Question

What elements of “Reality Check” place it in the genre of science fiction ? Does it present utopian or a dystopian vision ?

Answer 1

Science fiction is a type of literature that is based upon a made-up reality—a fantasy, if you will—of the future and technologically advanced societies.  The story, “Reality Check,” by David Brin, has quite a few elements that qualify it as science fiction.  For one, the story takes place some time in the distant future.  We know this because there is a reference to the past year of 2147 when “the last of their race died.”  Additionally, the story begins by assuming the reader is some type of computer-human hybrid by the way it requests the reader to “pattern-scan” the story “for embedded code and check it against the reference verifier in the blind spot of [the] left eye.”  Further, the narrator discloses toward the end of the story how his people have a “machine-enhanced ability to cast thoughts far across the cosmos.”  The story represents a dystopian society, or at least a society that is deemed to be failed and dystopian by the narrator.  This is evidenced by the narrator’s reference to his planet as “The Wasteland” and how he discloses how much of his “population wallows in simulated, marvelously limited sub-lives.”  As the story concludes, it is made clear how unhappy his society is when it is stated that they have been “snared in [a] web of ennui.”   Because of these loathsome descriptions of his society, it seems quite impossible that the society could be anything near a utopia thus could only be seen to be dystopian.