Second paragraph of third chapter (“Children of Utopia”, by Andy Sawyer):
In science fiction, [Thomas] More’s island becomes another planet whose inhabitants are rewritten as aliens from other worlds; his criticism more secular in imagining a possible, if not probable, future. Although More did not invent the concept of the better world – isolated, ‘perfect’ societies are found in Chinese fables such as the 5th century Peach Blossom Spring, or the medieval European Land of Cockaigne where all material pleasures can be found – he gave us a word to articulate this concept. ‘Utopia’ means good place, but the pun in More’s Greek tells us that it means no place1. It exists in our imagination. Should we try and create it? Politicians and science fiction writers alike, being what they are, often end up creating a ‘bad place’: dystopia. The best science fiction addresses this tension: our desires for something different and better compete with fears of something much, much worse.
1 More’s invention of the word ‘Utopia’ is based on the Greek ou ‘not’+ typos ‘place’.
This is the souvenir book of an exhibition about science fiction in the Barbican in London which I went to in June 2017, and don’t seem to have written up at the time. It’s a really wonderful collection of sf art, mainly book covers with some magazine covers, comics and stills from films or TV, combined with some decent essays by the likes of Andy Sawyer, Tade Thompson, Susan Stepney and Bruce Sterling. I particularly appreciated the piece on Soviet science fiction by Alyona Sokolnikova. I’m afraid it is out of print, so no purchase link today.
Here’s a walkthrough of the exhibition in case you missed it:
I remember that at the exhibition itself I was particularly grabbed by Palestinian film-maker Larissa Sansour’s In the Future They Ate from the Finest Porcelain, which explores the intersection between sf, archaeology and politics, three subjects that greatly interest me. The full film (30 mins) is here, and this is a trailer:
This was the shortest unread book on my shelves acquired in 2017. Next on that pile is iLobby.eu, by Caroline de Cock.
