The future will be terrible. The only thing you don’t have to worry about is the polar bears. They will adapt to global warming and migrate ever further south. As early as 2035, the first animals will no longer be lurking in the Arctic at the scarcely existing ice holes to snatch air-breathing seals. Instead, standing on garbage heaps in the Caribbean, use the same tactic to hunt dolphins. “Of course, the environmental activists didn’t like it at all that the ghastly garbage patches saved their polar bears,” says a character in Martin Heindel’s radio play Backward Hannah thieving about this paradox.
The Bavarian Radio production is part of a smart project by the public service: all state broadcasters and Deutschlandradio each contribute a science fiction radio play to the anthology series 2035 – The future begins now. The nine pieces – MDR and Saarländischer Rundfunk have joined forces – each work independently, despite some references to each other. However, they are more of a playful factor and do not actually require knowledge of other radio plays from the series. Heindels is particularly ambitious in this respect Backward Hannah.
A nearly ten-hour fiction podcast was created for the ARD audio library, which represents more than the sum of its individual parts. In the linear programs of Kulturwellen, it is up to each broadcaster to decide which and how many of these radio plays it broadcasts within which period of time. Independent of the content and stylistic aspects of this project 2035 In this respect, it is also a very convincing option in the current transformation process of public broadcasters, in relation to the question of how to cleverly use the strengths of both linear radio and digital platforms without constantly producing more content because it is only available on one of the Play paths work well.
The content is partly wild fantasies: In Walter Filz’ pack meat (SWR) civil wars, the so-called meat wars, are raging in the not so distant future. More than 150 years ago, during the American Civil War, people fought bitterly against each other over their attitudes towards slave ownership, but now their respective attitudes towards animal husbandry are making them take up arms. Lars Werner and Sarah Kilter paint themselves in dad (RBB) from how gigantic CO2 extraction systems are trying to stop climate change. And Mariola Brillowska has for the NDR The Tetris invented, a dystopian settlement where women, children and old people have been evacuated. For their safety, the residents are told. In truth, however, it is about being able to control them.
As much of it – intentionally – is curious, unrealistic, exaggerated, even crazy, at this point the nine radio plays come together: Whatever the situation will be in 13 years, the foundation for it will be laid in our current present. The pandemic, the climate crisis, the war in Ukraine and the crisis of democracy continue to have an effect in the possible worlds that are designed in these nine radio plays. Most of the conflicts described already exist. It has not yet been decided who is on the right side of history with their lifestyle. The nine radio plays have one or the other uncomfortable idea.
Mariola Brillowska, for example, likes to work with trash elements, lots of self-mockery and subversion. However, one should not make the mistake of overlooking the seriousness of their plays given their often great comedy. In The Tetris she succeeds in resolving the debate about the value of fundamental rights that has been going on since the pandemic restrictions from any lateral thinker context and shifting it back to serious realms. And all this in the guise of an over-the-top three-generation conflict.
What Nina Meyer and Felix Engstfeld are doing in Emily’s reminder (WDR) debate: In this near future, a tech company will succeed in preventing climate change by darkening the sun. Some see a kind of messiah in the incredibly rich and therefore powerful company owner, while others demonize the man because they do not believe in his altruism. Because this blackout is of course also a gigantic business.
Emily’s reminder leaves the man’s true motives in the dark. Because something else than this individual character is much more exciting: namely the question of whether democracies are so paralyzed by their lengthy deliberation processes and the incompetence of the masses in complex scientific mixtures that they are no longer able to make quick and radical decisions. And what the alternatives would be: authoritarian political systems? Or to leave the groundbreaking decisions to the economy, i.e. to the Elon Musks?
2035 – The future begins now. Nine science fiction radio plays. As a podcast in the ARD audio library.