[Avec France Culture] In our column of the week in The best of worldswe make peace with the future: there is also love in SF.
Technological gadgets, spaceships… SF often inspires us with these materialist, even cold, images. But where is the love in all this? Believe me, there are! You may remember the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson. In this undetermined future, a man installs a new system on his computer: artificial intelligence. Little by little, feelings and desires begin to arise.
Falling in love with an AI sounds downright funny, but this film presents it delicately: Her uses technology to question the foundations of our feelings, in complete privacy.
The Birds of Time
Let me tell you about a space-time war. It pits two factions against each other who fight by traveling through time to change elements of history. The two heroines, who are called Red and Blue, each belong to an enemy camp. However, they start a secret correspondence. They break through the armor, they confide and love develops intensely. Their words contrast with the futuristic war atmosphere: “ Reading your letters is like picking flowers within me, a bud here, a fern there, arranging and rearranging them to decorate a sunny room. »
It is one of the most beautiful love stories told by SF: the work is called The birds of timeby Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, you will find it in the Pocket Book.
The Star Odyssey
The Star Odyssey also proves that love is compatible with science fiction. This is the first Korean SF novel published in France, by Rivages, and you will fall in love with this tender story which also shines with intelligence. A couple wants to get married, but there is a problem: he is on Earth, she is on Alpha Centauri. Their love is separated by light years. Due to relativity, all space travel is also temporal: she cannot reach him in a few months. The couple will have to coordinate across space and time to find each other. This will of course be fraught with pitfalls. But, as their correspondence progresses, the history of our planet also advances decade after decade, between climatic catastrophe and political conflict.
The author, Bo-Young Kim, tells us a love story and a story of the future. This odyssey of the stars is a human odyssey: a sublime science fiction as science, poetry and metaphysics come together perfectly.
SF love stories refocus questions on what really matters. There is no future without others, there is no future without friendship, love or family. This helps a little to make peace with the future.
To listen to Brave New World podcast
In this Brave New World program, François Saltiel receives Axelle Desaint, Olivier Duris and Séverine Erhel to discuss supporting young people in their use of screens. Podcast to listen to on the Radio France website and on all listening platforms.
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