On Wed, 30 Apr 1997, Anastasia McPherson wrote:
> Hi Ladies (I assume)
No, you can't assume that!
> And here is a meaty question. I have always loved the
> utopia/dystopia dyad but find myself leaning toward creating dystopic
> futures by extrapolation and see this tendency in the other literature of
> the day. How much of this do you think is due to the millenialism abroad
> n the culture today and how much due to a real weighing of the facts of
> our near future?
>
If there is "millennialism [UK spelling!] abroad in the culture today",
then I think this is to a large extent abroad in _American_ culture -- or,
more accurately, _US_ culture. I see very little evidence of it in Europe,
and, of course, elsewwhere in the world (the Muslim world, India, China)
it is meaningless -- they don't use the same calendar! There must be more
people in the USA who see the millennium as being of historic
significance, because of a strange misreading of the Bible, than in the
rest of the world put together.
But why should the millennium, in a strictly Christian sense, tend
toewards dystopic thoughts? Many millennialists (I can never remember
whether they are the pre-millennialists or the post-millennialists) see
the millennium as ushering in a wonderful utopic time.
To take another tack, science fiction writers have _usually_ tended to the
dystopic, Makes for better fiction, arguably. And (to agree with your
suggestion) it is a bit difficult to extrapolate a utopia of any kind from
current trends. Do you remember the prologue of David Brin's _Earth_,
where he says "This is the best 2050 I can possibly imagine: scary, isn't
it?", or words to that effect. Admittedly, Kim Stanley Robinson
extrapolated a utopic California of 2075 or so, in _Pacific Edge_: but
somehow his dystopic 21st century Orange Counties, in _The Wild Shore_ and
_Gold Coast_, seemed that much more plausible...
Edward James
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Professor Edward James, Dept of History, Faculty of Letters and Social
Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, READING RG6 6AA, UK
http://www.rdg.ac.uk/~lhsjamse/home.htm
Editor: FOUNDATION: THE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION
Joint Editor: EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE
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