Reflection 1: Alienus, Alius, Sci-fi and I

[Alienus]
For sixteen years I lived in an apartment walking distance away from the wall separating the North and the South Cyprus. I grew up in a place where "us vs. them" mattered in everyday life. A place where politics of division, built more than a wall dividing the island; it built walls inside people's heads which prevented people not to learn about the other, not to hear about the other and not to speak about the other in any other form but "the enemy." There were no aliens back home (as far as I know), only a lot of alienated people. Then one day, the wall came down.Talk about contact.

[Alius]
What is sci-fi? I would say it is a sophisticated form of story-telling which sees human response/reaction to social change as the central theme. What drives a social change? Well, change does not really come about only via science. Conflicts can lead to change, some traumatic experience (i.e. terrorist attacks) or knowledge may lead to change. However, biggest changes in human lifestyles in Western world has been (and to this day remain to be) driven by scientific breakthroughs. The term "progress" is the most widely used term in making scientific breakthroughs more acceptable for people. Since the beginning of the 20th century, people have been less critical of the scientific breakthroughs and most inventions have been welcomed by communities at large without any questions. Any small step was portrayed as a milestone towards better days. We stopped questioning the health costs of carrying mobile phones in our pockets, we stopped questioning large amounts of time we spent staring at computer screens. Science provided solutions to all our problems (well, almost all) without waiting for our questions. What's more, seeing the safe system of scientific approach our government policies started becoming "progressive," and we slowly stopped effectively questioning "national security measures," military expenditures, direction of foreign aid or economic sanctions. I think sci-fi reminds us that there are still questions we need to ask- not only to each other but to others. Sci-fi holds reality accountable for the artificial reality it submits and consequently sci-fi needs to meet every test of reality (or significant amount of reality).

I am by no means suggesting that sci-fi needs science to be sci-fi. I know that there is sci-fi without scientific discoveries (please see: Rwanda in Year's Best SF 12) where dicovery of disguised other replaces the stereotypical science dimension of the genre. This then brings me to the other question of PTJ...why aliens and sci-fi? Why not Orcs or monsters?

I think it is one of those beautiful sides to the English language which identifies anything foreign or not belonging as alien- which takes me to my initial point on Cyprus where people saw each other in terms of Greek vs. Turkish until there was interaction which started a new wave "us, the Cypriots." Sci-fi brings in its criticisms to our world built on duplicities: black/white, right/wrong. alien/human. It is no wonder, on several occassions alien contact somehow results in experiencing "the other" on an internal level (i.e. through learning about the other, physically changing form into the other etc.). Even though genre caries the black and white features of the real world, it twists the interaction capacity between the right and wrong (or black/white) by changing the setting of the interaction. Arguably, if you control the environment, then you can control human behavior...but can you control the most intimate feature of human experience: emotions and feelings? Or people's attachment to their costumery ways? And who other than an outsider could possibly be threat to these ways? Unless one within the community is somehow "possessed" by the aliens...

We more or less know about the orcs and monsters being all fantastic wild, savage creatures which do not represent any form of advanced civilization or any capabilities of advanced societies. They are deemed to be the losers... their brutality do not match with the high morals or intellectual capabilities of men. Alien interaction calls for a high level of technological advancement which would create an asymmetric division of power, which can  lead into an "oppressor" and the "oppressed" dichotomy. This does not matter when humans are facing the orcs or monsters, because hey, "we" get to be the oppressors. Positions change when it comes to the aliens...them having the technology and all, it would be hard to expect them being the "oppressed." In such settings, the whole of humanity is at stake...and questions that we did not ask before become relevant.

[i]
Though I often times get fascinated by this genre, I tend to take in what I read with a grain of salt. The sci-fi I have read/watched so far never fully articulated the possibility of aliens belonging to multiple planets (or worlds). Same with the humans... what we find at stake is never the minorities, or mixed races...it's always the humans- not Asians, not Africans just humans. To me this notion is similar to being color-blind...or treating all equal when they are definitely not equal. Sci-fi has a level of accepted
"purity of blood" when it comes to humans which I find hard to settle with. On another note, I am excited to be taking another course with PTJ, exploring the role of culture and identity on micro-level interactions between self and the alius in various settings.