Science Fiction and the Coming of the Antichrist

The literary genre called science fiction has been developing for over a hundred years, and its vitality today is surprising. In a narrower sense, a science fiction story is usually a tale of adventure in a world of tomorrow, transformed by technology. The classic writer in this vein was Jules Verne. His books show particularly clearly the origin of the genre: the 19th century’s breakthroughs in science, which created the belief that technological progress would have no limits. Verne’s favorite heroes are lonely scientists whose thoughts range further than those of their contemporaries. He often places his action in the present, but that present is visited by the future in the guise of inventions created by minds of genius (Captain Nemo’s submarine, television in the Carpathian Castle).

Science fiction, however, soon became enriched with new contents; these were images of societies from the day after tomorrow, and in the 20th century they were mostly pessimistic images. Moreover, no precise borderline could be traced between the technologically oriented imagination and philosophical reflection. An intermediary zone extends from forebodings of “vengeance,” in which the creations of ...