#about ethics in science being such a common source of evil in scifi media

[trans-rights-adam-jensen]

Slams fists on table

Scifi evil man manmade creations this, playing god that... Tired of it. When is scifi as a genre going to explore the power of science to liberate. To transform.

So much of science is gatekept away from marginalized groups, used as a tool to study them or pin them in place. Its inaccessibility to the public makes it feel cold and exact and calculating, and so much of it is framed as a guillotine, sealing our fates.

But that's not science itself, that's it's weaponization. Naturalists caring for their gardens and animals and all the things people like to point to as "opposites" of tech and "progress"... that is all science too. Grassroots science. Would it be so hard to paint advanced science fiction mechanics as beautiful and loving and warm, solutions to problems we thought we would always have or are just now beginning to emerge and change the way we live our lives? Science to improve quality of life, to give us machine kin who work alongside us and learn how to communicate with us, and us them in return.

Science is only a weapon, only amoral, in the hands of the cruel, guarded away with privilege.

Instead tell us about how we can use it to better care for each other. To dazzle ourselves.

I understand that the roots of the genre itself come from horror and criticism, but there is space for growth into new understandings of ourselves, our relationships with technology (which, like it or not, will only grow), and what we want to be. I think we should consider dreams alongside nightmares. Otherwise we won't be encouraged to think about how to change the real world around us for the better. For a future we might want.