Exploring Sci-Fi Realities: Perception, Time Travel, and Mind Manipulation

1. A Brief Survey of Science FictionSession 4: Reality Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Winter 2013 Dr. Agatha Taormina

2. Session Overview: Reality • Perception • Virtual reality • Time travel • Parallel universes • Alternate history

3. Perception • Can we trust our perception? • Optical illusions • Eyewitness accounts • Is the outside world an actual reality or an intellectual construct? • Plato’s Allegory of the Cave • Plato’s Theory of Forms

4. Thematic concerns • Who am I? • What is real? • Can history be changed?

5. Altering Perception • Psychoactive Drugs • Mind control • Manipulation of memory • Dreaming • Extrasensory perception

6. Psychoactive Drugs • Can alter • Perception • Mood • Consciousness • Cognition • Behavior • Can be used • Therapeutically • Anesthetics • Analgesics • Treatment for psychiatric disorders • Recreationally • For ritualistic purposes

7. Drug Use in Science Fiction • Drugs to control the populace • Soma in Brave New World • Drugs to expand the mind or escape reality • Substance D in A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick • Drugs as an aid to space navigation • Melange (spice) in the Dune universe

8. Mind Control • Behavioral modification • Reinforcement can be positive or negative • Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

9. Memory • Erasing memory • Altering memory

10. Amnesia • Memory loss • Major types of amnesia • Retrograde: the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an accident or operation • Anterograde: the inability to transfer new information from short term to long term memory

11. Problems with Memory • Planted memory • False memory • Examples • Erasing memory: Men in Black • Planting memories • Total Recall • Dollhouse

12. Dreaming • Lucid dreaming • Term coined by Frederik van Eeden, Dutch psychiatrist and writer in 1913 • Dreamer is aware he is dreaming • Dreamer might be able to control or manipulate the dream imagery • Example: Inception

13. What to Read: Perceptions • Drugs • A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick • Mind Control • A Clockwork Orange (1962)by Anthony Burgess • Manipulation of Memory • All My Sins Remembered (1977) by Joe Haldeman • Dreaming • The Lathe of Heaven (1971) by Ursula K. Le Guin

14. Extra-Sensory Perception • Clairvoyance • Telepathy • Empathy • Precognition • Examples • The Vulcan Mind Meld • Deanna Troi, an empathetic Betazed from Star Trek: The Next Generation • The Pre-cogs from Minority Report

15. Parapsychology • Pseudo-science that studies paranormal phenomena • Rejected by scientific community • No evidence base • No theory explaining ESP • No experimental techniques that can provide reliable positive results • Survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences • 96% skeptical • 4% believe in psi powers • 10% believe in encouraging research

16. Group Mind • Extrapolated from examples of communication among groups of social insects such as ants and bees • Can be formed by telepathy among a group of individuals

17. Is more often a hive mind in which individuals operate under the control of one consciousness • Example: the Borg

18. What to Read: ESP • ESP • The Demolished Man (1953) by Alfred Bester • Group Mind • More Than Human (1953) by Theodore Sturgeon

19. Virtual reality • Simulation that immerses the user in a computer-generated world • Implies that the user can interact with this simulated environment • Example: Tron

20. Current State of VR • Primarily visual • Sometimes adds sound • Haptic systems provide users with force feedback of tactile information • Examples • Simulations for pilot training • Simulations for surgery

21. Thematic Concerns • Can we differentiate between reality and virtual reality? • How sure are we that our own world is the real one? • Examples • The holodeck from Star Trek: the Next Generation • The Matrix

22. What to Read: Virtual Reality • Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card • Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline

23. Early Time Travel Devices • Sleep/Dreams • “Rip Van Winkle” (1819) by Washington Irving • A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens • Suspended animation • Cryogenics

24. Actual Time Travel • Peer into space with the Hubble telescope • Faster-than-light travel • Einstein's theory: demonstrates that travel at or near the speed of light could theoretically allow a human to travel into the future • Travel into the past would violate causality • If time travel were possible, wouldn’t we encounter tourists from the future?

25. The Time Machine • Novella by H.G. Wells (1885) provided the crucial science fiction mechanism for time travel • Hypothetical machine generally described with technobabble for credibility

26. Common Conventions • One might travel back to the past but is unable to change it • One might travel back to the past in an attempt to change the future • One might travel back to the past with strict orders not to disrupt the timeline • One might travel back to the past but be unable to meet his past self • One might travel back to the past, but be unable to bring any person or artifact back to the future with him • One might travel to the future and learn about something that must be changed in the past

27. Examples • The Forever Gate from “The City on the Edge of Forever” from Star Trek • The de Lorean from Back to the Future

28. Time Dilation • the effects on characters of varying rates of the passage of time • faster than light travel slows down the passage of time for the person doing the traveling • the event horizon of a black hole slows down time so much that for all practical purposes time stops

29. Time Loops • Person is forced to continually repeat the same time period • Person may or may not be aware that he is caught in a time loop • Example: Groundhog Day

30. Wandering Through Time • Person materializes at various points in time • May or may not be able to control the journey • Example: Doctor Who

31. What to Read: Time Travel • The Time Machine (1885) by H.G. Wells • The End of Eternity (1955) by Isaac Asimov • Time and Again (1970) by Jack Finney • Timescape (1980) by Gregory Benford • The Doomsday series by Connie Willis • “Fire Watch” (1983) • Doomsday Book (1993) • To Say Nothing of the Dog (1999) • Blackout/All Clear (2011) • 11/22/63 (2011) by Stephen King

32. What to Read: More Time Travel • Time Dilation • Time for the Stars (1956) by Robert A. Heinlein • The Forever War (1974) by Joe Haldeman • Gateway (1977) by Frederik Pohl • Time Loops • Replay (1987) by Ken Grimwood • Wandering through time • The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003) by Audrey Niffenegger

33. The Multiverse • Term coined by philosopher William James, 1895 • Refers to a hypothetical infinite set of multiple possible universes • Forms the scientific basis for stories of parallel universes

34. Quantum Mechanics • Branch of physics that deals with phenomena on atomic and subatomic scales • Often explores the dual wave-and particle- like behavior of very small bits of matter

35. Many-Worlds • Interpretation of quantum mechanics postulated by Hugh Everett in 1956 • Notes that in quantum mechanics certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely but can only be rated by probability • Many Worlds posits that each of these probabilities corresponds to a different universe

36. Levels of Parallel Universes • Described by MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark in 2003 • Level 1: An infinite universe that, by the laws of probability, must contain another copy of Earth somewhere • Level 2: Other distant regions of space with different physical parameters, but the same basic laws • Level 3: Other universes where each possibility that can exist does exist, as described by the many worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics • Level 4: Entirely distinct universes that may not even be connected to ours in any meaningful way and very likely have entirely different fundamental physical laws

37. Visits to other Places • Voyages to the underworld • Portal fantasies • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland • The Chronicles of Narnia

38. Alternate realities • Parallel universes • Divergent universes

39. Parallel universes • Rooted in theories of quantum physics • Occupying the same space and time as our own reality but on a different plane of existence. • Some theorists conjecture that any exercise of choice splits reality along a variety of divergent timelines

40. Common conventions • an opposing set of physical laws or moral codes or social conventions • a lack of previous knowledge of the existence of the other universe • an inability to communicate with or pass easily to the other universe

41. What to Read: Parallel Universes • The Gods Themselves (1972) by Isaac Asimov • The Apprentice Adept Series (1980-90) by Piers Anthony • The Neanderthal Parallax (2002-3) trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer • The City & the City (2009) by China Mieville • 1Q84 (trans. 2011) by Haruki Murakami

42. Alternate History • Poses the question “What if?” • Extrapolates the answer • Alternate history stories point to a moment of divergence and extrapolate the alternate universe

43. What to Read: Alternate History • Bring the Jubilee (1953) by Ward Moore • The Man in the High Castle (1962)by Philip K. Dick • The Best Alternative History Stories of the 20th Century (2001) ed. Harry Turtledove and Martin Harry Greenberg

44. Live Long and Prosper!