Science fiction, at its core, reflects contemporary anxieties and cultural fears, providing space for critical reflection of the challenges facing humanity.
Since the genre’s heyday in the 1960s, futuristic fiction has presented paranoia as prophecy, subliminally conveying contempt of present-day issues through a digestible lens. The impossibility of many such works, counterintuitively, grants them space to raise questions society struggles to address otherwise.
All science fiction, whether pertaining to instantaneous travel or intergalactic settlements, requires suspension of disbelief about the fantastic to point audiences toward grounded reflection. Classics of the genre deftly navigate this balance, with authors like George Orwell, Harlon Ellison, or H.G. Wells hiding their distaste for contemporary occurrences behind compelling narratives. While these luminaries primarily questioned government overreach and censorship, modern works have a plethora of anxieties to tackle, begging the question: what is of foremost concern for modern audiences?
Past is prologue
A classic of the genre, Orwell’s 1984, urges readers to recognize the threat of totalitarianism through its depiction of “Big Brother.” A dystopia where all erroneous actions by citizens are monitored and corrected, the text exaggerates concerns of government encroachments on privacy through concepts like the “Thought Police” and two-way screens. Its publication date, 1949, points to the anxieties facing that era: penned shortly after World War II, it reflects the postwar anxieties of surveillance states bearing the characteristics of Stalinism and Fascism. At the time, total control was seen a likely progression of security, with fears of efforts to curb harmful ideologies leading to a loss of human rights.
Another iconic work is Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Spanning hundreds of years, the books posit the invention of “Psychohistory,” a mathematical science predicting mass behavior. Despite appearing more positive in tone than Orwell’s text, it still reflects the era’s fear of collapse. Leading into the Cold War, people feared further conflict and the trilogy delves deeply into contingency plans, mitigation efforts, and attempts to prevent an inevitable collapse. All such plans are for naught, however, as it depicts ruin as unavoidable, with instability always moments away.
Proceeding into the height of the Cold War, waning Western alliances, and the fracturing of the Soviet Union, authors—and audiences—shifted their fears to the perils of new technology. In “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” Ellison imagines a doom that is neither imperial, nor political, but rather technological. In it, sentient supercomputer AM wipes out humanity, keeping just five individuals alive to torture in revenge against its creators.
Another example of the growing concerns with technology appeared in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Blurring the lines between technology and mankind, it highlighted the paranoia of the late 1960s, depicting androids indistinguishable from humans. Evoking fears of the ‘other,’ it reflected the paranoia of McCarthyism, and growing distrust in the government amidst the Vietnam War. An increasingly disenchanted public grew distant from the establishment and questioned its motives. The perception of the enemy within was perfectly captured in the world of Rick Deckard in the novel.
United in fear
These four seminal works, as well as countless others, suggest the previous century’s most significant concern was technology as an extension of authoritarian control. It remains relevant today, as fears mount over artificial intelligence replacing humans across a wide swathe of jobs. Each of these texts further depict an entity or establishment utilizing modernity to exert ever-greater control over populations, usually at the behest of an often unseen threat. As the conflict between the public and authority reaches a tipping point, anxieties shift to a societal collapse that severs individual freedoms, morality, or civilization itself.
The trend persists in the 21st century. A notable example is 2023’s Godzilla: Minus One, the newest iteration of the franchise that emerged in the aftermath of the U.S. dropping nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945. Initially conceived as a means of processing national trauma, it projected the atrocities inflicted on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to a fictitious riposte from nature.
The latest movie explores the cynical possibility of total undoing, with Godzilla serving as a hulking reminder of the underbelly of human intervention. A creature of epic proportions, Godzilla represents an unstoppable force brought about by man’s hubris. The story echoes concerns raised by men throughout recorded history while raising new ones in a progression of fear itself.
The best science fiction, whether books or movies, has always reflected the era from which it emerges, the public’s rational, logical concerns embedded within absurd flights of fancy. With society now entering a new age of discrimination, as evidenced by growing anti-immigration rhetoric and a widening divide between the haves and have nots, it is likely the fiction produced today would reflect the same anxieties. To disregard such works as mere entertainment is to rob them of their truest essence.
Sometimes, one must step light years away from reality to effectively examine the maladies currently sweeping the global collective.