The potentials of the new technology created in the early twentieth century created a variety of reactions with in society. Some people embraced the changes, others resisted the developments, and still others fell somewhere in between. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s piece, “The Futurist Manifesto”, embraces the rapid transformation of society. His world is composed of fast, powerful machines and strong, young citizens. The Manifesto also depicts an aggressive, violent, and unjust world that is devoid of any morals. Edgar Rice Burroughs is another author whose work, A Princess of Mars, addresses the future and its possibilities. It is the story of John Carter, an American Civil War Veteran, who is mysteriously transported to Mars or Barsoom and goes through a series of trials and triumphs with the different Martian natives. It may initially appear to fit Marinetti’s vision of the future because it takes place on another planet, there is advanced technology, and the violence is prevalent on the planet. However, Burroughs is actually critiquing the very qualities that Marinetti praises. For instance, Burroughs discredits the use of violence for violence sake and the lack of a family unit. He also recognizes destructive potentials of technology, which is something that Marinetti does not take into consideration for the future. After careful analysis, it can be determined that Burroughs is not one of the Futurists that Marinetti describes.
Upon first inspection, Burroughs’ mindset seems in accordance with Marinetti’s Futurist world. Burroughs’ protagonist, John Carter, appears to physically fit Marinetti’s ideal Futurist because he is large at six feet, two inches, he is strong, and he remains relatively young at thirty years old. Yout...
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...”, Marinetti does not express uncertainty; rather he presents a future with limitless possibilities. In contrast, it was very unsettling for many people to not know what was going to happen in the future. In modern times we have experienced the advances of technology that Marinetti mentions, such as exploring space, but we have also seen its destructive capabilities in the atom bomb. Today, there isn’t as a great of a feeling of uncertainty because of inventions like the Internet. Alas, with the diminishing feeling of uncertainty also comes the waning experience of wonder and intrigue of what the future is going to hold for us.
Works Cited
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars. 1917. New York: Penguin Books, 2007.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso, “The Futurist Manifesto”. 1909. Italian Fascisms. ed.
Adrian Lyttleton. London: Cape, 1973. pp. 209-215.
In conclusion, Burroughs presents two Martian races that are largely different to validate that all races are created equal and the differences in abilities result from cultural disparities. Burroughs’ focus on race in this novel is critical as it serves as a reaction against the biological racism fueled by eugenics in the 20th
The futuristic setting is the author's way of saying that the future will be depressing if humans fail to recognize and appreciate literature. The world is doomed because all these people want to do is sit in front of wall televisions and be entertained. Another example, Ender and Peter play buggers and astronauts, which simulates the real war that is taking place. "When kids played in the corridors, whole troops of them, the buggers never won, and sometimes the games got mean." (p. 11) When Peter and Ender simulate the war, they are telling the reader that even children are aware of the terrible war. The author shows his message of a terrible future here through the everyday activities of children being affected by the events that are far from home. Lastly, Montag's wife tries to kill herself by taking an entire bottle of sleeping pills and some emergency workers come; they just go about their business like her suicidal tendencies are nothing.
It was not until the summer of 1860 when John Burroughs essay Expression was picked up by Atlantic Monthly. Which was later published in November of that same year. In 1864 John took a job as a c...
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre . New Haven : Yale University Press, 1979.
The underlining theme in The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury is unarguably war. War is the point of origin from all conflicts generated throughout this story. War drives man to Mars, nearly wipes out the Martian population, wreaks havoc on Earth, and forces humans to leave their newly found planet to its previous tenants. War is the driving factor for this whole story; without it, this story never occurred. It gives humanity the courage to travel way out of their comfort zone onto a wasteland of a planet. Being that war follows humans to Mars due to their actions makes humans realize that they cannot escape their own violence.
Bradbury, Ray. The Martian Chronicles: The Grand Master Edition. New York: Bantam Spectra, 1977. EPUB file.
The story of The Martian focuses on the obstacles botanist and astronaut Mark Watney must overcome to survive on the planet Mars. His adventure is filled with fictional and non-fictional elements that are most likely difficult for the normal individual to identify what is actually realistic and what is simply fantasy. After taking a closer look, this film contains a lot more realism to actual science and space travel today. This paper will closely analyze and discuss three accuracies and inaccuracies of the film in relation to the content discussed in ESS 102 lectures, labs, and assignments.
Gallagher, Edward J. “The Thematic Structure of ‘The Martian Chronicles.’” DISCovering Authors. Online ed. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 3 March 2011.
The Golden Age of Science Fiction featured many of Science Fiction’s greatest and most prolific authors. American author Philip K. Di" (1928 - 1982), active from 1952 until his death, was one of those who helped shape science fiction during the three decades during which he was active (Behrens and Ruch). Throughout his career, Di" wrote more than forty novels, one hundred short stories, as well as numerous essays. Amongst the author’s numerous works, eight short stories and four novels were eventually adapted to the silver screen (such as the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) which became Blade Runner (1982) and the short story “Adjustment Team” (1954) which was loosely adapted to eventually become The Adjustment Bureau (2011) (Kimbell). Nevertheless, something was eating the author away despite his success.
Nevertheless, Neil Postman wrote a very thought-provoking novel that should make all Americans rethink their lives, even if it is just a little bit. Postman was very critical in his novel, but he provides a wakeup call for everyone that has not come into contact with the nasty reality technology can have on society.
Gatsby encompasses many physiognomies such as ambitious. Ambitious outlines one who is eagerly desirous of achieving or obtaining success, Jay Gatsby. It is evident that Gatsby generates his own fantasy world, a realm where he is not the underprivileged James Gatz, but the fantasized Jay Gatsby. Fitzgerald conceives him as, “… the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen year old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end” (98). This quote expresses how he dreams up a new world to escape the blandness of his own existence. But his imagination and turmoil pays off because he ends up making his dreams reality. He personifies a man who goes from “rags to riches” because he strives to better himself as opposed t...
Her analysis of the metaphysics behind literature derived from Jean Baudrillard who proposed that reality has become an artifice in reality. His precise term for this occurrence is called hyper-reality and consists of society using motifs and signs in order to coincide for what is real, basically, that reality falls far from the understanding of Americans due to the “information-saturated, media-dominated contemporary world”. Gonzalez uses this idea to make the argument that in literature we have lost our grasp with verity and reality; we’ve lost this perception by trying to recreate our pasts and never creating our "now". Moreover, we’re so obsessed with explaining the theories of our ancestors that we’ve created a “perverted” culture of intertextuality. Gonzalez’s most substantial argument stands in that the novel has lost its credibility today because contemporary authors seek to recreate and call the results “postmodernism”, hence, intertextuality. This theme has also been a recurrent one that seems to be the most compelling: people are tired of the same ideas bouncing from one generation to the next, tired of cliché themes, and tired of seeing the same thing in novels. She also portrays technology’s role in this issue with evidence of its threat to the future of the novel; basically, she argues that literature entirely is at risk because all technology does is create an epidemic that destroys present day aesthetic and ideas of the
... to foretell of a dystopian America that has eerily similar qualities to current- day- America even though he wrote this book over sixty years ago. Just as the novel predicts, People are becoming buried in their technology, leaving books and social interactions lower on peoples’ priority list. They want to have the latest technology to make it seem like they live a successful life. People have turned towards the technology obsessively in order to have fun entertainment and feel happy. Medication consumption is higher than ever and humans are addicted to fast- paced actions that provide them with their coveted entertainment. America is changing, moving towards an alarming technological dystopia just as the America in the novel did.
Tracy K. Smith’s “Life on Mars” is a collection of poetry dealing mainly in the search for a sense of purpose and the nature of people. The books is something of an elegy as a whole with many poems pertaining to death and the author’s struggle with the loss of her father. The poems are at once poignant and gentle in tone and leave questions than can only be answered in multiple readings. The book is segmented in four parts that travel through different topics and types of poetry. The mood ranges from passionate accounts of Orwellian politics to soft recollections of a lovers embrace; throughout the book Smith brings in references to pop culture, science, and technology that incorporate seamlessly with her words.
The media has been depicting the future in various ways. Ever since man started to ponder on the thought of the uncertainty of prospective events, a lot of possibilities were offered. These were represented in numerous media types—print, film, television, art and so on. The first wave of artists were very optimistic. The future was illustrated as an ideal place wherein everything is in order and nothing is wrong. Such settings are called utopias, which came from the Greek words οὐ and τόπος and was the framework of Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Johannes Valentinus Andreae’s Christanopolis, and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (Hillegas 3-4). This was counteracted, however, by the batch of artists that came thereafter. They have acknowledged