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• W4295867029 abstract "Certain Assistances:The Utilities of Speculative Fiction in Shaping the Future Donald L. Lawler (bio) Keywords Science fiction, speculative fiction This is an essay in the traditional sense. That is to say, it is a speculative examination of the potential good effects upon the human imagination of sciencefiction and fantasy literature.1 The conclusions reached as a result of questioning the utilities of science fiction in shaping the future should be regarded more as trials of argument than as my own private expectations. They constitute a kind of speculative believing. I have placed my emphasis upon the utility of speculative literature (used here to refer to that type of both science fiction and fantasy which engages new, future or alternate worlds) as productive of good, because I do not see any long-term evils arising from such literature—although I recognize that there are colleagues and critics who do. To the degree that science fiction has been sexist, chauvinistic or fixated on coercive power, it has reflected the prejudices and limitations of its times and its authors—to that extent, it has violated its own nature and compromised its own ideals as an imaginary extension of scientific thinking. At worst, those poorer and weaker examples of the genre have the same sort of self-destructive quality as all other [End Page 11] bad books, and they are quickly and mercifully forgotten except by critics with perversely long memories. The better works which have or seem to have lasting value as literature also seem to have potentially important related values as well. This paper attempts to account for some of those related values and to speculate upon the impact they are having now—and will probably continue to have in the future—upon the evolution of human consciousness. My subject is the role of science fiction in shaping the future (with side glances at fantasy), and I will begin with a quibble over terms. It is an important quibble, however, and it has to do with the idea of whether we may speak rationally of shaping the future at all. Indeed, in a sense, everything that follows is an attempt at answering the implications of that question. We all know, although sometimes we must remind ourselves, that we cannot speak literally of shaping the future. The future exists only potentially. It is true that present choices help give shape, substance and dimension to the future as it actually unfolds; but our choices, much less our hopes and fears, are themselves insufficient causes of actual futures. Chance, irrational actions and events, destiny, and what we may broadly term forces of history, all converge in helping to shape our tomorrows. In The Perils of Futurist Thinking, Joseph Sittler cautions wisely against taking the term shaping literally.2 The expression has value as a figure of speech, but it is not the basis for a method upon which any valid reasoning may proceed. This does not leave us impotent, however. What we shape, of course, if we shape anything at all, is our ideas, our own thinking about and attitudes toward the future, while we remain rooted in today. Such thinking about the future is a kind of protest against being time-bound in the present, and it expresses humanity's determination to control its environment and direct its own destiny. In this essay, I will try to keep the implications of this truism before the reader without tediously reiterating them. Ways of thinking have been translated historically into future realities. But since the future is a problematic unknowable, we cannot foretell without prophetic gifts which thoughts will become tomorrow's hardware, values or assumptions. We can try to influence this process, of course, and that is the basis of our theories of educating youth. Isaac Asimov pointed out another truism about science fiction. In his view, the one thing all sciencefiction stories reveal is that the future will be different from the present. Although this is really a self-evident proposition it is one that bears repeating because most people do not believe it or do not want to believe it. Any psychologist will tell us why this is so. It is, unless..." @default.
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• W4295867029 date "2021-01-01" @default.
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• W4295867029 title "Certain Assistances: The Utilities of Speculative Fiction in Shaping the Future" @default.
• W4295867029 doi "https://doi.org/10.1353/mos.2021.0018" @default.
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