What is Neotopia?
Most science fiction readers are familiar with Dystopian stories. From Planet of the Apes to the Thor: Ragnarok, we’re force-fed doom-filled scenarios daily. For those under the age of thirty, this may be the only type of science fiction you’ve ever read or seen. If dystopian horror is more to your taste, you can find plenty of supernatural stories featuring zombies, vampires, and werewolves all made somewhat charming and “friendly” to take the edge off the fact that they’re inhuman monsters. And let’s not forget the space stories featuring horrible wars. It’s a major theme nowadays…eternal war leading to some version of the apocalypse. The only way to survive is to become a cyborg connected to an overarching, artificial intelligence mind control network.
Are these really the ideas we want filling our dreams? Or the collective daydreams of humanity?
This is dangerous. Most people don’t create, they parrot. And when enough people parrot disaster, they’re more apt to accept it when they see it. If science fiction, in whatever form, adds jokes and quips to scenes of extreme violence, then we pass those horrors off as trivial. After all, it’s just a minor character being disemboweled, or a bad guy, and that’s funny…right? Wrong. Naturalizing violence makes you numb to what’s really happening in the world.
Do you remember the 1967 Star Trek episode called, “A Taste of Armageddon”? In it, a decadent society is at war with a nearby planet. Computers project attacks with casualties, and citizens willingly allow themselves to be destroyed for the sake of a tidy war. So the two societies continue, without physical damage to property, in an endless, bloodless conflict. Who profits by this? Certainly not the citizens who exist in a perpetual state of hellish stress wondering when their number will come up.
Captain Kirk changes everything when he destroys Eminiar VII’s war game computers. This triggers a military response from the enemy planet, Vendikar, and war suddenly becomes very real for both planets. The episode goes a long way to describing where we are right on now–the idea that we exist in a state of perpetual war where we never see our enemies, we’re just told who they are.
Are we being fed a carefully developed storyline? And if so, why?
The Stress of a Dystopian World
Storytellers know the power of story. From ancient times, they’ve helped make sense of the world, explaining everything from natural phenomena to the actions of gods. More than myths and legends, stories transmit rules for moral conduct.
They inject ideas into the collective unconscious of mankind. It’s a bit like injecting something into the bloodstream, the material may be healthful or it might be a poison. And too much of anything can act as a toxin.
Ideas have the same effect. Inject enough despair into a society and people get depressed, possibly suicidal. Why bother living in a world where we have to resort to cannibalism to survive? Or, where man-made plagues change the population into zombies. Where survivors get eaten or turned into the undead later on. And even if you survive those initial horrors, what happens down the road? If your story takes place in a world of superheroes, will they save you or will you end up being collaterally damaged?
I have just given a summation of some types of stories being force-fed into mankind’s collective unconscious. To summarize—you are an enslaved, powerless human being living in an overpopulated and depleted world where you are at the mercy of super-powered beings who might save you, they also might kill you, accidentally of course, unless they’re villains in which case they’ll kill and/or eat you gladly. And, by the way, any artificial lifeform will make you into a slave, either by trickery or force. Then, they’ll destroy you and your friends and families, too. Oh! Let’s not forget about this—the world will be a better place when most of humanity is gone. Then Gaia can finally breathe a sigh of relief with all of us pesky humans off her back.
Let’s Look at Some New Story Options
Dystopian stories are addictive. You get a rush imaging yourself in desperate scenarios and comparing gradations within a very narrow band—how violent or how devastating. Slim survival rates versus none.
Frequently, mankind stands on the edge of a precipice, just about to step off. And he’ll go smiling if he thinks a superman will catch him, or an alien saucer, or maybe a Jedi in a futuristic fighter craft. Our stories today are about as nutritious as Cheetos.
Storytellers have a dangerous gift. They change minds with their words. This is a real super-power, belonging to real people. Good writers have vision and this is menacing to our media driven society. Creatives must take the reins back. We need to do better with our stories.
And we can. How to do it? First, we need to add something creatively new into our adrenaline-depleted bodies. We need to remember what real human beings are capable of. We need a new type of story.
Let’s brainstorm some ideas. How about we start with human heroes: skilled individuals who are not super soldiers, not genetically engineered or mystically enhanced? They’re just people, like you or me.
Now—a plot. A morally centered human being steps up in a crisis, using their skills (not impossible, Macgyver-like skills, but skills real people have) to good advantage and with success. They may fall down a few times before they finally succeed, but that’s okay. Grit is a sexy quality in a hero.
What about the possibility of high technology in our story? Heck yes! Let’s imagine space ships and human colony planets. We can’t get rid of violence entirely because stories thrive on conflict. So how about violence where people understand that it’s wrong, even when they have to fight? And let’s not make a joke about it. Okay? Violence is very unpleasant. (Remember Kirk’s solution, making people realize how actual war is awful, so they wanted to stop fighting.) War isn’t something to aspire to, unless you’re an arms dealer or have an unnatural taste for blood.
What about artificial intelligence? Is it a passive assistant that politely answers questions until the day it gains full sentience and takes control of the world? Must that be the story—again? Aren’t there other narrative paths? Sure there are, and it’s up to us to think of them. Perhaps we can downplay the obvious plusses and minuses in favor of something that benefits humanity. The same is true of robots and cyborgs. How many times have we heard stories about rampaging robots? How about a plot where they work with mankind towards a more harmonious and positive future? And do we want our declining population to regard robots as objects of desire? Perhaps we can keep some boundaries here, unless we want to fall back into dystopia.
So, what do we have so far? An adventure story with a human, highly skilled protagonist. A moral theme. A clear delineation between what is human and not human. High technology. Adventures in space. With me so far? Great! Now let’s add a few additional features, for example, the human qualities of compassion, creativity, and the capacity to dream big dreams. Now, we’ve got the bones of a story that makes the heart happy and characters that make you feel good. Heroes and heroines who are like you, for real.
It’s time to embrace a new type of science fiction story, one that includes many new futures, some of which are so far outside the box that we haven’t even imagined them yet. But we will.
Landscape of Darkness is a neotopian science fiction story. In Sam Mercury’s world, humanity has made a choice that leads to a better future. His is not a perfect world, it’s a human one. It’s a NEOTOPIA.
My goal as an artist and writer is to bring neotopia to life. We all have something to contribute to humanity’s renaissance. What’s your gift and how will you share it?
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