Category: Introduction

Andromeda. It is the title of this portfolio, and a name with many meanings. Princess Andromeda, the mythological character that is saved from the wrath of Poseidon by Perseus who later became his wife. M31, or more well known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way and another possible reference. It could also be related to the adventures of Captain Erg Noor in the novel Andromeda by Ivan Yefremov that I read for this class: Cold War Science Fictions. For right now, it doesn’t matter what the title is actually referencing because it has done its job of bringing up images and meanings that you have yourself of the word Andromeda. Accompanying the title is an image of a presumably human figure clad in futuristic armor. The deep blacks and the faded reds of the armor do not remind us of camouflage that our current soldiers use. The full face helmet, plated armor, and the full body suit all indicate an advanced state of technology. With the starry background, we can assume that these humans are spacefaring. The weapon in their hands narrows the possibilities somewhat as there is an enemy that is being fought; be it other humans or aliens. It could be about a humanity that finished colonizing the Milky Way and has expanded into the Andromeda Galaxy. Perhaps humanity is fighting off aliens from Andromeda. Finally, the last identifying clues are the alphanumeric engravings of “Ryder,” “N7,” and “TX4877.”  It shows us an organized and industrialized humanity prepared for warfare. All of these ideas, conclusions, and possibilities came from just one word and one image together.

This analysis of the first thing you see on this portfolio is a reflection of what I have learned over the past semester. Cold War Science Fictions was not a class about reading old novels and writing analytical papers about them. It was an investigation into the relationships between the texts and reality, the historical context surrounding them, and progression of the genre over the years. The texts I have read have reshaped how I view science fiction, and I will put it to use in this portfolio by applying it to a modern work of science fiction: Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of my favorite video games of all time, and despite it being a less than formal medium for fiction, it is a brilliant example of what science fiction should be. It explores ideas that can not be answered in our current reality, such as artificial intelligence learning and growing alongside us in a symbiotic relationship, and humanity searching for a new home millions of light years away.

The flexibility that science fiction has allows for the vast worlds and realities that capture our attention. At the core of a science fiction work is the ability to make the reader to understand and be invested into a world that is beyond our preconceived notions of the world. Science fiction uses the idea of ‘cognitive estrangement,’ which is when the reader is pushed past their personal assumptions into ideas that break the rules of possible. This core principle is what allows authors to create any place, society, planet, or galaxy in order to fit their narrative. However, these estranged worlds of fiction do not cut off any connections between them and our reality, which brings us to the purpose of my portfolio and the class Cold War Science Fictions. The class explored the development and progression of science fiction through the lens of its relationship with the Cold War. Science fiction grew alongside the Cold War with the space race and the ideological conflicts between capitalism and communism being ample topics to be covered. Authors used science fiction as a way to explore the ideas that had propped up recently, such as humanity exploring the stars and political division between the West and the East. The historical events in the Cold War had a powerful effect on the works of science fiction at the time. On the flip side, the world around sci-fi literature took notice of its power to criticise. Nations during the Cold War understood the power that literature held over its population. With the Eastern Bloc’s science fiction being focused upon political commentary compared to the entertainment focused western style, it was strictly controlled and censored to ensure it followed communist guidelines.

Beyond the historical exploration into the ties between science fiction and the Cold War that this class brought was the deeper understanding into how authors develop their reality-bending settings. I touched upon it early with the idea of cognitive estrangement, but the defining text that developed my view of science fiction was Samuel L. Delany’s About 5,750 Words. The first of the main points in the essay is how texts are a constantly evolving image that is caused by every progressive word. The second is how science fiction allows for the images created by the text to be absolutely limitless. With this freedom, authors are able to explore the issues that are present in our reality today from different perspectives, or they can present us entirely new questions for humanity to deal with. Below are blog posts that go more in depth with Delany’s text.

The reason Delany’s text was so influential for my understanding of the novels I read during the class was because of how it made me think about how the authors set up their settings and societies in their novels. The beginning of each novel became crucial for me to feel out how the author would challenge my perception of reality. The idea that each and every word contributes to the evolving image of the novel forces me to think about what the novel is trying to make me see. It makes me think about why the author chose to present me with these images, and it makes me think about how the estranged realities serve the messages and themes of the work. This finally brings us back to the introduction of the portfolio. A singular word and image has provided me a vast amount of ideas that the author could be working with. That image was my introduction to Mass Effect: Andromeda three years ago and it has pushed me to think of how it fits into my limited view of the world and how the image challenges me as well. It proves how central the use of imagery is to creating the cognitive estrangement in science fiction.  The human mind searches wildly for something familiar when presented to a new sentence or image. The reason science fiction is good at commenting on the real world is because it engages the reader into understanding the new rules of the world and how the author leverages the setting to their bidding.

Mass Effect: Andromeda is a great example of the evolution of themes within science fiction. One of the core ideas in sci-fi is the existence of artificial intelligence. How would AI behave? How would humanity accept AI? Could the two entities coexist? So many questions presented by the idea of AI and many more explorations of the idea through science fiction. One of the main readings of the class was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Humanity is constantly creating more androids to fulfill their needs in that universe. Escaped android have infiltrated human society and are hunted down by bounty hunters. It is a grim take on humanities’ relationship with artificial intelligence.

The Mass Effect universe has a similar relationship between biological life and artificial. AI’s are strictly controlled, and the only AI race left is considered a major threat to biological life. The Geth are isolated to a singular star system and are the bogeymen of the universe. However in the latest installment of the franchise, Andromeda introduces Simulated Adaptive Matrix, or SAM. To the rest of the world, it is just another AI that is a tool to help out the expedition into Andromeda. In reality, SAM is an unshackled AI that is attached to a living being that enhances everything they do. In return, SAM learns from the living being’s experiences, memories, feelings, and thoughts. There is a symbiotic relationship between you and SAM. It gets to learn how to become an independent and intelligent being based off of you. The choices you make and the journey you progress through. It is a really interesting idea that the AI’s that are produced by humans to be smarter and faster than us usually can only grow in order to serve their purpose better. SAM grows in the similar manner humans do. It is a modern take on the topic of integrating AI into human society.

Science Fiction also has a constant interest in the relationship between humanity and aliens. Our class focused on three drastically different ideas on this topic. Andromeda by Ivan Yefremov followed alongside a powerful humanity exploring the stars and fighting off monstrous aliens along their journey. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem explores the attempts of the mid-1900s humanity trying to establish a relationship with the massive and completely unreadable entity encompassing the planet Solaris. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky shows us the aftermath of the violent arrival and disappearance of aliens over the course of two days on Earth. The core difference between the novels is the position of power humanity resides in. From Andromeda to Solaris to Roadside Picnic, it flows from humanity to equality to the aliens respectively. Mass Effect: Andromeda strips humanity of its power by removing the one constant in all of the previous novels: our home. The game places humanity in the situation of escaping the Milky Way from imminent destruction in an attempt to find a new home. What they find is the projected golden worlds to be ravaged by various issues, a hostile alien race prepared to wipe you from the stars, and an ever closer deadline of finding a home for the colonists still frozen in cryostasis. 

Overall, Mass Effect: Andromeda demonstrates the progression of science fiction and how a more visual form of media can realise the imagery used to create the worlds in science fiction. Despite the entertainment-focused purpose of the work and the less than formal medium of the work, it successfully contributes to the ever-growing science fiction genre.