A Few Strokes of the Pen
Posted on October 23, 2021Hello! Welcome! Grab a seat and settle in. Comfortable? Good. Now the telling begins.
“We’re living in science fiction, but we don’t realize it.” ― Terry Pratchett
In the beginning of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway, she describes a framework for how we understand and respond to the world and the complex problems it presents us: “An ubiquitous figure in this book is SF: science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far” (Haraway, 2). I want to specifically hone in on the ideas—or rather intersection of—science fiction and speculative fabulation. Presumably, one already is acquainted with the idea of science fiction (aliens and robots come readily to mind). The latter, however, requires some describing. Merriam Webster describes fabulation as, medically speaking, “the act of inventing or relating false or fantastic tales”. Wikipedia (and stay with me now, reader) describes its origins in literary criticism as referring to a class of 20th century novels akin to magical realism that “violate, in a variety of ways, standard novelistic expectations by drastic—and sometimes highly successful —experiments with subject matter, form, style, temporal sequence, and fusions of the everyday, fantastic, mythical, and nightmarish, in renderings that blur traditional distinctions between what is serious or trivial, horrible or ludicrous, tragic or comic”. A lot to take on, don’t you think? Well, I think I favor the latter definition, truth be told, especially in the context of Haraway’s SFs. Haraway herself describes SF as “a method of tracing, of following a thread in the dark, in a dangerous true tale of adventure, where who lives and who dies and how might become clearer for the cultivating of multispecies justice” (Haraway, 3). And that really is the best definition of all for the discussion we are about to embark on. Life is an adventure, the scope of the tale bounded only by what our imaginations can dream up. And who is more instrumental to translating those dreams, to unraveling the tangled thread and weaving them into something wholly new, than fiction writers?
Terry Pratchett is one of my favorites authors who treads this line between fantasy and reality, and so masterfully well. His novels are, on the surface, almost ridiculous. Collisions of magic and modernity, timelines and religions and gods and God and creatures and people. His—arguably—most famous series of Discworld novels build a world, a universe, rife with problem and possibility alike. Religion, government, power, and conflict are all explored through the lens of the mystical Discworld. I think as designers, there is such a threat of being disheartened—smothered, really—by the ‘wicked’ problems of the world. I think speculative fabulation—science-fiction-building, narrative-writing fantasy—is the antidote, of a kind. The counterpoint of weightless dreaming to the world’s heavy reality. The inspiration to be more, be better, or sometimes a warning against what may already be in motion. There is so much power in stories, in science fiction and in fantasy, as much as they seem to be merely the offspring of escapism or—a worse condemnation indeed—childishness. It is that balance of fearful prediction with the cultivation of hope and wonder and the sheer guts to question what is and imagine instead what could be. We at TD see design as creating preferred futures; well, the first step is imagining that better future, right?
And it isn’t strictly an academic or design-related impetus for me, to be honest. If there is one title I allow myself it is that of ‘writer’. I’m quite partial to fantasy and sci-fi myself, you see. It has been solace and burden both for me over the years. I actually participate in this even called Nanowrimo (*shameless plug*) where people around the world get together—well, metaphorically—to write a novel…ish sort of text over the course of the month of November. The idea stems from the belief that anyone can write; indeed, everyone should. It’s probably an exaggeration but I truly believe the most fundamentally human capacity is that of dreaming. Not planning, though that certainly is part of it. But imagining what doesn’t yet exist, what might not even be possible, combining past and present and future with the near unimaginable inverses of all three—forgive me, reader, if I get a little emotional. Before books, before paper, before pens in hands, we were painting our stories on cave walls. We were telling them over campfires. We were dreaming.
And I don’t know, reader, in the face of designing for the world’s wickedest problems, I guess it feels a little small, a little less action-oriented and a little more contemplative. But as Donna Haraway says: “there is a fine line between acknowledging the extent and seriousness of the troubles and succumbing to abstract futurism and its affects of sublime despair and its politics of sublime indifference” (Haraway, 4). This is the hope; this is how we combat the indifference, the despair.
So I’ll leave you, dear reader, with a little snippet from the man himself on the power of words:
One of the advantages of a life much longer than average was that you saw how fragile the future was. Men said things like “peace in our time” or “an empire that will last a thousand years,” and less than half a lifetime later no one even remembered who they were, let alone what they had said or where the mob had buried their ashes. What changed history were smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would do the trick.
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
Sources:
- Haraway, Donna Jeanne. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press, 2016.
- “Fabulation Medical Definition.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/fabulation.
- “Fabulation.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 18 Sept. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabulation.
- Pratchett, Terry. Feet of Clay. Gollancz, 2014.
By ramem101