By Jay Fuentes
“May the force be with you," is one of the most iconic lines in film history as the fourth installment in the Star Wars franchise made its way into theaters in 1977.
Humanity has made numerous attempts to understand the multiple components concealed within the immense expanse of the universe. To restore order to society and, ideally, make sense of the universe, we once more resorted to divine beings. Ultimately, though, we constructed our own instruments to help us survive and comprehend the complexity of the cosmos, which eventually gave us the freedom to venture into infinity and beyond.
Herein lies the role of science fiction. People have created this genre by speculating about what might be hiding just outside the bounds of our comprehension of reality. It is entirely based on ideas, but scientific norms largely constrain it. In contrast to fantasy genres, it is a genre that challenges the current physical environment in the aftermath of our society's technological advancement rather than creating imaginative worlds. The future holds many possibilities, but is humanity ready to confront them?
Although modern science fiction's spectacular galactic battles and horrific dystopian settings are well recognized, the genre's origins were more experimental. Science fiction evolved into "speculative fiction" as we moved into the mid-1900s, the genre's "Golden Age." Writers predicted what people might come across in the distant future, like Arthur C. Clarke’s extraterrestrial perspective on the potential metamorphosis of humanity and Isaac Asimov’s innovative research regarding robotics. The mystical stories, while entirely fictitious, never strayed from the scientific—and occasionally philosophical—principles upon which they were founded.
Other artists, meanwhile, popularized science fiction by presenting the Hollywood story of action and peril set against a background of space and aliens to the public. Anybody can describe the awe they felt upon viewing Star Wars or Star Trek. Contrary to the realistic manner of the past, modern technology alternatively brought about new types of conflict and drama.
Science in science fiction is different from actual science. Some science fiction media try to keep the logic but fail to incorporate facts into said media. Ant-man, Star Wars, Interstellar, E.T., and Star Trek are just some examples of science fiction movies with relatively accurate science. We say “relatively accurate” because although some aspects are well thought out, there are still parts that cannot be explained. After all, we may not have discovered a particular piece of science in the aforementioned films yet.
There is a blur between science fiction and legitimate science, but we, the audience, don’t know that because not all of us are not experts in scientific fields. Some of us only know a fraction of science due to the required curriculum we are given throughout our basic education.
Not all of us know what wormholes are, how light cannot escape a black hole, or if we humans can inhabit a planet widely different from Earth. But what the audience relies on is the writing and the fruitless effort to do research. Take for example, again, Star Wars, at the time, we could not explain the science behind the lightsabers, the robots, and the “force”, but we watch the films anyway because we are entertained by the idea that we get to experience things that do not exist; or may not have existed until the research was made. The point is that science fiction is meant to be entertaining and inaccurate because if the films followed every fundamental rule of every field of science, the people would be forced to skip observing the plot, and the main focus would be on science instead.
For the ordinary audience to be so out of the loop from the media they consume will automatically spell disinterest. This is why science fiction is hard to write. Writers must balance layman’s terms and actual science to gauge their audience’s interest.
Science fiction as a genre is what it is because of how it tries to deliver real-life and scientific fantasy to people while also trying to simplify certain things for them. Part of this genre is a balance between reality and entertainment, a paradox of “this feels so real!” and “this is so inaccurate.”
Whatever the outcome of sci-fi media and how it shapes itself in the future, there will always be a blurred line that separates factual science and science fiction.
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