Attitudes Toward Technology: American and Asian Science Fiction in Conversation

Science fiction narrative and its close cousin dystopia frequently engage in social critique by means of invented settings, scenarios, and peoples that function as allegories of the present, thereby revealing a culture’s collective anxieties and values. Comparing trends in the themes of American science fiction stories with those of Asian countries, such as Japan, China, and South Korea, for example, brings their respective concerns into greater relief through contrast. For many American science fiction readers, the obstacle or threat at the center of a science fiction story emanates often from a new development in science or technology, and usually their unanticipated consequences. In the many popular Asian science fiction films and TV series of the last decade, technoscientific nova may form important elements of the setting but the threat usually emanates from elsewhere, such as the evil of individuals or society, suggesting a fundamentally different attitude to the role of technoscientific developments in Asian cultures.