Activity 3

While not falling cleanly into science fiction and perhaps more into fantasy, Kino's Journey still has elements of speculative fiction, especially in this episode, where Kino, a traveler with a talking motorcycle, has a world with elements of our world like nations with laws and people, but the cognitive estrangement comes from how these nations have unusual laws. In this case, the law allows for legal murder in the country, yet ironically the country is one of the most peaceful ones Kino visits. This is because like in Parable of the Sower, the people follow an unwritten law of the land that is similar to some of Earthseed's philosophy in that they follow what's best for group adaptability. Namely, it is legal to murder, but they only do so against people who pose a clear and present danger to the village. This is similar to Lauren's perspective on page 233 where she cautiously accepts the children saying, "If she isn't a thief, doesn't have dangerous habits, we may be able to carry them."

Black Mirror Episode 2 - "15 Million Merits"

"15 Million Merits" explores a dystopian speculative fiction that involves a novum where adverts and capitalism is taken to the extreme, and people's lives consist of them pedaling to gain merits and having to use those merits to skip advertisements that are a lot more intrusive in people's thoughts. In this way it mirrors the idea of neoliberalism where everything in the characters' lives are governed by this capitalistic system governed around merits. One can even argue that fame is also a currency that is present in the episode, and that Abi in chasing personal success in a talent show ultimately falls victim to the coercion by the people in power under the world's system, who convince her that she is untalented and has to do pornography instead. Then, when the main character Bing tries to appear on the show as a rebellion to call out the system he lives in, the main plot point of the show is that he later becomes famous for doing so and his points only exist superficially as a point of drama and a currency mine for attention rather than any actual substantial rebellion. In other words, everything is governed by the two capitalistic currencies of fame and money in the world of "15 million merits"

Game Portrayals

LISA: The Painful

LISA: The painful is speculative fiction that involves a world similar to Parable of the Sower with its desert-like setting, maniacs similar to pyro-maniacs, and the theme of drug abuse (there is a drug called Joy that is prevalent in the world). Unlike Parable of the Sower, the world also features the cognitive estrangement of a world with only men and uses this to make the viewer empathize with masculine loneliness and depression. The odd thing about LISA is that there is also humor and oddities present in the maniacs that the protagonist encounters which adds an overall different mood than the one in Parable of the Sower.

The Sims 4

This source is unique since it does not involve the original game but rather a story created with original text and screenshots of the game. In other words, the Sims is more of a sandbox game following the life of player-made characters and the source Thymeless Challenges has used the source in an unintended fashion to create a story speculating about a future involving clones that were protected from being damaged by having their pain reflected on the original.

The actual story itself explores something similar to hyper-empathy in Parable of the Sower where if you hurt the clone you hurt yourself. Yet, the interesting part of the story is that the clone, who was previously commodified and objectified decides to take matters in its own hands and harm itself so the original is forced to recognize its autonomy. This is similar to Lauren's response to page 229 where she discourages hyper-empathy in that even if people could experience others' pain that would not necessarily lead to a better world as in this case people used hyper-empathy as revenge by hurting themselves to hurt others.

Music Portrayals

Rap Ferreira

"Leaving Hell"

Rap Ferreira's music video offers somewhat of a speculative fiction narrative not so much through the lyrics but through the visuals. The theme of the visuals mirror that of Parable of the Sower through the same wandering in an aggressive landscape and the later afrofuturistic visuals involving RAP Ferreira using a musical spaceship to escape from his "hell" which very much mirrors the ideas of reverse colonization or separatism where people which to free themselves of the institutional racism and cultural oppression they face. In other words, music is his metaphorical escape from this but also his literal escape (the trombone spaceship) from the planet in the music video.

John Lennon

"Imagine"

John Lennon's imagine is interesting since like Earthseed it features inspiration from multiple philosophies including anti-religious and anti-possession philosophies, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's teachings who heavily influenced the Beatles and is similar to Hindi thought, and the historical perspective of many protestors of the Vietnam War. Lennon presents a utopia which is interesting since as we learned in the lecture utopias have often been presented by mainly European white colonizers. While John Lennon is not exactly a colonizer, he still creates a binary opposition which implies his perspective that religion and possessions are corrupting is the only correct perspective.

Other

The Metaverse and Walmart

Mark Zuckerberg's Metaverse is arguably a form of speculative fiction. He uses technology to build a new world that is a logical extension of our own but with some cognitive estrangement since we are not used to a virtual reality world. The only difference is rather than telling the story to promote a new world or comment on our existing world, Mark Zuckerberg is presenting The Metaverse in order to build this new world if people support his project. Interestingly, since people didn't support the fiction as well as he'd hoped, they also didn't support the project itself.

Mr Beast Squid Game

Squid game is a speculative fiction where the novum involves a hunger games scenario where people have to play playground games to win money. The purpose of Squid Game is to highlight the class differences and the corrupting nature of money that leads people to play a game involving life and death. However, Mr. Beast's video poses a question that involves the applicability of sf in general. Just like how people tried to apply Earthseed's principles in real life, so too does Mr. Beast try to recreate squid game. However, it is questionable whether the themes and social commentary gained from the original translates to the recreation. In fact, one can argue that by creating this video Mr. Beast is engaging in the very money-oriented society that the original Squid Game criticizes.

Bibliography

See the attached youtube videos for their source.