the distinction between the game and the diegetic world(s) of the film
becomes blurred. All these SF films demonstrate that western society is
aware of the reproduction/creation of technological (un)realities and the
dangers that they imply. The only possible way to avoid the fear and feel
confident about our creations is to understand their potential, the dangers of
our technology and how to deal with the virtual worlds that we are
producing.
SF is historically and intrinsically linked to technology, and, in this
respect, we can trace two fundamental stages in the relationship between SF
and technology, periods in which the technology used in the films also
reflects the historical social moment and the transformation of the genre
from low budget films to the spectacular budgets of today. So, we find a
period in the 1950s when technology was acquiring a new role: the Cold War
and the fear of the outsider inspired many films in which Earth or our society
is attacked by societies/aliens with more advanced technology. Indeed, films
such as It Came from Outer Space (Arnold, 1953), Invasion of the Body
Snatchers (Siegel, 1956), Forbidden Planet (Wilcox, 1956) and It, The Terror
From Beyond Space (Cahn, 1958) illustrate this fear of the unknown in
western societies. Today, with a consumer electronic/virtual/digital society,
and where technology has achieved a different stage and become part of our
life and simultaneously an unknown, the social fear is different; the threat is
not outside but it is ‘in’ us, in our society. This is a fear based on losing
control over our technological creations, of being dominated by the
technology we have produced and not being able to understand the virtual
environments that we have produced. Films such as The Matrix, eXistenZ,
The Lawnmower Man, Total Recall and Abre los Ojos are perfect examples of
both the technological fears and the SF of today. In this sense Vivian
Sobchack suggests that ‘we have lost a concrete perception of reality and
those changes in technology have led to the radical alternative of our
culture’s temporal and spatial consciousness’ (Sobchack, 1997: 255). Thus, SF
films have the ability to analyze social changes and the way that individuals
perceive reality; this makes SF a most crucial tool for analyzing the
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