science-fiction

By Elizabeth Prata

There have always been technological advances in history. The printing press in 1448 comes to mind. The 1978 British TV show Connections “demonstrated how inventions and historical events are interconnected is Connections. Created by science historian James Burke, the series explores how seemingly isolated events and inventions influence the development of others, shaping the modern world”.

But I am glad I’ve been alive at this time in the world’s history, because I’ve seen incredible advances in technology. I remember seeing the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. It was produced between 1965 and 1968 and released in ’68. The scene where the astronaut puts a credit card in the machine and presses numbers on a keyboard, and the screen lights up with a live video conference with his daughter, drew audible gasps and not a few scoffing laughs. Never in 1968 had the general populace imagined a live video call. I mean, in 1968 push button phones had barely been invented and were not widely used until the late 1970s. And now in 2025, a video conference across vast distances is common.

2001: A Space Odyssey video call scene, complete with push button phone personal computer keyboard, credit card, and live streaming. Envisioned in 1968.

Credit cards were new then, too. The Diner’s Club card was invented in 1950. General credit cards for any kind of purchase, not just restaurants, were not commonplace in 1968. In fact, when 2001 A Space Odyssey began production in 1965, Mastercard was not even on the scene yet. It was invented in 1966 and was called Interbank. In 1969 it was rebranded as Mastercard.

Since the year of my birth I’ve seen satellites, space travel, the internet, streaming, optical fibers, digital cameras, cell phones, personal computing, sonograms, heart transplants, insulin production, cloning, limb reattachment… and so much more.

And now, artificial intelligence.

AI can make ‘art’ (it’ll be a while before I consider a digitally produced picture ‘art’, hence the scare quotes). It can answer questions. Automate tasks. Generate content. Even make predictions. Someone on social media had warned about Grok, Elon Musk’s AI as opposed to Google, the research engine. Google presents the researcher with links for further research, leaving it to the live brain intelligent person to make decisions about the quality of and value in the links presented, while Grok simply gives the answer.

A couple of years ago, I read a novella called “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. I’ve written about it before, it made a big impression on me. It’s a science fiction story written in 1909. The Edwardian era had its own breathtaking advances as well. As we read in this essay about the time period when the novella The Machine Stops was written,

automobiles were becoming common; Louis Blériot successfully flew across the English channel in his prototype aircraft; Ernest Henry Shackleton’s expedition reached the South Magnetic Pole; London’s Science Museum was established as an independent institution; physicists Ernest Rutherford, Hans Geiger, and Ernest Marsden carried out their famous Gold Foil experiments, which proved an atom had dense nucleus with a positive charged mass. Edwardian society was modernizing industrially, scientifically, and technologically at an exponential pace.

The novella serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of over-reliance on technology and the dehumanizing effects of unchecked technological advancement. It seems to predict the very moment in which we find ourselves today, 116 years later.

If you’re interested in prescient science-fiction, this essay describes why The Machine Stops is so eerie, and it’s well-written too.

“The Sunlight Almost Touched Me”: Tactile Horrors in E.M. Forster’s The Machine Stops

With all this happening in our world, and trust me, an old lady, it is moving faster and faster, I turned to Answers in Genesis for help on how to think about Artificial Intelligence. We know there are smart, unsaved people, sure, but without gaining knowledge from THE Source, Jesus, it is worthless. Wisdom from the world gains us nothing. In fact, most unsaved people descend into such sinfulness that their thinking becomes futile. (Romans 1:21-22).

The title of the 33-second video is AI Is NOT as Reliable as People Think, the synopsis states:

Multiple researchers have shown how people can easily use publicly available AI to intentionally create false but persuasive information, which is why we must not trust AI as our final authority for truth. God’s Word has to be our final authority in EVERY area.

It is worth watching. As I said, it is only 33 seconds long. We need to be mindful of where wisdom comes from and the final authority of that wisdom. The AiG video is a good exhortation.

For a longer treatment of the subject of AI, Patricia Engler, the local AI expert at AiG, wrote a two part essay, is titled

Part 1- AI: Useful Tool or Existential Threat?
What is AI, and how should Christians engage with it?

Part 2- The Effects of Artificial Intelligence

Only God is all-knowing, infallible, and the ultimate Truth. His Word, not the outputs of AI, must be our final authority. (Source).

AI is handy. It’s convenient. It’s not neutral though. Or is it? Did Grok achieve political neutrality? Is inherent bias completely absent in its algorithms? Time will tell. Meanwhile, we can consult the Bible for most of life’s conundrums. For the nitty gritty not addressed in the Bible, if you use AI, employ common sense and be wise.

By Elizabeth Prata

Tim Challies is a reader and a book reviewer. He is the author and promoter of the Annual Christian Reading Challenge, in which I have participated in the past.

I was glad to see this article by by Jon Dykstra linked from Tim Challies’ site. I’d add the eerily prescient 1914 novella from EM Forster, “The Machine Stops“, which predicted, well, pretty much where we are now regarding media, internet, imagination, ideas, social contact and more. Pretty amazing for a hundred-year-old novella.

Here is Dykstra’s essay- Why Is Dystopian Fiction Worth Reading?

Dystopian is a word from Greek meaning ‘bad place’ according to the article. It’s the opposite of Utopian, meaning ‘perfect place’.

Dystopian fiction is a genre that describes people surviving or trying to, after a holocaust of some kind, or a societal collapse, or a nuclear war, and the like. The article speaks of this kind of fiction being worthwhile because it helps us in predictive prophecy of the secular kind, in connecting the dots to see a current credible future threat. The author Dykstra’s point was that this kind of fiction spins a credible threat into scenarios that help us understand where these threats may lead us.

This is a genre well worth exploring, though with care and caution. It’s a big blank canvas that insightful writers can use to paint pictures of grim futures, all in the hopes that they, and we, will ensure such futures never come to be.

Of course, the mightiest and truest prediction of all is what God has said will come, via His word in scripture. Nothing outsmarts, outpaces, outdoes God’s prophecies.

I enjoy this fiction but had felt mildly guilty about it, as though I needed to be doing something more productive. I’d wonder, ‘Am I a ghoul?’ ‘Why do I find this absorbing?’

Mr Dykstra helped me see my interest in it was to go where my own imagination lacked facility, to ‘see’ a future that is all too real in some cases, and to develop opinions and thoughts to guard against it. EM Forster’s The Machine Stops is a future that is practically already here, as is Stephen King’s The Running Man. Chilling.

The most famous work of dystopian fiction is George Orwell’s 1984, which the article mentions. That work was published in 1949. Another famous work of dystopian fiction is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Other classic dystopian books are PD James’s Children of Men, which discusses the childlessness of all the nations and certain doom as the already born die off with no new births coming up to replace them. In fact, birth rates are ranging from declining to collapsing all over the world right now.

Of course there’s the famous Canadian book The Handmaid’s Tale. Dystopian fiction is good where it helps us see ahead and cope with credible current or near current threats and that book’s twisted version of Christianity isn’t a credible threat.

I mentioned I’ve participated in the Challies’ Christian Reading Challenge, at the “Avid Level” (26 books to read in a year.) I added several others of my own choosing to Challies’ list, making myself a separate genre nook of dystopian books I wanted to read. They included The Running Man, The Machine Stops, and It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis about the rise of fascism in the US.

FYI, in Stephen King’s The Running Man (1982)- The end is absolutely chilling, because the final action the main character takes has already come to pass. Remember, in Dykstra’s essay, dystopian fiction that presents credible threats help us formulate our own reactions and imaginations, and that ne came true, for sure.

William Forschen’s book One Second After (2009) depicted the effect upon America from an EMP, (electro-magnetic pulse), and the nation’s societal collapse and resulting high death rate. The author consulted with psychologists, economists, and sociologists to base his fiction on real scenarios those experts stated would most likely happen if we suffered an EMP. It was well written and horrible to think of it occurring, as the Bible hints in some form, it will.

Pat Frank’s book Alas, Babylon (1959)-

-was one of the first apocalyptic novels of the nuclear age and has remained popular more than half century after it was first published, consistently ranking in Amazon.com’s Top 20 Science Fiction Short Stories list. The novel deals with the effects of a nuclear war on the fictional small town of Fort Repose, Florida, which is based upon the actual city of Mount Dora, Florida. The novel’s title is derived from the Book of Revelation: “Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.”

Nuclear winter wasn’t a very known or understood event back then, so the survival rate of the population in Alas, Babylon, this initial entry into the American dystopian nuclear fiction isn’t realistic, but most of the rest of the book is.

As predictive or as absorbing as dystopian fiction might be for some people, the only true prediction is what the prophetic books of the Bible tell us will happen in the future, in God’s timing.

With the US election mere days away, many on both sides are saying ‘if the other side wins it will be the end of us’… Maybe, maybe not. It might tell us a bit about God’s judgment, though, or it might just tell us that we go on living long after the thrill of living is gone, as John Cougar Mellencamp sang.

People, the Tribulation is unthinkable. But we must think on it, the Lord’s wrath already hangs over the unsaved. Thoughts of the dystopian future and reading it now in His word should should spur us to witness with eagerness and fervor.

I don’t think a steady diet of this kind of material should be on our plates, but books like this can be a legitimate addition to our bookshelves or movie queue, for the reasons stated above. Happy reading…or in this case, unhappy reading.