NOT using the
panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in Dublin,
Ireland in August 2019 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)),
I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF
DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation
is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes
reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of
mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…
“I hate science
fiction!”
“That scifi stuff
is stupid!”
“You couldn’t pay
me to watch one of those crazy scific flicks. They’re all totally unbelievable!”
Those of us who
read it, hear it all the time. Yet, science fiction ideas have wormed their way
into real life in countless ways. For example, while lots of people own vehicles
made by the seventh largest automobile manufacturer on Earth, most of them
wouldn’t even be able to tell you that the company made a commercial that was as
strictly science fictional as say, “Kate & Leopold” or “The Lake House” or “Midnight
in Paris” or “The Family Man” – all of which deal with altering one timeline in
favor of another.
“Kate &
Leopold” is arguably NOT one of these because she appears in a picture taken by
her ex-boyfriend while he was in the past at a ball where the dude who invented
the elevator was about to marry the wrong woman…but she was there because her
ex was followed by her future husband (from the past)…Captain Kathryn Janeway,
of the starship VOYAGER often said, “ Since my first day on the job as a
Starfleet captain I swore I'd never let myself get caught in one of
these godforsaken paradoxes - the future is the past, the past is the future,
it all gives me a headache.” (“Future’s End”, ST:VOY, Season 3)
In “The Lake House”,
the main character alters the timeline in order that a man in the past whom she
falls in love with isn’t hit by a car and killed. “Midnight in Paris” doesn’t
have quite as dire ramifications, but the main character breaks up with his money-grubbing,
hyper-controlling fiancé who isn’t interested in him writing what he wants to
write, but demands that he writes what makes boatloads of money. He falls instead
for a French woman who loves – the FARTHER past of the “city that never sleeps”.
Finally, he meets his true love – a woman who loves Paris best when it rains.
Lastly, “The Family Man” chooses TO marry a woman and have a family, rather
than have boatloads of money and a carefree – if lonely – life.
OK – back to the,
uh, future (to coin a phrase…) In the Honda commercial you can view by following
the link below, a car company has chosen to use the science fiction trope of “alternate
time line” (for more on this, see the link below) to advertise the wisdom of
buying a car (and hoping everyone else in the world will buy your car because
it has this really fabulous technology that causes your car to brake when it is
in danger of colliding with an object – in this case a man.
Honda is by no
means the first company to introduce the technology to the consumer. Actively
developed for use on consumer cars since 1997, most “high-end” cars now have
such technology as a standard feature with the majority of the largest auto
manufacturers now pretty much on the bandwagon.
As I’ve seen them,
the commercials so far have been pretty standard, urging buyers to get the
technology because it will save you from smashing into stuff. Honda’s “Safety
for everyone” goes way, way beyond that. The commercial is sixty seconds long and
features a young man’s wife and infant son, sister, co-worker, nephew, boss, and
his MOM! All of them sing his praises and are at peace with how wonderful he is
(for 25 seconds). Then he waves to the camera, confident he’s on an important
mission. With the “whoosh!” of a car moving fast, we’re in an alternate
timeline. We see his wife weeping, his son wailing, his sister contemplating
her own mortality, his co-worker looking up to heaven with tears streaming down
his face, his nephew suddenly behind a fence unsure of his future, and his mom
hunched over a table sobbing. Then suddenly, we’re at the moment where in that alternate
timeline, his hand and “Whoa!” were obviously ineffectual in fending off his
death. We are at the point at which the timeline of this young man skewed into
the alternate reality. (Tough to understand? Doc Brown explains it perfectly in
Back To The Future: Part II – you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfmdW3hiu8w))
My point? Science
fiction has become mainstream, which mean SF doesn’t exist anymore except for a
few “spacey” issues. Cloning is mainstream. Landing on the Moon is either
mainstream or a conspiracy theory. Communication and weather satellites are
boring.
And the SF idea of
alternate timelines is being used to sell automatic braking systems for car manufacturers.
What are science fiction writers “inventing” now? As far as I can tell,
nothing.
We’re projecting
the past into the future – the TV series THE EXPANSE, while people zip around
in space, is little more than a rehash of 20th Century Cold War dramas
like “Get Smart”, “MASH”, the original “James Bond” movies, and any number of
other films and TV shows…with spacey stuff. The same way, STAR TREK was
initially pitched as “Wagon Train to the Stars” and while it didn’t stay there,
at least managed to inject some out-of-reach technology to their scripts (if
only as cost-saving measures) in particular, the transporter and matter-anti-matter
power generation. Even so, the original series was pretty much a rehash of the Cold
War as well, with the Klingons playing the role of the Soviet Union.
Is there any show
that’s taking us in totally new directions? Anyone doing anything more than recycling
old ideas or touting their political philosophies as the sole antidote to “today’s”
political situations?
Meanwhile, a science
fiction idea is being used to advertise a new way to stop your car…
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system,
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlternateTimeline
Image: https://global.honda/content/dam/site/global/about/cq_img/sustainability/safety/bnrL_safety.jpg
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