On the Rise of Dystopian Science Fiction

I listened to Frankenstein on audiobook recently, as part of my dive into transhumanism for Simulacrum research, and it hit me suddenly one afternoon at work.

Frankenstein is really kind of the first dystopian sci fi novel. It’s the first story in which misguided science/technology produces something evil that must be defeated. Later, more obvious examples, include Brave New World, Jurassic Park, That Hideous Strength, and even Tron: Legacy.

It was a particular comment in Frankenstein that drew my attention to this. Victor was speaking of the Enlightenment, of the ‘new’ science which was cold, hard, and absolutely distanced from the spiritual and moral. The exact verbiage of it escapes me, but it snagged my focus because it perfectly described our world today.

There was a shift in history during the Enlightenment. A shift in morality.

And consequently, a shift in the way we did science. It wasn’t about discovering the nature of God’s orderly creation anymore. It was about conquering, harnessing, and surpassing through self-directed evolution and dreams of utopia. This has become even more prominent since the twentieth century. We try to edit genes, and mix proteins in the hopes of proving evolution. We tinker with viruses and drugs – and it’s not just Nazis and CIA agents trying insane, blasphemous experiments anymore.

We had utopian literature before Frankenstein, but not dystopian. That genre spiked after WWII, probably as people were starting to get scared by the rapid increase of technology and beaurocracy. Many of the dystopian novels today are also very bleak, skeptical, and post-modern. In them, science is being used to control, or has been used to destroy, or is being used to build something monstrous.

Things changed massively after the Industrial Revolution. Not only did we have gigantic bounds in technological capabilities – but we were losing the moral fiber to keep it under control. No wonder it was easy for authors to imagine how quickly things could go wrong. In fact, some of the stuff you read if you dig into the history of the CIA, like I did for a school project, sounds like it should be science fiction.

It was funny to return to The Mysterious Benedict Society as a young adult and realize the subtle social commentary and hints of Big-Brother-like dystopia. Even in that simplified world without cell phones or internet, it was still very easy to conceive of science surpassing some bound, perhaps even dipping into the fantastical, and then being used to manipulate humanity. But I never noticed these themes until I was older and more informed about the world, and understood how truly we are living in an age of monitoring and surveillance.

Frankenstein was written in 1816. Most of the famous dystopian literature today was written in and after the 1900s.It’s a classic story – a man, a little too giddy with his new discoveries, makes a monster, and it escapes and wreaks havoc. A curious thing to note about Victor Frankenstein, though, is that he was also influenced by alchemy and pagan ‘scientists’ during his youth. He seeks the thing which they sought — to defeat death.

“No one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like a hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.“

– Victor Frankenstein, Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

At its core, his desire to create life, to seek immortality, to be in essence a god, is not a cold, detached thing — it’s struck through with all that old, original sin, that ancient evil that smacks of great, fantastical epics.

There really is no neutral science.

There is no neutrality in matters of morals, period. What you do is either right or wrong, and so is the way you do it.

Nothing’s changed since the beginning of time. Man always wants to become God. He just packages it differently – whether it’s alchemy and sorcery with metals and ‘magic’ stones, or transhumanist gene editing with all of the latest tech.

There are some stretches and liberties taken in Frankenstein — such as the explaining-away of how Victor managed to produce life in his amalgamation of corpse parts, or discrepancies between the things his monster can understand in the beginning and the things he can’t, but nonetheless, the point of it remains. It is not how he made the monster that matters. Just that he did.

Man cannot make life. Man can most certainly not imbue anything with a soul the way our Great Maker does. Man certainly can’t improve on God’s creation. His attempts to do so bring about destruction and harm, just like Frankenstein’s monster, or the Jurassic park dinosaurs, or Soma, or Tron’s Clu.

Frankenstein brings up all sorts of interesting considerations on whether or not humans could actually create pseudo-life, what that creature would be like, whether it would be good or evil, whether it would know the difference between those things, and so on and so forth.

But the considerations, and what actually happen in the story, are two different things. As Josiah DeGraaf puts it, the way characters act in their story is an ‘experiment in living.’ It’s what they do that shows the message, not necessarily what they say.

Victor Frankenstein brings a monster to life. And regrets it forever.

His is an example we’d be wise to follow. Where is our ambition leading us in these days of AI, pharmaceuticals, and new technologies? Do we look before we leap?

We have stories to warn us. We’ve had stories for the last few centuries — and it’s not coincidence.

May we not repeat the error of Babel.

We are not God

Until next time,

Shine brightly!

Cheers!

Cover image by liuzishan on Freepik