I read a lot of Harlan Ellison (worked on The Outer Limits, 80’s Twilight Zone, Babylon 5), and I was wondering what people thought of this quote from him:
[S]cience fiction is the only 100% hopeful fiction. That is to say, inherent in the form is, “There will be a tomorrow”. If you read a science fiction story, it says, “This will happen tomorrow”. Now that’s very positive, that’s very pragmatic, “We’ll be here tomorrow. We may be unhappy, we may be all living like maggots, but we’ll be here.” So that means it’s 100% positive.
Ellison has even said that his short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is optimistic, because in the climax, there is still room for self-sacrifice and defiance to authority.
I guess it comes down to whether you think a bleak future is better than no future at all.
Shameless plug for my work if you like Ellison or want to learn more: https://ndhfilms.com/ellison
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I can kind of see where he’s coming from, but only if you’re weighing it against an assumed future where we’re going to die out tomorrow. That’s a low bar for hopeful, and certainly not “100% positive”.
I have a hard time seeing I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or even worse, All Tomorrows, as “hopeful”. I’d honestly rather just die.
Plus, not all sci-fi involves humans, and not all sci-fi is in the future. There’s scifi with no humans in it, there’s scifi set in the past or in an alternate present, and none of those qualify as “hopeful by default” in the way he defines it any more than any other fiction does.
Fuck hopeless stories. All my homies believe in the indomitable human spirit
I had no idea emo ducks admired humanity like that. Imma try and be better for y’all, bring that good bread. Wait, is bread bad for you now? I think I saw that in my feed while doom scrolling.
For real! This is why a lot of modern TV is hard for me to watch. So many stories about mostly terrible people being awful without any humanity. Most people are good.
