Though til this day, there is no definitive
definition of what science-fiction is and when did it first begin, we can trace
its roots back to the stories and myths of early civilizations such as the
Greeks, Mesopotamian, and even Japanese. These stories, albeit heavily doused
in fantasy and exaggeration, it discuss narratives that later on would very
much be identified with the modern science fictions.
This includes :
Epic of Gilgamesh
Lucian’s satire True history : in which ,
one of the first examples of space travel, aliens (spiders) and interplanetary
warfare (between the moon and the sun)
Princess Kaguya in the tale of the wood
cutter is a princess from the moon , sent to earth to escaped from celestial
conflict and is taken back to the Moon by her real family at the end.
New types of proto-science fiction began to
shape under the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, - a period where knowledge
of astronomy, science, and other forms of reason experienced a major push,
forming new ideas and challenging the existing conditions of society and
humankind. Galileo and Copernicus re-positioned human’s place in the universe,
and the advent of the telescopes allows for astronomers to better map out the
stars, including the surface of the Moon, which became more and more of a
common destination for fictions instead of some far of land across the ocean.
Johannus Kepler, who developed the basic laws of planetary motion, uses them in Somnium (1634) to imagine living on the Moon. Francis Godwin describes a utopia on the Moon in The Man in the Moone (1638). Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1659) and Sun (1687) include marvelous inventions such as solar energy converters and talking machines.
Along with it, new thinking in societal
order inspired the humanist Thomas More to create Utopia, in which he describes
a society based on the principals of equality, shared ownership and
productivity, and by doing so , chastised the failure of European society at
the time (poverty by land enclosure by landowners due to the rising demand for
wool).
And from then on , Utopia became a plot
that is very much identified with the the genre of science fiction
During the the 17th century,
technology was also developing rapidly
to a point that cumulate into the Industrial revolution, and so ,
fictions such as Francis Bacon, father
of scientific methods, ‘s New Atlantis and Johnathan Swift’s Gulliver’s
travel, revolves around the development of
what was at the time , fantastical invention and examine how it would
effect of human society ( the later of
which taken a more pessimistic approach in the form of super weapon that the
powerful use to oppress the weak. “
Under industrial capitalism, vast numbers of people
were soon spending their lives working for a handful of capitalists who owned
everything the people produced, including the factories, coal mines, railroads,
and ships. Not only were the workers thus alienated from the means of
production and their own products, but they also found themselves increasingly
alienated from nature, from each other, and from their own essence as creative
beings. Human creativity now appeared in the form of monstrous alien forces
exerting ever-growing power over the people who had created them
This led to Mary Shelly’s
Frankenstein, considered the first true modern science fiction by many ,
followed by the consequential works of Jules Verne and H.G Wells , each examples of the multiple routes in which
the author can build the fiction.
This were also the earliest the
appearances of mechanical design and description being a major part to the sci
fi narrative, such as the Nautilus and the Tripods from War of the worlds, as
well as other examples such as the Steam man of the Prairies.
Early 20th century
marked a new period in science-fiction development, particularly in the US,
where the notable stages were, pulp sci fi, hard sci-fi , the New Wave and
soft-sci fi.
Pulp scifi gathered a reputation of
being shallow in narrative, adolescent in visual (often opting for a plot
involving skimpy-clad vixens taken away by alien monsters), and often have
little to none relation to the basis principle of science, and more akin to out
blown fantasy, however, the visual aspect of these magazine, (in the forms of
covers,), with its colour and shiny metallic space suits and influenced by the
optimistic, clean and bright vision of the future during the Atomic Age and the
Space race, can now be considered classics
Hard sci fi then can view as a
direct opposition to pulp scifi, with champions like John Campell, Iassac
Isamov, and Rober A Heinlein, who ushered in what was know as the Golden Age of
Science fiction. Hard sci fi authors celebrate the development progress of tech
and science, and more often than not, built on a solid base of scientific
principles.
In between , there is soft scifi,
where works display a level of balanced between the scientific facts and the
fantastical, this could includes, the prominent space operas saga, Star Wars
and Star Treks
The New Wave was a period between
between the 60s and 70s when writers of the trend deals with heavy
experimentation of genre’s narrative, wanting to move away from the traditional
direction of science fiction storylines, with a greater emphasis on style and a
more high brown form of writing, as well as dealing with more controversial and
contemporary societal and political subjects such as , sexuality, environmental , overpopulation, distrust of
government and coporations, and dystopia,. Scifi films in this period also
reflect this shift in the genre, albeit perhaps not over -extreme example being
2001 Space Odyssey
By the 80s , with the the rise of
computing technologies and the beginning of the digital Age, writers felt the
urge to voice their ideas on its impact of the cultural and political
landscape, which would give birth the the Cyberpunk subgenre first coined by
William Gibson in Neuronmancer, in which , the vision of the future is often
almost dystopia and apocalyptic in description. This would be reinforce by
works like Ghost in the shell, Blade runner, all of which proved to be a
influential and commercially successful. Cyber punk remains til this day to be
one of the core pillar of influence for 21st century sci-fi.
At this point, through learning of
the history of the sci-fi , we can
observed how its narrative has been shaped by the society of which is was created,
thereby influenced its visual development, this an idea, that will be
repeatedly observed when discussing the particular artist below, as well as
present a question on the prospect of scifi visual development going forward.
“If we look at movies of the
past , the future appeared further away. In the 21st century, the future accelerates
toward us at a dizzying pace”
“The world created by
science fiction cinema –whether full blown fantasy or fiction a few degrees
separated from the facts of the real world – have always been more about the
present than the future they purport to predict.
Matt
Hanson – Building Sci-fi Moviescape
Example: s A world with 2 realms ?
reality and digital, virtually operated robots ? virtual relationships ?
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