"1950s television psychic Criswell said, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives." Why are we obsessed with the future? The Other comes to us from the future, but the arrival is always surprising. To prepare for the Other: this is the mission of ethics. Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction fuses contemporary philosophy from Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, and others with cultural texts preoccupied with the future arrival of an Other: science fiction. We peer though the lens of science fiction with the help of H. G. Wells, Walt Disney, Star Trek, David Cronenberg, Philip K. Dick, and many others, in search of a theory of ethics that leaves open the possibility of the Other and encourages empathy, which is necessary for survival in our multicultural world. Future Present is written for both scholars in philosophy and nonacademics with an interest in science fiction and popular culture. Michael Pinsky teaches writing, twentieth-century literatures, and popular culture at the University of South Florida."
ISBN 0-8386-3924-0. Retail price is $43.50. Currently available from Amazon.com.
"Pinsky's Future Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction is a profound and provocative examination of how sci-fi literature and movies actually address deep questions of ethical behavior. The book begins at the bottom, literally, with Edward D. Wood Jr.'s anti-classic Plan 9 from Outer Space and works its way upward through the somewhat more coherent offerings of H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Philip K. Dick, David Cronenberg, the Star Trek adventures, and Japan's anime masters. Throughout the text, Pinsky dissects the moral, philosophical, psychological, and (where applicable) theological implications that can be found in these tales of space travel, time travel, monster mashing, and other excursions into the imagination.
While perhaps the focus of Future Present is reading a bit more into these works than their creators might have actually intended, it is nonetheless an original and challenging new look at a beloved genre. Fans of sci-fi and philosophical discussions will find common ground and common joy here."
When I began reading science fiction as a bored 12-year-old, I certainly never thought I was embarking upon a philosophical study of ethics. Michael Pinsky, however, points out in his new book that sf presents ethics in ways that are not as possible in other literatures. Because sf deals so much with the Other, and with particular others, it is able to embody ethics by creating a future and displaying the repercussions of the developments that led there. As Pinsky writes:
Science anticipates the future. Science fiction writes the future. And according to science fiction, our future apparently consists of both external encounters—technological marvels (and horrors), aliens, and outer space—and internal tensions—the mysteries of the human mind and body. (13)
Pinsky begins his exploration with a clear layout of the plan of his work, giving his readers a good roadmap and pointing out that his book does not necessarily need to be read from cover to cover to be useful. “Part I: Space and Time” is a review of the philosophical bases upon which he develops his own work. Here he reviews Heidegger and Derrida without overwhelming readers who might not be completely familiar with how their ideas are connected to our understandings of space and time.
First, he examines the concept of space, as described by Heidegger, and how it relates to our understandings of being and self. We recognize ourselves as beings, and, as we grow, we begin to differentiate that which is the self from that which is “outside” the self—that which is alien, foreign. In describing that-which-is-not-self, Pinsky makes an important delineation between the Other and the other:
the Other is anticipatory system constructed by the subject and based on a range of potentialities. The Other is nonlocal, nonspatial, although it does exist in spacetime relative to the speaking subject. The other is localized, spatial manifestation of alterity in the present. This other is confronted in the fact-to-face encounter. (35-36)
In our efforts at assimilation, the human being (or Dasein) seeks to assimilate the other in order to understand it, and to make the other less Other than it had been. This can only be done over time, a fourth dimension that allows for movement closer to the other. Time is also a type of location, for we can ask where we are in time. We divide experience into past, present, and future, and we seek to control the future by predicting it—telling stories of the future as if they were the past. We tell ourselves science fiction stores in order to determine how we might react to an alien, to technological progress, to our own lives in the future.
“Part II: The Future in Focus” looks at some particular works of sf and how they support Pinsky’s assertion that these story-tellings are a presentation of ethics. As many do, Pinsky begins with Wells. He touches on three of the major novels and how each presents the subject, law, and the Other. Both The Time Machine (1895) and its unfinished predecessor The Chronic Argonauts (1888) dramatize how a subject is transformed by escaping the so-called natural progression of time. The villain of The Chronic Argonauts reappears as Griffin in The Invisible Man (1897), although now he has subverted law by becoming invisible, rather than by slipping through time. The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) presents the arbitrariness of law, showing how it is a product of thinking subjects, and not something eternal. As Pinsky considers The War of the Worlds (1898), he notes that the Martians of the future, although presented as Others, are really just other humans—a vision of our potential future reliance on technology. The true others here are, in fact, the germs.
The question of future progression of time is examined not only in terms of Wells’s fiction, but also through the lenses provided by the architecture and attractions of Disney’s Tomorrowland and EPCOT Center. Tomorrowland was originally intended to be a showcase for future innovations, a vision of life in the future of our dreams. The “Rocket to the Moon” ride had to be revamped to become “Rocket to Mars” once Apollo 11 brought the moon within reach. Tomorrowland showcases the problem of how quickly technology becomes outdated, and eventually, Tomorrowland was redesigned to showcase the 1950’s view of the future. In contrast, EPCOT Center showcases possibilities and marvels that are not as precisely tied down as those of Tomorrowland. For instance, Spaceship Earth focuses on developments in the technology of communication, and it finishes in an area where corporate partners can display their latest high-tech gadgetry, keeping products up to date without having to revamp their entire construction. These two examples, Tomorrowland and EPCOT, serve to demonstrate the differences between trying to control the future and trying to predict it while still allowing for the operations of chance.
Pinsky approaches the question of aliens, of others and Otherness, through first examining the Don A. Stuart (a.k.a. John W. Campbell, Jr.) novella “Who Goes There?” (1938) and then its 1951 movie adaptation The Thing from Another World. Here Pinsky argues that we cannot always recognize the Other, since when it takes particular form, it has become enough like the viewing subject to be indistinguishable. Next Pinsky moves to a 1953 issue of EC Comic’s Weird Fantasy, focusing particularly on a tale in which the other really is one of us, but one who has come back from further down the timeline. Finally, aliens are considered through the screen of Star Trek, particularly the Next Generation’s encounter with the Borg. Worth noting here is the fact that the Borg became increasingly less alien the more often they appear in the series, infected perhaps by subjectivity after their capture of Picard/Locutus.
Pinsky then turns to a discussion of the cyborg as a hybrid entity able to bridge Dasein and Other. The early part of this section looks at two examples of anime: Akira (1989) and Ghost in the Shell (1995). Both of these films, on some level, examine the interaction of humans and technology, with Ghost specifically looking at cyborgs and artificial intelligences. The discussion next moves to a rapid-fire consideration of David Cronenberg’s films. The result is something of a rush, but it serves the purpose of outlining how incredibly different characters and situations serve very similar purposes in showing how the subject, the other, and the Other interact.
The penultimate chapter uses the stories of Philip K. Dick as particular embodiments of the types of ethical presentation that sf can engender. VALIS (1981) and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) provide specific examples. The discussion of VALIS is particularly intriguing, as the lines of subjectivity begin to blur as we realize that different characters are in fact sides of a single person, and as we wonder which parts of the text are discussing the character Phil as opposed to the author Philip K. Dick. Androids only seems to present a clearer sense of subject, but that too blurs as we question who is human. Pinsky’s final chapter returns to the structure laid out in his introduction. It looks back at the roadmap without being repetitious or redundant.
Pinsky’s style does not overburden itself with jargon, even when dealing with philosophical subjects. The book would be useful for scholars in a number of subfields of sf, particularly of the authors and films it cover as well as of the broader subjects of cyborg and alien fictions.