May the 4th Be With You: How Sci-fi Can Shape Our View and Guide Us Toward Certain Futures
Image credits: Casey Horner via Unsplash
The Star Wars franchise has been part of my personal mythology since I was a child; I remember seeing Return of the Jedi in the theater! These stories are a great example of how science fiction can shape our view of the present and guide us toward (or away from) certain futures.
My son’s love of Star Wars has given us ample opportunity to explore, as a family, some important themes. Here are some questions about the future (and today) that you can explore with your family:
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What roles should robots play in society?
What will gender mean in the future, and how does it affect how we experience these stories?
How much value do we place on the lives of clones?
How do we label terrorism versus resistance?
Are good and evil meaningful ways of looking at the world?
As a biologist, I’ve been both entertained and baffled by the rich universe of Star Wars. I love seeing other people’s visions for what life off Earth could look like; Avatar is another amazing movie for expanding our view of what’s possible in nature. I wish the Star Wars creators would give themselves broader license to explore what intelligent “life” means beyond humanoids. (Also, my brain can’t stop autocorrecting “midichlorians” to “mitochondria”, which is confusing for a bunch of reasons.)
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💡 Perhaps most importantly, Star Wars blends the exotic with the emotional in ways that highlight the essential “humanity” of the characters—including droids and nonhumanoid life. Here I take “humanity” to mean things like a desire for dignity and the quest for a life with purpose. Those are important ingredients of the futures that I’m trying to build today.
Sure, some elements of this fictional universe haven’t aged well. The whole comms system perplexes me; your holo-thingy just picks up whenever anyone calls? No, thank you. I also have questions about the physics. Lots of questions. And there’s no internet in Star Wars! But overall I love that this sprawling and complex set of stories is a touchstone in my daily life that has also inspired cultures and generations to look to the future and to the stars.