On Science Fiction
Set phasers to stun.
(Audio: link)
[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Membership/M11-OnScienceFiction.mp3]
Link M11-OnScienceFiction.mp3
I have always loved science fiction. In the movies. On TV. And especially in the written word. Having always been an avid reader I would rather let an author paint alien landscapes in my mind than let the jaded magicians of Hollywood do it for me. The best art takes you out of your world and puts your mind, body and spirit into another.
Why Science Fiction? What is it about his genre that engages my otherwise peripatetic mind?
There is obviously an element of escapism to it. To be transported away to distance planets on starships and to do battle with aliens is a great adventure.
I also understand that the genre plays to the undeveloped 13 year old boy in me. Allowing that 13 year old boy to leave this scary world of mean people and meaner responsibilities of life. To be whisked off for a game of intergalactic cowboys and aliens is a nice break.
Where every man is an unlikely hero, and every woman is smart and beautiful, and every hunch pays off, and every risky gambit somehow pulls through against all odds and humanity is saved. What 13 year old boy wouldn’t want to trade this universe for that?
If only for an afternoon.
I remember discovering Asimov and reading my way through the Foundation novels non-stop like some Harry-Potter-crazed pre-teen. The romantic 1950’s brashness of Heinlen before he went nuts. The toxic mountain deserts of Dune. All these great space operas with their grand, compelling and sweeping universes. Such great stories.
But it’s more than that.
Science fiction also is allowed to break the rules without penalty. Since we know going in that this genre is outside our known universe that gives it license to ignore the sensibilities of our own universe.
I like ‘hard’ science fiction. Hard science fiction takes the existing science and extends it creating an unlimited potential to the science of that universe that can be explored. I understand the typical tropes of this genre. Faster than light travel. Alien species. Time travel. Future worlds. I understand that these are in a sense fantasy but in a hard science way they are plausible. That plausibility makes the story work. For me.
I’m not a big fan of what would be called fantasy fiction. These are the types of stories involving fairies, and other dress-up tropes from Grimm’s tales projected into an alien realm. To me these are the Harlequin Romances sub-genre. Not worth the investment. When everything becomes magic there is no need for your mind to be involved. That’s cheating.
Maybe it’s just my rational mind and upbringing forcing me to find something worthy in a vice. A certain intellectual prurience that bars one from surrendering to pure, unremitted pleasure.
My favorite form of science fiction is the short story anthology. A short story could be anything from a couple pages to a novella that couldn’t achieve escape velocity into a full novel.
The beauty of the science fiction short story is that it has one good idea. Sometimes is a forgettable mediocre idea. Sometimes it is a brilliant, haunting idea that will roll around in your consciousness for years.
Think of the Illustrated Man stories of Ray Bradbury or any of the wonderful novellas of Phillip K Dick. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? These small stories encapsulate ideas so interesting, so powerful that they cascade down through the generations as a new form of cultural mythos.
One good, haunting idea. Wrapped up in just enough of a story to build a display for that idea. A mental diorama of ‘hmm…’ and ‘Ahh…’ and ‘Wow…’ moments propped up for you to take a curious stroll through.
A good anthology of science fiction is just like that for me. A sideshow. A house of curiosities. Each one peeking out from its cubby hole with a new and nuanced way to look at existence. With each one of these revelations I am able to pick up that curiosity and turn it over in my mind and compare it to the normal universe that we live in for contrast.
In that contrast we can find something entirely new. Because the science fiction is not constrained by the rules of this universe it is able to ask questions, present scenarios and possible solutions or alternatives that we would not ever stumble across on our own paths.
You might argue “but it’s not real!” I would rejoin that nothing is, but besides that its unrealness is precisely what gives it power. The lack of frame or the introduction of an alternate frame is exactly the vehicle you need to jump out of well-worn paths.
Why wouldn’t you race yachts in the atmosphere of Jupiter? Why wouldn’t artificial intelligences have existential crises? How could we expect to understand the cultural frames of alien species when we can’t even accept our own?
Take some time and find a good short story anthology. Instead of playing Words With Friends or surfing Facebook while you’re waiting for the train read two pages of an idea that has been set free of the constraints of our universe.
You can see the power of the human mind in the things it can imagine. You can ask different questions that are based entirely outside your exiting frame of reference. It is an extraordinary palette. It is painting large with the brush of human imagination.