Christian Baron Peter Nicolai Halvorsen Christine CorneaScience Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition

Abstract

397 BOOKS IN REVIEW The book would have benefitted from a stronger editorial focus on sf, fantasy, or monstrosity, and the essays might then have had more space to develop discussions more fully. It will nonetheless be a useful book to have in libraries, and the above-mentioned essays could easily be used in courses on the global fantastic.—Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, University of Oslo The Good, the Bad, and the Scary. Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea, eds. Science Fiction, Ethics and the Human Condition. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017. vi+246 pp. $119.99 hc. This useful collection of papers is distilled from a conference in Denmark that involved scholars and scientists from a range of disciplines, plus input from local sf fandom. The contributors present varied perspectives, including some that are not narrowly academic. In their introductory chapter, Christian Baron, Peter Nicolai Halvorsen, and Christine Cornea outline the book’s concern with the ethical implications of future technologies and whatever social practices they might bring. In that context, as the editors observe, science fiction can provide a laboratory for thought experiments: Indeed, one of the aims of this book is to demonstrate what can be achieved in approaching science fiction as a kind of imaginary laboratory for experimentation , where visions of human (or even post-human) life under various scientific, technological or natural conditions that differ from our own situation can be thought through and commented upon. (2) The remaining chapters are grouped thematically into three parts, though the allocation of particular chapters sometimes appears a touch arbitrary. Part I relates to science, technology, and sf, Part II to questions of identity and what the editors call “the post-human condition,” and Part III to sf’s engagement with political and ethical questions. Part I is focused as much on science and technology themselves as on sf narratives. Christian Baron’s chapter considers the scientific credibility of Alien (dir. Ridley Scott, 1979) and its successors, with brief discussions of other scientifically informed works such as the film Quest for Fire (dir. JeanJacques Annaud, 1981). Baron argues that sf narratives (and their creators) often take sides—sometimes deliberately, sometimes by inadvertence—in live scientific controversies. In a thoughtful contribution to ongoing debates about an anticipated technological singularity, Mikkel Willum Johansen expresses what seems to be well-reasoned skepticism. On his assessment, there is no likelihood that research on artificial intelligence will cause a mind-boggling technological liftoff. Johansen explains the limited ability of computers to do creative work in mathematics that requires sophisticated high-order concepts. He argues that the increase in cognitive advantage brought about by computers has happened far more slowly than the steady doubling and redoubling of raw processing power described by Moore’s Law. Rather than computers developing the field of mathematics through their autonomous problem-solving power, they have become increasingly effective as tools to aid human intelligence. Johansen then ponders the ethical implications. We should, he concludes, abandon our hopes 398 SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 46 (2019) for (or fears of) a technological singularity, however exactly we define the concept, and instead concentrate attention on real, imminent problems caused by AI applications—which we need to identify, examine, and debate. Peter Westermann’s chapter, “A Greenhouse on Mars,” analyzes the prospects and, importantly, the ethics of colonizing the red planet, including whether we should disturb even bacterial life if we find it there. Westermann makes perceptive comments about Kim Stanley Robinson’s MARS TRILOGY (Red Mars [1992], Green Mars [1993], and Blue Mars [1996]). He is mainly concerned, however, with the actual science of interplanetary travel and colonization. Also in Part I, Gitte Meyer’s chapter bears the longiloquent but rather splendid title “Fascinating! Popular Science Communication and Literary Science Fiction: The Shared Features of Awe and Fascination and Their Significance to Ideas of Science Fictions as Vehicles for Critical Debate About Scientific Enterprises and Their Ethical Implications.” The “science fictions” that Meyer has in mind are not novels, stories, or films; they are sensationalist reports and speculations relating to actual or postulated scientific innovations. These, Meyer argues, merit a level of scrutiny and skepticism that they seldom receive. Part II of...