The introduction of the science fiction genre brought about by innovative accomplishments in the past fifty years stirred creative ideas into the minds of artists in the 21st century. Events like the first artificial earth satellite Sputnik being put into orbit as well as breakthroughs in technology like utilizing laser beams has influenced some of the most entertaining and thought-provoking works of art.
An example of this could easily be the science fiction story The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke which tells of a quest to find an ancient crystal monolith out in deep space using state-of-the-art technology like spaceships and artificial intelligence supercomputers. This classic adventure is the quintessence of science fiction and invites the mind to think about mind-blowing ideas that might be difficult to comprehend since no one has seen or heard of things like deep space travel and artificial intelligence. The Sentinel which was made into a motion picture called 2001: A Space Odyssey and has greatly influenced several future films either directly or indirectly including the extremely famous Star Wars by George Lucas.
In addition to science fiction space travel, the book also mentions The Matrix trilogy, which happens to be my favorite, to provide the best example of artificial intelligence taking over the world. The idea that the world that we sense is not an actual reality can easily be traced back to this trilogy. Also, The Matrix was the first to introduce the photographic technique called "flow motion" that can be found in several of today's current movies to provide excellent special effects to audiences. Anytime you see an action scene go back and forth from slow to fast motion, remember that The Matrix started this popular trend. Here below is the most famous scene using the slow motion camera techniques.
Science fiction allows an artist to think way outside the box to come up with new and creative ideas to entertain audiences and sometimes give insight on how the future might look, hopefully not like The Matrix.
I also love how the humanities book talks about science fiction. It is one of my favorite genres for movies especially. I couldn't agree more with you that science fiction allows an artist to think outside the box. I love how science fiction artists can take possible science and technology and transform it into something that, at the time, is completely unheard of. One of my favorites is Back to the Future with Michael J. Fox because when the movie was made, time travel was thought to be completely impossible. Now, in my physics class we are discussing the possibility of time travel, but of course at lightning speeds, not 88 miles per hour!
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