Many years ago, before the hyperslick interfaces that define the internet today, I was briefly on a chatboard where folks in attendance were in one way or another trying to learn how to write science fiction. I was already well into my short story career and I’d just gotten a contract for a work-for-hire novel. One member wanted to engage me with writing a collaborative piece, not to do a complete story, but with the idea of learning from me how the process of story construction was supposed to work. I was new enough at all this that I agreed, with the understanding that we were not going to produce anything “salable” and we proceeded to swap story chunks.
It quickly became frustrating because all he (and for a variety of reasons I came to the conclusion that he was a male) was interested in writing were combat and technology scenes. Tech and tactics, with occasional bits about what the aliens were physiologically. I was trying to show how all the rest—character, setting, subtext—was what made that stuff worth reading, but there was no lightbulb coming on at the other end. All he wanted to do was describe these awesome machines and the mayhem against the alien invaders they caused. I bowed out, left that chatroom, and frankly never did that again.
I could remember writing that way once—when I was 13.
I’ve read some things since that lead me to believe that, with a slight bit of polish, there’s a market for that kind of thing. For years I gave it little thought.
Upon reading Jordan S. Carroll’s Hugo-winning tome Speculative Whiteness I’m rethinking it.
Carroll traces the links between white supremacy and fascism with science fiction. To my dismay, I learned some unpleasant truths about my favorite genre. The idea that anyone would read Dune as prescriptive is startling to me, but I found myself reassessing much of my youthful intake and realized that, at its simplest, many readers probably geeked out on the tech and the galactic empire scenarios and ghe giant worms without the least understanding of the underlying messages (the big one being that mixing religion and politics is a bad idea, because, well, jihad). That wanna-be writer I failed to connect with on the level of character and motivation may well have been exactly the sort of “fan” who today wonders when Star Trek became “woke” without any notion that it has always been. The ship and the phasers and the aliens and the fights were cool and that was the end of any appreciation. How many of them thought the Terran Empire was way cooler than the Federation?
As I say, when I was 13 I reacted in much the same way. I had no patience for characterization (if that was all there was; as it turned out all that stuff got through despite my stated ambivalence) or all that lit’rary nonsense. I was interested in event, in landscape, in the technology. And I was very drawn by the lone hero motif that defined many, many works of SF.
Which may be the point at which the message diverges, depending on reader disposition. Because one of the things SF examines is institutions, and not always always the positive aspects of them.
Carroll goes back to the pre-WWII days to establish a clear connection through James Madole, a fan who found a guru in the person of Charles B. Hudson, an author I had never heard of who apparently published a pro-fascist newsletter and even earned a charge of sedition during the war. We tend to forget these days that there was a significant degree of sympathy in this country for Hitler and Naziism. It would be nice to think it had vanished in the wake of the war, but alas we need only look around to see that new weeds have grown thick. Madole went on to be a prominent leader in post-War fascist politics.
Much of what informed such thinking in regards to science fiction can be found in those examples extolling the coming of a “superior” human, Homo Superior (a term coined by Olaf Stapledon) continuing to recent manifestations of the idea of genetically modified people or even the advent of next-stage evolutionary expressions (Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio anyone, or earlier, A.E. Van Vogt’s Slan?) as well as cybernetically enhanced people, all sharing the common assumption of transcending modern humankind. It would seem that the warnings attached to such examples are less important to some fans than the suggestion of superiority. It would not be difficult to follow the steps down the path of “improvement” to dreams to dominance.
Be that as it may, for the rest of us it has been a bit of a shock, perhaps, to realize how certain texts have been, shall we say, alternately read to portray dystopias as goals. Gilead from The Handmaid’s Tale would seem a good current example. But perhaps more to the point, how the underlying moral threads of a great deal of SF are simply overlooked, unrecognized, or undervalued. (A part of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged deals with advanced technological development in the absence of an ethical framework.)
That earnest wanna-be writer whom I engaged for a while who could not seem to understand the value in paying attention to anything other than tech and tactics may well have been a nascent alt-right fan.
Or he may only have been 13 with an as-yet unawakened sense of empathy. The one leads to a nihilistic sensibility, the other likely matures and grows out of it. It’s difficult to predict and, as has been pointed out often, science fiction is not about prediction.
In recent years the SF community has been from time to time convulsed by the expression of reactionary sentiments arising out of rejections of certain aesthetic and moral directions in prominent (read: award-winning) writing and the content of previously unremarked social aspects of film and television franchises. Namely, the whole tussle over so-called Woke sensibilities. Personally, this caught me by surprise, since I have always taken as given that one of the constants in SF has been the idea that the future can be better. As I grew to adulthood the content and shape of that betterment has evolved. Even in the dire scenarios of SF, there has usually been a thread of “see how this goes if we don’t pay attention” and even “as bad as it might get there is hope for a brighter future.” Star Trek, of course, has always exemplified both this threads and to hear criticisms today that focus on the fundamental advocacy of empathy across all lines is undesirable and even corrupting baffles me.
Reading Carroll’s study reveals, in part, the source of that reaction. In retrospect, some of John W. Campbell’s awkward dictums make more sense. Not that I believed Campbell to be a fascist, but he was a supremacist of sorts. Human supremacist. But the mindset that embraces the concept of superiority among sentient beings is the basic precondition to racism.
I cannot help but feel those who misconstrue the messaging in most SF, who regard Arrakis (or worse still Giedi Prime) as goals to achieve are simply not very astute readers. Another time I was involved in judging student papers about favorite works of fiction and one struck me in particular concerning Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The student in question seemed to think Huxley was an advocate for that world, that he was trying to convince readers of the desirability of striving to achieve it. The student was not so much a bad reader as an inexperienced one who had not reached the deeper layers. When I pointed out that Huxley was writing an “if this goes on” kind of examination, the response was “But some of this works!” “And what does that tell you?” was my question, which led to a fruitful discussion. The student in question was 12. In context, a very advanced reader, but we continue to read over a lifetime to discover new layers, both in the books we read and in ourselves as we read, and come to new realizations.
Some, however, would appear to get stuck at a certain point. A point they perhaps like too much to question further.
Which suggests the less sympathetic take on this, which is intentional misreading or interpretation. The predetermined message sought for and found, regardless of the actual content and intent of a given text. The, shall we say, REconstrual of theme and message, but someone already determined to find support for a viewpoint which for most of us seems inconsistent with the ready meanings. And, of course, the then quite purposeful creation of new texts that while sharing a surface aesthetic with the genre as a whole are aimed at completely antithetical meanings of the basic tenor of the genre as a whole.
It would hardly be the first time such an insistent misinterpretation has occurred. But it would demonstrate a set of a priori disconnects ion clever service to a flawed intent.
Carroll’s 107 page study reveals the disconnects—disconnects between reader and text, author and text, text and text, and reader to reader—and shows us how what we may believe too obvious to question is still in a state of flux. That often the thing we love is not experienced the same way by others, some of whom may use it as the foundation of a wholly other and seriously flawed way to see not only the work in question but the world outside the work.
Science fiction, as I have theorized before, is at base epistemological. How do we know things, how does knowledge come into being, which presumes as knowable universe, requiring examination and questioning. As long as we keep asking questions—which implicitly requires us to always be open to change and reexamination—we have the potential of improving, both ourselves and by extension the world around us. The point is to not look for a template but for a path. The idea that SF, as a practice, is about What Should Be instead of What Might Be is a dangerous misreading. One that, apparently, can lead to some very dark places.
