Flash Forward a Science Fiction TV series?

While viewing the previous posts on the SF blogger, I saw that someone had mentioned Lost being a science fiction TV series. As I was reading that particular blog post, I began thinking about the new TV series called "Flash Forward". For those of you who have not seen this TV show or haven't heard anything about it, here is a little background information for you:

So basically, a mysterious event causes everyone on the planet to simultaneously lose consciousness for 137 seconds. During these 137 seconds, everyone on the planet sees what appears to be visions of their lives approximately six months in the future. After the loss of consciousness, LA FBI agents begin the process of determining what happened, why it happened, and whether it will happen again. The team investigates a number of events related to the flashforward, including "Suspect Zero", who did not lose consciousness during the event, the sinister "D. Gibbons", and a similar mass loss of consciousness in Somalia in 1991. This is a general summary of the TV series as to date, but I don't want to give too much information away because I RECOMMEND this show and you should all watch it!

Anyways, after beginning to watch this TV series, I started researching about whether or not the TV series can be considered Science Fiction. The TV series is originally based off the Science Fiction novel "Flash Forward" by Robert J. Sawyer. This novel is set in a fictionalized and overly futuristic year 2009. At CERN (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), the Large Hadron Collider accelerator (the ALICE experiment) is performing a run to search for the Higgs boson. The experiment takes a unique effect: the entire human race also loses consciousness for about two minutes. During this time, nearly everyone sees themselves in the future (by about 21 years). The flashforward that takes place in the book and the flashforward that takes place in the TV series do differ. However, they are fairly similar in regards to the massive loss of consciousness that resulted in deaths, accidents, and also the futuristic flashforwards that everyone on the planet sees (these occur in both the book and the TV series).

I think that there are a few reasons in which Flash Forward (the TV series) can be included in the science fiction genre. Although this particular show does differ from the science experiment taking place in Robert Sawyer's book, it does represent some of the conventions that shape the science fiction genre.

I think that when people see the future, either by traveling to it or even just viewing it in general, it can somehow be tied to science fiction. As technology becomes stronger and more determined, will it be possible for people to actually see into their future? Wouldn't that be interesting. But anyways, I think that another example of the show being science fiction is the idea of time travel. Although the characters are not traveling back into time or embarking on an actual travel to say- the moon, the characters and everyone on the planet experiences a time travel six months ahead of the current time in 2009.

I was most curious to write on this TV show because I was wondering if anyone had similar feelings. Does anyone else think that this show can be classified as science fiction? I think it can.

As I touched upon earlier, I think the one aspect of the TV show that really jumped out at me as being science fiction was the idea of time travel; the time travel that exists during the massive blackout that the entire planet undergoes. I think that show definitely sells the fiction part of the genre. Of course it is not probable that everyone on the planet is going to black out at the same time and see their future, but hey you never know. The science aspect of the show can be possible correlated to the ongoing investigation that the FBI has initiated. I guess a lot of the investigation is science driven-In example, fingerprinting, tapping phone lines, etc. All of these things would not be able to be done without the science that has been previously created and experimented on. Another example, technology. I think that technology has a lot to do with the science fiction genre. This show is filled with technological aspects of the 21st century.

Hugh Nissenson's The Song of the Earth and “Science Fiction and Biology”

About six or seven years ago I was thumbing through my public library’s Science Fiction section and came across The Song of the Earth, a novel by Hugh Nissenson. I was probably a little younger than the author’s intended audience and so a lot of the thematic issues went over my head, but I was able to get through it with a minimal amount of life scarring. It’s about an arsogenic metamorph—a person genetically enhanced to be an artist at conception—who grows up in world that distrusts his gift. He also deals with issues of sexuality and religion, but it’s his genetic make-up and the consequences begot from it that fuels those issues as well as the majority of the plot.

When we read Reading Science Fiction, particularly the chapter by Pamela Sargent entitled “Science Fiction and Biology” I thought immediately of Nissenson’s novel. Sargent writes that “biological change…can seem like a ‘perversion’ even blasphemous to some.” In the novel there was a large amount of public outcry against one of the arsogenic metamorphs. She was killed at a young age because of her engineered talent and is referenced consistently when the other characters talk about their fear of others because of their unnatural nature. Many of the characters of the novel are artists and, when Johnny, the main character, reveals his history to them, they treat him differently, often times the same way one might treat a person who’d cheated on a test.

The novel attempts to merge the scientific (particularly the genetic) with the natural. Johnny, the protagonist and subject of the book, is another arsogenic metamorph and joins a cult that worships the Earth. He is a product of science, but feels trapped within his manufactured gift and therefore gives it up to try and gain “Gaian Consciousness” (which was a kind of connection to the Earth). In this connection we see a blending of technology and nature as well as the merging of gender, another point brought by Sargent who writes briefly of the “increasingly mutable” sexual identifications. In order for Johnny to be accepted into the cult he must grow a pair or breasts (the novel was pretty weird) and so again, he must use technology to enhance himself. Even as he tries to merge with the world around him he must take part in the science within it which brings up another point of.

Ultimately one aspect of Johnny, the technological side (at the behest of his mother’s suicide), wins out and he takes up his artistic gift and becomes famous within a very short amount of time. Nothing really works out in this book though, and another arsogenic metamorph kills him out of jealousy. Reading about Johnny and his unique circumstance, the reader watches this battle for dominance take place and is left to rely on his own interpretation in order to determine which aspect of him—the scientific or natural—is the winner (since he dies at nineteen one might argue that it is neither, but for the sake of discussion, I’m going to leave that open-ended). This internal struggle within Johnny again represents the point brought up by Sargent, referencing the overall unease of the world around him, though it’s interesting that another one of the enhanced artists is the one to kill him.

The Song of the Earth speaks for and elaborates on a traditional theme within science fiction through its unique spin on genetic engineering. Sargent’s essay helped me place the book within this realm and helped me to find meaning where before I might not have been able to. Reading Nissenson’s book was far more enjoyable with Sargent as a guide than it was when I was younger.

Gender and Sexuality in Science Fiction

Jane Donawerth’s essay “Gender is a Problem That Can Be Solved” is a very clever analysis of gender in science fiction, once you take out the extreme feminine undertones. The first paragraph annoyed me greatly, with its talk of woman being more susceptible to poverty and lack of equal representation. I am in no way a feminist. I have found that whining about rights that we already have and things that are in our control to be obnoxious and unnecessary. But I digress..

          The specific part of the essay that I found to be extremely irritating was when Donawerth talks about Joanna Russ’ “What Can a Heroine Do?”. Russ says that women have less to write about than men, that they’re stuck with “the marriage plot or the mad woman plot”. Seriously? Give your imagination more credit than that. Russ is essentially saying that women know only how to write about marriage and going crazy, both of which coincide, normally. Haaa.

          Yet, once I looked past the feminine undertones and the slighting of the female sex by females themselves, I was delighted at the innovations that many of the authors presented to the science fiction genre. I liked the whole idea of gender neutrality and non-conforming sexual futuristic societies. Donawerth talks about novels by Melissa Scott, in which “woman can do all men can do because the gender catagories “woman” and “man” have been transmuted, no longer constraining future humans”. I also liked the idea of a future “where humans can change bodies and sexualities”.

          I think this essay is good because it shows how science fiction can have gender/sexual issues and not just technology and aliens. Once female authors “ignore gender roles and are not culture-bound”, they are able to create new alternate realities that haven’t been discussed before in science fiction. Gender is a catalyst to better literature, not a hindrance.

Quantum Leap and Time Travel

Time travel is one of the numerous motifs that consistently appear in the science fiction (SF) genre. In Reading Science Fiction, when the discussion of time travel rises in the pop culture section of the book, it is mentioned that one of the purposed time travel is used by the characters of a story is to fix something in the past that once had gone wrong. When reading this line, I immediately thought of the show, Quantum Leap, which was not mentioned in the articles at all.


Here is a very general description of the storyline from Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) for those who do not know:
Doctor Sam Beckett led a group of top scientists into the desert to research his theory that a man could time travel within his own lifetime. Unfortunately, in order to save his funding, he was forced to enter the accelerator prematurely and vanished. He then found himself in someone else's body with partial amnesia. His only contact from home is Al, a holographic image only he can see and hear. Setting right things which once went wrong, Sam leaps from life to life, hoping each time that this is the final leap home.

In each episode, Sam must figure out who he is and what he has to make right of the situation he has leaped into.

Though time travel isn't something new in the SF genre, Quantum Leap beings a different aspect of time travel into play. Having watched most of the show, Sam can not control where or when he leaps from time to time. The driving force of these leaps is never revealed; he just hopes the next leap is back to the lab in which he disappeared from. When he leaps into the body of whoever in whatever time, the "actual person" he has left into is back in the science lab in Sam's time, usually confused and scared, not understanding what is happening to him, much like Sam after he has leaped. But once Sam has leaped in a person, he controls all aspects of that person and, not only fixes what went wrong involving that person, he changes the affects of time while the actual person is rendered helpless of control over their own lives. This is a power God-like: almost an all- ruling ability to change- well history! But what if it is God who is having Sam leap around from decade to decade, fixing things that went wrong in the world. This brings as whole new aspect to discussing science in relation to religion. This topic of course would be too in depth for a single blog post, but the connection is there. How can there be a pre-destined plan in a person's life if time travel is possible? Would time travel disprove the existence of [a] God is a person can go back and change history ( which would affect the years after the event)?

These are just a few questions SF, at least not in Reading Science Fiction, has not addressed.