Researching and Teaching Science Fiction in Greece

In the dreams our stuff is made of, Thomas M. Disch talks about the influence and pervasiveness of science Fiction in American culture and asserts the genre's power in “such diverse realms as industrial design and marketing, military strategy, sexual mores, foreign policy, and practical epistemology” (11-12). A few years earlier, Sharona Ben-Tov described science fiction as “a peculiarly American dream”—that is, “a dream upon which, as a nation, we act” (2). Recently, Kim Stanley Robinson has claimed that “rapid technological development on all fronts combined to turn our entire social reality into one giant science fiction novel, which we are all writing together in the great collaboration called history” (1-2). While such diagnostic statements may ring true to American ears, they cannot be taken at face value in the context of Hellenic culture. Despite the unprecedented speed with which the Greeks absorb and consume both the latest technologies (like satellite TV, video, CD and DVD players, electronic games, mobile and cordless phones, PCs, and the Internet) and Hollywood's science fiction blockbuster films, neither technology per se nor science fiction has yet saturated the Greek mind-set to a degree that makes daily life a science-fictional reality. Greek politicians do not consult science fiction writers for military strategy and foreign policy decisions or depend on imaginary scenarios to shape their country's future. Contemporary Hellenic culture does not acquire its national pride from mechanical devices or space conquest. Contrary to the American popular belief that technology is the driving force of history, “a virtually autonomous agent of change” (Marx and Smith xi), the Greek view is that a complex interplay of political, economic, cultural, and technoscientific agencies alters the circumstances of daily life. No hostages to technological determinism, modern Greeks increasingly interface with high-tech inventions, but without locating earthly paradise in their geographic territory and without writing their history or shaping their social reality as “one giant science fiction novel.”