The Future is in Love with the Past

In the mystical worlds of science fiction, the past may be our only tool for understanding the future.

Image credits: Sun Rays by Helene Goldberg, available on Flickr

Since the dawn of the internet and the rise of modern computing, humanity has been running a race. With whom? That slippery bitch, the future. There’s a certain desperation in how we hurtle forward towards the next thing, the newest fad, the freshest take. As our connectivity grows and the gears turn quicker, so too do our worlds spin that tiny bit faster. 

Ursula Le Guin, in the opening lines of her sci-fi space adventure ‘City of Illusions’, asks us to “Imagine darkness”. It’s true that when I think of the future, it’s hard not to see the dark. Global warming, a second Trump term, income inequality… so much can go wrong, and so much is uncertain.      

The future isn’t terrifying because we know it will be bad. It’s terrifying because we don’t know. 

And yet, despite her overwhelming presence, I find we do not waver. Instead, as I have been noticing more and more, people are turning to science fiction, the only genre dedicated to knowing what cannot be known. People don’t flock to cinemas for Dune Part 2 just for Timothee’s cheekbones (I hope). There is comfort, I think, in finding out what’s going to happen next for humanity. 

Sci-fi writers can be split into two camps: those who celebrate the progress technology grants us, and those who warn against it. But if there’s one thing the dystopias of the 50s and the space operas of the 70s have in common, it’s this: they’ve cracked the code of the unknowable future by using stories to reflect our pasts back at us.

In my sci-fi explorations, I found myself drawn to the writings of Ursula Le Guin, and her short story collection, ‘Worlds of Exile and Illusion’. The three stories, ‘Rocannon’s World’,  ‘Planet of Exile’ and ‘City of Illusions’,  tell the tales of a human race spread out amongst the stars. Beyond her fantastical world-building and character development, Le Guin’s work stands out because of how she positions her stories around the future.

When we look at Le Guin’s future, we don’t see it through the eyes of space pilots or emperors. We see it through the eyes of the medieval societies of worlds conquered by humans. In her stories, the iconography of the future is constructed using the language of the past. Rocket ships, aliens, and even the vastness of space are recontextualised as wingsteeds, the farborn, and the long night. This technique simultaneously brings these worlds closer to us and blurs them beyond all comprehension. To read Le Guin’s work is to become a detective, to shift through a dialogue that fails to describe what it cannot truly capture, to realise the truth at its core.

When asked in 1985 about sci-fi and the future, Le Guin regarded the future as something to look back on: “When we look at what we can't see,” she says, “what we do see is the stuff inside our heads.”

When you look a little closer at the sci-fi standouts of the past century, a similar pattern begins to emerge. In constructing their worlds, language becomes a key component of how sci-fi writers wrap their futuristic sensibilities around the wisdom of the past.

Frank Herbert, author of ‘Dune’, was keenly aware of the importance of words in developing a future that feels real. “If you want to give the reader the solid impression that his is not here and now,” he says, “give him the language of that place… that oral tool - it has it’s own inertial forces; it’s mind-shaping as well as used by mind”. ‘Dune’ is a smorgasbord of language, including French, Latin, Hebrew and Navajo. However, Arabic figures as the most prevalent language of Dune, Manvir Singh of the New Yorker highlights at least 80 terms (used primarily by the MENA inspired Fremen of Arrakis) with distinctly Arab origins. 

Scholars like Harris Durrani, a Professor of History at the University of Cambridge, have argued that this use goes beyond the tokenistic to a profound and extended conversation with MENA, and especially Islamic, culture. In his book, Herbert draws from and modifies the roots of Arabic words to explore how a language changes over time. In a similar way, when he engages with distinctly spiritual terms, such as identifying Paul as Muad’Dib, he draws from Islamic spiritual knowledge, asserting the character as something more than a messiah. Speaking of the book’s reference to passages from the Qur’an, Durrani says, “Herbert is not merely copying-and-pasting from Muslim sources but actively engaging with how they might be reinterpreted… while preserving their basic principles across millennia'. Here what Herbert demonstrates is the value of deep introspection on the past in order to grant his world a sophisticated spiritual grounding. 

Moving forward in time, the 2014 film ‘Interstellar’ —a movie famous for its use of theoretical physics to inform and illustrate its futuristic visuals — also uses language as a key medium for connecting the future and past. In the film, a Dylan Thomas poem written in the 50s is used to serenade a crew of astronauts embarking on a mission to another galaxy. The poem, written as a plea to the poet’s father to fight against death, is recontextualised to capture the emotional crux of the film, humanity’s resolve to forever “rage, rage against the dying of the light”. The poem, which should feel out of place in a film that leans heavily on scientific jargon, seems to transcend time as it captures the heat and futile hope of the moment.

In Sci-fi, the future is just as much about looking back as it is looking forward. 

‘Worlds of Exile and Illusion’ begins and ends the same way: with tragedy, born in the cruelty of time. In the prologue to ‘Rocannon’s World’ and the ending of ‘City of Illusions’, medieval queens and exiled negotiators embark on journeys into the stars, to recover treasured heirlooms and rescue doomed planets. They speed out on mystical vessels far beyond their comprehension, flying faster than light to planets unknown. They stay for a few weeks, a few months, and return to their homes to find their lovers dead and their children older than they are. The relativity of time has ripped away the connections the characters have to their pasts, and in a way, destroyed their futures. In Le Guin’s stories, there is tragedy in hurtling towards the future and leaving the past behind. 

We all too often fall into the trap of seeing the future as a never-ending race towards an ever-receding goal. The past behind us is worthless, the future ahead a glimmering jewel. In her works, Ursula Le Guin allows us to see the future from a different angle, allowing us to see what can’t be seen. To see where we will go, we must look at where we have come from.