What are some examples of science fiction, whether it be novels, short stories, movies, or tv episodes, that do a very good job examining a complex ethical issue?
Could you give us a better notion of what kind of thing you are looking for?
The Cold Equations is probably the gold standard. A pilot is ferrying medicine to a colony world where a plague has broken out and discovers a stowaway - a teenage girl who hoped to get to visit her brother. Unfortunately, these types of fast shuttles are built bare-bones with exactly enough fuel to make the run - and now that they’re overweight, the only way to complete the run successfully is to throw her out the airlock.
ST:TNG - “The Measure of A Man”
Which I’ve always felt was a stupid way to run things. Looks like a foreshadowing of corporate idiocy and stinginess.
Yes. Unfortunately the drama of the story is undermined by the idiocy of the premise, that the margin for error in the amount of fuel carried would be literally zero. I just couldn’t get over how stupid that was, because the writing is otherwise excellent. The editor should have sent it back to the author construct the setup in some other plausible manner from a physics/engineering perspective.
The Culture novels by Iain Banks explore the ethical principles of a post-scarcity society run by superintelligent AIs (and their interaction with other civilizations).
One of the most striking examples is in Surface Detail, in which some societies have used technology to turn their religious fantasies into reality. They have constructed virtual Hells into which the mind states of the dead may be transferred for eternal torment.
We’ve done this ad nauseum, I partially disagree, but it’s a topic for another thread.
ETA, I was referring to Cold Equations.
So, basically, Black Mirror. Love that show but I’m not sure if they exactly explored whether or not we should do that. (Puzzling over the answer myself. /s)
It strikes me that an ethical conundrum can happen in any genre, and while sci-fi allows the exploration of ethical situations beyond our current technology, there are plenty of ethics-related plotlines that take place in sci-fi universes but didn’t have to take place there. Another ST:TNG example, Worf’s injury and decision whether to commit suicide. That story happened to take place on a spaceship, but it could have been the Wild West - nothing particularly sci-fi about it.
It’s dumb on many levels. But I feel like it’s typical of sci-fi ethical conundrums in that’s it’s really just a reworked “Trolley Problem”.
- Jettison the stowaway or the 120 lbs of life-saving medicine for the colony?.
- Enter the Neutral Zone to rescue the Kobayashi Maru and risk war or abandon it to its fate?
- Become the Kwisatz Haderach so I can avenge my father and secure humanities future, but at the cost of 60 billion lives?
Spoilers for the Dune sequels;
That one’s really not a choice at all - as soon as Paul foresaw that future he was destined to live it out no matter what decisions he thought he was making along the way.
There’s also the episode where Worf is the only guy on board who can serve as a compatible donor for an injured Romulan; to quote Picard, “I don’t want to order you. But I ask you. I beg you to volunteer.”
(To quote Worf: “I understand.”)
I do not recall that Paul ever actually sat down and weighed option A vs option B as an ethical dilemma. At some point, but well after he had set/precipitated events into motion, he has a prophetic vision realizing that things had gone too far:
I’ll just list out a few potential conundrums-- Any of them will have countless examples in the genre.
- What counts as a “person”, and deserving of rights? An AI? A partially-uplifted animal? An alien?
- Is it ethical to duplicate a person? Having done so, what is it acceptable to do with the duplicate?
- Is it acceptable to change the past? Is it acceptable to not change the past? Does the answer change if there’s reason to believe that you can’t succeed?
- Is it acceptable to punish someone for something they haven’t done yet, but which you know they will? Does it depend on how you know-- Is it just through advanced psychology, or through actual precognizance, time travel, or the like?
- Are alien cultures bound by human ethical standards? Should they be (if that’s even a different question)?
Can you give a really good example of each?
Honestly, I would recommend at this point that you seek out The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. It’s a three-volume compilation (two volumes officially, but Volume II was published as two separate books labeled II-A and II-B) put together early '70s as a collection of the best sci-fi short stories and novellas published prior to the establishment of the Nebula awards, and you’ll find pretty good examples of all of those types therein. I don’t believe they’re currently in print, but Amazon has them all available on Kindle and they have used copies for sale at reasonable prices.
One of the classic conundrums is that faced by R. Giskard Reventlov - to benefit humanity as a whole, is it OK to turn the Earth into a radioactive wasteland?
Ursula K. Leguin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is all about an ethical dilemma.
A utopian society only can exist due to the terrible suffering of a child.
Halfway through the first season, I realized that one reason I liked The Good Place is that it’s Sci-Fi.
A friend of mine, a University prof, teaches Philosophy and Ethics. During its run, he’d use each week’s episode for discussion. He said it was because they’d cover at least one classic ethical dilemma in each episode. He went on to list a dozen or so, but I only recognized the Trolley Problem.
I thought of Omelas, but I’d like to think we all believe we’d walk away.