science fiction and sustainability...1934 stanley g. weinbaum how to communicate with aliens...

SCIENCE FICTION AND SUSTAINABILITY

PUBLIC LECTURE ON PLANET TALKS

IMPRI

17/11/2020

1#PlanetTalks IMPRI India Water Portal TERI

SAS 2020

What makes a good Science / Dystopian Fiction work?

• Dystopia (antonym of Utopia) – unfair, injustice, postapocalyptic

– Themes – Religion, Psychology, Culture, Economy, Society, Environment, Ethics, Technology but going beyond this and the uncharted territories in these themes

– Create something which is not plausible at all

– Create a thesis and an antithesis – the more the dialectics the larger is the dystopian element


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The Process

• Respond to an injustice, a situation and then personalise it

• Then take it to a set of all plausible outcomes

• Create outcomes and counteroutcomes

• Create Plots and Counter Plots

• I think of a situation and express it into my music and then play notes and counter notes and then I can see characters and plots for a certain situation and then I create a world through melodies and counter melodies, rhythm and counter rythms


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How important is research and study to deliver a believable and convincing work of fiction ?

• Extremely important• It is a must• Instances of a book – Dystopia: Natural History (2017) – Cleares• We (1921)• Animal Farm, 1984 (black market to produce select materialistic

goods, domination of the state on individuals)• Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

– Role of parents are forgotten, Children are born automatically– Society and class structures are reconstructed– Fondly Fahrenheit – people going to rural society for consumption

• Joanna Russ (Female Man), 1919 (Sultana’s Dream) - RokeyaSakhawat Hossain– Both are about how an imaginary society is happening centering about

power shifts to women from men and different gender types


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Science / Dystopian fiction novels can challenge readers to think differently about current social and

political climates, and can inspire action.

• Yes• It is like a parabola which opens up possibilities and helps

us to see future with different possibilities• Even if you don’t add the post apocalyptic element to

dystopia, anything which is not fair or injustice can also motivate us to think of a dystopia and create an action towards the utopia

• So dystopia creates an action towards utopia• When utopia is not attained, a state of dystopia can again

arise for further utopia• So utopia is justice and dystopia is somewhat the law

(which needs to be practised to attain the dream of justice)


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• ‘’Sustain’’ and ‘’Ability’’

• Sustain to be Able or Ability to Sustain?

• Is there a difference between ‘Children’ and ‘Adult’ Science Fiction, from a sustainability standpoint?

What is Sustainability?


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Why Children Science Fiction and Sustainability?

• Because it is – “A pot of green and a pot of orange paint spilled on the floor and forms a murky brown together which does not belong to any pot but who cant distinguish that is also a fool” – (McDowell 58, Nodelman, Hidden Adult 188)..

• Because as Roger Sale wryly says – “Everyone knows what children science fiction literature is until one is asked to define it”!!

• Trust it or not, Sustainability is exactly having these two above characteristics!!!!


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So why the idea of merging children science fiction and sustainability emerged?

1. Can depict a schematic moral view of life (Mcdowell, Nodelman)

2. Active (full of action) and ruminant (full of introspection, reflection and liberation) at the same time

3. Simple, formulaic as well as abstract, open ended at the same time

4. A dialectics between a small and large vision within the storytelling


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To do that – What was essential is to understand the history

And hence the historical exploration started …


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• Lessons from Old Testament – the ship of Noah - A pair of animals to secure a sustainable lifecycle

• Lessons from Mahabharata – Khandava Dahan?

• Lessons from Indian scriptures like the Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Manusmriti, Arthashastra – Sustainability is about - human beings, make people capable of joint performance, to

make their strengths effective and their weaknesses irrelevant by imbibing culture, common goals, shared values, commitment, communication

Sustainability in Mythology and Early Scripture Context?


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• Jagadananda Roy's Shukra Bhraman (Travels to Venus)

• Hemlal Dutta as one of the earliest Bengali science fiction writers for his Rohosso (The Mystery)

• 1882 in the pictorial magazine Bigyan Dorpon (Mirror of Science)

• Jagadish Chandra Bose - Kuntol Keshori, Palatak Tufan (Runaway Cyclone)

• Roquia Sakhawat Hussain (Begum Rokeya), an early Islamic feminist, wrote Sultana's Dream –a world where role reversal happens between men and women

• Premendra Mitra wrote the first novel, Kuhoker Deshe (In the Land of Mystery). HemendraKumar Ray wrote Meghduter Morte Agomon

• Qazi Abdul Halim's Mohasunner Kanna (Tears of the Cosmos), Tomader Jonno Valobasa (Love For You All),

• In 1997, Moulik, the first and longest-running Bangladeshi science fiction magazine, was first published, with famous cartoonist Ahsan Habib as the editor

• Nasim Sahnic is a promising young science fiction writer in Bangladesh. His latest science fiction books like Genetic code, Robopsychologist, Sundarbone Truti, Coxsbazarer Cossop are very famous to young generation

• OTHER THAN THIS – Tagore, Narayan Sanyal, Adrish Bardhan, Bibhutibhushan, SukumarRay, Leela Majumdar, Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay, Syed Mustafa Siraj, Samarjit Kar, AnishDeb, Biswajit Ganguly, Siddhartha Ghosh, Suman Sen (Sarpa Manav: NagmoniRohosyo, Ajana Sima: The X Boundary),[4] Rajesh Basu and Abhijnan Roychowdhury SatyajitRay are well know mainstream writers who are popular and everyone reads them

My Journey began with my vernacular which is absolutely essential and critical for everyone to

understand sustainability


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Science Fiction Magazine in Bengali (happened in 2016)

• Publication of Kalpabiswa (কল্পবিশ্ব)

(www.kalpabiswa.com), first ever Science Fiction and Fantasy themed Bengali web-magazine for adult readers

• Once the vernacular is known – 1%, let me explore to the world literature which I did to understand sustainability


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Historical Narrative

Name Year Author Genre Content

Utopia 1516 Thomas More Scientific Voyages Imaginary voyage to an

unknown land

Somnium 1632 Johannes Kepler Lunar voyage How earth’s motion looks

from moon

Gullivers

Travels

1726 Jonathan Swift Voyage to an imaginary

land

Fiction on gulliver’s

experiences in a Lilliput land

Frankenstein 1818 Mary Shelley Limits of scientific

understanding and

humanity’s

relationship to created

beings

Innovation in the realm of

science rather than

supernatural

Critique of

science fiction

After 1818 Paul Alkon Defined as narrative

use of science to

create myths to bring

in novel view points

Science to create myths

allowing novel points of view

Amazing

stories

1926 Hugo Gernsback Scientifiction to

Science fiction

Codified an already existing

literary form which included

fantastic voyages, utopia,

disaster fictions, invention

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Historical NarrativeName Year Author Genre Content

Future Shock 1970 Alvin Toffler Contemporary western cultures

grappling with rapidity of

technological and social change

Technological and social change

acting as a centre point of

change

Pulp Magazines 1940 John W Campbell Focusing on pulp science fiction Science fiction culture

Le Zombie 1941 Bob Tucker Relationship between

enthusiastic group of fans and

emergence of science fiction in

magazines

Practicing science fiction

Brave New

World

1932 Aldous Huxley Science fiction practice of generic

attribution

Sites of both high and low

culture

The Time

Machine

1895 Jules Verne Polarization of humans into two

bleak species

Vision of an alien and an

alienating planet

Some fiction

works

Over a long

range of

time

H.G. Wells Focuses on philosophical and

social implications of scientific

discoveries

Understanding of ethical choices

and perceptions of material

world changes over time

M.S Found in a

Bottle

1833 Edgar Allen Poe Range of engagements with the

sublime nature

Transmutation into the

comforting sense of wonder

The Sentinel 1951 Arthur C Clarke Human confrontation with a

manufactured than a natural

object

Evolutionary time scale of a

technology 14

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Argosy 1882 –

1978

Story

Magazine

Sensationalist novels Science fiction with a special magazine

culture

The Strand 1891 –

1950

Story

Magazine

Mixture of story types Transformed market place with different

story mixes

The War of

Worlds

1898 H.G. Wells Alien invasion Centred around anthropocentrism

The New

Atlantis

1624 Francis

Bacon

Scientific discoveries

demonstrate our lack of

empire over matter

A world powerful than ours

The War of

the worlds

1898 (first

hardcover

) and

serialised

first in

1897

H G Wells Challenges the way of

understanding the world.

The superior imperialist

British race is outweighed

by Martian technology

Martians are doing the same thing as done

by British in their colonies. Comparisons are

drawn with extinction of bison and dodo by

human activities, extinction of Tasmanians

by European immigrants. Questions the

anthropocentric view of religion,

Christianity which poses humanity above

nature, whereas science has no special

interest in homo sapiens. Gives us a more

heterogenic view of the world making

humans conscious of future given life exists

in Mars.

Ralph

124C41+

1911 –

1912

Gernsback Adventure story of Ralph

saving his girl in an

adventurous journey

Ralph moves from one future technology to

the other viz. television, video phone, solar

energy, synthetic food, spaceflight


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Martian

Odyssey

1934 Stanley G.

Weinbaum

How to communicate with

aliens

Questions the paradigm of human and alien

friendship in an alien landscape of Mars by

questioning whether reason or technology

should decide such friendship

A Door Into

Ocean

1986 Joan

Slonczweski

Understanding off

planetary life

Rational differentiation between

ecofeminist and technorationalist approach

to understand planetary life

Astounding

Stories to

Astounding

Science Fiction

1937 John W.

Campbell

Bringing in technology for

explaining nuances of

social life

Technocratic rationalism to replace

emotions to explain the social world

Who goes there 1938 John W.

Campbell

Explores the value of

science fiction conceived as

a rationalist worldview

Discovery of a long buried spaceship in

Antartica and the crisis amongst men

stationed in the research camp where alien

body is discovered. The conflict between

nature and human science is explained

when the alien starts taking the form of any

life with which it has contact

That only a

mother

1948 Judith Merril Intersections of public

science and domestic life

A mother writing a letter to her husband

posted in a secret station related to nuclear

warfare about possibilities of mutation in

her baby16


More Narratives for the Birth of Lucy

• Liar (1941) - Isaac Asimov - Misunderstandings launched by a mind reading robot - deception by robot and misunderstandings between human race

• Runaround (1942) - Isaac Asimov - The law of robotics - A robot should not harm a human being or through inaction will not allow the human being to harm the robot. A robot will follow the orders of a human being unless and until there is a defiance of the first law.

• Reason (1942) - Isaac Asimov - The conflict between reason and logic. In a space station, the scientists try to convince a robot that he has been created by the humans and the robot disagrees to acknowledge that fact.

• Forbidden Planet (1956) - Wilcox - The robot refuses to attack a monster as a human being is behind the monster attack and this follows the discourse of robotic law of Asimov

• The Female Man (1966) - Joanna Russ - DNA derived artificial lover who scares another woman


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• Culture Novels (1987 - 2012) - Ian.M. Banks - AI Mind Citizens in human relationships

• We Who Are About To (1976) - Joanna Russ - Talks of a civilization where women are reduced to the role of breeders

• Fondly Fahrenheit (1954) - Alfred Bester - It comments on what science fiction has overlooked due to its attachment to rational explanation. The story is about the master slave relationship where the master creates an android and the android starts to trouble and the master has to change his identities again and again due to that. Finally, a point comes where the master decides to sell the android when the android makes the claim that he cant be sold following the law of Robotics. Projection of the master's mind onto the slave - it is not clear. Is the android a subconscious depiction of the psychology of the master.

• Childhood's End (1953) - Arthur C. Clarke - Alien Overlords come to the earth and owing to their superior technology they become Gods to humans and establish a peaceful, equal society on earth. The overlords create a new set of telepathic, human species who work for a better future. So the human civilization's doubts of colonization here progresses towards a betterment. 18



• The Liberation of Earth (1953) - William Tenns - also highlights about alien invasion - Two alien invasion - one trying for betterment and the other not for betterment and human race caught in between two superpowers of space - just like USSR and US.

• The Day Earth Stood Still (1951) - Wise - Is about a nuclear warfare race and its impact on environment

• Aleutian Trilogy, White Queen (1991), North Wind (1994), Phoenix Cafe (1997) - Gwyeneth Jones - are all about the complex exploration of cultural difference and misunderstandings arising from not able to accommodate the cultural differences. Not able to understand the aliens immortality, telepathic aspects.

• When we went to see the end of the world (1972) - Robert Silverberg -Highlights the conspicuous consumption nature of middle class and their constant race to go high up in the ladder of the society in comparison to others by getting a better vacation package to conduct a time travel vacation towards seeing the end of the world without actually worrying about the end of the world


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• Journey within a train (like a nemesis in compartments), and

• In a ship (like a Sindbad)

The journey of Lucy in the Context : After this journey of mine – I needed a catharsis and hence Lucy

happened


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A moment that pushed you for the Science / Dystopian Fiction genre?

• I started following this genre from the age of 12• I was travelling in a local train which was jampacked from

Jadavpur to Ballygunge and it was so fully packed, I was constantly pulled apart from all sides in the two stop journey and I felt can there be a transportation medium in which everyday I can travel from home to school on air with airpumped shoes – I looked for options – I started reading Flash Gordon after being attracted through a visual

• I saw something unfair around me and I felt if I can change the world for a betterment and then I started thinking how would that world will look like and hence I started reading about the world where I can see about these possibilities and hence I started to move towards the genre


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Feeling , Sustainability and Science Fiction?

• Practice feeling and responding to any unfair and injustice happening around you

• Then practice how would you like to change it and what are the possibilities of changing it

• Practice it and then in that possibility create a plot

• To implement the plot create characters through whom you change it and then create the possibilities you want to see

• The more dialectical the possibilities are, the better is the dystopian fiction


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And hence LUCY (Love, Understanding, Creation and Youth) and her tryst with Sustainability was born

Within a train (like a nemesis in compartments) moving through challenges

in order to be able to sustain

In a ship (like a Sindbad) –towards future unknowns with an unknown vigilance of Artificial Intelligence

Sketch Potrait Created First in Diary and then projected through coral draw

Sketch Potrait Created First in Diary and then projected through coral draw


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THANK YOU

Email:[email protected],

[email protected]@gmail.com


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mailto:[email protected]



science fiction and sustainability...1934 stanley g. weinbaum how to communicate with aliens...

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