Art Won't Save Us, But Construction Workers Might.

Fantastic Four: First Steps, Project Hail Mary, and Abundance: the new thesis of Utopian Science Fiction.

It’s not looking good out there, folks. I could rehash it for you, but since you’re currently reading a blog post online, I imagine you know.

I’m not sure it’s our fault, though. I think that we’re building the world that we were shown. Now stay with me:

We Used to Write Utopian Science Fiction

It was 2018 and I’d decided (who knows why 21 year old boys do anything) to read 2001: A Space Odyssey--at that point, the oldest Science Fiction novel I’d ever read. Some monkey had just gone (forgive me) ape-shit, and now some guy named Dave was in a commercial space craft on his way up to the moon. Dave was belted into the shuttle like it was Delta flight 1234, and looking to kill time. So, what did he do? He grabbed his tablet, turned it on, and started reading the newspaper.

I cocked my head back in that way that gives me an unfortunate double-chin. I flipped back to the copyright page. 1968. Those cigarette-smoking morons hadn’t even been to the moon yet. Why the hell was Dave reading the newspaper on an iPad? I turned to my friend to show him what I’d just read, and in so doing I took a good look at what he had on his wrist for maybe the first time. That wasn’t just the lamest watch in the world, that was a Star Trek wrist communicator.

Had Steve Jobs (best known for his contributions to the cinematic tour-de-force Pixar’s Cars) gotten all of his ideas from 1960s science fiction?

I mean, probably. The guy pretty famously attached his marketing know-how and aesthetic taste to other guy’s ideas. It’s not a far cry to think that the science fiction of the 1960s directly influenced the technological boom of the 1980s-2010s.

But I sort of think that’s how it’s supposed to go, no? Fiction is where we work it out ahead of time, and inspire the next generation to make it happen. If not that, what’s the point of speculative fiction? Surely it isn’t just there to create wiki articles to keep us busy at our excel-centric jobs, right? Like, the genres built around societal structures are surely there to teach us about what society is and what we want it to become, right? I mean, I agree with me. I’m sure you do too. But, I think both creatives and consumers have lost track of this in recent years.

On the creative front, I see two diverging paths in speculative fiction:

A.) The Woldbuilders

and

B.) The Jeremiads

Worldbuilders are the dominant force within the genre confines of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the moment. Looking at their work, one can see that these authors all read (more likely watched) The Lord of the Rings and/or Dune and are now thrilled at the prospect of constructing their own “Secondary-World” governed by embedded video-game-progression-tree logic and a run of the mill hero’s journey adjacent plot. I, too, eat these up. In fact I’m writing one. But these honey traps of entertainment tend to miss much of what has made Tolkien and Herbert’s work stand the test of time. They don’t have much to say beyond the broadly accepted “everyone has the same merit and ought to be treated as such.” This theme allows the author to wave at social change they want to see in our world, often having to do with an increase in equality for a fictionally-marginalized group by a few kind hearted tweaks to the existing world order. This is by no means the point of the story, but it does make us feel nice while we spend time in that intricately structured secondary world that is the real point of modern Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The Jeremiads are no less one note, but they do get to win literary prizes that non-nerds care about, so that’s neat! The function of the Jeremiad, in this sense, is to call to attention a singular failing of our world, by constructing a society within which that singular failing is the bedrock upon which that whole world is built. If the worldbuilders follow Tolkien and Herbert, the Jeremiads follow Orwell and Huxley. Again, like the worldbuilders, I like many of these Jeremiads. I think the Handmaid’s Tale is a potent reference point for understanding the dangers of religious extremism in the United States. But where Orwell provided a solution to his world’s woes, the modern Jeremiad scribe more often than not leaves the solving of the problem to you, the reader. We are made aware of the problem, and then… nothing. The plot is compelling, often sad. But the social critique never becomes social construction.

Do you see how neither of these provide actionable solutions? Neither of these, ultimately, do anything other than excite your senses and emotions for the duration of your time within their pages?

I’m not the first person to point out just how dystopian Science Fiction has become. But I don’t think we are giving enough credit to the role that science fiction plays in creating the future ahead of it. We are caught in a negative feedback loop where tech executives are taking cues from movies like Her and then creatives are using how scary of a situation that is to create new, scarier futures in their fiction that the tech industry will then make a reality.

But this isn’t just the creatives or even the tech billionaire’s faults. It’s our fault too.

Late stage capitalism (yes, it does indeed always come back to this) has created a world in which consumption is the foundation upon which morality is built. It’s ubiquitous, to consume or not consume is at the heart of the arguments about the climate crisis (to amazon or not to amazon), the health crisis (is ozempic cheating), the education crisis (the kids are watching tik toks instead of reading books), and for this essay’s purpose: the “media-literacy” crisis.

In 1990 author and attorney Mike Godwin introduced “Godwin’s Law” to the internet, the idea that the longer an argument continued in an online forum the greater the odds of a comparison to Hitler became. As you know, things have gotten way more chill on the internet since 1990. Pretty conflict-free place by all accounts. At this point one of the quickest ways to bring about Godwin’s Law is to disagree with someone about a movie, or a book, or whatever other consumable distraction you want to talk about. You know, important things. I don’t think I need to outline for you how these conversations and arguments go, but I do want to touch on one pet-peeve of mine: the phrase “All Art Is Political.” This phrase is not a pet-peeve because I disagree with it, in fact I agree with the sentiment. No, it is a pet-peeve because it is an action killing cliche. It shifts the politics of art from the act of creating it--or even acting on its message--squarely onto the consuming of the art. The political act is simply the consumption. No need to do anything in the tangible world, you read Giovanni’s Room. (Great book, btw.)

This is pretty dour so far. I’m sorry, I know I baited you with an MCU cover photo. Let’s talk about that:

We Are Once Again Writing Utopian Science Fiction

If I opened this essay with an anecdote about my reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, let me get to the fucking point of the essay with an anecdote about my watching Fantastic Four: First Steps.

It was 2025 and I’d decided (who knows why 28 year old boys do anything) to watch Fantastic Four: First Steps--at that point, the newest Science Fiction movie I’d ever watched. Jack Kirby’s purple-hatted-planet-eater had just told Reed Richards he wanted to “eat that baby” and Sue Storm had told them both “No.” Without an obvious solution to the looming eaten-planet problem, the Fantastic Four went to the drawing board, and came away with a solution that reminded me an awful lot of another recent Science Fiction story: Project Hail Mary.

For the sake of those who have neither read Andy Weir’s spectacular novel, nor seen the spoiler-heavy trailer for the upcoming big screen adaptation, I’ll be light on plot details. Suffice it to say that just like the Fantastic Four, the world of Project Hail Mary was facing a world-ending existential threat, and, just like the Fantastic Four, they came together, overlooked their interpersonal conflicts and red-tape, and solved the problem on a global scale. At the end of the day, both of these excellent science fiction stories rely on the idea that with cooperation humanity can solve enormous looming threats bigger than any one person could solve on their own. Not even Reed Richards. This is the new thesis of Utopian Science Fiction.

You’re clever enough to realize what our looming existential threat is, right?

We are once again using fiction to outline what we need the world to look like in the near future, and though I don’t think we have set anything meaningful enough in motion yet, I’m hopeful.

Abundance

Earlier this year Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s own Utopian Science Fiction manifesto was released. They took this idea of cooperation and cutting through red tape literally and outlined how they thought it could be applied to our own looming existential threat. What ties this together for me is how actionable this new wave of science fiction is, particularly in Thompson and Klein’s proposal.

The world, sadly, is not a Disney Channel Original Rec Center, it will not be saved by our talent show, no matter how earnest or special it is. However, if, like Ben Grim advised, we all “pick up a shovel” I think we realistically do have the means to fight the climate crisis. If we demand (perhaps at the end of something pointy) that budgets spent on bombing brown children be redistributed to bolstering our failing power grids, and funding research into renewable energy sources, we can chip away at our Galactus. Perhaps if we used our broken-ass capitalist incentive program to aim people at building high speed railroads we could work toward offsetting carbon emissions and alleviating unemployment now. And, anecdotally, I think work with a worthwhile goal and tangible metrics of success would do more to solve the mental health crisis in America than almost anything else. I have never felt more at peace mentally than the summer that I dug holes to install utility pipes. My body felt great, my mind felt great, my soul felt great. It turns out that worker ennui is created at the same pace that shareholder value grows. I don’t think those factories that the GOP is pretending to want to build in America are coming any time soon, but I earnestly believe that building a Green Infrastructure in America could pull us out of the tailspin we’ve been in this century.

Sadly, I don’t think Superman is going to save us. The idea that a single great man can save the world has not held up under pressure (though it is quite cathartic in fiction.) But I do think we can follow this new model being laid out before us. We can build the solar panels for the astrophage, we can weld the steel girders that will teleport Galactus, we can face the climate crisis and its fall out. I think our science fiction is beginning to light the path forward that we must actually walk in order to save ourselves, and I’ll be proud to stand beside you as we make that fiction a reality.

If you liked this, please send it to your most Republican relative:

If you want more from your’s truly, check out my backlog, or:

I’ll catch you in the next few days with a piece about my favorite scene in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest

*Jaws Theme Begins*