{"id":67930,"date":"2020-07-20T13:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T17:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=67930"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:37:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:37:21","slug":"science-fiction-interconnectedness-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/science-fiction-interconnectedness-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Science fiction explores the interconnectedness revealed by the coronavirus pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Science fiction explores the interconnectedness revealed by the coronavirus pandemic\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

In the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, a theory widely shared on social media suggested that a science fiction text, Dean Koontz\u2019s 1981 science fiction novel, The Eyes of Darkness<\/em>, had predicted the coronavirus pandemic with uncanny precision<\/a>. COVID-19 has held the entire world hostage, producing a resemblance to the post-apocalyptic world depicted in many science fiction texts.
\nCanadian author Margaret Atwood\u2019s classic 2003 novel Oryx and Crake<\/em> refers to a time when \u201cthere was a lot of dismay out there, and not enough ambulances\u201d \u2014 a prediction of our current predicament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the connection between science fiction and pandemics runs deeper. They are linked by a perception of globality, what sociologist Roland Robertson defines as \u201cthe consciousness of the world as a whole<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globality in science fiction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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In his 1992 survey of the history of telecommunications, How the World Was One<\/em><\/a>, Arthur C. Clarke alludes to the famed historian Alfred Toynbee\u2019s lecture entitled \u201cThe Unification of the World<\/a>.\u201d Delivered at the University of London in 1947, Toynbee envisions a \u201csingle planetary society\u201d and notes how \u201cdespite all the linguistic, religious and cultural barriers that still sunder nations and divide them into yet smaller tribes, the unification of the world has passed the point of no return.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Science fiction writers have, indeed, always embraced globality. In interplanetary texts, humans of all nations, races and genders have to come together as one people in the face of alien invasions. Facing an interplanetary encounter, bellicose nations have to reluctantly eschew political rivalries and collaborate on a global scale, as in Denis Villeneuve\u2019s 2018 film, Arrival<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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