In choosing a book for the Class of 2026 to read and discuss collectively during their first semester as Clark University students, Clark scholars selected Octavia Butler’s 1993 dystopian science fiction novel Parable of the Sower.
Set in the year 2024, the book envisions a world beset by all manner of unrest generated by climate change, disease, racism, violence, and widespread homelessness. It follows the story of an African American teenager, Lauren, and her community, who fight for survival amid the social and environmental turmoil.
The book—which shot to the top of bestseller lists during the pandemic is not a lesson in bleakness, insists English Professor BETSY HUANG, who has long studied the post-apocalyptic story and taught it in her classes. Indeed, she sees Parable as a cautiously hopeful tale that holds out the possibility for a meaningful life springing from a troubled world.
If you ask Huang about the future of humanity and the humanities, which face disruption from seemingly unmitigable forces such as climate change and artificial intelligence, she will direct you to pragmatic visions of hope and eye-opening messages of caution offered by contemporary speculative fiction writers. She says speculative fiction, like Butler’s Parable series, helps to make meaning of it all “by forcing us to take stock of what we find valuable in our everyday life.”
Likewise, studying the humanities brings people face to face with questions about “the pursuit of the good life, and what that good life means,” she says.
“Is the good life about consumer power, where your degree will translate into a job that allows you to function as the kind of consumer that our capitalistic economy encourages?” Huang asks. “Or is it about another way of being in this world, attuned to the life and longevity of not only the human race but every other species on this planet?”
In this age of AI and other emerging technologies, speculative fiction also raises questions about what it means to be human and to be alive, she says.
“For over a century, speculative fiction has been in this conversation about how technology has been folded into the human condition and even physically into the human body, changing the way that we function intellectually, biologically, and relationally,” Huang says. She notes the influences in literature and pop culture of human-technology interfaces, from Mary Shelley’s creature in Frankenstein in the 1800s, to Philip K. Dick’s androids in the 1960s, to Spike Jonze’s Her and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun in recent decades.
To better understand those who embrace “technology as the solution to everything,” Huang took a class on AI through MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
“IT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO STUDY ALL THINGS THAT MAKE US HUMAN.”
What was missing from classroom discussions, she says, was something that she believes Clark can introduce into its liberal arts curriculum: “The overarching philosophical and existential questions about what AI is really going to mean for the human race.”
Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower was named one of “9 Banned Books We Just Can’t Live Without” by Oprah Daily.
For the near future, she says, “It’s still very much a human-AI partnership. Humans need to learn how to coexist with AI and consistently understand AI as a tool to help them think about what would improve conditions of humanity. Even though AI does mean the end of many ways of doing things, it doesn’t have to mean the end of times. How we use or abuse AI as a shortcut for doing the kind of work that gives human life its sense of meaning is the most critical question we can ask every time we are presented with a tool this powerful. Unfortunately, not enough of the creators of these tools are asking these questions responsibly.”
Huang reminds us that powerful technologies have not replaced artistic creativity and work. Despite having access to digital music and books, she points out, people still flock to live performances of music and theater where they appreciate the labor and love that goes into producing the art.
And therein, Huang insists, lies the value of the humanities.
“The humanities provide a person with the vocabularies they need to make sense of their experience in the world in all its dimensions, to be able to articulate it, and to feel that they are creating their own experience and value rather than simply receiving it,” she says. “It is very important to study all things that make us human, but it’s also in the act and in the performance of our humanity that truly reminds us of who we are in this world.” ▣
Story from Clark University Magazine, fall 2024
