Future Worlds: Role of Science Fiction

I am currently buried under work – though in June i will be publishing plenty of articles – here is a short excerpt from ‘Hegel and the Impossibility of the Future in Science Fiction Cinema’. Todd McGowan begins his paper by asserting:

Of all film genres, science fiction is the one most explicitly linked to the issuing of moral imperatives. This aspect of science fiction is tied to the futural mode in which it occurs. The science fiction genre, as J. P. Telotte claims, allows us ‘to speculate, in the precise sense of the fantastic, on what might or might not be, now or in the future’ (Telotte 2001, 141). By showing us a possible future – often either utopian or dystopian – science fiction films provide an image for us to realise or to fight against. Unlike genres focused on the present (such as melodrama) or genres focused on the past (such as the Western), science fiction, because it is futural, involves a clear break from what is and a plea for what ought to be. Science fiction directs us toward a better future, even if negatively, through the depiction of a nightmarish one.

The rest of this article can be found here.

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