Science fiction, biotechnology and the shadow of September 11

THE EMERGENCE of science fiction (or "SF") as a distinct literary genre in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was occasioned by the scientific and industrial revolutions, which encouraged speculation about extraordinary technological innovations and future societies radically different from the present. That, however, does not entail that SF must be optimistic about science and technology, or about the future societies that it imagines. On the contrary, the genre's history shows strong and continuing cautionary impulses, often including scepticism about scientific and technological advancement. Science fiction, then, need not be, and often is not, pro-science fiction.
This cautionary tendency has been clearest, perhaps, with SF works produced for mainstream audiences by predominantly mainstream writers, such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World(1932). The latter, with its dystopian future of biologically engineered social harmony, is frequently referred to by opponents of biotechnology, such as Leon R. Kass, who in May 2001 published an article entitled "Preventing a Brave New World" in the New Republic. In this article, Kass argues that all forms of human cloning should be prohibited as a first step in what he foresees as "a long battle against eugenics and a post human future".
An element of technophobia is also apparent in SF cinema, which has given a particularly sinister image to biological scientists and biotechnology, displayed recently in Jurassic Park (1996), Gattaca (1997) and The Sixth Day (2000), among many others. The Sixth Day is an Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster that depicts an evil biomedical company which secretly manufactures human clones. The clones are grown to adulthood in a matter of minutes using genetically blank bodies stored in nutrient vats. They are programmed with personalities and memories that can be extracted from an existing brain in a mere second, using a computerised eye scan.
This kind of science fictional cloning technology tends to justify the irritating journalistic habit of referring to "mere science fiction". The technology depicted in The Sixth Day is scientifically absurd and certainly bears no resemblance to any current proposal for therapeutic or reproductive cloning using the somatic cell nuclear transfer technique that created Dolly (or any other real-world technique).
Overall, postulated biotechnologies such as cloning, genetic engineering and various kinds of technological enhancement of the human body/have been treated negatively in much SF, particularly in works that command huge audiences, such as productions emanating from Hollywood. In this context, SF often seems be anti-science fiction.
However, any attempt to examine the relationship between SF and the futuristic technologies that it postulates quickly encounters complications, and some postulated technologies, such as those relating to space travel, are the mainstay of $F in all media. Biotechnology, it seems, is especially feared and most frequently demonised, and even this is probably less common in the work of professional SF novelists than in movie scripts and one-off $F works by mainstream authors.
THE COMPLEX relationships SF and biotechnology were recently considered at an international conference entitled "Biotechnological and Medical Themes in Science Fiction", held in Thessaloniki, Greece. It was superbly organised by Associate Professor Domna Pastourmatzi, of Thessaloniki's Aristotle University. Pastourmatzi has lived for extensive periods in the USA and has an international outlook. She provided an excellent opportunity for writers, scholars and critics from a range of countries, including Austria, Australia, Canada, Greece, Poland, Sweden and the USA, to consider such issues as SF's Frankensteinian drift. The mainly Greek audience of about 200 was provided with headphones for a real-time translation service.
Australia's leading SF writer, Greg Egan, is largely ignored by the, mainstream literary community in his own country, but his work was discussed with enthusiasm in papers by Nerina Kioseoglou, a Greek translator, and Elisabeth Kraus, an Austrian academic, as well as in my own paper. Young literary scholars from Aristotle University delivered many of the papers, showing a burgeoning interest in SF at their institution, which has a strong Department of American Literature and Culture. Most of these papers were presented in English, and they were lucid and penetrating, though some of them showed the same mix of unnecessary academic jargon and a technophobic mindset that typifies literary scholarship in English-speaking countries.
We met, of course, in the terrible shadow of September 11, during the early period of the American and British bombardment of targets in Afghanistan. As a result of the terrorist attacks on the USA, some delegates from outside of Greece cancelled their attendance at a late stage. This included three Americans who were among the key speakers listed in the program as advertised: SF writers Greg Bear and Joan Slonczewski, and literary scholar Susan Squier. At the start of the first day, Pastourmatzi read out statements from these three, explaining why they felt unable to attend. The gist of it seemed to be that they were unwilling to leave the USA at a time of uncertainty, when additional atrocities were feared. They did not necessarily feel in any personal danger if they travelled, but were worried about being stranded in Europe, away from their families, if further aviation shutdowns proved necessary.