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5 - Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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THERE IS NO such thing as a canon of German SF. As discussed in my introduction, it simply does not feature in the standard German literary histories. Nor does it register in histories of German film, with the exception of Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's Metropolis (1927), which has acquired cult status. And even in the German SF community—that is, among the members of the Deutscher Science Fiction Club e.V and the organizers of the German SF prizes—there is no agreement over what the key moments of German SF are. Many would name Kurd Laßwitz as the “father” of German SF, but few have read more than his novel Auf zwei Planeten (1897). Hans Dominik is undoubtedly the most successful German SF writer in the first half of the twentieth century, but his reputation as a peddler of jingoistic and nationalistic sentiments makes him a less than ideal figurehead. As Hans Esselborn's recent study has shown, what one selects as a representative sample of German SF invariably determines one's conclusions. In his case, a decision to dismiss the “Americanized” variety (as well as SF films and SF written by women) produces a corpus that earnestly engages with future technologies but tells us little about the imaginative and playful core of German SF, its dystopian outlook, or what makes it distinctive.
My selection is admittedly equally subjective, and I have to acknowledge that casting the net wider makes it significantly more challenging to come to firm conclusions about the nature of German SF. But perhaps that is one of its best qualities, with writers and film directors balancing commercial considerations, aesthetic ambitions, political agendas, and innovative ideas. The writers and directors’ starting point of asking “what if” can lead them in any direction, which explains why my decision to subsume texts and films under thematic headings regularly puts me in a quandary, since most of these would fit under several categories. At the same time, my selection of seventy novels and twenty-five films provides a large enough base to allow distinctive patterns to emerge.
I argue that the works listed in the appendices should be regarded as science fictional, whether they have the “SF” label on the cover or not, since they all engage with the central questions of SF: What if the world were different?
Appendix 1 - Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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Laßwitz, Kurd. Auf zwei Planeten, 1897. (In English: Two Planets, 1971).
Scheerbart, Paul. Die große Revolution: Ein Mondroman, 1902.
Laßwitz, Kurd. Sternentau: Die Pflanze vom Jupitermond, 1909.
Kellermann, Bernhard. Der Tunnel, 1913 (In English: The Tunnel, 1915).
Scheerbart, Paul. Lesabéndio: Ein Asteroiden-Roman, 1913 (In English: Lesabéndio, 2012).
Dominik, Hans. Die Macht der Drei: Ein Roman aus dem Jahre 1955, 1922.
Döblin, Alfred. Berge, Meere und Giganten, 1924.
Dexheimer, Ludwig (pseudonym Ri Tokko). Das Automatenzeitalter: Ein prognostischer Roman,1930.
Illing, Werner. Utopolis, 1930.
Dominik, Hans. Der Wettflug der Nationen,1932.
Hesse, Hermann. Das Glasperlenspiel, 1943 (In English: The Glass Bead Game, 1949).
Werfel, Franz. Stern der Ungeborenen: Ein Reiseroman, 1946.
Jünger, Ernst. Heliopolis, 1949.
Schmidt, Arno. Die Gelehrtenrepublik, 1957 (In English: The Egghead Republic, 1979).
Franke, Herbert. Der grüne Komet, 1960.
Haushofer, Marlen. Die Wand, 1963 (In English: The Wall, 1990).
Brenner, Robert. Signale vom Jupitermond: Ein Bericht aus dem Jahre 2028, 1968.
Franke, Herbert. Zone Null, 1970 (In English: Zone Null, 1974).
Amery, Carl. Der Untergang der Stadt Passau, 1975.
Steinhäuser, Gerhard. Unternehmen Stunde Null: Leben nach dem jüngsten Tag, 1975.
Erlenberger, Maria. Singende Erde: Ein utopischer Roman, 1980.
Jeschke, Wolfgang. Der letzte Tag der Schöpfung, 1981.
Steinmüller, Angela, and Karlheinz Steinmüller. Andymon: Eine Weltraum- Utopie, 1982.
Ziegler, Thomas. Alles ist Gut, 1983.
Pausewang, Gudrun. Die Wolke, 1987.
Fleck, Dirk C. Go! Die Ökodiktatur, 1993.
Ziegler, Thomas. Stimmen der Nacht, 1993.
Ransmayr, Christoph. Morbus Kitahara, 1995 (In English: The Dog King, 1997).
Eschbach, Andreas. Die Haarteppichknüpfer, 1995 (In English: The Carpet Makers, 2005).
Rabisch, Birgit. Duplik Jonas 7, 1997.
Eschbach, Andreas. Das Jesus-Video, 1998.
Kerner, Charlotte. Blueprint Blaupause, 1999.
Kirchner, Barbara. Die verbesserte Frau, 2001.
Eschbach, Andreas. Quest, 2001.
Schätzing, Frank. Der Schwarm, 2004 (In English: The Swarm, 2006).
Jeschke, Wolfgang. Das Cusanus-Spiel, 2005.
Lehr, Thomas. 42, 2005.
Weiner, Richard M. Das Miniatom-Projekt, 2006.
Zelter, Joachim. Schule der Arbeitslosen, 2006.
Dath, Dietmar. Die Abschaffung der Arten, 2008 (In English: The Abolition of Species, 2018).
Kracht, Christian. Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten, 2008.
Schätzing, Frank. Limit, 2009.
Zeh, Juli. Corpus Delicti: Ein Prozess, 2010 (In English: The Method, 2012).
Trojanow, Iliya. EisTau, 2011.
Eschbach, Andreas. Herr aller Dinge, 2011 (In English: Lord of All Things, 2014).
7 - The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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AT THE BEGINNING of the twentieth century, Germany was experiencing a social, economic, and technological upheaval. Industrialization, the move made by millions of people from villages into the rapidly growing cities, and the rapid growth of the working class are all reflected in the SF of the time, as is the realization that the authoritarian and militaristic attitudes unleashed by the forces of colonialism and imperialism were diametrically opposed to the romantic yearnings for more idealistic values held by those who felt threatened by the cold wind of modernity.
Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) has only recently been rediscovered as an early writer of German SF. A call for papers for a panel at the 2018 German Studies Association Conference declared him “a significant figure in early modernism, one who may have inhabited the earth-star too soon.” His novels Die große Revolution. Ein Mondroman (The Great Revolution: A Moon Novel, 1902) and Lesabéndio. Ein Asteroiden- Roman (Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel, 1913) are exquisite leaps of the utopian imagination. They follow in the footsteps of Kurd Laßwitz's more playful short stories but add a unique allegorical and expressionistic aesthetic. Another, more typical example of the Zukunftsroman is Bernhard Kellermann's Der Tunnel (1913). This novel became a bestseller, selling one hundred thousand copies in the six months after its publication, and it continued to be read widely, particularly owing to the fact that it was made into a film, first in 1915 and again in 1933–35, when versions in German, French, and English were produced. The main theme of the novel is technological progress—in this case, a gigantic engineering project. A tunnel is built at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, linking Europe with North America. The idealistic engineer Allen is repeatedly thwarted, by losing the financial backing initially promised to him but also because the tunnel's construction is beset by problems. The army of workers revolts against the inhuman conditions in which they have to labor, and when the tunnel is finally opened after twenty-six years it is already obsolete because airplanes can cross the Atlantic in a few hours. Kellermann’s novel does not hold up well to scrutiny today: his characters are twodimensional, with the idealistic engineer Allen pitted against the scheming financier S. Woolf, who is painted in racist and anti-Semitic tones.
Bibliography
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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6 - First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm Intelligences
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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AS THE PIONEER of German SF, Kurd Laßwitz has had a lasting influence and his work contains many of SF's major tropes. His magnum opus Auf zwei Planeten (1897), published at the same time as H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, was enormously influential in Germany, but it was only translated into English in 1971. Laßwitz firmly believed in the civilizational power of technology, and he sought to align moral, ethical, and technological progress. For this reason, he abhorred the ruthless use of technological superiority for corrupt motives. Highly critical of the German Empire's colonial and imperial ambitions and policies, he imagined what it would be like if the “civilized” nations of Europe would suffer the fate they were subjecting others to: that of being colonized by technologically and allegedly ethically superior beings.
Auf zwei Planeten reached high circulation figures in Germany, especially after World War I. Full of astonishing technological predictions, it inspired several generations of German scientists, among them Hermann Oberth, the pioneer of German rocketry, and Wernher von Braun, who worked on the German V2 rockets in the 1940s and the American space program in the 1960s. Laßwitz's vision of a space station in geostationary orbit provided the blueprint for the International Space Station. Yet in spite of its popularity, the novel was considered “too democratic” by the National Socialists and no longer printed.
Laßwitz imagines a whole civilization built on a technology that is able to control gravity, with armed and armored Martian airships that can reach any point on the planet in a matter of hours. Auf zwei Planeten thus takes a global viewpoint: following the moment of first contact, when three German scientists in a balloon expedition to reach the North Pole are rescued by Martians who have built a base there, it soon becomes clear to the explorers that the Martians are planning to conquer Earth. The Martians, coming from an older civilization, have a keen sense of their own superiority. This attitude is partly based on their observation of the Eskimos, the only humans they have encountered so far. The Martians believe that if the rest of humanity is on the same cultural level as the Eskimos, they are justified in taking control and using the planet’s resources for their own benefit.
Conclusion
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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SCIENCE FICTION ENGAGES with scientific progress and social change by imagining alternatives to the present status quo—often, but not exclusively, in future scenarios. It is a literary form that mirrors the changing human condition while at the same time it is capable of accommodating “the spatial scale and cultural heterogeneity of an entire planet.” Grounded in, and often explicitly critiquing, perceived political, social, economic, and cultural shortcomings, it confronts them with the impact of scientific and technological innovations. Freed from the shackles of realism but still working within the (remotely) possible, if not the plausible, science fiction writers and filmmakers set up thought experiments that allow their audiences glimpses of possible futures and the consequences of specific choices.
German SF builds on a broad tradition of utopian thought and the nation's calamitous history in the twentieth century. The alternative history approach has a particular appeal to German audiences because of the disastrous choices the country made in the past: the experience of hubris and the subsequent fall echo through a number of the works explored here. But Germany's experience of a totalitarian past does not have to be a permanent burden—rather, it has inoculated German SF writers who warn against the risks of ubiquitous surveillance, an uncritical adherence to the mantra of growth and progress, and the siren calls of demagogues.
German SF is distinctive because it tends to ask complex questions. Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou's Metropolis, Carl Amery's Der Untergang der Stadt Passau, and Andreas Eschbach's Die Haarteppichknüpfer explore the mentality of tyranny and subservience, while Arno Schmidt's Die Gelehrtenrepublik sarcastically reflects the madness in the strategy of “mutually assured destruction.” There is an elegiac and melancholy tone in some of the works discussed here—for example, Marlen Haushofer's Die Wand, Valerie Fritsch's Winters Garten, and Thomas von Steinaecker's Die Verteidigung des Paradieses. At the same time, German SF often assumes a more defiant, political stance, especially in critiquing capitalism. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Welt am Draht and Leif Randt's Planet Magnon offer explicit deconstructions of capitalist excesses, while social satires like Martin Burckhardt's Score and Marc-Uwe Kling's QualityLand effectively ridicule the promises of Silicon Valley.
10 - Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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ACROSS THE WESTERN world, the specter of nuclear war and the growing awareness of impending ecological catastrophe intersected in the 1970s. Following the dire predictions of Danella and Dennis Meadows’s Limits to Growth (1972), with concerns about the environment and fears about a nuclear confrontation between the superpowers potentially erasing all life in Europe growing, apocalyptic media stories abounded. SF, with its long tradition of foreseeing catastrophes, reflected the mood, and it was rewarded with an ever-growing readership. As in its golden age in the 1940s, the genre came to the cultural surface with its chameleon-like ability “to reflect the conscious or subconscious states of the collective.”
In the case of disaster stories, such a reflection of the collective state of mind was criticized by those who held higher hopes for the genre—for example, by Darko Suvin, who branded it “black SF anticipation” and “romantic recoil.” Nevertheless, the attraction for SF writers to romanticize that “inconceivable terror” proved irresistible: by exploring external threats—real, perceived, or imaginary—they, like their Romantic forebears, were addressing the rapid technological change and the fears associated with it. They warned not only of the end of the world; they imagined a phoenix-like rising out of the ashes, one of SF's “most potent icons.” Few writers, however well-meaning and critical, could avoid the danger of romanticizing the apocalypse, or using it for heroic survivalism. Gertrud Lehnert has suggested that while it was only natural to develop fantasies of survival in order to cope with the all-pervasive fear created by a superpower arms race and ecological disasters, such fantasies often produced the opposite of what was intended:
When the catastrophe becomes the mere vehicle for one or more heroic individuals to take possession of this emptied world and to fashion it according to their desires, this “coping with fear” can have an effect that is diametrically opposed to its warning function.
Focusing on Anglo-American examples of disaster stories, Lehnert observed that in such a context, the question of human responsibility for the catastrophe was no longer relevant, and that the catastrophe was often presented as inescapable or as fated. Man, though responsible for his actions, was unable to prevent the consequences.
Part I - The Great Discourse on the Future
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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9 - To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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IT WASN'T UNTIL the 1960s that a genuinely “German” SF reemerged; it did so with the East German film Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star, 1960), directed by Kurt Maetzig. Based on Stanislaw Lem's novel The Astronauts (1951), it depicted an international expedition (led by the Soviet cosmonaut Arsenjew) to the planet Venus. The crew members discover that the inhabitants of that planet had planned to annihilate humanity by means of “nuclear rays” but had been wiped out themselves owing to an accident. In spite of its political message warning of a nuclear war (and its none-too subtle call for international cooperation under Soviet leadership), the film was shown in the United States and the United Kingdom in a shortened and “westernized” version that cut out all references to Hiroshima.
In West Germany, German SF came in the shape of Perry Rhodan, a weekly pulp-style magazine that hit the kiosks in 1961 and was initially written by Walter Ernsting and Karl-Herbert Scheer. Jokingly described as “Unser Mann im All” (our man in space) in a documentary on occasion of its fiftieth anniversary in 2011, the series gave Germans a stake in the emerging space race in the form of an American astronaut of German ancestry who lands on the moon in 1971 and encounters members of an alien humanoid race who have crash-landed their spaceship there. With the help of their superior technology, he establishes a “Dritte Macht” (third power) on Earth, prevents World War III, unites the superpowers (initially in their shared opposition against himself and his small band of loyal comrades), and, once he has established control, he sets out to build a united Earth capable of entering into alliances with, but also defending itself against, threats from other alien species in the galaxy.
In Germany Perry Rhodan has provided the gateway for generations of male and female teenagers, equivalent perhaps to Doctor Who in the United Kingdom and the “pulps” in their golden age, as well as to Marvel and DC comics and films in the United States. It started life as a mirror of its time, reflecting both the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union and the global fascination with manned space flight. From the outset, the series has been (rightly) criticized for its militaristic tendencies but also for its thinly veiled revanchism, jingoism, and Germanic superiority complex.
8 - Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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SOME MAY QUESTION whether the texts discussed in this chapter can be regarded as SF, since the authors under consideration here are interested in science only insofar as they require a means or a process by which a utopian society can be established or to critique its impact. But then we would also have to ask whether Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) belong in the history of SF, where they are routinely listed. Given the imagined futures—desirable or undesirable—that these speculative texts contain, I believe that they, as well as a venerable forebear, deserve consideration in this investigation.
Johann Gottfried Schnabel's Die Insel Felsenburg (1731–43) is a meandering narrative published under the pseudonym Gisander that grew into four volumes over twelve years. It follows the fate of several individuals in the first half of the eighteenth century as they are shipwrecked on an island in the South Atlantic, or are later invited to join the a utopian community they find there. Founded by Albert Julius and populated by his offspring who marry refugees and exiles from continental Europe, Insel Felsenburg becomes an escape fantasy for those tired of the social conditions in Europe and without hope that these will ever change. Thomas Schölderle sums up the experience of the “Felsenburger” (residents of Felsenburg) as follows:
The newcomers all experienced suffering, misery, and injustice in their European homelands. Their lives and the conditions on the old continent were shaped by poverty, war, and the execution of innocent people, by adultery and sexual abuse, gluttony, larceny, murder, religious intolerance, and a general decline in morals. While one life story after another illustrates the shocking conditions in the Europe of that time and offers Schnabel the opportunity to assemble his satirical critique out of the numerous individual representations, he brusquely sets them against the life stories from the utopian island.
In his commentary on the critical edition of this text, Günter Dammann argues that the community established on the island has attained the “moral good” as envisaged in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Essais de Théodicee (1710). Indeed, once established, Felsenburg becomes a utopian community with a strong programmatic foundation dedicated to mutual aid.
1 - Utopians and Utopian Thought
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UTOPIAN THOUGHT HAS a long tradition and has for centuries been both feted and condemned. While the literary manifestations of utopian thinking will be discussed as the third tributary, the visioning of ideal societies (political and social utopias) has escaped its merely literary confines and has provided blueprints for humanity's noblest aspirations (the United Nations, the European Union), as well as its vilest ideologies (fascism, National Socialism). “Being human means having a utopia” declared German theologian Paul Tillich, but we do not always wear this characteristic with pride. Politicians and the media use the term “utopian” to denigrate ideas and proposals for change; and in everyday parlance the term suggests impossible schemes, pipe dreams, and harebrained projects. And yet, despite this, a certain type of person will vehemently defend the right to imagine the world differently, and work to radically change it accordingly. There are “utopians” who plan better, if not ideal, worlds at their desks, and there are those who actively fight for them in the public arena in the attempt to turn them into a lived reality. And there are those who are fascinated by the idea of utopianism, and who study its history and manifestations. The political and social utopias they advocate or study tend to share a holistic perspective, and they are ostensibly oriented toward “happiness.” But what makes people happy depends on context and an individual's perspective. In the 1970s, Frank and Fritzie Manuel laid the groundwork for a systematic study of utopias and utopian thought, and they wrote about the “thinkers and dreamers” who envisaged an ideal social order. As Dan Chodorkoff points out, the focus on the individuals who conceived of utopias was key for their generation of researchers:
Philosophical and literary utopias are the work of individuals and as such tend to reflect their creators’ likes and dislikes. These idiosyncratic approaches have given rise to the cliché that “One man's utopia is another man's hell.”
Sociologists often speak of a “utopian impulse” that drives individuals and groups to envision better worlds and push for their realization when reality becomes unbearable:
The utopian impulse is a response to existing social conditions and an attempt to transcend or transform those conditions to achieve an ideal. It always contains two interrelated elements: a critique of existing conditions and a vision or reconstructive program for a new society.
18 - High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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THIS FINAL CHAPTER is not intended as a “mop-up operation” for German SF narratives that do not fit into the thematic strands explored thus far. In fact, each of the following examples could have easily found a home in one or more of the strands discussed before. But what sets them apart is an elusive quality of transcendence, a search for epiphanic moments, a desire not to be too specific in their anticipation of the future but rather to act as artistic statements—about concepts like time, love, or the meaning of life—that the readers or viewers will have to come to terms with for themselves.
Marlen Haushofer's novel Die Wand (1963) is a perfect example of this type of text: an unnamed forty-year-old woman spends her vacation in a hunting lodge in the Austrian Alps. Overnight, a transparent wall appears that separates the woman and the mountain region around her from the outside world. There is no sign of life outside the wall; in fact, beyond the wall animals (and a single person visible in the distance) seem to be immobile while plants continue to grow. The woman is left not simply to survive on her own but also to develop the resilience to cope with her loneliness. She quickly rules out ending her life:
I lay in bed shivering, wondering what to do. I could commit suicide or try to dig under the wall, something that would most likely turn out to be a more laborious way of killing myself. Of course, I could simply stay and try to remain alive. I wasn't young enough to seriously contemplate suicide. What really prevented me from going through with that was the thought of Luchs and Bella [the dog and the cow], and a certain curiosity. The wall was an enigma, and I would have never been able to steal away while there was a riddle to be solved.
With hard work, she manages to eke out a life, having only a dog, a cat, and a pregnant cow as her companions. She learns to look after the animals and secure food, and she spends the summer months further up the mountains in a hut on the alpine pastures, experiencing moments of inner peace and acceptance of her situation.
Part II - German Science Fiction in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
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2 - Futurists and Futures Studies
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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HOW WE FEEL about the future is important. This determines not only when we decide to start a family, make a purchase, go for a new job, or take some other risk but also our level of political engagement (from apathy to activism) and our mental health and well-being. Until recently, people in the Western world believed that their children should and would live in a better world (whether defined by standard of living or quality of life) or at least have more choices then they had. This is no longer the case. A recent study by the Pew Research Center showed that a majority of Americans expect life to get worse by 2050. In the annual Allensbach poll that has been conducted in West Germany since 1949 (and in a united Germany since 1990), we can see that global events have had a considerable impact on whether we can look to the future with hope. For example, in 1950, at the time of the Korean War, only 27 percent of West Germans said that they were looking to the future with hope. The oil crisis in 1973 (30 percent) and, much later, the Iraq War (31 percent) caused similarly low levels of optimism, while the fall of the Berlin Wall produced a record high level of 68 percent. But how do we know what the future is likely to hold in store?
If utopian thought has led to debates about what the future ought to look like, the futurists’ approach aims to be more dispassionate in anticipating, on some sort of scientific basis, what the future is likely to look like. To be more precise, futurism, futurology, and futures studies are concerned with identifying probable futures (plural) and determining which of them are likely to become reality. As in utopian discourse, one finds a very broad range of competing voices and approaches, reaching from the specialist to the popular, the ideological to the pragmatic, as well as from the transparent and retraceable to the opaque and surmised. But in sifting through the literature, it quickly becomes apparent that futurists are currently as concerned about the future as the utopians are.
Index
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15 - Eternal Life: At What Cost?
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The utopian dream of extending human life and achieving immortality is as old as humanity. Religions, myths, and legends transported it into the afterlife, claiming that humans were immortal once and could be so again if they met certain conditions. Closely connected to the dream of eternal life is that of health, which can be improved or possibly even restored when it fails us in old age: Lucas Cranach the Elder's painting Der Jungbrunnen (Fountain of Youth, 1546) illustrates this vision beautifully, showing very senior citizens with sagging flesh and grimaces of pain being carted to the pool and emerging rejuvenated, with firm physiques and cheerful expressions on their faces. In SF, the theme of long or eternal life (a.k.a. “Immortality SF”) has featured in countless stories, novels, and films that explore what life would be like if we could extend our lifespans by decades until mortality becomes optional, and what we could achieve if we lived longer lives. These narratives “normalize” longevity— for example, in Robert Heinlein's Methuselah's Children, and even Perry Rhodan gains “relative” immortality by means of a “Zellaktivator” so that he can plausibly guide humanity over thousands of years. In computer gaming, winning another “life” extends players’ time in virtual reality, while it ironically shortens their time outside it. Meanwhile, in the real world, while techniques to combat the signs of aging have existed for centuries (sleep, exercise, diet, vitamins, meditation, makeup), and cosmetic surgery has enhanced the possibilities in this area in recent decades, it is only lately that an industry has emerged that researches and purports to offer the key, if not to eternal life, then at least to “extreme life extension”— for example, Dmitri Itskov's “2045 initiative” or the Alcor Life Extension Foundation (cryonics).
Even if eternal life is out of reach for most of us at the moment, recent advances in genetics have made cloning humans a possibility and we could, in theory, create an exact physical copy of ourselves.
13 - Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother?
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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Summary
THE THEME OF ubiquitous surveillance is a staple of dystopian SF and it holds a special significance in Germany where the history of eavesdropping and covert observation employed by the Gestapo and the Stasi has led to the right to privacy enshrined in the Grundgesetz (Basic Law, Germany's constitution, specifically Articles 2, 5, 10, and 13). These categorical guarantees have been qualified in recent years, though, in response to the rising threat level from domestic and international terrorism. In spite of the Europäische Datenschutz-Grundverordnung (General Data Protection Regulation, 2016), which caused every website to reassuringly declare that “We value your privacy,” Germans continue to be skeptical about its effectiveness and are wary about the promises of “smart living.”
One of the most visible critics of what she considers a creeping curtailment of civil rights is the novelist Juli Zeh. Zeh, who holds a doctorate in international law, is widely known as an outspoken public intellectual, writing on a broad range of topics; she is also a regular guest on talk shows. Her novel Corpus Delicti. Ein Prozess (2009), initially written for and performed on stage in 2007, imagines Germany in the year 2057 when a health dictatorship has been established with Die METHODE (The METHOD, also the title of the English translation, 2014) as official state philosophy replacing the previous democratic system. The state compels its citizens to live as healthily as possible to prevent illnesses, while unhealthy lifestyles (smoking, sex with incompatible partners, eating junk food, not exercising) are punished as crimes against the collective.
Since the METHOD is declared infallible, and human nature is understood as weak, the state introduces a complex system of surveillance in order to ensure compliance—ranging from regular medical checkups and sensors and monitors in every home (including sensors in the toilets to test urine for sugar and meters to measure whether the residents have done the required amount of physical exercise) to incentives for collectives in apartment blocks in order to snoop on each other and report any infringements to the authorities.
14 - Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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- Book:
- Beyond Tomorrow
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 16 September 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 September 2020, pp 178-187
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Summary
WHILE THE DEPICTION of powerful computer programs enabling total surveillance requires SF authors to stick to frighteningly realistic scenarios, the portrayal of artificial intelligences and the focus on the circumstances in which forms of AI may gain self-awareness and an ability to act beyond their programming leaves a lot more room for the imagination. The AI theme is highly popular in anglophone SF. Memorable examples range from Stanley Kubrick's computer Hal 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Dan Simmon's TechnoCore in the Hyperion Cantos (1989–1997), Ridley Scott's David in the film Prometheus (2012), Spike Jonze's Samantha in the film Her (2013), Alex Garland's Ava in the film Ex Machina (2015), and the “Synths” in the British television series Humans (2015–2018).
While some narratives focus on the singular moment when an AI becomes self-aware and its intelligence surpasses that of humans (e.g., the fateful moment Skynet becomes self-aware in the Terminator movie franchise), writers and directors love to explore the way AIs might differ in their thought processes, asking what makes us human. Obviously, there may well be a threat to homo sapiens, but there is also the opportunity for an evolutionary step forward that extends human knowledge and capability (not to mention the thrill of creating new life, even if it is not human—see chapter 17 below). In this chapter, I explore three recent German SF texts that imagine the emergence of artificial intelligences in order to gauge what they contribute to the discussion.
Richard M. Weiner is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Marburg. Following his 2006 foray into fiction with a “science and crime novel” involving sinister goings-on at the CERN laboratories in Geneva where scientists are working on the miniaturization of objects (another favorite trope of SF films, e.g., Fantastic Voyage [directed by Richard Fleischer, 1966] and Downsizing [directed by Alexander Payne, 2017]), Weiner returned to SF in 2014 with Aufstand der Denkcomputer: Ein Zukunftsroman (Rise of the Thinking Computers: a Science Fantasy). In the near future, while discussions about Künstliche Intelligenz (artificial intelligence) are still confined to scientists and computer specialists, the psychologist George Wilson notices a number of statistical anomalies that seem to indicate that society is becoming increasingly secular as a consequence of the “Errungenschaften der Wissenschaft” (the triumphs of science, 44).
Acknowledgments
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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- Book:
- Beyond Tomorrow
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 16 September 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 September 2020, pp vii-viii
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Appendix 2 - Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection
- Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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- Book:
- Beyond Tomorrow
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 16 September 2020
- Print publication:
- 15 September 2020, pp 239-240
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Summary
Lang, Fritz, dir. Metropolis, 1927.
Lang, Fritz, dir. Frau im Mond, 1929.
Hartl, Karl, dir. F.P.1 antwortet nicht, 1932.
Bernhardt, Kurt, dir. Der Tunnel, 1933.
Kutter, Anton, dir. Weltraumschiff I startet, 1937.
Hilpert, Heinz, dir. Der Herr vom andern Stern, 1948.
Maetzig, Kurt, dir. Der schweigende Stern, 1960.
Braun, Michael, dir. Raumpatrouille Orion, 1966.
Zschoche, Hermann, dir. Eolomea, 1972.
Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, dir. Welt am Draht, 1973.
Erler, Rainer, dir. Operation Ganymed, 1977.
Emmerich, Roland, dir. Das Arche Noah Prinzip, 1984.
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Schübel, Rolf, dir. Blueprint, 2003.
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Tykwer, Tom, Lana and Lilly Wachowski, dirs. Der Wolkenatlas, 2012.
Pölsler, Julian, dir. Die Wand, 2012.
Hilger, Sebastian, dir. Wir sind die Flut, 2016.
Ruzowitzky, Stefan, dir. Acht Tage, 2019.
Koch, Philip, dir. Tribes of Europa, 2020.