johncwright: Will fantasy outlive Science Fiction?

John C. Wright (

johncwright) wrote,
@ 2007-08-02 14:38:00

Will fantasy outlive Science Fiction?

Will fantasy outlive Science Fiction? I think so. Fantasy is timeless. Science fiction is based on futurism, a particular view of how the future stands in relation to the present.

I am here distinguishing 'futurism' from 'millenarianism'. The world view of futurism is the view that the future will be to the present as the present stands to the past: but it is "the past" of Darwinian evolution, not the past of the Book of Genesis. In futurism, if the past was more primitive, the future will be more advanced. The past was the horse-and-buggy; the future is the flying car. The past was the ape-man, the future is the bald, dwarf-bodied big-brained superman, perhaps jaunting around in a three-legged war machine. Or maybe the future is Mad Max jaunting around in his gasoline-starved car with his meat-starved mad dog, depending on where the speculation thinks the world is heading: but in any case, it is a natural, not a supernatural.

In the millenarian world view, on the other hand, the past was The Golden Age, the Age of Saturn, and the future is the Kali Yuga. The future is the promise that the Armies of Light will destroy the Sons of Darkness that rule the present world, all harms will be healed, all tears wiped away, and New Jerusalem descend from the clouds, or, if you prefer, Baldir the Good return from his exile in Nastrond. The end of history is accomplished by a supernatural agency.

With no offense to my fellow Christians, I propose that an audience whose view of the future is millenarian has no real reason to be curious about the speculations of science fiction: if it is an article of faith that the Twilight of the Gods will take place as prophesied, reading about The Invasion of the Living Brains of Mars has no appeal. If you already know that the World Tree will be burned by Surtur, what do you care about a story where Earth is pashed to bits by some wandering planet like Zyra, Bronson Alpha, Nemesis, or Mongo?

Millenarianism is not confined to Christianity. If you are a good and loyal Marxist, any depiction of the future that did not contain the prophesied socialist utopia would strike you as wrong-headed and perverse.

Science Fiction's attitude toward the future is much the same as its attitude toward other planets. Before the industrial revolution, stories of voyages to other planets were trips to spiritual heavens--for example, when Astolfo flies by Hippogriff to the Moon in ORLANDO FURIOSO, he meets St. John of Patmos, who rules over a realm where all the lost memories and vanities of mankind rest. On the other hand, when Cavor flies to the Moon in FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, in an antigravity sphere no less impossible than a hippogriff, he arrives at a material world inhabited by rational beings no less physical than men of the antipodes, or some island visited by Gulliver.

Likewise here, science fiction in general assumes the future will not hold the New Jerusalem, the new heavens and new Earth of the Apocalypse, but men like us. When HG Wells' THE TIME TRAVELER traveled to the year 802701 AD, he meets the race that is the outcome of Darwinian evolution acting on current social divisions. The whole appeal of the book is the message that history is a soulless, mechanical force, and that we humans cannot stand above or aside it. In science fiction , if the future-men are changed into immortals or godlike creatures, it is through science and technology that the change is made: even if the change is a spiritual one, the magic power that changes the souls of men must be called "psionics" or "parapsychology" to fit it within the assumptions of the science fiction genre.

I have not read the popular "LEFT BEHIND" series, but from what I hear of them, it sounds like they are not science fiction, even though they take place in the future. The world-view of the Apocalypse of John is not the world-view of the consensus of science fiction readers.

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Brave New World?

juliet_winters
2007-08-02 07:03 pm UTC (link)

John, have you read it, and if so how does it fit in your paradigm?

If I had to call it anything, I suppose it would be social science fiction. Yes, the society (goals: Community, Identity, Stability) uses science to further its schemes, but those are merely tools employed by an evil regime. At base it is as much a call to reclaim spiritual innocence as any back to Eden story. The question there is who determines what is Eden.

As long as we can imagine that the technological future might bring additional nasty surprises, I think science fiction will be there. Oh, there will be heroes, too, to counter the world-breakers, but our rightful fear of the use to which some current technologies are put (recreational drugs, genetic selection, state-run childcare, the bomb, the pill--yeah, I know THAT one's controvesial but it's key to BNW) inspires a particular sort of science fiction more closely related to the present and demanding a more immediate reaction from its readers. IF the world continues along this path, this MIGHT be the way the world ends. Now as to whether or not it matters how the world ends since it's going to end anyway, I'd say the answer is yes.

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Re: Brave New World?

johncwright
2007-08-02 07:16 pm UTC (link)

I have indeed read Brave New World, but I don't understand the question about my paradigm.

As far as I know, Huxley makes no assumptions about physics that contradict how we know the world works. He does an admirable jobs of skewering the conceit of Utopian optimists like HG Wells, showing how a secular, humanist paradise would be utterly inhuman and inhumane.

I do not think the politics or economics of Brave New World are realistic, any more than I think the totalitarian state of Oceania could last a thousand years. In real life, totalitarian states are hotbeds of civil war, intrigue, palace coups, assassinations: everyone within striking distance of the throne is tempted by the untrammeled power. Huxley supposes that the world system of the future more or less runs itself, that all major opinions about all major topics are agreed-upon by all the ruling alpha class, and that drugs and sex and psychological conditioning can keep everyone happy and content.

If only human beings were so easily made content. If only.

Where are the factions? Everything has factions.

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Re: Brave New World?

juliet_winters
2007-08-02 07:30 pm UTC (link)

O, there are factions. Or there will be. John "Savage" may have died a wretched death, but it was enobled by his father who had to witness it and then was beginning to turn rebel.

They thought they solved the factions problem by genetic tinkering. Alphas supremely happy to be alphas. Betas content to be betas, and so on.

Among those passages I find most intriguing in the Bible are when those early apostles encounter Roman bureaucrats and soldiers. Some of the bureaucrats behave typically as bureaucrats will--what's one more life to stay in power? But some are changed over, converted, even though there's nothing in it for them materially and the Roman system works darned well. It must have seemed like philosophical and spiritual science fiction to them, and yet they embraced it despite the persecutions that were to come.
Fascinating.

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Re: Brave New World?

jordan179
2007-08-06 06:02 pm UTC (link)

I do not think the politics or economics of Brave New World are realistic, any more than I think the totalitarian state of Oceania could last a thousand years. In real life, totalitarian states are hotbeds of civil war, intrigue, palace coups, assassinations: everyone within striking distance of the throne is tempted by the untrammeled power.

Of course, we only see Oceania from Winston Smith's perspective, and he's a low-ranking cog in the Ministry of Truth machine. For all we know there are all sorts of deadly intrigues around Big Brother's throne: almost certainly, Goldman was once a rival claimant.

We don't even know for sure if Eurasia and Eastasia are as bad as Oceania, though given the time Orwell was writing, they were probably meant to be. There are all sorts of possible interpretations of what's going on in the larger world -- in a way, that's part of the horror, that Winston Smith has no way of knowing the larger picture in the world that's crushing his soul.

Huxley supposes that the world system of the future more or less runs itself, that all major opinions about all major topics are agreed-upon by all the ruling alpha class, and that drugs and sex and psychological conditioning can keep everyone happy and content.

Yeah, it occurred to me when I read it that the Alphas and Betas were pretty much freewilled, and hence the system couldn't possibly be as tight as they were all assuming.

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Re: Brave New World?

xander25
2007-08-02 07:37 pm UTC (link)

"As long as we can imagine that the technological future might bring additional nasty surprises, I think science fiction will be there. Oh, there will be heroes, too, to counter the world-breakers, but our rightful fear of the use to which some current technologies are put (recreational drugs, genetic selection, state-run childcare, the bomb, the pill--yeah, I know THAT one's controvesial but it's key to BNW) inspires a particular sort of science fiction more closely related to the present and demanding a more immediate reaction from its readers."

"Brave New World" was one of the things that inspired my move away from an atheist viewpoint. If these things can be seen as dehumanising then what does it mean to be human? That was my driving question for years (and still is). It was fairly obvious to me, why the Savage's society was preferable to the one of the World Controller's. It was also obvious, that religous folks had better answers. Gradually, I went from Atheist to quasi-Buddhist to neo-pagan to Jewish.

If I have any criticism to make of BNW, however, would be that it is too cynical. There is no reason to believe why technological innovations will cause the destruction of humanity. The atom bomb was invented over a half a century ago, but we're still here. Humans came up with socialism...but they also wrote the Constitution. Humans invented the atom bomb...but they also discovered atomic energy. The same rockets that would serve as the would-be delivery systems, carried us into space. Nerve implants restored hearing to a woman who had been deaf all of her life. Just yesterday, I saw a report of a "brain pacemaker" that awakened a comatose patient. BCI devices hold untold benefits for paralyzed individuals.

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Re: Brave New World?

juliet_winters
2007-08-02 07:45 pm UTC (link)

O, BNW is certainly not a probably view of the future, but if it got you to move away atheism, I think that the author did his job. Having the world be that bad, well, it's shock tactics. And it worked. Strangely, it was a book given to us to read in 7th grade in public school. Having read it did not turn me away from what religion I had but instead made me extremely wary of the college professors who would later come along with a system that they advertised as free thought. Ha.

Good stuff can certainly come out of science.
As it happens, I have 2 children whose hearing has been partially restored with cochlear implants. Had an odd encounter once with someone who said the initial tech for that had come out of the Holocaust experiments and therefore it was morally wrong to use it. Thoughts?

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Re: Brave New World?

xander25
2007-08-03 07:24 am UTC (link)

"Had an odd encounter once with someone who said the initial tech for that had come out of the Holocaust experiments and therefore it was morally wrong to use it. Thoughts?"

I actually did a little poking around here and there. I couldn't find any references. The first experiment was done by a scientist experimenting on himself in 1790. I didn't turn up anything else until the 1950s, after the Holocaust.

This may seem a little sentimental, but... If it were true, we should remember those people with remorse, so that it would never happen again. Even so, I consider it somewhat flawed if we say that we should not use them, because of this. It dishonors their memories in my view. Placing myself in their shoes, I would be happy if at least some good came of it. The only thing I could see morally wrong with it, is if it encouraged the same behavorior in the future.

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	Re: Brave New World? juliet_winters 2007-08-03 10:58 am UTC (link)
	I agree. However I did not argue with the woman as I believe she may have lost relatives in the Holocaust and was looking to vent pain. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Brave New World? mrmandias 2007-08-03 03:54 pm UTC (link)
	Some irreligious folk have put the fear of God in me recently by asking what's so wrong with the Brave New World? Notably I'm thinking of NRO's John Derbyshire. I don't mind y'all agnostics and atheists as long as you don't try to be all nihilist and distopian about it. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Brave New World? jordan179 2007-08-06 06:04 pm UTC (link)
	I'm an atheist and I can see an obvious flaw with the society of Brave New World. By operating so much on an artificial consensus it has lost flexibility, and flexibility is an important survival attribute. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: Brave New World? xander25 2007-08-02 07:47 pm UTC (link)
	Almost forgot...the 2007 St. John's College commencement address talks about this very topic: http://www.stjohnscollege.edu/user/commencement2007.pdf (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Brave New World? juliet_winters 2007-08-02 07:48 pm UTC (link)
	Thank you for that. Excellent. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	oscillon 2007-08-02 08:56 pm UTC (link)
	Why do you assume that the audience of the future will be one "whose view of the future is millenarian"? (Reply to this)

dirigibletrance
2007-08-02 11:00 pm UTC (link)

Bah!

Something only needs to be shiny to be read. That is enough. It matters not if I believe in or look foreward to some pre-millennial dispensational rapture. I still want to read about the Space Wolves making savage war upon the twisted spawn of the Hive Mind, etc etc.

If your outlook is not futurist, that just means that Science Fiction becomes speculation, rather than prediction. Aren't you the one that always calls what you write speculative fiction? I loved Everness, even though I don't believe in Oberon or the power of the Silver Key to open the gates of dream.

Or, to put it another way, it just means that Sci Fi becomes fairy tales, becomes Fantasy, anyway. For those of us who *like* fairy tales to begin with, this is no big loss.

I think that Science Fiction can be timeless, too, if it is written in the right way. It has to be told in a way that it does not become hung up on the technology itself, or on infodumping about it. Dune is the sort of Science Fiction that I'm talking about which is "timeless". As is Foundation. Or Gene Wolf's writings.

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	kokorognosis 2007-08-03 12:18 am UTC (link)
	Oh! Oh! Is that a mention of Gene Wolfe in a positive light I see? :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

johncwright
2007-08-03 04:06 pm UTC (link)

I am not sure I said what you think I said. In contrasting a millenarian view with a futurist one, I was neither saying these were mutually exclusive, or that one was right and the other wrong. All I was saying wash that the Industrial revolution ushered in a futurist world view, which, in turn, makes science fiction possible.

Indeed, I mentioned an example of the future that was both millenarian and futurist: if Landru turns out to be the False Prophet from the book of the Apocalypse, of the the Controller of the Brave New World is the Beast.

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kokorognosis
2007-08-03 12:30 am UTC (link)

I guess I qualify as a millenarian, assuming I have the correct definition of one who believes that the events described in Revelation will occur in some form.

I read SF for a number of reasons. I like shiny spaceships, and explosions, and vast alien empires, for one. The appeal to the little boy in me.

Also, I tend to think that most of my fellow Christians view the universe in a dull, lifeless way, as though we know all that there is to know, that we are the only speck of life in a vast vacuum of purposeless matter...

I can't see my world that way. I've never seen eye to eye with that worldview... and so many of the worldviews put forth by non-Christian SF authors match the way I see things more closely than the way Christian authors see things. Sometimes, I'm even pleasantly surprised to find that in an incredibly entertaining, intelligent space opera, the author shares my belief in a moral universe. ;)

Also, I'm one of the few that doesn't think that Armageddon (how strange to use that as a proper noun...) is around the corner. I definitely think it's coming, but who knows when? We're told biblically that none of us are going to expect it. So who knows, maybe it will look more like Kralizec than we think, maybe the armies that are brought to bear on Jerusalem will include miles-long star destroyers and planet busting missiles.

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(Anonymous)
2007-08-03 02:36 am UTC (link)

The early Christian poet Prudentius (The Psychomachia is great stuff! Virtues beat down Vices, and they're all women with weaponry!) clearly was a fannish kind of guy. And his "Hymn for the Lighting of the Lamps" not only provides a lucid (heh) exposition of the doctrine of the separation (through death) and eventual reunification (through resurrection) of the soul and body, he also has some great stuff about the soul traveling through the stars.

Anyway, believing in the Second Coming, Final Judgment, and the New Jerusalem doesn't cut off science fiction, anymore than believing that there will eventually be a new heaven and new earth precludes scientific investigation. There are plenty of interesting things which can happen before the end.

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	kokorognosis 2007-08-03 02:47 am UTC (link)
	I suppose I should say "Recent Christian Authors." ;) (Reply to this) (Parent)

zac_wight
2007-08-03 06:39 am UTC (link)

I wonder, that if in the future what we consider science fiction now, will become a type of fantasy. Assuming that the culture is a projection of ours and technology is so integrated that it is not thought of the same as it is now. Surely it couldn't classified the same as fantasy today, but from a future view perhaps the ideas that are in books now about what will be possible could become quaint and simpler than what is real then.

There's already the "steampunk" stuff that isn't quite science fiction, since the tech is more fantastical, but if such things were written about 100 to 200 years ago, it quite possibly would have been classified as science fiction. "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" seems to me to be similar to steampunk now if only slightly.

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	mrmandias 2007-08-03 06:25 pm UTC (link)
	Many Christian SF writers were actually adult converts: http://clawoftheconciliator.blogspot.com/2007/08/dick-converts.html Maybe its growing up millennarian that's bad for SF. (Reply to this)

	Big Future (Anonymous) 2007-08-03 06:57 pm UTC (link)
	If God is going to show His lovingkindness to thousands of generations, and if all nations as nations are going to be discipled, then Jesus is not coming back for a long time. Before the 20th century, most Christians expected the world to develop slowly and through crises for a long time. For an example in SF land, read the works of Cordwainer Smith. - James B. Jordan (Reply to this) (Thread)

Re: Big Future

johncwright
2007-08-03 07:03 pm UTC (link)

Let me add also: for an example of really darn good SF done right, read the works of Cordwainer Smith.

No matter what your opinion or conviction on any of these topics mentioned above, Cordwainer Smith is one of the masters of science fiction. He really showed the genre what it was capable of. The only author even close to him in breadth of imagination, I would say, was Olaf Stabledon.

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