Futures, Vol. 30, No. 2/3, pp.

175179, 1998
1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
00163287/98 $19.00 + 0.00

Pergamon

PII: S00163287(98)00024-X

ESSAY
Fantasy and the future
Rosaleen Love

Futures scenarios and fantasy both take flight from the notion that things could be
otherwise. A scenario, though, is usually seen as suggesting a future possibility, while
fantastic fiction plays with wild impossibilities. This essay explores two versions of communications futures, one a comic fiction, the other a serious scenario. 1998 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Imagine yourself a member of a medieval
religious order. You are standing in a library
and reach out to take down a large leatherbound volume. As you place it on the desk,
you have a sudden premonition that something rich and strange is about to happen. The
book is an old friend, a commentary upon Aristotle. You are familiar with the smell of the
leather, the feel of its fine vellum pages, the
pattern of theory and argument, commentary
and response, the marginal illustrations. You
intend to take the book and add to the centuries of argument.
Something happens, though, in the interval between taking down the book and placing
it on the lectern. You imagine that things could
be different. This book, when you open it, will
be totally transformed. It will be the book you
have always longed to possess, the book you
have been seeking all your sequestered life. It
will be the Book of All Knowledge.
When you open it you will find great
wonders. There will be light and sound and

Rosaleen Love is currently at the Department of

Communication and Language Studies, Victoria
University of Technology, PO Box 14428, MCMC,
Melbourne Victoria 8001, Australia (Tel: + 613 9365
2234; fax: + 613 9365-2658; email: lovrl@cougar.
vut.edu.au).

words and pictures which move. This book

will be connected to all the other books in the
world, and when you inscribe your words in
the book, there will be commentaries in
response. There you will find other worlds
remote from your library, yet within it. Search
for the word Paradise, if that is your desire,
and back will come information about Paradise apartments to lease in Florida, or Paradise! Girls! Girls! Girls! Or something more
akin to what you might have expecteda
guide to theology.
In short our medieval visionary has seen
into the future, and has imagined the laptop
computer, with built in modem and mobile
phone facility. The future book is interactive,
digital and video, and comes over phone links
to the computer.
Back to the past. You stand at your reading desk, looking down at your book. You
have had a vision that things could be other
than what they are, but you will not tell anyone about it: no-one would believe you.
Instead, you open the pages of commentary on
Aristotle, take up your quill and add to the old
familiar arguments for the earth as the centre
of the universe. Your vision fades, and you
return to the ageless rhythm of your monastic
life. Your goal is Paradise, the abode of the
soul after death, where the desert will blossom

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Essay: R Love

as the rose, and there, free from sorrow, pain

and death, you believe you will dwell forever.
The Internet search for the term Paradise,
throwing up as it does an eclectic mix of commerce, pornography and theology, tells us
something about the Book of All Knowledge
as we have it today: the uses both profound
and trivial, sacred and profane, to which the
new technology is put.
It seems a simple enough thing, to look at
objects in the world, such as the leather-bound
manuscript, and to seea book. Yet what you
see is more often complicated by what you
think and feel, and part of what you think is
things could be otherwise. The British novelist and dramatist Michael Frayn puts it this
way: Your view isnt simpleisnt as one
might say, entirely in the indicative mode. You
read into it what might have been the case,
and what might be the case.1 Indeed, Frayn
argues that we construct reality through fantasy. To take one of his examples: The objects
around us are the typeface in which we see
printed deeper messages, stories centring on
ourselves as hero, martyr, appetite. It takes a
special eye to look at a page of type and not
see cherubim and seraphim, but serifs and
spacing.2 According to his constructionist
view, the everyday is a fantastic construction
placed upon the natural world. Indeed, it takes
special training to see the natural world as a
scientist does; that is, to see it naturalistically.
Your view isnt entirely in the indicative
mode. By this comment Frayn was referring
to what other writers term the subjunctivity
of science fiction and fantasy.3 The science
fiction writer Samuel Delany explains: Subjunctivity is the tension on the thread of meaning that runs between word and object. For a
piece of reportage, a blanket indicative tension
informs the whole series: this happened...
Except we know that the medieval monk did
not find the laptop computer. It is a fiction, not
historical fact. However, it is not a piece of
naturalistic fiction, for as Delany explains: the
subjunctivity of a series of words labelled
naturalistic fictions is: could have happened.4
No, from the monks point of view, the vision
was fantasy, where fantasy takes the subjunctivity of naturalistic fiction and negates it,
to could not have happened, could never happen; what cannot happen because it cannot
exist. But, wait, today we have the Internet,
the lap top computer, the mobile phone, the
modem. The story about the medieval visionary, viewed from todays perspective, is a

176

piece of science fiction which tells of an event

which has not happened. Hence, says Joanna
Russ, the paradoxical or dialectical position
science fiction occupies between fantasy and
naturalism.5
In what follows I intend to take two texts
on communications futures: one an academic
article, the other a fiction, and examine them
in the light of the notion of subjunctivity.
For an example of a naturalistic analysis
of real world issues, consider the article by
Tony Stevenson and June Lennie on Anticipating applications for digital video communications: two scenarios for Australia.6 The
authors define digital video communication
(DVC) as: DVC is an emerging technology
which combines the power of visual media
with that of the computer, thus creating an
intelligent communication network with
increased capacity, reliability and potential for
interactivity and connectivity... It embraces a
wide range of imagery, such as computer
graphics, video in film production, video-conferencing and other active multimedia computer systems, extending to virtual reality.7
Stevenson and Lennie consider two scenarios for the future of the technology; the Conventional Age, in which the technology will
continue to serve current dominant industrial
interests, and the Communicative Age, in
which the technology will co-evolve with a
more liberal democratic and ecologically sustainable future. The Communicative Age scenario is an extrapolation from trends in current
thinking (rather than current practice), representing the desire for, indeed fantasy of an
interactive co-evolutionary future which
emphasises human and social concerns and is
grounded in an ecologically sustainable
socialeconomic system.8 The Communicative Age is a example of a hypothetical future,
a Utopia which takes what is perceived as a
communal loss in the Conventional Age and
corrects this loss with communal ownership
and control in a vision of what might yet be
the case (the Communicative Age). Scenarios
function like predictive tales in science fiction
in that they include events that might happen
and exclude events that can never happen.
Elements of the Conventional Age scenario are
events that are happening now, hence the
authors desire that things might be different.
They create the Communicative Age scenario,
reading into DVC technology of what still
might be the case, DVC technology as a key
to a good future life.

Essay: R Love

Id like to take up the point about the

paradoxical position science fiction occupies
between fantasy and naturalism, in particular
the case where a technology initially envisioned in science fiction becomes an actual
technology in the world, that is, the move from
what might be to what is. The actual technology is an example of digital visual communication in the form of virtual reality, the
fictional example of which was termed holovision back in 1968 by Michael Frayn in his
novel A Very Private Life. (It is worth noting
that Frayns version of holovision emerged in
print well before virtual reality technology was
created.) Both DVC and holovision technologies, ie both real and imagined technologies,
serve to close the gap between visual representation and reality. The world is arranged
so that humans do not have to experience it
directly. The illusion is created of being in the
picture, of taking part in the action, though it
is done without really experiencing discomfort
or danger. In A Very Private Life, the experience of being in a private room in a house
fades to the illusion of being anywhere else
within reach of holovision technology.
A Very Private Life is a fairy tale of the
future. The story begins: Once upon a time
there will be a little girl called Uncumber.
Uncumber will have a little brother called Sulpice and they will live with their parents in a
house in the middle of the woods. There are
no windows in this house of the future, for
windows might let the air in, and no one
would want the congenial atmosphere of the
house contaminated by the stale, untempered
air of the forest, laden with dust and disease.9
In Frayns family of the future, all communication will be technologically mediated by
means of holovision. Holovision is a technology which brings a life-like image of
another person, or another experience, and
pipes it into the house from outside. There will
be no need for anyone to leave their individual
rooms, or the house, ever. Seeing other people
will involve no more than selecting a number
and pressing a switch.10 A holograph will
instantly appear, and communication takes
place without the inconvenience of actual
physical presence. Holovision replaces parenting, schools and other people. The public
world becomes the private world and the
world that exists independently of us collapses
into seemingly solid images. Frayn satirises
ways in which technologies such as holovision, which provide the illusion of perfect

experience, cocoon the individual from a proper engagement with the real world.
One character, Aelfric, explains how the
world became as it is to his rebellious adolescent daughter Uncumber:
Everything became private. People recognised the
corruption of indiscriminate human contact, and
one by one they withdrew from it. Whoever could
afford it built a wall around himself and his family
to keep out society and its demands.
And in that inner keep... we enjoy the perfect freedom that men have always dreamed of. What
crippled and cut short all mans earlier experiments
in freedom is that they were public, and the public
freedom of one man must necessarily impinge on
the public freedom of others, so that public freedoms
inevitably limit and destroy each other. But our
modern private freedoms impinge upon no one and
nothing. And no-one, and nothing, can impinge
upon them.11

Aelfric works as a decider. He explains

his work to Uncumber:
Some of us have to spend our lives inside doing all
the worlds thinking and arguing and persuading...
[Deciders] can see whats going on in the world at
a touch of a switch, and talk to all the people they
have to talk to, and to be in touch with all their various thinking and doing machines.12
Inside this house youre part of a secure and happy
world which stretches all over the globe. Step outside it, and youre in another world altogetherthe
old primeval world, Cumby, where anything can
happen.13

Filters and electronic devices keep out most of

the external world, and drugs are taken to
keep the inner world under control from too
much boredom or over-excitement.
The story revolves around the adolescent
rebellions of Uncumber, who refuses to take
her drugs, and who keeps asking, but what is
it really like outside?. She eventually escapes
and finds out. There she meets members of the
outside classes who do not have sophisticated
communications technology, and the result is
total incomprehension. (In the outside world,
there are translation machines, but they are
only for the information rich.) Aelfric sees
holovision technology as a technology of liberation. He regards his daughter as quite
unreasonable in her struggle against the technologies of privacy for what she imagines will
be her freedom in the outside world. Uncumber, on the other hand, desires to find her true
self. Uncumbers quest can be read as a critique of unquestioning acceptance of tech-

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Essay: R Love

nology as an expression of Aelfrics male freedom to dominate the physical world.

Ive expanded on Frayns fiction of A Very
Private Life because it illustrates what Stevenson and Lennie might regard as a worst case
scenario. Frayns book may be read in terms
of the analysis of the subjunctivity of science
fiction as events that have not happened, yet,
ie the cautionary dystopia. Uncumbers quest
is hopeless. Aelfric will never change his ways.
The quest for domination of the world through
domination of communications technologies
is placed firmly by Stevenson and Lennie in
their Conventional Age scenario, as inherently
less desirable, in line with Frayns satiric
vision.
The Communicative Age scenario favours
industrial age democracy, with control in the
hands of the people. The scenario schema
allows Stevenson and Lennie the freedom to
imagine a desirable future, without having to
indicate exactly how to get there from here.
As Ursula Le Guin commented, of her Utopia
in Always Coming Home, it may be in the nature of her Utopia that You cant get there
from here.14 The primary task is to imagine
the future. Constructing the future is a different
task. The Communicative Age is not the real
future, which we do not know, but a fictional future.
Yet the reader may well demand more
from a scenario. How might the future transformation of the means of communication
through DVC work to create the good life? Just
what might a transformation of perception
through electronic media achieve? In Frayns
fiction, Uncumbers technologically mediated
experience of an enhanced romantic virtual
nature leaves her ill-equipped to cope with the
real polluted world outside. Joanna Russ comments: ones reaction [to satire] is more often;
this is ridiculous, this is impossible. But the
material that provokes such a reaction is in
fact only an exaggeration (if the satire is a good
one) of what the reader already believes in, for
the very good reason that it already exists in
the actual world.15 From fictional exaggeration springs belief. Contrast this with the
scenario, the predictive tale of the Communicative Age. In putting to one side the practical
steps that must be taken to get to there from
here, the reader may be unable to suspend disbelief. How can it be that DVC technologies,
which may enhance the retreat to a private
experience of the natural world, also lead to a
heightened public awareness of environmental

178

sustainability and the capacity to initiate global action towards this end? Digital visual
technologies are industrial products with the
proven potential to become rapidly obsolete
and pollute the environment. The trick of it
will be to find arguments that even if this is so,
how DVC technologies might also be embedded in and help create a more liberatory technological system.
Current and potential applications of
DVC listed by Stevenson and Lennie include
applications in the medical, entertainment,
education, public information, printing and
sales promotions arenas. For a list of more fantastic future developments, consider the entry
Communications in The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction: telepathy, or direct mental
communication; matter transmission in teleportation (for communication in the sense of
travel); messages from the future to the past,
or from the past to the future; linguistic communication in the meeting of humans with aliens (first contact stories); non-linguistic communication
(cybernetics);
attempts
to
communicate with other species, eg dolphins
and cetaceans; humanmachine communications with feedback of emotions.16
There are two things about this list. One is
the distinct probability that some of the items
currently considered impossible may happen.
The other question to ask of this list is, what
does it omit or negate? What forms of future
communication cant we even begin to
imagine yet? Take the medieval abacus as a
tool for calculation. In medieval times it might
have been easy enough to imagine a much faster abacus, a tool for very rapid calculation,
but no one imagined the very fast abacus as a
tool for very rapid communication.
In conclusion, real (and imagined) technologies both have unintended consequences.
People will take what is new and adapt it to
their particular ends, and some of these uses
will be unforeseen. In 1872 with the coming
of the Overland Telegraph Line across the
centre of Australia, the Aborigines shattered
the white porcelain insulators with their spears. They used the porcelain shards for cutting
tools, the wire for fish hooks and the iron foot
plates for tomahawks.17 The materials for the
latest communications system were appropriated to traditional ends.
Soon, no matter where you are, you will
be able to phone anywhere on one of the new
breed of mobile phones, which will then be
miniature earth stations of a low earth orbiting

Essay: R Love

(LEO) satellite system. What once might have

been a totally mad idea, had earlier writers
imagined it, will shortly become a reality.
When those 400 LEO satellites wear out, they
will disintegrate and leave orbiting trails of
dust. Scientists will find new properties of matter to study.
There may be spectacular sunsets, and in
those clouds dreamers may see the spires and
turrets of quite fantastic cities.

Notes and references

1.
2.
3.

Frayn, M., Constructions. Wildwood House,

London, 1974, p. 42.
Ibid, Constructions, p. 58.
Russ, J., To Write Like a Woman. Essays in
Feminism and Science Fiction. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis,
1995, pp. 1525.

4.
5.
6.

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.

Delany, S., cited in Russ, op cit, ref. 3, p. 16.

Russ, op cit, ref. 3, p. 24.
Stevenson, T. and Lennie, J., Anticipating
applications for digital video communications:
two scenarios for Australia. Technology Studies, 1995, 2, 125.
Ibid, p. 3.
Ibid, p. 2.
Frayn, M., A Very Private Life. Flamingo, London, 1984, p. 5.
Ibid, p. 7.
Ibid, p. 30.
Ibid, p. 19.
Ibid, p. 20.
Le Guin, U., comment at WisCon20 Convention, Madison, Wisconsin, May 1996.
Russ, op cit, ref. 3, p. 19.
Clute, J. and Nicholls, P., The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction. Orbit, London, 1993, p. 251.
Moyal, A., Clear Across Australia. A History of
Telecommunications. Nelson, Melbourne,
1984, p. 54.

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