“Sci-Fi” is a poem by Tracy K. Smith that presents a vision of the future that many would characterize as utopian. A not inconsiderable minority of people alive today would look at the poem and describe its vision of the future as unquestionably dystopic.
The poem starts out innocently enough within the realm of pure abstraction. The speaker envisions a future society with curves instead of sharp edges and lines always pointing forward. Forward, as in progressive. It is a progressive dream of a future and while nothing in it seems particularly horrific, the fact remains that many people would read into a futuristic nightmare the likes of which have never been seen before.
Women are treated equally with men. Gender equality—the dream of women for literally the entire history of human beings—will still look and act and sound just like women do today and that will be the only thing that distinguishes them from men. And that will be the only thing that distinguishes the sexes. This particular aspect of the imagined future is presented in simple language that would seem impossible to misinterpret. Yet it seems impossible to imagine the world of the 2020’s as a place where “Women will still be women, but / The distinction will be empty” won’t inevitably be mangled out of all context and interpreted as a hope for a transgender-only future.
Everybody gets the chance to live longer. The life span of human beings has been extended in this vision of the future. It seems impossible that anyone could possibly oppose that vision of the future as anything but a utopian ideal. But the tone of the speaker implies that others will find fault with this lovely idea. Everyone gets to live longer “thanks / To popular consensus.” The implication here is an example of how those metaphorical sharp edges will no longer exist in the future. The term “popular consensus” strongly suggests that policy decisions will be more truly democratic with fewer legislative initiatives designed to specifically benefit minority factions of the public.
These are ideas for making the world a better place in the future that almost everyone agrees with today. The content of this poem points out one by one that these things are possible today. The harsh truth of the poem is that pretty much everyone has the same general vision of what a dystopic future looks like, but the vision of what a utopian future looks like is nowhere near as universal. The average person should be able to this poem and recognize it as an idealistic impossibility. The truth is that a large percentage would read it and be terrified at the thought of its predictions ever coming to fruition.
