The epigraph to Brave New World

Utopias seem to be much more realizable than we formerly believed them to be. Now we find ourselves presented with another alarming question: how do we prevent their definitive realization? …Utopias are realizable. Life marches toward utopias. Perhaps a new century will begin, a century in which intellectuals and the cultivated class will dream of ways to evict utopias and return to a non-utopic society, less “perfect” and more free.”

Nicolas Berdiaff 

The source is a Russian writer (whose name is variously transliterated, often as Berdyaev), once a Marxist,   then a Christian existentialist theologian. The particular work is a French translation translated again into English under the titles of both The New Middle Ages (1924) and then as The End of Our Time (1933). Right in the midst of the great utopian "realizations" of the first half of the last century (The horror! The horror!) .

And so here we are now, a new century begun....


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The antique future

It's not this:

That was the 50's, a couple of generations or more past (though of course the 50's generate their own notion of the antique). But here's the future now, pre-aged:

Ian McQue, Shore Leave

Or this:

McQue, The Last Airborne

A rusty, old future, in other words, rather than shiny and new -- and no rectilinear grid lines disappearing to a perspectivist vanishing point. But this clearly has an appeal all its own -- note the enduring interest in Blade Runner. It's related, at least, to the appeal of punk, and to its cyber- and steam- variations. Related also to the appeal of ruins as such -- the sense of great depths, possibilities, mysteries, beneath the broken surfaces, the sense even of time itself made a visible, tangible presence -- but in this case still with that imagination-teasing added dimension of the future.

There's no escaping the appeal of decadence as well, however, and the indulgent sentimentalism that carries with it.  Note how that fits so well with the theme of Conspiracy, both benign and malignant -- the sense of vast, inherently incomprehensible social totalities, with a few outsiders fitting into its interstices, both preying and preyed upon (in contrast to the rectilinear, Utopian future of the 50's). Gibson, of course, but Pynchon too. And caverns measureless to man....


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Utopia and Conspiracy

Think of these as inverses, but related. Think of one being embedded in the other -- Conspiracy as being contained within Utopia, e.g. And then think of the inverse, or of the embedding turned inside out  -- Utopia contained within Conspiracy.

Think of twin narratives, or narrative layers. But what's the Utopian equivalent of Conspiracy's "revelation"? "Realization"? Or is there a Utopian revelation as well -- "Revelation" as the encompassing theme?

Well, that must be the case, given the Inversion -- Utopia's revelation the more profound, in other words.

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What this is about

Some themes:

• Utopia, of course
• Which includes Dystopia
• and which includes all other bullet points
• and contains an inherent ambiguity:
• on the one hand, the impossibility of utopia and the folly/evil of utopian attempts
• on the other, the Nozick/Rand utopia
• and on the third hand, the imaginative reach for a New People (see Cherneyshevsky, Gibson's "Blue Ant" trilogy, even possibly Pynchon, and see the Inversion theme below)

• Conspiracy -- the concept, as distinct from the plot (see Art-narrative below)

• The inversion and its consequences
• Epistemological ontology -- this is the central idea (if Utopia stands for the encompassing idea, this is the core): that what is is determined by what's known, not the other way around (and "what's known" is determined by what works -- i.e., a relational as opposed to a representational epistemology)
• "Inversion" describes the switch from let's say a "realist" ontology to the epistemological ontology noted above -- that is, from reality being something out there that we can only painstakingly discover to reality being, literally, right before our eyes (and nose, and ears, and touch, etc.)

• Art
• and religion
• and Utopia
• and narrative
• Elementory
• Conspiracy as plot (see below)
• The plot, as distinct from the concept (see above)
• the notion of "revelation" 
• as distinct from "epiphany" -- i.e., it's exogenous
• also as distinct from "solution" (of a mystery) -- this is a change in your understanding of the world
• A multipart series (say, 5) -- larger revelations at the climax of each?
• Space fiction
• 3000 AD (the 1000-year future)
• The Utopia Project itself
• architecture/urban design/planning
• The game
• of Utopia
• board/screen design
• layers
• fractal depth
• and the social network
• avatars

• Space colonization
• and utopia
• Getting off the planet
• the moon
• Mars
• Open space
• Commercializing space

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