‘Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.’
Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
(2005)
I find one of the most
interesting aspects of the popular imagination is the fascination and appetite
for tales of war, catastrophe, doom, destruction and apocalypse. Like many men
and women in the world I enjoy a good science fiction film or novel every now
and again. The eminent historian of British future-war literature, I.F. Clarke,
believed that fictional prophesies and future imaginings were capable of
providing a unique insight into the human psyche – and I tend to agree with
him. However, one thing that I believe rings true in over a century of
sensationally popular science fiction and dystopian literature is that though
fascinating and thrilling, such imaginings are rarely capable of predicting a
complete and accurate world of tomorrow.
Evolving Conceptions of the Future of Our World
Recently, I taught a seminar on ‘environmental
history’ to my first year students. This is an area of study my PhD supervisor
is moving into, and though many students struggled to see how this topic was
history at all, some were inspired and fascinated by this cultural
investigation into human interaction with the world around us. The thing that
struck me most was the ideological change that occurred, very
recently, when it dawned upon us that humans were capable of impacting upon the
whole world and changing the planet for worse, or for better. As eminent
historian J.R. McNeill so poignantly showed, as late as 1930 the Nobel Prize
winning American physicist, Robert Millikan stated in 1930 that there was no possibility
that humanity was capable of doing real harm to ‘anything so gigantic as the
earth’. In that same year Thomas Midgeley invented CFCs (chloroflourocarbons)
which would decades later be banned for their annihilation of areas of the
earths ozone layer – the primary ‘life support’ system of the earth. From this introduction into environmental
history I learned how a paradigm shift in human understanding of our impact on
the world resulted from the dawning of nuclear warfare.
Over the 1950s and 1960s the USA
and USSR became increasingly antagonistic and the proliferation and testing of
nuclear bombs escalated hugely. In one year, 1962 (the same year as the Cuban
Missile Crisis), the two super-powers tested a total of
130 nuclear devices
pushing the background level of radiation for the
planet back up to the
level of 1958 when the two powers had agreed to decrease testing due to this
terrifying result. With the effects of nuclear fallout being made
clear as a result of disasters like
Chernobyl and Bikini
Atoll, suddenly the human imagination was forced to recognize that
technology had advanced so far as to be able not only to wipe out nations, but
even to destroy our only home – Planet Earth. This shocking realisation was
soon reflected in popular culture, with the meteoric rise in popularity of
post-apocalyptic stories.
On the Beach (novel: 1957; film: 1959) was one of the most important and
popular stories of this genre, recounting a near-future world in the aftermath
of World War III.
Its negative message, scenes of destruction, dead cities, and state aided
mass-suicides struck home in the Anglophone world. Since the 1960s we have been
treated to a regular supply of such apocalyptic dramas as
I Am Legend (several versions from
1954),
Dr. Strangelove (1964),
Threads (1984), and
The Terminator franchise (1984-2009).
For the nuclear generation, the
concerns were clear. Fears were openly expressed about global apocalypse at the
hands of man. However, with the end of the Cold War, the seeming lack of
imminent nuclear war left an ideas vacuum – an epistemic change occurred. A
variety of new popular fears have entered into the vacuum which transcend
national boundaries: disease pandemics, economic disaster, environmental
collapse, fuel shortages and global starvation. Many of the concerns of today
are not new ones, but they have received surging interest as polemicists have
looked anxiously to predict where next we are truly headed.
Ronald Wright theorised that the human addiction to progress at all costs
has trapped us in an endless cycle of boom and bust which will eventually lead
to societal collapse. ‘Surviving Progress’ asserts that human obsession with
technological progress as the answer to economic and social problems results in
on-going ‘progress traps’ where ‘alluring technologies serve immediate needs,
but ransom the future’. Furthermore, it is argued that the absence of a valuation
of the environment, flora, fauna and human life in accepted economic dogma means
that blind belief in the benevolence of the market is a disastrous mistake
humans have made, and continue to make. This outlook is depressing in its plausibility.
Every Nation for Itself
Similarly, Bremmer’s economic prediction argues that in future the
nations of the world will be unable or unwilling to participate in global
dialogue and cooperation. He argues that as the USA declines from superpowerdom,
no other country will be able to assume the same level of control or
influence. Going from a G20 world to a ‘G-Zero’
– a decade long power vacuum – would have dire consequences for world – acting
as ‘an incubator of catastrophe.’ A lack of international cooperation, it is
argued, could result in epidemics, the implosion of North Korea, increasing
terrorist attacks and wars over scarce food and resources.
[5]
These academic polemics tie into long-running discourses about societal
collapse,
[6]
economic uncertainty and existential threats to our current world. In the
mass market, these concerns are most visibly expressed through television and
film. Recent years have seen a new spate of such films featuring regular
‘paranoid’ themes which have experienced vast box-office or best-selling
success:
- Post-apocalyptic
Worlds: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (novel: 2006; film: 2009); The Book of Eli (2009);
- Alien
Invasion=Human Frailty/Complacency: The
War of the Worlds (film remake: 2005); Battle:
Los Angeles (2011);
- Pandemics:
Contagion (2011); Twelve Monkeys
(1995);
- Environmental
collapse: Waterworld (1995); The Day After Tomorrow (2004); Supervolcano
(2005); Sunshine (2007);
- Extraterrestrial
Disasters: Deep Impact (1998); Armageddon (1998); Knowing (2009);
The themes here evidently reflect
the major anxieties of our own times, and exhibit the success of playing to
them.
Often, science fiction looking
further into the distant future has predicted dark consequences for humanity as
a reflection of contemporary societal uncertainties. The Alien films were both progenitors and inheritors of a vast quantity
of exceedingly popular films and productions imagining future human
colonisation of the galaxy. Alien
(1979), along with Silent Running
(1972), Logan’s Run (1976) and Blade Runner (1982), is the best in a
highly regarded and influential sub-genre of dystopian future imaginings which
tell us much about the times in which they were conceived. These examples of
space-age dystopia represent two major themes of their time: (1) the rapid
expansion of the space race; and (2) increasing concern over environmental
damage and voracious human expansion.
These stories depict worlds where humans have been developed incredibly
advanced technology, yet still suffer from the cruelties and hardships which
blight the ‘human condition’: be they the corporate greed (Alien), the ‘Frankenstein-inspired arrogance of man(Blade Runner), problems
of population control (Logan’s Run) or environmental exhaustion (Silent Running). Their message seems to be (in agreement with Surviving Progress) that despite
technological advancement, the future should not be assumed to be a better
place.
Sci-fi and disaster movies can
tell us something about the state of mind of our current society. Such vastly
popular films play on a common trope of destruction and disaster. In spite of
the fact that people are fearful for the future, they seem to have a desire to
see these events take place on the big screen. Although our current culture has
its own unique flavour of disaster-concepts, this fear of the future has a
legacy of over a century. Though all of these fictional tales were not written
directly as polemics to correct the evils of the world, they are the cultural
spear-tip of deeply latent concerns about the destructive nature of humanity. As times change, so the concerns expressed in
popular culture mutate and flex to meet the demands and desires of the popular
imagination of the time. As I hope it is clear from the above examples, each
generation of cultural creators plays upon the hopes, fears and imaginings of
its consumers. This, I would strongly argue, is nothing new….
Future and Science Fiction in
the Fin-de-Siecle (1880-1914)
Many literary historians see the
period either side of 1900 as being remarkable for the vast number of works of future
fiction and predictive forecasts. Although the limitations of Earth and modern
science were little understood in this period, philosophers, artists and
essayists shared the same deep sense of unease at what appeared to be an
increasingly widespread decadence and fundamental anxiety affecting society. This
can be seen both in contemporary journalism, as well as in the fictitious works
of authors, painters, poets and musicians.
Amongst the most influential
literary genres were the utopian/dystopian world of the future, science
fiction/prediction and the ‘tale of future war’. In European fiction writers
were infected with a sense of change – whether for the better or for the worse.
H.G. Wells and Jules Verne are perhaps the best-known authors of their
generation today. They were prolific novelists, but in their work they also attempted
to show people the future path of humanity, and warn against certain perceived
ills. Wells’ many works imagined the progress of technology in war (
The War in the Air, 1908), a possible
ideal world-state (
A Modern Utopia, 1905)
and also the potential for destruction and disaster (
War of the Worlds, 1898). Verne too was capable of imagining both
positive and negative and both authors sought to imagine the capabilities of
technological advancement, with the potential for both advancements and
disasters in equal portions. There were many similar authors who sought to augur
and propose the path to a better or worse society. Some stories flew way wide
of the mark, with ideas of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ galactic colonisation,[
10] communist utopias on Mars,
and poisonous galactic gas clouds enveloping earth.
More close to reality, writers attempted to imagine a near-future world. G.K.
Chesterton’s more thoughtful
The Napoleon
of Notting Hill (1904) imagined Britain in 1984 as a largely unchanged yet
completely un-democratic place.
J. McCullough’s Golf in the Year 2000 (1892) is
something of a golf fanatic’s handbook and made some accurate predictions for
daily life, while failing to envisage air travel, preferring high-speed
undersea trains. McCullough suggests that in the year 2000 women have become
the breadwinners and the men simply play golf all of the time – if only…!
In the press and periodicals of
the time, the same currents of thought were commonplace. The words ‘next’, ‘future’,
‘ambition’, ‘menace’ and ‘danger’ were second nature to journalists. They
embody the sense that in such a changing world something new was just around
the corner. For example such headlines:
- Henry Mann, ‘Europe’s Coming War: The Next Struggle Will Probably Spill Rivers of
Blood. Forecast Of The Battle,’ Washington Post, April 8, 1894.
- ‘The Future Empire of the World. Is It To Be Anglo-Saxon or Russian? An
American Author’s Plea,’ Daily Mirror, December 2, 1904.
- ‘The
Menace of the East,’ Contemporary Review 87, (January 1905), pp.
628-639.
- ‘The Next World War. Startling Prophecy of
Britain’s Battle with Germany. All Nations Involved,’ Daily Mirror,
March 13, 1907.
- ‘Does
Germany Menace the World’s Peace?,’ North American Review 184:8
(April 1907), pp. 853-860.
In the 1890s and 1900s there was
a seeming acceptance that things were changing and rarely was the assumption
made that it would be for the better. As seen above, many believed that a ‘world
war’ was increasingly likely. Henry Mann’s 1894 article (above) argued that
France, by invading Italy, would create a world war.
In Mann’s vision, it would be France who would fight on German soil. The
fascination with predictions of the future - and in particular of war - meant
that there was a vast selection of prophecies available. Many, like Mann, were
unsuccessful in many details. However, as
Anatoly Karlin has noted, (only)
three
authors were close to hitting the nail on the head with predictions of the
Great War: Iwan Bloch, Friedrich Engels and Pyotr Durnovo. These theorists accurately predicted the brutality of
trench warfare (Bloch), the rise of total war and accurate death tolls (Engels);
and combined alliances, war outcomes and their revolutionary repercussions (Durnovo).
Though these three men did their utmost to warn anyone who would listen,
they were unable to persuade the General Staff of any of the Great Powers to
prepare appropriately for the war to come. Amongst the vastness of opinion and
conjecture, this proves how difficult it is to believe any single tale. No
single ‘scientific’ analysis ever got every detail correct. Though Bloch
correctly saw the devastation and horror of the coming conflict, who was going
to believe the thoughtful writings of a Polish railway financier pontificating
in his spare time?
Conclusion
From these examples in disparate time periods I hope it is evident that
the vast majority of predictions of the future are unable to envision a real
and ‘deep’ version of times to come. For me this is a lesson we could well
learn. When reading the works of respected and eminent economists,
demographers, social scientists and biologists we should take care to note the
extreme rarity of a fully correct forecast for human ‘progress’. This is not to
say that there is no value in these works. Doubtless many of these authors will
look back regretfully on the way their warnings were ignored. Perhaps they will
even do so with a sense of schadenfreude.
The difficulty for planners and decision makers, as well as individuals, is
that there are so many threats and warnings – how can anyone possibly know
which aspects will be accurate, and which are facile.
Humans have been obsessing about the ‘apocalypse’ since the dawn of the
species. Every time there is a bright light in the sky, or an unexplained red
sunset there was always a shaman/witchdoctor/priest/scientist/story-teller
there to explain it could well be the end of us all. As long as there is a
human imagination, there will be humans envisioning their own doom. It just seems
to be an underlying fact of our brief existence. The real interest from such predictions,
be they scientific or flights of fancy, is what they tell us about the way
people are thinking. They delve deep into the human psyche to explain the
issues that matter most to society at the time of their inception. This is what
makes them – and ‘us’ (humans) – so fascinating.
Patrick Longson (June 2012)
Edited by Jamie Perry.
