In my previous installment of ‘What is Science Fiction’ I completed our survey of what I like to call the six ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction’. Now what I’d like to do in this last post is to carry out an examination of the differences between Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Most of the time it’s rather easy to tell one from the other. We know that Andy Weir’s ‘The Martian’ is Science Fiction because it deals realistically with the conditions both on Mars, the rarefied air and extreme cold, and in outer space, zero gravity. Also, the technology in ‘The Martian’, whether it be the spaceship’s ion engines or the living habitats on Mars are solidly based on the technology we presently have.
Realistic Science Fiction: The Martian
On the other hand, in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J. R. R. Tolkein the way a ring of invisibility or a sword that glows when bad guys are near work is never explained or even discussed, they’re just magic.
Magic just works because it’s magic
To me that’s the cardinal difference: In Science Fiction the assumption is that we, and by we I mean both the reader and the characters in the story, are intelligent enough that with time and effort we can understand whatever mysteries or powerful objects there are in the story. Sometimes this assumption is even emphasized by relating the main character’s education. Remember in the original ‘Star Trek’ series how Kirk went to Star Fleet Academy while Spock went to the Vulcan Science Academy, that’s where they learned how to control their advanced technology. (And remember how Victor Frankenstein learned science at Ingolstadt University)
In Science Fiction characters acquire their powers through education
This expectation of understandability limits the kind of plot twists and deus ex machina that the author can get away with in Science Fiction because everything has to feel natural, understandable.
In Fantasy however, the assumption is on the supernatural element, Gandalf and Sauron have magical powers because they are themselves magical. We never learn where Gandalf learned his magic, he just is magic.
Frodo can never understand how the one ring works simply because he is natural and it is supernatural. This means that in Fantasy the author has fewer restrictions on how to get his characters into and out of danger. Just have a Balrog appear and only later reveal that Gandalf was of course stronger than the Balrog was anyway, it’s all magic after all.
Gandalf and the Balrog
But now let’s a moment and consider ‘Star Wars’ for example. Certainly it has elements that are straight out of Science Fiction, spaceships, robots (O’k they’re called droits, so what?) and laser weapons. However it also has an all pervasive ‘Force’ that gives certain characters power that the others don’t have for no obvious reason and at the same time it seems like every planet has a breathable atmosphere and normal, that is Earth gravity.
Stars Wars. Science Fiction or Fantasy, or both?
This is intentional, when George Lukas first conceived of his epic he wanted a smooth blend of realism and mythology and that has certainly been one of the prime reasons for the saga’s enduring popularity.
It seems obvious therefore that any attempt to draw a hard line between Science Fiction and Fantasy would just be a waste of time. Instead let’s just take pleasure in both genres while promoting the best Science Fiction.
This brings to an end my little seminar on Science Fiction; I hope you all enjoyed it. Let me know what you thought and I look forward to reading your comments.
This time I intend to complete our discussion of the ‘Great Themes’ of Science Fiction as well as discuss Science Fiction stories that try to avoid using any of the themes, it’s not as easy as you might think.
As a reminder last time I proposed six themes that were central to the genre of Science Fiction:
The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself
In my previous post we talked a bit about the first three themes so with out further ado here’s number four.
The Creation of Artificial Life, Artificial Intelligence and the novel I’ll use as an example will be ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelly which was first published in 1818. Of all the novels I’ve mentioned so far I think undoubtedly ‘Frankenstein’ is the most famous but just in case there’s someone who’s never heard of it here’s the story.
Frankenstein, First Edition Cover
The story concerns a scientist named Victor Frankenstein who as a child read about the old alchemists and their search for the philosopher’s stone and the secret of immortality. As a student at the University of Ingolstadt he gains the knowledge of the then brand new sciences of chemistry and electricity. Using this knowledge he manufactures and brings life to an artificial man constructed from materials he obtained in “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house”.
The very instant the creature is brought to life Frankenstein is horrified by what he has accomplished and flees not only from his creation but from his responsibility to it. This is certainly the first moral of the novel, that scientists must be willing to take responsibility for their discoveries, a moral that rings even stronger today in our world of nuclear weapons, electronic surveillance, gene modification and you know I could go on and on.
The rest of the story continues the morality play with the creature, who is both intelligent and humane, being tormented for it’s ugliness and finally taking a brutal revenge on it’s maker for having abandoned it.
The plot of a scientist creating an intelligent being and then being destroyed by their creation has now become the most overdone cliché in all of Science Fiction. Whether the creature is portrayed as a robot or a trained ape (‘The Planet of the Apes’ has a strong trace of Frankenstein in it) doesn’t matter, Frankenstein’s monster is as alive today as it ever was.
Moving on to our next Great Theme ‘The Future and Purpose (if there is one) of Humanity. Finding a novel that only displayed this theme turned out to be quite difficult so in the end I decided to cheat and go with H. G. Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ published in 1895. Now obviously The Time Machine also includes our first theme of Exploration of Space / Time but because it also demonstrates our present theme so clearly I hope you’ll forgive me.
The Time Machine, first edition cover
In The Time Machine a scientist invents a means of traveling back and forth through time and uses his device to travel forward to the year 802,701 A.D. Arriving in the far future the Time Traveler, his name is never given in the story, finds that the human race has continued to evolve, indeed it had split into two species, the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Time Traveler conjectures that the split into two species happened when the rich aristocrats of his own time had forced the labouring poor to live underground (H. G. Wells was a socialist who got the idea from the building of the first London underground subway).
Without any need to struggle the Eloi have become both beautiful and graceful but at the same time they are small, weak and ineffectual. On the other hand the Morlocks are brutish troglodytes, unable to stand the bright light of the daytime. Also, because there are no large animals remaining on Earth (Because of mankind’s destruction of the environment?) the Eloi have become vegetarians while the Morlocks have turned the tables on their former masters and now eat the Eloi!
Not a pretty picture of our future perhaps but certainly one that illustrates our theme of ‘The Future and Purpose of Mankind’. Science Fiction stories that make use of the future of mankind theme do have a tendency to be either bleak or preachy, or both. Sometimes the author’s vision of the way ‘things ought to be’ can get in the way of telling the story but in my mind at least ‘The Time Machine’ avoids this problem.
We now come to our last theme ‘The Nature and Purpose (if there is one) of the Universe Itself’. If you think about it this theme really borders on religion, another way of stating it could be ‘Why did God create the Universe’ or even “Was there a recognizable “GOD” who created the Universe’. In keeping with the otherworldly aspects of this theme the novel I shall use as an example is H. G. Wells’ “Men Like Gods” first published in 1923.
Men Like Gods, first edition cover
Another thing to keep in mind is that in this theme, even more than our previous one, the author can easily find himself telling his readers how he things things ought to be instead of allowing them to imagine how things could be. In ‘Men like Gods’ Wells falls into this trap, making the story more sermon than Science Fiction.
In ‘Men like Gods’ the main character, a Mr. Barnstaple, is involved in a traffic accident that inexplicably transports him to a parallel world called Utopia. The fact that Wells has now resorted to magic when in his earlier stories he would have extrapolated from science is a symptom of how he’s become more interested in describing how the people living in a utopia would behave than in providing a realistic basis for that world.
And Wells’ utopia is based upon ideas originated by the French philosopher Henri Bergson and promoted by Wells’ fellow socialist G. Bernard Shaw. The basic idea of Bergson and Shaw is that the entire Universe is permeated by a ‘Force of Life’. (And if that reminds you of ‘The Force’ in Star Wars, yes that is a variation of the idea). This Life Force is what causes evolution as it experiments with living creatures with the goal of creating more complex, more intelligent life.
The Utopia in ‘Men like Gods’ is simply a world that is further along in this process, about 3000 years in the story and as Mr. Barnstaple returns to our Earth with all its troubles he resolves to dedicate the rest of his life to bringing utopia to our world.
Before I finish for today I’d like to take just a brief moment to discuss those Science Fiction stories that don’t actually make any real use of our Great Themes. You may recall a review I wrote in my post of 1Mar17 about the novel ‘Luna: New Moon’ by Ian McDonald. In that review I made the point that even though the story takes place on the Moon, and there’s Hi-Tech wizardry on every page the plot would fit just as well during the time of the emperors of Rome.
So is ‘Luna: New Moon’ a Science Fiction story? Of course each of us will have to decide for ourselves but I’m always willing to be inclusive. The important thing for me is that a Science Fiction story should make me think. I have found that most of the time it will be about one of the six themes I’ve discussed, but thinking is the important thing.
Next time I’d like to finish my discussion of Science Fiction by considering the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy, at least as I see it. Till then.
Today I’d like to begin talking about great themes or big questions that Science Fiction allows us to think about and discuss in clearer, more precise ways than any other form of writing. It is true that some of these themes can be written about in other genres, some were in fact first written about in other literary genres. However I hope to make a case that they are best treated as Science Fiction.
As I mentioned in the first part of this series I intend to examine these themes or questions using the novels and stories of the first two acknowledged masters of Science Fiction, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.
Without any further ado the six themes or questions are:
The exploration of space and/or time
The effects of new technology, invention on human society
Contact with alien life, alien intelligence
The creation of artificial life, artificial intelligence
The long term future, purpose (if there is one) of humanity
The nature and purpose (if there is one) of the Universe itself
Now obviously many, probably most Science Fiction stories combine more than one of these ideas in them. However I’m going to try to find examples that fit only into the single category I’m discussing at that time.
Let’s Start with ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time and the novel I will use as an example is Jules Verne’s ‘From the Earth to the Moon and a Trip around it’. The title is pretty much the plot. In 1865, right after the American Civil War union engineers who had developed Ironclad warships, repeating rifles, railroad mounted artillery and etc. are now looking for new challenges to tackle so they decide to build a cannon large enough to fire a projectile at the Moon.
Illustration to ‘From the Earth to The Moon’
When a daring Frenchman volunteers to be a passenger on the projectile two of the American engineers decide to join him and the three-man crew are off on a journey very reminiscent of the voyage of Apollo 8 nearly a hundred years later.
Now Verne’s novel is a pretty simple story, it’s really about nothing more than using science and the technology it provides to travel someplace that no one has ever been. But isn’t that simple idea built into our human DNA. Ever since the first humans left Africa we have always used our knowledge and our tools (science and technology) to journey over that next hill and the hill after that. That makes ‘The Exploration of Space and / or Time’ almost certainly the first of the great themes of Science Fiction.
Our second great theme is “The Effect of new technology or invention on Human Society’ and our example will be ‘The Invisible Man’ written by H. G. Wells in 1897. Once again the title is the plot; a chemist discovers a formula that makes living flesh transparent, invisible. Now there’s an important point to be made here. Wells takes a page or two to discuss how invisibility might actually be possible, just how the optics of transparency works rather than just giving the power of invisibility to a ring or a cloak. This is science fiction taking knowledge we actually have and extrapolating beyond it in a way that is distinctly different a fantasy novel just saying ‘it’s magic’.
Poster for ‘The Invisible Man’
The chemist, Jack Griffin uses the formula on himself and becomes invisible. Now we get the moral of the story, science fiction is a great platform for illustrating morals, just as fables are. Anyway, the power that Griffin now has goes to his head. He can steal anything he wants, spy on anyone he wants, murder anyone he wants and no one can stop him because no one can see him. He becomes mad from the power that his technology has given him, perhaps a valuable warning for our present technology mad society. As with exploration, the concept of technology changing human society is as old as human society is making this another very ancient theme indeed.
Our third great theme is that of Contact with Alien Life, Alien Intelligence and the novel we shall use to illustrate it is H. G. Wells ‘The War of the Worlds’ that was also first published in 1897. In the novel Martians invade Earth in order to conquer it as a new home for themselves and humanity is helpless against their superior technology.
‘The War of the Worlds’
Wells used some of the best science of his time in “The War of the Worlds’ including infrared radiation (the Martians heat ray) the use of poison gas and mechanized devices in warfare (the Martians war machines are basically tanks on legs) so that even after more than a century the story seems very modern.
What Wells was really doing however it criticizing his own country of Britain’s and the rest of Europe’s empires in Africa and Asia in the late 19th century. “How would you like it?” Wells asks, if a technically superior race dropped from the sky and said “This is our land now! You belong to us now!” Again we see how Science Fiction is being used as a platform from which we can observe and criticize human behavior.
I think I’m going to have to stop here for today; this is already the longest post I’ve ever published. Next time we’ll finish our survey of Science Fiction’s great themes and we’ll also discuss whether or not a story can be Science Fiction without using one of our themes. Can a Science Fiction story just be a story? (Hint: Of course it can.)
What is Science Fiction, boy now there’s a tough question to answer. We all have a feeling about what makes a story Science Fiction or not. The technology is more advanced than in our present day world; lasers replace firearms, rockets replace airplanes and automobiles and etc. Also, Science Fiction stories are often set in places no human has yet visited whether it be the planets or stars or perhaps the future. Then of course there’s the alien forms of life, creatures whose nature and motives are completely unknown to us, at least in chapter one. It seems then that Science Fiction takes what we know, science is the Latin word for knowledge after all, and proceeds from there to speculate on what we don’t know.
But at the same time isn’t Science Fiction more than that, doesn’t Science Fiction allow us to ask in story form the big questions, doesn’t it enable us to think about the very nature and purpose of reality and mankind’s place in it. With Science Fiction we can look out at the Universe and then turn around and look back at ourselves.
I’m going to take a few posts over the next couple of weeks to talk about just what I think Science Fiction is. The posts may not be one after the other but hopefully I’ll keep them close together.
I’m thinking of doing this in four or five parts. Today will be just a basic introduction of Science Fiction along with a brief history. Next time I’d like to discuss what I’ll call the great themes of Science Fiction, which will be followed by an analysis of some of the most famous Science Fiction novels and stories using those themes. In the final part I’ll talk about the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy as I see it.
Now right up front I admit that this is going to be pretty much just my opinion. Oh, I’ll do my best to get the authors’ names and the titles correct, but really I don’t expect anyone to agree with me completely. Indeed, feel free to dispute everything I say.
If I just prompt you to think a little about Science Fiction. Or if you are inspired to find and read one of the novels I mention for the first time, then I will have done my job.
As a literary form Science Fiction has a much older history than you might think. What is generally regarded as the first Science Fiction romance was “True History” by the second century CE poet Lucian of Samosata. (By the way the term romance simply means a story composed in the Roman fashion, today we would call it a novel or novella)
The idea of writing a story that you don’t want anyone to believe was so unusual at that time that Lucian felt the need to tell his readers at the end that the things in his tales “do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all”.
The story in “True History” concerns a group of travelers who are swept up to the Moon on a whirlwind where they witness a war between the armies of the Moon and the Sun over which would colonize the morning star. The story therefore contains two of the elements we mentioned earlier. Travel to a place no one had ever traveled to before and while there encountering strange and alien creatures.
Over the next 1500 years or so a rare story would be written that today we would call science fiction. Cyrano de Bergerac (yes he really lived, big nose and everything) wrote another story about a trip to the Moon but he used a balloon and, get this, rockets.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century however that we get authors who wrote several Science Fiction stories thereby establishing Science Fiction as a genre. I’m speaking of course about Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and this is where I’m going to stop for today. Next time I’m going to use the novels of these two pioneers in Science Fiction to discuss what I call the ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction.” Till then.
