to her mother who is in a catatonic state. Identifying with the parents of lost children, we are forced to bear that very fact – we do not get our lost child back and the family is not restored. Even though Will is back at home, he too does not have the happy ending that we have come to expect.</p>
<p>Compounding this hypocrisy of unfinished families is the fact that Barbara “Barb” Holland’s mother, the only mother to actually have a child die in the first season, is entirely forgotten. Barb is taken into the Upside Down and killed in an early episode, seemingly as a stepping stone to develop the other teenage characters. This, the only grief worth grieving, the only genuine and unmitigated loss, is ignored. The horrific event – the death of a child – which the series in its entirety strives to resist occurs as a plot device within it.</p>
<p>Where Stranger Things will go from here is at present unknown. It has been confirmed that the show is going to <a href="https://www.inverse.com/article/27658-stranger-things-season-2-eleven-upside-down-terry-ives-millie-bobby-brown">use the second series</a> to delve into Eleven’s back story, but given what viewers have already seen this is sure to be no tale of friendly woodland creatures and fairy godmothers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83417/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Lee does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>No happy endings in this dark fantasy about lost children.Nick Lee, Teaching Fellow in Film History and Critical Theory, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/855692017-10-19T09:18:48Z2017-10-19T09:18:48ZThe Thing: dread fears and the ‘Other’ in the polar environment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189807/original/file-20171011-9757-1b3a8ri.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A scene from John Carpenter's The Thing from 1982.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/mediaviewer/rm526007552">IMDB/Universal/JohnCarpenter</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>John Carpenter’s celebrated 1982 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/">The Thing</a> is a science fiction classic. Although not an initial commercial success, it has achieved cult status and traditionally is screened (with its 1951 and 2011 counterparts) on the first full night of winter <a href="https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/aroundTheContinent/contentHandler.cfm?id=1602">by crews</a> staying at the <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/geo/opp/support/southp.jsp">Scott-Amundsen Base</a> in Antarctica. It may seem a strange choice at first, yet the links between the polar regions and science fiction are <a href="http://www.phys.barnard.edu/%7Ekay/polar/film-fiction.php">strong</a>.</p>
<p>From the pursuit by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein of his creation into the frozen north, to Ripley’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/quotes">fruitless call to Antarctica</a> traffic control in Alien, writers have used the remoteness and novelty of the poles to enhance the menace and drama of their work. Carpenter capitalises on the dark polar nights and the claustrophobic confines of an Antarctic base to ratchet up the tension and paranoia as an alien infiltrates the outpost.</p>
<p>Inspired by John Campbell’s 1938 novella, <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0068PHWAC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">Who Goes There?</a>, The Thing follows the crew of an Antarctic base who discover an alien life form that can assimilate and perfectly mimic the appearance of other organisms. Operating at the cellular level, the alien tissue invades by gradually supplanting the original cells until what remains is an exact copy of the now consumed host. </p>
<p>The station personnel fight a desperate battle against the invader, devising a technique for testing blood samples for infection and struggling against the distrust that grows up in the group when they realise its ability to copy and replace their colleagues.</p>
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<p>The Thing is a polar film. Not only is it set in a polar environment, but its characters exemplify the strains of living in extended close proximity in the isolation and climatic extremes of an Antarctic base. It is also a film that speaks to the subject of “The Other” – a theme in the humanities that examines how a society identifies itself, not by defining the laudable characteristics to which it aspires, but by reviling others as exemplars of that which it rejects.</p>
<p>The eponymous alien constitutes an iconic Other. It defies description and therefore order. Having no fixed form other than the organisms it assimilates, it morphs – like a deceitful <a href="http://thenorsegods.com/loki/">trickster god</a> – into different shapes. Sometimes that shape is an incomplete transition phase, a chaotic mismatch of biological structures that affronts the logical processes of evolution (in one famous shot we see a detached human head that becomes mobile by growing arthropod legs). The assimilation process both frightens and disgusts, and the subversion of the base personnel’s own bodies into instruments of human destruction adds an extra touch of terror to the whole invasion process.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/189810/original/file-20171011-9801-16fk8zf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Kurt Russell, Richard Masur, and Donald Moffat in The Thing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084787/mediaviewer/rm943926784">IMDB/Universal/JohnCarpenter</a></span>
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<h2>Why planet Earth?</h2>
<p>But why would an alien come to our planet in the first place? The problem receives consideration in the work of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/nov/07/aliens-science-asks-is-anyone-out-there-review-jim-al-khalili">Dr Lewis Dartnell</a>, an astrobiologist who argues persuasively that Earth possesses no property or resource that an advanced civilisation would want to acquire. Reassuring though these arguments are, there remain nagging doubts. </p>
<p>The alien may be a survivor of a convict group condemned to exile on a distant planet. Recalling the First Fleet expedition to establish a colony in Australia in 1788, Commodore Arthur Phillip was under instruction as commander to maintain good relations with the indigenous people. Nonetheless, the effects of colonisation on the first nations living in Australia were <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003ATPQ8E/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">devastating</a>.</p>
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<span class="caption">Kurt Russell in The Thing.</span>
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<p>Stephen Hawking has made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNaVkAmRQBI">similar observations</a> on the meeting of alien and Earth cultures and the lessons of history. And HG Wells famously made the same point in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8909.The_War_of_the_Worlds">The War of the Worlds</a>. They may be understating the case. In terms of existential risk, subjugation by an alien race may expose humanity to cruelty and misery that exceeds even annihilation.</p>
<p>The second reason why a seemingly illogical alien visit might not be comforting is the unexpected. The alien might simply have developed engine failure and made a forced landing. (Perhaps it was shot down). But in any event, improbability does not provide the same degree of comfort as impossibility, and that mathematical certainty eludes us.</p>
<p>Carpenter’s alien is an imaginative analogue of the many creatures in the natural world with the ability to change appearance for competitive advantage – from cephalopods that adapt skin cells to the colours of the seabed to insects that undergo the widespread process of metamorphosis. </p>
<p>Its lack of fixed form and its physical pollution of human tissue exemplify Otherness, as its calculating ruthlessness epitomises its inhumanity. In the end, the humanity of the base personnel is defined not so much by their difference from the alien as their willingness to sacrifice themselves to defeat it – which is perhaps why the movie remains so popular among crew members who have to rely on each other every single day as they live through their own polar adventures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85569/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Ash is an Institute Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute.
This article is written to accompany a lecture he will give at 1900 on Tuesday 24 October at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, prior to a screening of the film The Thing: part of the Cambridge University Festival of Ideas. </span></em></p>John Carpenter’s The Thing is a sci-fi classic with a strong fanbase among polar scientists. So why does it resonate so much?John Ash, Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/851282017-10-05T14:16:34Z2017-10-05T14:16:34ZPhilip K Dick: you may not have read his books, but you’ve almost certainly seen the movies<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188968/original/file-20171005-9802-11c0v5q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">philip k dick</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Without conducting extensive research, one can state with some certainty that many more people have encountered Philip K Dick through cinema or television than have read his published novels or short stories. Blade Runner, the critically acclaimed 1982 sci-fi blockbuster directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, was based on Dick’s 1968 novel <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2015/apr/07/review-do-androids-dream-of-electric-sheep-phillip-k-dick">Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?</a> The highly anticipated sequel, Blade Runner 2049, has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20171004-film-review-does-blade-runner-2049-top-the-original">just been released</a> to general acclaim. </p>
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<p>Channel 4 is currently broadcasting a ten-part series of standalone dramas, penned by British and American writers, called Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams and based on his short stories. In 2015, Amazon aired the first season of The Man in the High Castle, a loose adaptation of Dick’s Hugo Award-winning novel of 1962 which vividly imagines an alternative history in which the Axis Powers were victorious in World War Two. </p>
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<span class="caption">Philip K Dick, died in March 1982, aged 53.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>The full list of Dick adaptations is too long to reproduce here, but it includes two big-screen versions of Total Recall, based on Dick’s 1966 story: <a href="https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/we-can-remember-it-for-you-wholesale/">We Can Remember It For You Wholesale</a>, Richard Linklater’s 2006 production of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2012/dec/17/philip-k-dick-a-scanner-darkly">A Scanner Darkly</a>, and the Steven Spielberg-directed Minority Report in 2002.</p>
<p>On the surface, it is easy to understand why filmmakers and television producers are so keen to plunder Dick’s oeuvre. For one thing, there is his <a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ch.cgi?23">sheer prolificacy</a>. Dick published his first short story in 1951 and never stopped writing until his death from a stroke on March 2, 1982, barely four months before the release of Blade Runner. There are 45 novels and more than 120 short stories for potential adaptors to choose from. </p>
<h2>Dystopian visions</h2>
<p>Many critics have observed that this headlong rush of creativity – driven partly by a naturally feverish imagination and partly by amphetamines – led to works of variable prose quality. And yet each of Dick’s sci-fi texts is replete with surprising and compelling visions of dystopian futures (or presents) and profoundly unsettling explorations of his recurring themes. These include: the nature of reality, subjective consciousness, schizophrenia, alternate universes, authoritarianism, technology and interactions between humans and non-humans. </p>
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<p>The opening paragraph of one of Dick’s less critically-acclaimed novels, <a href="https://philipkdickreview.wordpress.com/2014/11/14/eye-in-the-sky-1957/">Eye in the Sky</a> (1957), suggests the attractions of his work for producers of popular visual media: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The proton beam deflector of the Belmont Bevatron betrayed its inventors at four o’clock in the afternoon of October 2, 1959. What happened next happened instantly. No longer adequately deflected – and therefore no longer under control – the six billion volt beam radiated upward toward the roof of the chamber, incinerating, along its way, an observation platform overlooking the doughnut-shaped magnet.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The opening is highly misleading, in fact. If it promises uncompromising action ideal for cinematic special effects, then it highlights a consistent problem with adaptations of Dick’s work, whether or not they are (as is the case with Blade Runner) great movies. The <a href="http://content.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,575667-3,00.html">author himself feared</a> that Ridley Scott would turn his vision into “one titanic lurid collision of androids being blown up, androids killing humans, general confusion and murder, all very exciting”.</p>
<p>Coloured by his wry humour, Dick’s comments nonetheless raise an important issue about his writing which is that it isn’t, in any immediate, descriptive sense, particularly visual. Eye in the Sky, despite the bombastic opening, becomes a deeply paranoid meditation on consciousness, identity and gestalt, in which individuals injured in the deflector beam accident are forced to live in each other’s solipsistic subjective realities, inner worlds constructed and projected through prejudice and ignorance.</p>
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<p>So Dick’s real visual strengths – the ones much less amenable to Hollywood treatment – consist in the conviction with which he visualises irrational, unconscious, inner terrain. When he describes alien landscapes, as he does in <a href="https://medium.com/longform-literary-reviews/martian-time-slip-by-philip-k-dick-b5814b0dccb">Martian Time-Slip</a> (1964), they are inseparable from the psychological landscapes of his profoundly troubled characters.</p>
<h2>Dissident outsider</h2>
<p>For author Jonathan Lethem, who, having edited the <a href="https://www.loa.org/books/311-the-philip-k-dick-collection-3-volume-boxed-set">Library of America</a> editions of his novels, has tried harder than anyone else to drag Dick into the mainstream, Dick remains “<a href="https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/486-jonathan-lethem-on-philip-k-dick-i-call-him-science-fictions-lenny-bruce">the ultimate outsider, nonconformist dissident</a>”. This is because of his absolute emotional commitment to the inner lives of his characters. Indeed, he was so close to them that, in Lethem’s words, he “was not utterly in control”. </p>
<p>Like that of his sci-fi contemporaries, such as Robert Heinlein, Dick’s work critiques consumer capitalism and authoritarian institutions, and reflects and predicts technological advances, not all of them benign. Lethem is right, however, to argue that Dick stands apart from other practitioners because of his “personal visionary intensity” and the overwhelming sense of powerlessness his characters experience in the face of their shifting universes. For the same reasons, Lethem suggests, some readers have found Dick’s writing challenging.</p>
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<p>Critics have identified a kind of “<a href="https://blog.oup.com/2016/07/philip-k-dick-spiritual-epiphany/">spiritual turn</a>” in Dick’s work after 1974, when he started having powerful, religious hallucinations. In truth, the novels which followed these visions, such as <a href="http://www.conceptualfiction.com/valis.html">Valis</a> and <a href="http://www.fantasyliterature.com/reviews/the-divine-invasion/">The Divine Invasion</a> (both 1981), have more in common with his early, more obviously political sci-fi stories than many have allowed. Though these later novels evince a sincere interest in gnostic Christianity and divine communications, their obsession with identity, perception and the battle between isolation and connectedness is consistent with previous works.</p>
<p>Philip K Dick, who tried to write mainstream literary novels without much success before embarking on his sci-fi career, seems to epitomise the struggle that genre fiction continues to have to gain credibility within the canon. And yet he also seems to be positioned to the side of that debate, somewhere in his own created universe, following his own path. His remarkable destabilising visions will continue to offer rich material to cinema and television – and yet the adaptations will never quite catch the unique spirit of his work.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85128/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Peacock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Author’s dystopian visions have inspired some of the most popular sci-fi movies of all time.James Peacock, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literatures, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/812592017-08-29T04:46:04Z2017-08-29T04:46:04ZIs the tide turning for Australian sci-fi on the small screen?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179587/original/file-20170725-11177-1tvob9j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1500%2C999&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shows like Cleverman and Tidelands are showing how Australia can work as a sci-fi setting, but where has it been until now?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4649420/mediaviewer/rm2419385600">Goalpost Pictures</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Netflix’s planned Australian TV series Tidelands has been met with excitement from a country not known for its sci-fi. Tidelands will focus on an ex-criminal who returns to her hometown, investigating a mysterious group of half-humans and half-Sirens known as “Tidelanders”. </p>
<p>The ten-episode series will be filmed in Queensland in 2018. Co-creator and co-executive producer Tracey Robertson <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/netflix-to-produce-first-original-australian-series-tidelands-20170515-gw5ja7.html">said of the show</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The primeval landscapes of Queensland are a perfect setting to tell the story of betrayal, small-town secrets [and] ancient mythology …</p>
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<p>Meanwhile, the not-for-profit organisation <a href="http://scriptedink.com.au/2017/08/scripted-ink-announces-development-investment-in-catherine-smyth-mcmullens-sci-fi-thriller-series-awake/">Scripted Ink.</a>) will invest in developing Australian author C.S. McMullen’s sci-fi thriller series Awake. The series is set in a dystopian future in which the world’s richest 1% are able to choose to live without sleep. </p>
<p>Both the US and Britain have produced definitive science-fiction TV shows, such as The X-Files, Twin Peaks and Dr Who. Popular Netflix science-fiction series include the UK’s Black Mirror, along with America’s Stranger Things. </p>
<p>Australia has lagged when it comes to making influential science-fiction TV. Why is this the case, when sci-fi is such an influential genre overseas? </p>
<p>One answer can be found in our literary industry, where sci-fi <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-09/australian-science-fiction-authors-let-down-by-local-publishers/8336308">authors have</a> struggled to find support. Author Cat Sparks says publishers are hesitant to publish sci-fi:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think science fiction still suffers from bad PR from the days when it was considered the domain of nerds and geeks. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Another theory relates to our cliched national image, which is sun-drenched, beach-oriented and carefree. Australia frequently appears on the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/28/worlds-happiest-countries-2013-australia_n_3347347.html">World’s Happiest Countries list</a> – yet sci-fi, as Andrew Milner <a href="https://theconversation.com/science-fiction-and-dystopia-whats-the-connection-8586">has argued</a>, often presents dystopian visions of the future. (Mind you, some, such as the late critic Mark Juddery, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-culture-blog/2014/jul/31/australian-new-science-fiction-films">have pointed out</a> that we have a solid track record of equating the beach with stories about the end of the world. Just think of films such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268458/">These Final Hours</a> (2013), <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076299/">The Last Wave</a> (1978) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053137/">On The Beach</a> (1959).) </p>
<p>Australian cinema seems to have a better budget for the demands of science fiction, including CGI. Notable science-fiction films made and/or produced here include The Matrix (1999), which Warner Bros. co-produced with Australia’s Village Roadshow Pictures, and The Mad Max franchise.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180448/original/file-20170801-22175-wikoip.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) had an estimated budget of $150 million and was a global success.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/mediaviewer/rm3933930496">Warner Bros. Pictures</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Budgets for Australian films are arguably larger than for Australian television shows. But Martha Coleman, former head of development at Screen Australia, <a href="http://if.com.au/australian-sci-fi-where-is-it/">says</a> when it comes to Australian science-fiction television, it’s not just a question of money:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s about coming up with those high-concept great ideas that are going to draw attention to themselves and achieve it within the right budget.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Past Australian sci-fi shows range from the cringe-worthy (Ocean Girl, Cybergirl) to the cult classic Farscape (1999-2003). Made jointly with the US, it is one of the few Australian sci-fi shows to have gained popularity. Set in space, the series had a predominantly Australian and New Zealand cast, and followed American astronaut John Crichton as he teamed up with a group of rebels to escape the corrupt organisation known as the Peacekeepers and search for a wormhole back to Earth.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/179580/original/file-20170725-26586-1n0yexj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Farscape was set in space, but the cast were mostly Australian or New Zealanders.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0187636/mediaviewer/rm1165281280">Jim Henson Productions</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, ABC’s Glitch is set to return for its second season. Situated in a fictional country town where dead people come back to life, the series won numerous awards, including Best Television Drama at the AACTA Awards in 2016. Co-produced by Netflix, it will stream internationally (which shows how useful streaming platforms have become for local content). </p>
<p>One of the best science-fiction shows to emerge in recent years is, of course, Cleverman. Launched in 2016, it marries the Aboriginal Dreamtime with supernatural elements. The show follows Koen (Hunter Page-Lochard), who is bequeathed the supernatural powers of his people by his Uncle Jimmy (veteran Aboriginal actor Jack Charles), while a class of sub-humans known as “The Hairypeople” try to gain acceptance in society.</p>
<p>The series aired in the US on SundanceTV and was well received by international critics. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/arts/television/review-cleverman-builds-a-somewhat-muddled-mystery-from-aboriginal-culture.html">The New York Times</a> and <a href="http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-st-cleverman-review-20160531-snap-story.html">Los Angeles Times</a> both praised the series particularly for its approach to racial issues and Aboriginal narratives. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/science-fiction-cinema/9781903364031">Science Fiction Cinema</a>, authors Geoff King and Tanya Krzywinska note that science fiction is a “powerful cultural barometer of our times”. Cleverman attests to this, exploring culturally and politically charged issues relating to national identity, which may help explain its success.</p>
<p>Australia has a unique landscape and culture that could lead to a distinctive genre of local sci-fi. And while sci-fi is not the most popular genre here, it is not completely without industry support. Now in its tenth year, the <a href="https://awg.com.au/view/10000-on-offer-for-top-sci-fi-script-as-new-era-of-popular-sci-fi-is-heralded/">John Hinde Award</a> for Excellence in Science-Fiction Writing awards $10,000 for the best-produced sci-fi script, as well as providing support to undeveloped work. This award helped lead to Cleverman and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3013160/">Arrowhead</a> (“an interstellar survival story of a stranded mercenary who discovers a deadly secret on a seemingly deserted moon”), among other works. </p>
<p>So while it is still associated primarily with the geek subculture, sci-fi appears to be gaining momentum in Australian television. The Australian Writers’ Guild has noted that we appear to be experiencing a “renaissance” of local sci-fi content, citing Tidelands as evidence. And since sci-fi reflects timely cultural concerns in imaginative ways, it is arguably the most important genre for our “post-truth” era.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81259/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhan Lyons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Australian TV has been slow to enter the sci-fi genre, but the success of series like Cleverman shows we could have our own distinct brand of local sci-fi.Siobhan Lyons, Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/816582017-08-03T00:04:13Z2017-08-03T00:04:13ZWorth reading: Future visions of women, war, time and space<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180090/original/file-20170727-8492-1uz4jp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C1998&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Former Globe and Mail newspaper reporter turned novelist Omar El Akkad contemplates his debut book _American War_ in his publisher's Toronto office in this 2017 file photo. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.cpimages.com/fotoweb/cpimages_details.pop.fwx?position=3&archiveType=ImageFolder&sorting=ModifiedTimeAsc&search=omar%20and%20el%20and%20akkad&fileId=7ED4E565C8CEED276553137C3F07278F0211563F5E7047DF3AAB663AE59BB0CF1642B0B80D34257E6710EC2568FB7698B59B4D70A14C35A58152C97161CDE0D6B04E7CE9AA485A90E4AEC54C277A369E3B7CAC16A4D3910C42F841C1FF39A6F82A1B1FF576DC98DF2CBC8470DC9E2A6ECB3FE13564EA8A05F21FEEB4402E3B87313C2338D9C9BAFAFBE8F7FDA2D826E5">(THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young)</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: The Conversation Canada asked our academic authors to share some recommended reading. In this instalment, Bryan Gaensler, an astronomer who wrote about how an <a href="https://theconversation.com/humans-in-2167-internet-implants-and-no-sleep-79402">life will change for people in 150 years</a>, highlights a few of his recent picks.</em> </p>
<p>My passion is science fiction. Here are my favourite sci-fi books that I’ve read this year:
</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180248/original/file-20170728-1529-562oq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1192&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Power</em> by Naomi Alderman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29751398-the-power"><em>The Power</em></a></h2>
<p>by Naomi Alderman (Fiction. Hardcover, 2016. Penguin.)</p>
<p>Women around the globe spontaneously develop the ability to deliver electric shocks through their fingertips. As they begin to use this power to intimidate, control and kill, the world order is turned upside down.</p>
<p>A spectacular novel, and surely the favourite to sweep all the sci-fi book awards for 2017. People can be both cruel and good-intentioned, often at the same time. Introduce a new power imbalance, and society is abruptly transformed. Wonderful writing, and a whopper of a story twist. Turns <em>The Handmaid’s Tale</em> on its head.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180097/original/file-20170727-8516-3e4mh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>American War</em> by Omar El Akkad.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32283423-american-war"><em>American War</em></a></h2>
<p>by Omar El Akkad (Fiction. Hardcover, 2017. McClelland & Stewart.)</p>
<p>A hundred years from now, Florida has vanished under the seas, the Bouazizi Empire is the new world superpower, and the United States has begun its second civil war. In the South, a young woman ends up in a refugee camp and is slowly radicalized into terrorism.</p>
<p>An intense, moving portrait of a future America that maybe isn’t the future after all. The characters are complex and the story is all too real. A spectacular debut.</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180245/original/file-20170728-23788-7gyilq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1138&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>All Our Wrong Todays</em> by Elan Mastai.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27405006-all-our-wrong-todays"><em>All Our Wrong Todays</em></a></h2>
<p>by Elan Mastai (Fiction. Hardcover, 2017. Doubleday Canada.)</p>
<p>Tom Barren travels back in time, accidentally alters the course of history, and returns to a horrifically changed, dystopian present day. The catch? Tom grew up in a utopia of flying cars and moon bases, and the dystopia that he finds himself trapped in is <em>our</em> timeline, warts and all.</p>
<p>A gem of a story that provides several new twists on time travel. If you’ve screwed up the timeline, should you fix it? What if there were two different ways to travel through time, with different rules and different consequences? And under all of this is the classic sci-fi question writ on the scale of billions of lives: Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of a few? Hard to put down, with a lovable lead character.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=912&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180414/original/file-20170731-22175-qpxhub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1146&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>4 3 2 1</em> by Paul Auster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30244626-4-3-2-1"><em>4 3 2 1</em></a></h2>
<p>by Paul Auster (Fiction. Hardcover, 2017. McClelland & Stewart.)</p>
<p>The life story of Archibald Isaac Ferguson, born in 1947 in Newark, N.J. Except that this is the story of four identical Fergusons, each of whom take divergent paths as their lives play out.</p>
<p>A tour de force story of adolescence and the path not taken. It’s hard to believe a single author could possibly cram so many real-life details, emotions and characters into a single book. Extraordinarily memorable and engaging.</p>
<p> </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=906&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/180094/original/file-20170727-8516-1thea9f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1139&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>The Collapsing Empire</em> by John Scalzi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Handout</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30282601-the-collapsing-empire"><em>The Collapsing Empire</em></a></h2>
<p>by John Scalzi (Fiction. Hardcover, 2017. Tor.)</p>
<p>Humans have spread throughout a galactic empire, our worlds interconnected by faster-than-light wormholes. But what happens to trade, the economy and civilisation itself when the wormholes start to break down?</p>
<p>A fun and fast-spaced space opera, centred on some forthright women and some fresh ideas. In the spirit of Asimov’s <em>Foundation</em>, Scalzi explores the theme of the downfall of empire on a galaxy-spanning scale.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81658/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bryan Gaensler receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from the Canada Research Chairs Program.</span></em></p>Astronomer Bryan Gaensler picks five speculative and science fiction novels worth reading, including Omar El Akkad’s American War.Bryan Gaensler, Director, Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/802752017-07-19T20:00:53Z2017-07-19T20:00:53ZExplainer: ‘solarpunk’, or how to be an optimistic radical<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/178929/original/file-20170719-13545-7rjaa1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Solarpunk imagines a sustainable future, and what it might be like to live in it.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Punks (of the 70s and 80s kind) were not known for their optimism. Quite the opposite in fact. Raging against the establishment in various ways, there was “no future” because, according to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02D2T3wGCYg">Sex Pistols</a>, punks are “the poison / In your human machine / We’re the future / Your future”. To be punk, was, by definition, to resist the future.</p>
<p>In contrast, the most basic definition of solarpunk — offered by musician and photographer <a href="https://thejaymo.tumblr.com/">Jay Springett</a> — is that it is a movement in speculative fiction, art, fashion and activism</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that seeks to answer and embody the question ‘<a href="https://medium.com/solarpunks/solarpunk-a-reference-guide-8bcf18871965">what does a sustainable civilization look like, and how can we get there</a>?’ </p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first pass, then, Solarpunk seems to turn the central tenet of punk on its head. Its business is imagining the future. Moreover, perform an online “image search” for the term “solarpunk” and you will find colourful, leafy metropolises, flowing neo-peasant fashions and, perhaps, a small child standing next to a solar panel in front of a yurt. </p>
<p>How, then, are the bright futures imagined by solarpunks, worthy of the “punk” suffix?</p>
<p>Solarpunk’s optimism towards the future is the first concept that needs complicating here. Along with the original punks, there is a wide body of scholarship that critiques positive thinking. Feminists like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo">Barbara Ehrenreich</a> and <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=uOAPdbhSpksC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false">Sara Ahmed</a>, for instance, trace links between the capitalist establishment and happiness. They suggest that future-centred optimism serves the very system raged against by most punks of old. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/u5um8QWWRvo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">An animated version of Barbara Ehrenreich’s criticisms of positivity.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Although optimistic, Solarpunk’s future imaginings do not fit neatly with current political regimes or economic systems. Self-described “researcher-at-large” Adam Flynn argues that the movement begins with “<a href="http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/2014/09/solarpunk-notes-toward-a-manifesto/">infrastructure as a form of resistance</a>”. Solarpunks are in the business of dreaming a totally different system of energy delivery, essential services and transport. Quite different to behemoth of roads and coal-fired power plants we live amongst today.</p>
<p>In other words, Solarpunks resist the present by imagining a future that requires radical societal change. Radical, perhaps, but not radically impossible. Indeed, many of the technologies and practices that solarpunks draw into their imaginings already exist: solar and other renewable energy, urban agriculture, or organic architecture and design. Like sci-fi authors, solarpunks remix the present to produce an alternative future.</p>
<h2>Apocalypse or utopia?</h2>
<p>In a fictional sense, solarpunk sits across the table from “cli-fi”. In recent years, the term cli-fi has moved from a fringe concept to a marketable genre of fiction. Coined in the first instance by <a href="http://cli-fi.net/">Dan Bloom</a>, it has grown so big that scholarly researchers are able to produce <a href="http://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/4777">studies of the conventions</a>. <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/kim-stanley-robinson/new-york-2140/9780316262347/">New novels</a> and <a href="https://climateimagination.asu.edu/everything-change/">short story collections</a> are now published in this category each year. </p>
<p>Cli-fi, in both film and fiction, tends towards dystopia. For film, watch <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/">The Day After Tomorrow</a>, in which New York is flooded and frozen in climate mayhem, and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1706620/">Snowpiercer</a>, where efforts to control climate change go dramatically awry. For text, look for Paolo Baciagalupi’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23209924-the-water-knife">The Water Knife</a>, in which drought has devastated the south western US. These are stories of failure, disaster, and social collapse. Crucially they represent the apocalypse as catalyzed in some way by climatic or environmental change: wave, snowstorm, drought. Cli-fi has really just replaced earlier anxieties (such as <a href="https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2007/june/1268876839/gideon-haigh/shute-messenger">nuclear war</a>) with new ones (such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz8cjvKJLuw">out-of-control geoengineering</a>). </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/nX5PwfEMBM0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In the Australian context, Briohny Doyle’s <a href="http://www.briohny-doyle.com/the-island-will-sink/">The Island Will Sink</a> and James Bradley’s <a href="https://penguin.com.au/books/clade-9781926428659">Clade</a> take up these themes. Here too, cli-fi can be seen in novels written before the concept existed, in what Ken Gelder calls “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/After_The_Celebration.html?id=465BCwvKbLgC&redir_esc=y">rural apocalypse fiction</a>” such as Carrie Tiffany’s explorations of failed semi-arid land farming in <a href="http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781742611495/">Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living</a>.</p>
<p>I teach “cli-fi” in a literary studies course, including Doyle’s and Tiffany’s novels, and I invite students to critique the apocalyptic nature of the genre. Is it a problem that the future is only imagined as spectacular disaster or slow decline? </p>
<p>Solarpunks argue that the problem with imagining such a dark future (or no future, for that matter) is that, while failure may be cathartic it thwarts the possibility of thinking about alternatives.</p>
<p>As a genre of writing, solarpunk has its predecessors. <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/80689.The_Fifth_Sacred_Thing">The Fifth Sacred Thing (1994)</a> by Starhawk and Ernest Callenbach’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4049576-ecotopia">Ecotopia: The Notebooks and Reports of William Weston (1975)</a> both imagine anti-capitalist, de-urbanised, garden-centric societies. Although Callenbach’s text is not a perfect utopia (<a href="http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html">as if there is such a thing</a>), he is on record as stating the need for alternative future visions in a similar manner to solarpunks. In film, the work of Hayao Miyazaki provides a mainstream forerunner to the aesthetics and political challenges of the movement.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4OiMOHRDs14?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer of Miyazaki’s <em>Princess Mononoke</em></span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Discovering the rainbow</h2>
<p>As a category of fiction, solarpunk remains a fringe dweller. Its few self-identifying authors describe their additions to the genre as a positive reaction to grim science fiction. Examples in this vein are <a href="https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/6675">Biketopia: Feminist Bicycle Science Fiction Stories in Extreme Futures</a> and <a href="https://sunvaultantho.wordpress.com/">Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Ecospeculation</a>. Solarpunk fiction is either self-published or supported by small independent presses, with <a href="http://portlandbookreview.com/2017/06/biketopia/">mixed reviews</a>. </p>
<p>On Instagram #solarpunk yields under 1,000 uses. Nevertheless, the aesthetic sensibilities of the subculture are starting to emerge. A few fashion enthusiasts post selfies experimenting with flowing fabrics, cool coloured lipstick and body piercings. If steampunk is when “<a href="https://twitter.com/otfrom/status/406841030815010816">goths discover brown</a>”, solarpunk is when they discover the rainbow. </p>
<p>On Twitter, the hashtag is more common. It groups together self-published tales, fashion statements and even instances wherein the solarpunk project might be seen to break through into the present day, as in the case of <a href="https://twitter.com/SolarPunked/status/844431694031675392">electric buses</a>. It also seems that, like its predecessors steam and cyberpunk, solarpunks do dabble in <a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/solarpunk%20cosplay">costumes</a> (cosplay).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176859/original/file-20170705-21500-1ddxh6j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation is a collection of solarpunk short stories and art.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35235851-sunvault">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s also political. <a href="https://medium.com/solarpunks/on-the-political-dimensions-of-solarpunk-c5a7b4bf8df4">Andrew Dana Hudson</a> says that the subculture “posits a world of solar-energy abundance and then argues that we will still have need of punks. No magical tech fixes for us. We’ll have to do it the hard way: with politics.” To be solarpunk, then, is to mount a resistance to the <em>mainstream</em> present by imagining an alternative future.</p>
<p>The question that remains for me in all this is what differentiates a solarpunk from an <a href="https://theecosexuals.ucsc.edu/ecosex/">ecosexual</a>, or an <a href="https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/POM/article/view/2072">ecofeminist technopagan</a>, or an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/327822750900209/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%223%22%2C%22ref_newsfeed_story_type%22%3A%22regular%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D">eco-afrofuturist</a> or even a <a href="https://medium.com/solarpunks/002-a-simple-set-of-tools-interview-with-jesse-grimes-pt1-832ebdcaad05">permaculturist</a>? Or, indeed, other colourfully clad, politically oriented utopian movements? </p>
<p>Similarities abound, but the focus on the cultural change that will necessarily accompany the full transition to renewable energy is the defining feature of solarpunk. </p>
<p>This is what I find deeply compelling about the subculture. We usually ask “can renewables <em>replace</em> fossil fuels?”. It is an <a href="http://reneweconomy.com.au/csiro-says-australia-can-get-100-per-cent-renewable-energy-86624/">important question</a>, but it does not grapple with the links between <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Living_Oil.html?id=fXP1AQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">culture and energy</a>. Thus instead solarpunks ask “what kind of world will emerge when we <em>finally</em> transition to renewables?” and their writings, designs, blogs, tumblrs, music and hashtags are generating an intriguing answer.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>The lead image on this story was updated on July 20 to more accurately reflect the content of the article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80275/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Hamilton receives funding from The Seed Box: A Mistra+Formas Environmental Humanities Collaboratory, Linköping University, Sweden.</span></em></p>Punks aren’t known for their positivity, but ‘solarpunks’ are all about optimism. A new movement of speculative fiction, art, fashion, and activism, it imagines a sustainable future that requires radical social change.Jennifer Hamilton, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/721372017-03-16T09:18:33Z2017-03-16T09:18:33ZRobots, aliens, corporate drones – who will be the citizens of the future?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160313/original/image-20170310-20215-1h3hwob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the 1940s, science fiction author <a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/library/sca/science-fiction/colldescs/stapledon.html">Olaf Stapledon</a> gave a talk to a school about the future. Addressing his audience as “you citizens of the future”, he proposed three visions for this future: the “destruction of the human race”, a “worldwide police state”, and “an entirely new kind of human world”.</p>
<p>Citizenship will not be such an important issue if Stapledon’s first vision comes to pass. But any future in which humans persevere or flourish will be accompanied by a repeated need to reassess what a citizen is. As we increasingly consider what and where we are citizens of in the face of recent political events in Britain and America, what “citizens of the future” might look like takes on new resonance. And it’s something that science fiction has long imagined.</p>
<p>Citizenship obviously has different meanings. Etymologically, it implies the inhabitant of a city, but its connotations cut across legal, geographical, cultural and racial senses. Nobody necessarily agrees on what citizenship is, let alone who should have it. This is further compounded when we consider who the citizens of the future might be, from the “next generations” of children and grandchildren, to questions around the political, economic and geographical landscapes that will redefine current debates about citizenship.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160023/original/image-20170308-24215-12sihnc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who will inhabit our future cities?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Citizens in space</h2>
<p>The most common science fiction setting – space – is the site of one such redefinition, as humanity expands into the universe. This is something of a stalwart of science fiction from Star Wars (the Empire and the Galactic Senate) to Star Trek (the United Federation of Planets). In both cases, humans and aliens are part of the same political organisations. In Star Trek especially, the different series examine the various tensions surrounding Federation membership, from the inclusion of the Klingon Empire in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/">The Next Generation</a> to the founding of the Federation in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0244365/">Enterprise</a>.</p>
<p>Even without aliens, science fiction has examined how humanity might be governed as it colonises space. One of the most explicitly political of such works is James SA Corey’s recently adapted <a href="https://arstechnica.co.uk/the-multiverse/2016/01/what-changed-when-the-expanse-went-from-book-series-to-television/">Expanse series</a>.</p>
<p>The Expanse sets the United Nations (as the governing body of Earth) against the Martian Congressional Republic and a “terrorist” Outer Planets Alliance. Here, a corollary between citizenship and colonialism comes to the fore. Citizens of the Belt imagine themselves to be citizens of one place (the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) but are in fact governed by Earth, Mars and corporations based on those planets.</p>
<iframe src="https://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi905753113/imdb/embed?autoplay=false&width=720" width="100%" height="405" allowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" webkitallowfullscreen="true" frameborder="no" scrolling="no"></iframe>
<h2>World citizens</h2>
<p>Much science fiction imagines some such incarnation of a “world citizen”, often emerging from space colonisation and a decline of national borders. Some examples of “post-nation-state” science fiction are concerned with the rise of mega-corporations (such as William Gibson’s early cyberpunk fiction or <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1954347/">Continuum</a>). Others explore the increasing homogenisation of humanity, as racial characteristics (broadly identified) become mixed across large sections of the population.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1072&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1347&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1347&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160314/original/image-20170310-3696-1rx0n1u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1347&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>World citizenship isn’t necessarily imagined as a consumer hell or socialist paradise. One of the most famous, and perhaps provocative, examples of global citizenship in science fiction is the one portrayed in Robert Heinlein’s <a href="http://io9.gizmodo.com/5439145/starship-troopers-is-perfect--and-therein-lies-the-problem">Starship Troopers</a>. Heinlein’s “citizens” are the opposite of civilians. In this novel, citizenship equates to being given the right to vote in the State (the Terran Federation) and is only earned via federal service.</p>
<p>In effect, Heinlein seems to be advocating limiting the right to vote to those who serve the State and, given that <a href="https://www.nitrosyncretic.com/pdfs/nature_of_fedsvc_1996.pdf">this service is often military</a>, for many readers Heinlein’s sense of “world citizenship” is quasi-fascistic. Heinlein justifies this militaristic “citizen of the world” by the existence of an outside enemy — the Bugs. So citizenship here remains a case of “us” and “them”: what unites the world and humanity is a shared enemy beyond the State.</p>
<h2>Us and them</h2>
<p>Some authors are more overt about the ways in which the concept of citizenship can itself be redefined. In Orson Scott Card’s <a href="http://sfreviews.net/card_speaker_for_the_dead.html">Speaker for the Dead</a> – the sequel to his famous Ender’s Game – he introduces the <a href="http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/lyons20120430">Hierarchy of Exclusion</a>, a framework that determines how “foreign” other nations, planetary populations, and species are. The Hierarchy of Exclusion codifies the ways in which categories of “us” and “them” are decided, and as one of his (alien) characters comes to realise, “the tribe is whatever we believe it is”. </p>
<p>Another recent example is Ann Leckie’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/01/science-fiction-novel-ancillary-justice-ann-leckie-arthur-c-clarke-award">Ancillary Justice</a>, which underscores what happens when any particular racial or cultural imperative, whether a notion of “the human” or being born within a particular caste, comes to stand as a measure of citizenship. In her novel, she equates the struggle of a colony planet seeking independence from the empire with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) seeking to obtain its own legal identity. Both cases revolve around notions of citizenship, which Leckie rather cannily reframes in terms of “Significant Beings”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/160024/original/image-20170308-24204-fp0egr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What might citizenship look like for an AI?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Back to reality</h2>
<p>Given Leckie’s narrative of AI rights, recent proposals for European legislation to <a href="https://theconversation.com/robots-and-ai-could-soon-have-feelings-hopes-and-rights-we-must-prepare-for-the-reckoning-73462">reconsider the legal status of robots</a> seem strangely relevant, even if truly autonomous machines do not exist yet. While much of <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+COMPARL+PE-582.443+01+DOC+PDF+V0//EN&language=EN">the draft report</a> is concerned with legal liability, section 32f looks to the future: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The most sophisticated autonomous robots could be established as having the status of electronic persons with specific rights and obligations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/robots-eu-vote-electronic-persons-european-union-ai-artificial-intelligence-a7527106.html">The Independent</a> reported, this implies that a robot could be legally a citizen. Yet in the same report, the committee advocates that designers include “opt-out mechanisms (kill switches)”. This creates a potential situation where an “electronic person” could be programmed with a kill switch – surely a somewhat self-contradictory gift of citizenship?</p>
<p>So where does all this leave the notion of “citizens of the future”? Aliens — in both senses — can become citizens (if our understanding of citizenship shifts), as can robots (if we have the means to kill them). But citizenship depends, it seems, as ever upon who we call “us” and who we call “them” – citizenship understood as an exclusive club. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in his writings, Stapledon counselled himself to “think cosmopolitanly” – that is, to think inclusively, outside of national and even anthropocentric structures. As citizens of Stapledon’s future, it seems we are still failing to consider citizenship in such innovative terms, even now. For all the speculations inherent to the field of science fiction, it appears that we still often limit ourselves, even in our imaginations, to a moribund sense of citizenship.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article was written as part of the <a href="https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/new-and-international-writing/citizens-of-everywhere/">Citizens of Everywhere</a> project, organised by the Centre for New and International Writing at the University of Liverpool. @CitizensofWhere #CitizensofEverywhere.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Will Slocombe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the face of recent political events in Britain and America, sci-fi imaginings of the ‘citizens of the future’ have taken on a new resonance.Will Slocombe, Lecturer in American Literature, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/735952017-03-13T19:20:16Z2017-03-13T19:20:16ZExtinction or survival: how storytellers explore the ethics of colonising other planets<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159229/original/image-20170303-24325-gt8iht.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Colonising other planets may be possible, but does that mean we should?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mars image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>NASA’s <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-telescope-reveals-largest-batch-of-earth-size-habitable-zone-planets-around">recent discovery</a> of seven new Earth-sized planets, 40 light years away, has generated more excitement in the hunt for life off our own. Many influential thinkers have turned their attention to the colonisation of other planets (usually Mars), including Tesla founder <a href="https://www.wired.com/2016/09/elon-musk-colonize-mars/">Elon Musk</a>, and the groups behind <a href="http://www.mars-one.com/about-mars-one">Mars One</a>. But while the search for extraterrestrial life is fascinating, our interplanetary exploration raises some interesting ethical questions. </p>
<p>Physicist Stephen Hawking <a href="https://qz.com/597326/stephen-hawking-humanity-will-only-survive-by-colonizing-other-planets/">has said</a> that we should colonise other planets to protect the human race: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Although the chance of a disaster to planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, and becomes a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years. By that time we should have spread out into space, and to other stars, so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The notion of a mass exodus and transplanting a planet is, on the surface, an attractive concept. But we rarely, if ever, critically ask why we ought to do such a thing in the first place. Have we truly earned the right to colonise other planets, especially after the way we’ve behaved on this one? Many films and books have turned their attention to these ethical questions. </p>
<h2>Can we survive?</h2>
<p>Interplanetary colonisation was once the stuff only of science fiction. Kim Stanley Robinson’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/40710-mars-trilogy">Mars Trilogy</a>, for instance, showed the act of colonising and terraforming Mars (literally turning it into Earth). </p>
<p>Red Mars (1993), Green Mars (1994), and Blue Mars (1996) showed the gradual changes to the structure of the red planet as it became more habitable for humanity. The books also looked at the psychological effects of humanity’s ultra-longevity, including existential boredom. Even Robinson questions whether we should colonise Mars, indeed <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/887.Kim_Stanley_Robinson">he has said </a> of the Mars One project, which aims to establish a permanent human settlement on the planet: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is an example of the kind of fantasy that can emerge in the age of the internet, with the gullible <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism">scientism</a> that comes from a culture that lacks scientific literacy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>He also reasons: “I like the Earth too much”.</p>
<p>More recently, in Andy Weir’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/">The Martian</a> (2011), astronaut Mark Watney (Matt Damon) colonises Mars after being left for dead. </p>
<p>And in the 2012 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0816692/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Interstellar</a>, a group of astronauts go through a wormhole to examine three new planets for a “new earth”, after crop blights and a second Dust Bowl ravage much of the original earth. The remainder of humanity is left for dead while new colonies are set up on a new planet. </p>
<p>Both these films raise tough questions, suggesting that there’s no single utopian vision regarding the colonisation of planets. While both look at extending the lifetime of humanity beyond the Earth, we must ask, at what cost is humanity’s survival ensured?</p>
<h2>Should we survive?</h2>
<p>These discussions are taking place in a period of time known as the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-human-impact-earth">according to scientists</a>, is the current geological era in which we find ourselves: characterised by humanity’s impact on the planet, and a tendency to view everything through a human-centred lens. </p>
<p>Cultural studies theorist Claire Colebrook, whose work focuses on culture and the Anthropocene, has looked at the rhetoric of survival that is attached to many science fiction films, notably <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970416/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Day the Earth Stood Still</a>.</p>
<p>In both the 1951 and 2008 version, an alien called Klaatu is sent to Earth to warn humans that if they don’t change their disregard for the planet, they will be eradicated for the benefit of Earth. The 1951 version is set in the Nuclear Age, while the 2008 remake focuses instead on environmental catastrophe. When the alien sees another, more benevolent side of humanity, he calls off the attack.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1951 trailer for The Day the Earth Stood Still.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/o/ohp/12329362.0001.001/1:11/--death-of-the-posthuman-essays-on-extinction-volume-one?rgn=div1;view=fulltext">Colebrook asks</a>: “[why] is present discourse focused on <em>how we might survive</em>, rather than whether we ought to survive?” </p>
<p>Numerous writers and film-makers have turned their attention to the question of what it means for humanity to be annihilated. In Nevil Shute’s critically acclaimed <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38180.On_the_Beach?from_search=true">On the Beach</a> (1957), a hallmark Nuclear Age sci-fi work alongside Pat Frank’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38169.Alas_Babylon?from_search=true">Alas, Babylon</a> (1959), a cloud of radiation slowly drifts from the Northern Hemisphere down to Melbourne after a nuclear war. The survivors, meanwhile, try to enjoy themselves before the inevitable end arrives. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/662792-it-s-not-the-end-of-the-world-at-all-he">Observes one character</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It’s not the end of the world at all. It’s only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>JG Ballard’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16234584-the-drowned-world?from_search=true">The Drowned World</a> (1962) similarly demystifies the longevity of the human race, with the central character gradually welcoming the destruction of civilisation as the world reverts to its wild, primitive state. <a href="http://www.azquotes.com/quote/1303985">The novel ends</a> with him disappearing into the wild:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He left the lagoon and entered the jungle again, within a few days was completely lost, following the lagoons southward through the increasing rain and heat, attacked by alligators and giant bats, a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn sun.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As theorist Gary Westfahl <a href="http://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=B3976C">points out</a>, in comparison to other sci-fi works, The Drowned World “rapturously embrace[s] human extinction”. </p>
<p>More recently, Lars von Trier’s film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/">Melancholia</a> (2011) follows the story of two sisters, played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, as another planet is on a collision course with Earth. Justine (Dunst), welcomes Earth’s destruction, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb69TMISL_Y">saying</a>: “The earth is evil. We don’t need to grieve for it […] Life exists only on Earth. And not for long”. At the end, the planet collides with the earth and obliterates it. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wzD0U841LRM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Similarly, in the Australian film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268458/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">These Final Hours</a> (2013), the world comes to an end after a meteor collides with the earth, and the main character and his pregnant girlfriend sit on the beach as a firestorm bears down on the planet. </p>
<p>And in Michael Faber’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20697435-the-book-of-strange-new-things?from_search=true">The Book of Strange New Things</a> (2014), a pastor is sent to another planet to impart Christian values while Earth succumbs to severe climate devastation and famine. Despite this, the pastor tries to get back to Earth to die with his wife and their unborn child. </p>
<p>These works delve into the moral and ethical issues surrounding humanity’s survival, in contrast to other works that promote humankind’s longevity. In The Day the Earth Stood Still, humanity was seen to have jeopardised its chance of survival before being redeemed by the benevolence of the alien. </p>
<p>But in a world that is dragging its feet on <a href="https://theconversation.com/introducing-the-terrifying-mathematics-of-the-anthropocene-70749">climate change and other massive environmental problems</a>, the concept of moving to other planets appears quite selfish. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Independence Day</a> (1996), President Thomas Whitmore (Bill Pullman) describes the invading aliens as a virus, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes">saying</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They’re like locusts. They’re moving from planet to planet…their whole civilisation. After they’ve consumed every natural resource they move on. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>As interplanetary colonisers, we would become the aliens.</p>
<p>Some of these books and films suggest humanity doesn’t deserve to survive, others withhold judgement, instead hurtling towards the final moments. These usually offer redemption for at least some humans – through love, bravery, or freedom. </p>
<h2>Should we give up?</h2>
<p>It appears all too easy to adopt a fatalistic attitude in light of such discussions of humanity’s ultimate fate. Woody Allen, for instance, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55369.Woody_Allen_on_Woody_Allen">has discussed</a> what he calls “Ozymandias Melancholia”, or, the “realisation that your works of art will not save you and will mean nothing down the line”. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/159228/original/image-20170303-24327-1to3hx2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The view from the moon, captured in 1968.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">NASA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet he <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/460793-the-artist-s-job-is-not-to-succumb-to-despair-but">also notes</a> that “the artist’s job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence”.</p>
<p>It isn’t as simple as nihilistically accepting the inevitable, but questioning the extent to which we are willing to ensure survival, and considering the inevitability of human extinction. Medicine, for instance, has kept humans alive for longer than they otherwise would have lived, an example of positive human survival. </p>
<p>But when the prospect of human survival intrudes upon the natural environment of other planets, which would be best left alone, the idea of colonising other planets becomes unethical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Siobhan Lyons does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Interplanetary colonisation was once the stuff of science fiction but now there are plans to colonise Mars. How have film-makers and writers dealt with our rapacious Anthropocene age?Siobhan Lyons, Scholar in Media and Cultural Studies, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/722622017-02-01T03:36:57Z2017-02-01T03:36:57ZEnough with the Doctor Who gender debate – it’s time<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155091/original/image-20170201-12649-8ll5zp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joanna Lumley (briefly) played the Doctor in 1999 Comedy Relief special The Curse of Fatal Death.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Youtube</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Doctor is a 900(ish) year old alien with two hearts, at least 12 different faces and the ability to travel through all of time and space. So why is it so hard to imagine the Doctor as a woman?</p>
<p>Peter Capaldi’s decision to leave Doctor Who at the end of the upcoming season has started speculation about options for his replacement. This is a sport of high stakes for fans – the grief of losing the current lead mixed with the excitement of a new face and new identity.</p>
<p>Doctor Who is now over 50 years old, and over that time television conventions have certainly changed. When the first Time Lord was cast in 1963, the audience and BBC felt an elder statesman and “mad scientist”-type was best to lead the franchise. The Doctor was played by William Hartnell, a proper, older, white Englishman – a grandfather, even – and audiences and the Beeb happily relied on this casting to draw in their desired audience. </p>
<p>Hartnell feel ill soon after he had established the character and the role of “The Doctor” for Doctor Who. Rather than cancel or merely replace him, the show’s creators worked with the science fiction narrative to write in the character’s “renewal,” later to be known as the Time Lord’s process of “regeneration”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jvKLhj4xz9w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Doctor regenerates.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since Hartnell, Doctor Who has covered 12 regenerations and featured 13 (male) Doctors – not counting the other “Doctor” castings in audiobooks, comics, offshoots and parodies. Favourites include the incomparable Tom Baker, the undeniable David Tennant, the hipster cool of Matt Smith and the recently deceased, but eternally wonderful John Hurt as “The War Doctor” for the program’s fiftieth anniversary special in 2013.</p>
<p>During at least the last couple of “regeneration” rounds, questions of casting and diversity have been asked. Why has the lead still be taken by a white man? What about actors of colour? What about, shock, a woman? They got away with it once – Joanna Lumley appeared as part of a joke sequence of swift regenerations for a <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0212887/">Comic Relief special</a> – but never as part of the show proper. As British television scholar Lorna Jowett <a href="https://theconversation.com/trust-me-im-a-time-lord-doctor-who-needs-to-diversify-15066">beautifully put it</a>; </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Doctor Who should push the boundaries of representation in the casting of its title character because it can. It’s a major science fiction series with a protagonist who is an alien. The Doctor need not be bound by social conventions.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Do-wDPoC6GM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Curse of the Fatal Death - Comic Relief does Doctor Who.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jowett’s point gets to the heart, beauty, and genius of Doctor Who as a television story. It’s repeatable in almost any way the producers of the day choose. Adaptable and barely bound by timey whimey wibbly wobbly rules – except when it comes to the last (gendered) frontier.</p>
<p>Sorry fellow nerds – I’m straying from one sci fi galaxy here into another – but you know what I’m saying.</p>
<p>A few weeks ago the US-based “inclusive, feminist community” The Mary Sue offered five reasons why it was finally time for a female Doctor, with author Holly Christine Brown <a href="http://www.themarysue.com/the-ladies-of-sci-fi-5-reasons-why-we-need-a-female-doctor-in-doctor-who/">arguing against existing stereotypes of women as villains, romantic distractions or side kicks</a>. Given we know the position will be vacant again soon, we can formally begin regeneration speculation (and campaigns) to have the lucky Doctor number 13 cast by a female actor rather than a male. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/01/peter-capaldi-leaving-doctor-who-female-doctor">Vanity Fair</a> has been one of the first major outlets to raise the issue again, while reports in the iconic British masthead <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/2017-01-30/peter-capaldi-confirms-hes-leaving-doctor-who-at-the-end-of-series-10">Radio Times</a> have so far tended to avoid recasting talk, instead focusing on the more pressing business of promoting Capaldi’s upcoming (final) series which is still yet to air. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jan/31/doctor-who-new-time-lord-woman-peter-capaldi">The Guardian</a> has also launched a pro-woman Doctor campaign, suggesting actors like the Olivier Award winner Noma Dumezweni as exciting possibilities.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155099/original/image-20170201-12656-10voki7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Noma Dumezweni, who played Hermione Granger in stage play Cursed Child, has been suggested as a replacement for Peter Capaldi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Strong female leads are now on the rise across television (thankfully), and reports like Screen Australia’s “Gender Matters” and <a href="http://www.womensagenda.com.au/career-agenda/item/6631-reel-action-on-gender-screen-australia-sets-minimum-targets-for-female-led-projects">subsequent initiatives to help address gender in balance</a> are positive steps. Research from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media also suggests that “<a href="https://seejane.org/research-informs-empowers/data/">Gender balance in casting produces sound financial returns</a>”, and at times, even increased earnings for films that are gender diverse when compared to those that aren’t. So there is some hope that a Doctor Who-like television program lead by an excellent woman could work, and work well. However – are we able to accept the direct replacement of a male actor with a female one?</p>
<p>If <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/05/the-sexist-outcry-against-the-ghostbusters-remake-gets-louder/483270/">reactions to the 2015 Ghostbusters reboot</a> are anything to go by, it seems that any incumbent actor will be in for an uphill battle regardless of how talented she is. Suggestions that the recasting “killed the childhoods” of many angry viewers or was “reverse sexism” were loud, and sadly, got pretty ugly at times. </p>
<p>While all of the cast members received criticism (much of it even before the film was released), the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/movies/leslie-jones-star-of-ghostbusters-becomes-a-target-of-online-trolls.html?_r=0">abuse directed at Leslie Jones</a> was downright shameful. It was disappointing that she moved away from the spotlight for a while, but also completely understandable. No one should be subjected to that.</p>
<p>However, we also know that the trolls are not the only people who watched and were influenced – with praise coming from, importantly, new generations of young girls (and boys) who were having some of their <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/this-photo-shows-why-we-needed-an-all-female-reboot-of-ghostbusters_us_5783f409e4b01edea78f0c9d">first screen experiences with funny, fierce and kickarse women</a> in the lead roles.</p>
<p>So – a message to (Queen) Helen Mirren, (Should Be President) Meryl Streep, (Dame) Sarah Millican, (Lady) Miranda Hart, (Glorious) Meera Syal… and any others who might get a knock on the door or have an agent make a call – don’t let the trolls scare you. Same goes for you, incoming Doctor Who showrunner Chris Chibnall. Take a chance, explore all of time and space – and hand the sonic screwdriver over to a woman, hey?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72262/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a universe of infinite possibility, why is Doctor Who always a man? Peter Capaldi’s forthcoming retirement from the role means it’s surely time to hand the sonic screwdriver over to a woman.Liz Giuffre, Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.