Science Fiction seminars

I might be a bit late with this one, which has a lot to do with the fact that Google really hasn’t been nice to me for the past weeks and so I haven’t been able to upload anything to the blog. Now everything seems to be fine, since you are reading this. I found the seminars with Michael Godhe to be really interesting. I especially liked the idea of science fiction as a prophecy – that in science fiction you often find things which years later becomes reality. The examples are many, but of course we have Jules Verne’s submarine. When it comes to Jules Verne Godhe points out that since he wrote about so many inventions he was bound to right about something. Other examples of inventions that where discussed was cellphones and nuclear warfare. I personally believe that science fiction is not meant to be used in a too serious agenda. In the seminars we discussed a group called Sigma – which is a team a science fiction writes whom comes up with new ideas on for example terrorist attacks. They are being paid to do so by the American government. This is from my point of view to take it a bit too serious – I must say that it’s a funny idea, but not a very practical one. Again Godhe’s words on Jules Verne make a really good example – they’re bound to be right at some point. The question is of course how you judge something that is made up being more likely to happen then something else?

We also discussed what science fiction is and one of the students made a brilliant definition, but unfortunately I don’t remember it. Anyhow Godhe claims that the first science fiction novel was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). Since then it has evolved but the basis is the same – it is about taking a problem from the present time and put it into a different context and environment – such as the future or the past. This got me thinking. Since I am a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki I asked myself if that is science fiction or not? I know that his most famous work Spirited Away can not be claimed to be science fiction, but many of his other work has a lot of those inputs. Take for example Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind which has it story around a world where most of the earth was destroyed during a period called Seven Days of Fire and where most of the ecosystem has been polluted and is toxic. Where the human settlements are scattered and divided by a toxic sea. Remember that this film was released in 1984 and even if global warming might have been known I still think that the film skillfully proves its point. If it hadn’t been for the science fiction seminar I probably wouldn’t have thought about it like that. I had of course reflected on it, but still. If you haven’t seen that movie – or any other Miyazaki movie for that matter – I would really recommend it. Godhe did say that the line between fantasy and science fiction is getting thin and he claims that the only thing that differs them is rationality – which you have in science fiction.

As a final point I recommend you to read – yet again – one of my friends take on the same seminar since it has a deeper meaning then my input.