Alternative Future SCI-FI — imagines more than one “Possible FUTURE” for Humanity, flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT.
Exploring these stories can help us to “see” the world as it might be — 10, 20, or more years from now — Warning us of Danger in the form of a “Cautionary Tale” or offering Hope that Disaster may be averted — if we change course TODAY.
In either case, we have a role to play in determining which Future unfolds before us.
“The City on the Edge of Forever” — Star Trek (TOS) — (1967)
“The City on the Edge of Forever” is an episode from season one of the American SCI-FI TV series Star Trek.
STORYLINE
While the USS Enterprise orbits a mysterious planet causing time distortions, Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is treating a near-death Lt. Sulu when the Enterprise is rocked by another time wave and McCoy accidentally injects himself with a huge dose of cordrazine, a dangerous drug. Driven into a mad frenzy, he flees from the bridge and beams himself down to the planet.
Captain Kirk (William Shatner) follows with a search party that includes first officer Spock, (Leonard Nimoy) chief engineer Scott, (James Doohan) and communications officer Uhura (Nichelle Nichols). On the planet’s surface, they come across an ancient glowing ring (the “Guardian of Forever”), a portal capable of sending them to any time and place. The Guardian shows them images of Earth’s historical past, which Spock records on his tricorder. Suddenly, the still-frenzied McCoy bursts out from his hiding place and jumps through the portal.
The landing party instantly loses contact with the Enterprise, and the Guardian explains that McCoy has altered the past to such an extent that the Enterprise and the reality they knew no longer exists. The Guardian says that it’s possible to fix the damage, so Kirk requests that it replay the historical period it was showing when McCoy passed through.
He and Spock attempt to jump through at a point in time just before McCoy’s arrival and find themselves in New York City in 1930 during the Great Depression. They steal clothes from a fire escape to blend in, and while fleeing from a policeman, hide in the basement of the 21st Street Mission. There they meet the soup kitchen’s operator, Edith Keeler (Joan Collins). She senses something odd about the intruders but nevertheless offers to pay them to clean up the basement and finds them a place to stay.
Later, Spock attempts to discover how McCoy changed history by accessing the recordings on his tricorder. This is a difficult task using the available technology of 1930, which Spock likens to “stone knives and bear skins”. While Spock works on the engineering problem, Kirk pays their expenses by doing odd jobs at the mission, where he falls in love with Keeler. (Unknown to Kirk and Spock, McCoy arrives in a highly agitated state and stumbles into the mission, where Keeler nurses him back to health.)
Spock completes his work and discovers that Keeler was supposed to die in a traffic collision but was somehow saved by the arrival of McCoy, creating an altered timeline in which she founded a pacifist movement on the eve of World War II. It grew powerful enough to cause the United States to delay its entrance into the war, allowing Nazi Germany time to develop the first atomic bomb and use it to win the war instead of the Allies and conquer the world. Kirk is shaken by this revelation and admits his love for Keeler, to which Spock responds that she must die to prevent millions of deaths and restore the future.
SPOCK: Captain, Edith Keeler
is the focal point in time we’ve
been looking for, the point that
both we and Doctor McCoy
have been drawn to.
KIRK: She has two possible
futures then, and depending
on whether she lives or dies,
all of History will be changed.
While walking to a movie with Kirk the following evening, Keeler casually mentions McCoy’s name. Shocked, Kirk tells Keeler to stay right there while he crosses the street back to the mission to inform Spock. McCoy emerges from the mission at the same time, and the trio reunite on the sidewalk. Observing this, Keeler begins to cross the street to join them and does not notice an oncoming truck. Kirk instinctively turns to save her, but a shout from Spock freezes him in his tracks, and Kirk reluctantly grabs McCoy so he can’t save her either. Keeler is struck and killed. A stunned McCoy asks Kirk if he knows what he just did, but it is Spock who replies, “He knows, Doctor. He knows.”
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy return through the Guardian and rejoin the landing party, where they find contact with the Enterprise is restored. A grim-looking Kirk ignores questions about what happened, says “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and the landing party beams up to the Enterprise.
“The Road Not Taken” — Fringe — (2009)
Fringe is an American SCI-FI TV series that premiered on September 9, 2008, and concluded on January 18, 2013, after five seasons comprising 100 episodes. The series has been described as a hybrid of fantasy, procedural dramas, and serials, influenced by TV shows such as Lost, The X-Files, and The Twilight Zone.
STORYLINE
A key plot element of Fringe is the parallel universe that exists next to ours, and the concept that there’s “more than one of everything”.
There were hints of the parallel universe idea scattered through Season 1, but things really didn’t hit hard until “The Road Not Taken” episode, where Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) starts having visions of the alternate universe. At first, the visions were fairly simple, like Olivia seeing two charred bodies instead of one, and seeing Broyles’ office in a different configuration, but then things started to get really weird.
In “Road”, Walter Bishop (John Noble) theorizes that Olivia is experiencing a form of extended deja vu, which he believes is just a brief glimpse of an alternative reality. Olivia’s mind is somehow breaching the fragile walls of space-time. Walter postulates that although we experience time as a linear progression, in reality, every choice we make creates parallel universes, so time is actually like a continuously branching tree of alternative realities. He explains that “deja vu” comes with a feeling of being somewhere before because you actually have been there, in another reality. Also, as we first learned in “Momentum Deferred” that some people, like Olivia, can be “tuned” to see a “shimmer” around objects and people, like Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) — from the alternate universe.
“Deja vu
is simply a
momentary
glimpse to the
other side. Almost
everyone experiences
it. We feel that we’ve
been somewhere before
because actually we have
in another reality.
It’s another path.
The road not
taken.”
— DR. WALTER BISHOP
The final scene of the Season 1 finale is still the pivotal moment when everything changed, and we were “through the looking glass”, so to speak. The images of the World Trade Center towers, still standing, brings the point home. A New York Post newspaper from Universe 2 features stories about former president John F. Kennedy (still alive) addressing the United Nations.
Fringe teaches us that every choice we make creates an Alternative Future or Reality.
Cloud Atlas — (2012)
STORYLINE
The story of Cloud Atlas follows six main characters during six time periods, all taking place at various places on Earth. As each story progresses, connections between the actions of the characters become clear, each one making a significant impact on the following stories. A quick breakdown:
1849, Pacific Islands: The setting of the first plot is in the South Pacific, where attorney Adam Ewing arranges a business meeting with plantation owner Gilles Horrox. After they set sail, Ewing finds a stowaway slave, Autua, and begins to help keep him hidden. Meanwhile, Dr. Henry Goose slowly poisons Ewing with the intent of killing him for his gold, under the pretense of treating him for a parasite. Just before Ewing is about to die, Autua saves him from the doctor. After returning to San Francisco, Ewing and his wife Tilda join the abolitionist movement.
1936, Cambridge: Robert Frobisher is a bisexual/homosexual (we aren’t really sure) English composer who takes an apprenticeship under the famous composer Vyvyan Ayrs. He is inspired by the journal kept by Adam Ewing, and sends a series of letters to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith. Frobisher eventually composes his original piece, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, which Vyvyan attempts to steal and claim as his own, leading Frobisher to shoot and injure the old man. After finishing his composition, Frobisher commits suicide.
1973, San Francisco: Luisa Rey is a journalist who has been tipped off by a now older Rufus Sixsmith about foul play in the new nearby nuclear reactor, built by Lloyd Hooks. Hooks plans to have the reactor fail, causing a disaster and a subsequent boost in the oil business. Sixsmith and Isaac Sachs, another employee who helps Rey, are killed by Hooks’s assassin. A friend of Rey’s father eventually helps her gather the evidence and kill the hitman. Rey also finds and reads Frobisher’s letters to Sixsmith.
2012, Great Britain: Publisher Timothy Cavendish becomes involved with the wrong crowd after one of his writers commits a murder. Pressed for a share of the profits by the author’s brother, Cavendish turns to his own brother for money, who then locks him up in a nursing home as a “practical joke.” While there, he reads a mystery novel written by Luisa Rey about her ordeal with Hooks. He plans an escape with the other residents of the nursing home, and eventually writes a movie about his adventures.
2144, Neo Seoul: Jumping ahead a century, the next story takes place in a dystopian future, following the clone workers at a popular restaurant. One of the clones, Sonmi-451, is inspired by Cavendish’s film and escapes the restaurant with the help of rebel soldier Hae Joo. She discovers that after a clone completes its contract, it is recycled into food for the other clones. Determined to stop this wrongdoing, she becomes the voice of the rebel forces and is martyred.
“Our lives
are not our own.
From womb to tomb,
We are bound to others.
Past and present. And by
each crime and every
kindness, we birth
our future.”
— SONMI-451
2346, Hawaii: Far into the future, a group of tribesmen live as some of the last among the human race after some apocalyptic event. This tribe worships Sonmi (Sonmi-451) as a goddess, and the main character Zachry is tormented by “Old Georgie,” a devilish figure of his imagination. A Prescient, a race more advanced than the Valleymen, named Meronym visits the village. She and Zachry travel to a rundown communication station to activate a beacon, with the hope that someone will rescue them from the planet. While they are gone, a war tribe kills everyone in their village except for Zachry’s daughter. They eventually escape Earth on a spaceship and end up on a distant planet, where Zachry and Meronym start a family.
Cloud Atlas, both as an entirety and in its separate parts, primarily focuses on the metaphysical aspect of humanity and the interconnectivity of all things. (Metaphysics, which itself is the title of a book by Aristotle literally meaning “after physics,” is the branch of philosophy that attempts to gain an understanding of reality as a whole—basically a total explanation for all things.)
Theology is also quite prevalent in Cloud Atlas, mostly in the story told from the far future in which the Valleymen worship Sonmi as a goddess—the same Sonmi who was a Fabricant in 2144 Neo Seoul. Theology means “the study of God,” and it has been the subject of intense thought throughout time.
One of the most prevalent aspects of Eastern philosophy that is prominent in Cloud Atlas is the concept of rebirth and karma. Karma is defined in most Eastern worldviews as the influence of a person’s actions on his or her future, including future lives. According to an interview with Tom Hanks on his role in the film, the actors playing the characters represents the soul of the individual and its continuity through death and rebirth. Each of the characters’ souls takes a different journey through each of the time periods, eventually bringing about that soul’s fate.
Through karmic law and the immortal soul, Cloud Atlas presents a metaphysical “big picture” of reality, with different times and spaces being inherently connected to each other. This demonstrates how our own human lives are integrally connected to those of others in ways we cannot imagine.
The question of what we can and cannot know is also addressed when the Archivist is interviewing Sonmi-451. He asks her for her perspective, her “version” of the Truth. Sonmi replies to this statement, saying, “Truth is singular. Its ‘versions’ are mistruths.” Following the Pre-Modernist view of Truth, which is one that is ultimately objective but not truly knowable, Sonmi’s definition of Truth contrasts that of the Archivist’s, presenting the wide range of beliefs that have been held throughout the history of philosophy.
Ultimately, the characters of Cloud Atlas grow to discover for themselves some level of the Truth in that they make choices they cannot, not make. And every choice shapes the Future that unfolds … for generations to come.
In other words, everything is connected.
Tomorrowland — (2015)
Tomorrowland is an American SCI-FI film — inspired by the progressive cultural movements of the Space Age, as well as Walt Disney’s optimistic philosophy of the future.
STORYLINE
In 1964, a young boy named Frank Walker (Thomas Robinson) attends the New York World’s Fair to sell his prototype jet pack, but is rejected because it does not work. Frank is approached by a young girl, Athena, (Raffey Cassidy) who hands him an orange lapel pin with a blue “T” embossed on it, telling him to follow her onto Walt Disney’s “It’s a Small World” attraction at the Fair’s Pepsi-Cola Pavilion. Frank obeys and sneaks onto the ride, where the pin is scanned by a laser, and he is transported to Tomorrowland, a futuristic cityscape, where advanced robots fix his jetpack, allowing him to fly and join the secretive world.
In the present day, optimistic teenager Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) repeatedly sabotages the planned demolition of a NASA launch site in Florida. Her father, Eddie, is a NASA engineer, but faces losing his job. Casey is eventually caught and arrested. At the police station, she finds a pin in her belongings. While touching it, the pin transports her to Tomorrowland. Her adventure is cut short when the pin’s battery runs out, leaving Casey stranded in a lake.
With help from her younger brother Nate, Casey finds a Houston memorabilia store related to the pin. The owners attack her when she is unable to divulge where she got the pin, insisting that Casey knows about a “little girl”. Athena bursts in and defeats the owners, actually Audio-Animatronics, who self-destruct, blowing apart the shop. After Casey and Athena steal a car, Athena reveals she is also an animatronic, purposed to find and recruit people who fit the ideals of Tomorrowland. Athena drops Casey off outside an adult Frank’s house in Pittsfield, New York.
The now reclusive, cynical Frank (George Clooney) declines Casey’s request to take her to Tomorrowland, having been banished from it years ago. Inside Frank’s house, Casey finds a probability counter marking the end of the world. Frank warns her that the future is doomed, but she disagrees, thus lowering the counter’s probability. Animatronic assassins arrive to kill Casey, but she and Frank escape, meeting Athena in the woods outside Frank’s house. Frank resents Athena for lying to him about her true nature, but reluctantly agrees to help them get to Tomorrowland.
“Find the ones
who haven’t given up.
They’re the future.“
— FRANK WALKER
Using a teleportation device, the trio travel to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Frank explains that Gustave Eiffel, Jules Verne, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison co-founded Plus Ultra, a secret society of futurists, creating Tomorrowland in another dimension, free to make scientific breakthroughs without obstruction. The trio use an antique rocket, called the Spectacle, hidden beneath the Eiffel Tower to travel to Tomorrowland.
There, they find Tomorrowland in a state of decay. David Nix, (Hugh Laurie) Tomorrowland’s governor, greets them. They travel to a tachyon machine, invented by Frank, which accurately predicted the worldwide catastrophe. Casey refuses to accept the world will end, causing the future to temporarily alter. While Frank attempts to convince David to listen, he refuses and intends to have the group leave Tomorrowland.
Casey realizes the tachyon machine is telling humanity that the world will end, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. They confront David, who admits he tried to prevent the future by projecting such images to humanity as a warning. Instead, they embraced the apocalypse, refusing to act to make a better future for their world. Believing that humanity simply gave up, David has also given up and intends to allow the apocalypse to happen so that he can rebuild the world to his liking.
Casey, Frank, and Athena attempt to use a bomb to destroy the machine, leading to a fight with David. The bomb is accidentally thrown through a portal to an uninhabited island on Earth, the explosion pinning David’s leg. Athena sees a vision of the future where Frank is shot by David, and she jumps in the way of his attack, mortally wounding herself beyond repair. Making peace with Frank, Athena activates her self-destruct sequence, destroying the machine, which falls on David, killing him.
In the present, Casey and Frank lead Tomorrowland, recruit Eddie and Nate, and create a new group of recruitment animatronics like Athena, whom they were addressing at the beginning of the film. Given pins, the animatronic children set out to recruit new dreamers and thinkers for Tomorrowland.
Tomorrowland reminds us that the Future is what we make it.
The Handmaid’s Tale — (2017)
The Handmaid’s Tale is an American Dystopian TV series, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Canadian author Margaret Atwood.
STORYLINE
The story takes place in the Republic of Gliead, a city in what used to be in the United States. In this alternative future state, the democratic government has been overthrown and replaced by a totalitarian one. What makes Gilead so scary is that it still looks pretty much the same … but its government and society are totally alien from our own. Gilead seems to be without freedom or choice. By law, women are forced to work in very limited roles, including some as natal slaves, and they are not allowed to own property, have careers, handle money, or read.
Worldwide infertility has led to the enslavement of fertile women in Gilead determined by the new régime to be fallen women, citing an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah. These women often include those who have entered marriages following divorce (termed “adulteresses”, as divorce is not recognized under Gileadian law), single or unmarried mothers, lesbians (homosexuals being termed “gender traitors”), non-Christians, adherents of Christian denominations other than the “Sons of Jacob”, political dissidents, and academics.
These women, called Handmaids, are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape (referred to as “the ceremony”) by their male masters (“Commanders”) in the presence of their wives with the intent of being impregnated and bearing children for them. Handmaids are given names created by the addition of the prefix Of- to the first name of the man who has them. When they are transferred, their names are changed.
Along with the Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a plain dress in a specific color. A Handmaid’s outfit consists of a long red dress, a red cloak, heavy brown boots, and a white coif, with a larger white bonnet (known as “wings”) to be worn outside, which conceals her from the public view and restricts her vision.
June Osborne, (Elisabeth Moss) renamed Offred, is the Handmaid assigned to the home of the Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford and his wife Serena Joy, key players in the formation and rise of Gilead, who struggle with the realities of the society they helped create. During “the time before”, June was married to Luke and had a daughter, Hannah.
“Now
I’m awake
to the world.
I was asleep
before. That’s
how we let it happen.
When they slaughtered
Congress, we didn’t wake
up. When they blamed
terrorists and suspended
the Constitution, we
didn’t wake up then
either. They said
it would be
temporary.”
— JUNE OSBORNE
At the beginning of the story, while attempting to flee Gilead with her husband and daughter, June was captured and forced to become a Handmaid because of the adultery she and her husband committed. June’s daughter was taken and given to an upper-class family to raise, and her husband escaped into Canada. Much of the plot revolves around June’s desire to be reunited with her husband and daughter and the internal evolution of her strength to its somewhat darker version.
The Handmaid’s Tale warns us that allowing discrimination based on gender and sexuality — with power concentrated in the hands of a few — can result in a horrific slide from Democracy to Authoritarianism.
Alternative Future SCI-FI imagines more than one Possible FUTURE for Humanity — flowing from Choices we make in the PRESENT. It may Warn us of Danger, leading to Disaster — or offer Hope for a Brighter Tomorrow, if we change course TODAY.
So which path will it be? To War or Peace … Enslavement or Freedom … Extinction or Survival?
The Choice is up to YOU.
***
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