Science fiction is a tool. This is a simple fact, but a very important thing to understand. A good science fiction author’s work invariably conveys an insightful message to the reader. However, a large proportion of the messages in science fiction are very pessimistic, especially in stories about the future of mankind. Whenever science fiction authors write about the future, there are three possible outcomes: there will be a dystopia where there is either too much or too little government control, there will be some sort of holocaust or war and life will be very bad afterwards, or everything will turn out to be nice and pleasant.
However, as Philip Dick says, the third type of future is only written about by authors looking to make money, and so cannot be counted as real interpretations of a particular authors feelings, and should only be seen as pleasant, diversional reading (Dick, 1995). Dick goes on to say that a sort of natural hope displaces legitimate optimism and makes us prefer these happier alternatives to the doom stories. He says that humans by nature would rather ignore reality, so, since the doom story’s main purpose is to call attention to that reality which we are trying to avoid, it is only natural that the pleasant future story would be more popular, and therefore more profitable to the author.
So that leaves us with the doom story and its two remaining possibilities. Again, Dick says that if a science fiction writer feels that the future is going to be horrible, he must be responsible for that feeling and represent it in his work (Dick, 1995). Why is this so? And what makes the author think the future is going to be so sad? Take a look at the world around you and then try to make yourself believe that the future will be all right. Kurt Vonnegut says,
I am mistrustful of most people as custodians of life and so I am
pessimistic on that account… I’m just a bearer of bad tidings
really. You know, I just got born myself, and this is what I found
on this particular planet (Vonnegut and Musil, 1988, p. 233).

It seems that any science fiction author who wants to be true to his ideas must write a doom story when writing about the future. But which doom story to write? Each type has as much merit as the other, so it must be something about a particular author that makes them decide which way to go. Each authors’ personal experiences and day to day dealings with the outside world influence his view of the future.
H. G. Wells popularized the dystopian idea of the future, and many writers such as Kurt Vonnegut and Frederik Pohl have followed him (Hillegas, 1967). This dystopian, or anti-utopian view generally comes in two distinct ways: either there is too much regulation and sameness in the future that life has become unbearable, or society has broken down and there is a type of anarchy reigning over the world. Again, the reason that a particular author chooses one of those ways over the other can only be described by that authors feelings about the subject he is writing about.
Although Wells thought that science would be the ultimate savior of mankind, he still believed that the dystopia would be our ultimate future. In The Time Machine Wells describes a future where the human lineage has split. Although at some point humans had reached an almost perfect utopia, this utopia was bound to fall apart. After gaining much intelligence and physical strength, the above ground humans had no outlet for those characteristics after they had conquered the forces of nature; and so had de-evolved into pretty looking idiots. The below ground humans, being forced to do all the labor for the utopian society also de-evolved into emotionless mechanical-like beings who, although they had retained much of their intelligence, were very un-humanlike. In this future history, the first of its kind, Wells represents a distopia where anarchy has taken control. The character in the book at first only sees the remnant marvels of the utopian society, but then, upon closer inspection, he sees that everything left is decaying and that the human race has become something entirely different.
The view of the future that the first writers of the anti-utopias had was shaped by the somewhat different world from ours that existed from the 1890’s to World War one (Hillegas, 1967). The height of the industrial revolution, much faith was put in progress and the gaining of superior technology. However, a few writers such as Wells wondered what might happen if technology went wrong and perhaps became a governmental tool to control and oppress the people. It is from this idea that the first dystopias were formed.
Vonnegut, while also writing many anti-utopian works, portrays his dystopias in a different manner than Wells. Instead of showing the results of too much technology and a lot of time as Wells does in The Time Machine, Vonnegut places his stories directly in the dystopian setting, and focuses on the struggle of a few characters against the oppressing force. A superb example of this style is shown in the story “Harrison Bergeron”. The dystopia of this story entails that everyone must wear physical and mental handicaps so that everyone will be perfectly equal. The only problem is that Harrison keeps outsmarting the handicaps. He is, in fact, quite godlike, and is quite capable of taking over the world. However, before he can do that, the handicapper general shoots him with a twenty-gauge shotgun. This theme of super-governmental control is also apparent in Vonnegut’s novel Player Piano, often considered the best anti-utopian novel ever written. In this novel, America is dominated by the government and especially by a super computer called Epiac XIV. There is no opportunity for advancement because your job and position are determined by government aptitude tests. This novel is a direct result of Kurt Vonnegut’s pessimism of the American character (Hillegas, 1967). This view is also apparent in the quote by Vonnegut used earlier in this paper. Vonnegut bases his ideas of the future on what he sees going on today. He apparently does not trust our leaders today to do what will be best in the future. He sees them as power hungry and very capable of making some of the dystopian futures that he sees (Publishers Weekly, 1988).
The other version of the doom story involves some sort of holocaust. Most often this is war, especially nuclear war, but it can include anything from an especially deadly epidemic to death from pollution. Many authors have written about this topic, but two of the best and most famous science fiction writers to have used this approach are Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.
Philip Dick was obsessed with the post holocaust doom story. Almost one third of his novels and a lot of his short stories utilize a post holocaust setting (Warrick, 1987). Dick especially liked to write about the aftermath of nuclear war, however, he rarely writes about the actual war itself, and there are only a few examples in his work where we see the bomb actually dropping. He prefers to take the horror of an atomic holocaust and then set his story in it with a plot involving the many trivial and mundane things that occur in suburban life. Dick himself stated that he liked to “Make the ruined world of ash a premise… and make the central theme or idea of the story an attempt by the characters to solve the problems of postwar survival” (Dick, 1995).
This is exactly what he does in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. He masterfully blends the destruction of a nuclear war with the everyday life of the survivors and the things they must do to live in the new type of society that exists after the holocaust. By his usage of the fictitious religion Mercerism, and its concept of love for all life, he is commenting on the way he sees people in the present treating our world. The fact that this religion has sprung up in the aftermath of a holocaust shows that the people are sick of the destruction caused by their predecessors and only want to find a way to deal with the horribleness of their life. But by making Deckard, whose job is to create death, as a main character, he shows that tensions between wanting struggling to live and let live and the basic human tendency to destroy are still present in this future society. This also shows that the fundamental question of where a person stands in relation ship with the rest of the universe has become even more important to the people living in this post-nuclear world.
But why does Dick write stories like this? What makes him so sure that we will blow our selves up instead of creating a stagnant anti-utopia that controls everything we do? Well, I will let Dick explain for himself,
However, I can’t seriously believe that much of our cultural pattern
or physical assets will survive the next fifty years. Our present
social continuum is disintegrating rapidly; if war doesn’t bust it
apart, it obviously will corrode away (Dick, 1995, p. 56).

The reason that Dick sees the future as doomed is quite simple: he thinks that it is bad already, and with the way it is going there is no hope for it to get any better.
Another science fiction writer who portrays that war is inevitable is Ray Bradbury. The major difference between Bradbury’s and Dick’s depictions of the holocaust is that Bradbury thinks that the war will kill everyone and therefore wrote his stories in the time period up until the war, and tried to have them explain the reasons for the war. Even Dick says that “…Bradbury is perhaps too pessimistic…” (Dick, 1995, p. 56). In Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, he tells the story of mankind gradual ascension to space, and then to Mars. He tells of how humans conquer and eradicate the native Martians and of how we colonize Mars. And then he tells of the death of the Earth by nuclear war. Everyone left on mars then rushes back to earth to join in the fight or to see loved ones. Mars is left uncolonized and dead of both human and Martian life.
In one particular story, “There Will Come Soft Rains”, Bradbury tells the story of an automated house left standing after the war. Although everyone that lived in the house has been killed, the house continues to go about its mundane everyday routine. It shows how the technology that we use to help us in our everyday life breeds the same technology that we will use to destroy ourselves. So for all our great advances, we are still human beings who are not perfect. Bradbury then drives this message home when, after the house burns down, the only thing left working is the clock, which continuously screams out the date, the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
It seems that, to many science fiction authors, the future is not going to be a very nice place. The reason why a lot of science fiction is very pessimistic about the future is because these same authors feel responsible to put their true feelings into their work. They could easily write stories, good ones, about a bright and happy future. Even though this would make them a lot of money, they don’t do it because they simply do not think the future is going to be nice and bright. They understand the usage of the instrument they are wielding and they feel too responsible to use it only for their personal profit. The view of the future they depict, however, stems strictly from their own individual minds. I think that Ray Bradbury summarized this belief wonderfully when he said,
People always ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is
 prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too
easy anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you
stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same.
To hell with more. I want better. (Bradbury, internet)

As I said before, science fiction is tool. The doom story is specialized use of the science fiction tool, a specialized to change the future.
 
 
 
 

Bibliography

Musil Robert, “There Must be More to Love Than Death: A Conversation with Kurt Vonnegut”, in Conversations With Kurt Vonnegut, 1988, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Publishers Weekly, “The Conscience of the Writer”, in Conversations With Kurt Vonnegut, 1988, Jackson: University of Mississippi Press.
Hillegas, Mark R., The Future as Nightmare, H. G. Wells and the Anti-utopians, 1967, New York: Oxford University Press.
Dick, Philip K.(1955), “Pessimism in Science Fiction”, in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick, 1995, New York: Random House, Inc.
Vonnegut, Kurt, Welcome to the Monkey House, 1968, New York: Dell Publishing.
Dick, Philip K., Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep, 1968, New York: Ballantine Books.
Vonnegut, Kurt, Cat’s Cradle, 1963, New York: Dell Publishing.
Bradbury, Ray, The Martian Chronicles, 1979, New York: Bantam Books.
Bradbury, Ray, Exerpt from “Beyond 1984: The People Machines”, in Bradbury Central, an internet site.
Warrick, Patricia S., Mind in Motion, The Fiction of Philip K. Dick, 1987, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.