Chance and Science Fiction: SF as Stochastic Fiction

Eizykman, Boris. "Chance and Science Fiction: SF as Stochastic Fiction" (trans. by Will Straw of "S-F: Science Spéculative Stochastique Fiction" in Traverses #24 [1981]: 115-24). SFS #29, 10.1 (March 1983): 24-34.

"[T]he utopian inclination in the modern world has entered the political as well as the scientific domain, imparting, through its determinism, a mechanistic vision of man and nature." This determinism is opposed by Chance, and a number of works of SF deal seriously with Chance. Handles briefly, Hugo Gernsback's Ralph 124C41+ . . . (1911), S. Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (q.v. under Drama), Robert Silverberg's The Stochastic Man (1975), and other works; usefully applies to SF some of the concepts of H. Bergson (q.v. under Background), and Marshall McLuhan.