
Science Fiction #
Christ. I remember a time when Science Fiction wasn’t even a genre. I mean, it kinda always was, in the way literary snobs pronounced genre as a derogative. But it’s always been (and still is today) “Fantasy & Science Fiction”. Only now it’s “Speculative Fiction”. Or worse, Science Fiction is just a form of Fantasy1. Sigh.
Yeah, it’s hard to define. Like so many things, I’ll know it when I see it is about the best way to define it2. I will admit that it’s really hard to put boundaries around it. What Jemisin said about faster than light travel being “fantasy”, is, in some ways, correct. In some ways. But not in all ways. This is because Science Fiction has always had the problem of having, at it’s core, something that seems like it is impossible, but has (in the story) been made possible. And there lies the crux of the problem. If something is clearly possible (sequencing DNA, for example) but is made insanely fast (for example, such that a simple hand-held device can sequence a DNA sample in situ, and spit out who’s DNA it is, or whatever), then that’s less Science Fiction than. . . fiction. What makes it Science Fiction is. . . something we can’t do today that we (probably) can in the future.
It seems like that’s basically my test for Science Fiction. And there’s a lot hanging on that “probably”. Consider the faster than light problem. We know there’s an absolute speed limit, the speed of light. So it would appear there’s now way to travel faster than light. But there’s spooky action at a distance3, and that opens the door for something. Me, personally, I kinda like the “folding space” ship from a somewhat less than impressive Voyager episode4. But it’s enough of an open question5 to put it in the “possibly” camp, and from there it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to “probably”.
OK, so there’s “probably” and “possible”. Clearly, Science Fiction is composed of the former. It’s also something that dances with the latter. Fantasy, in my mind, is more open to whatever the author wants to make possible in the world. Oh, sure, we have telepathic races in Science Fiction (all the time!), and I don’t know how I can square that with what I feel about the rest of science fiction. I guess I’m willing to overlook certain things. A willing suspension of disbelief, if you will.
It’s not about the technology (or, er, the science). #
Generally speaking, Science Fiction isn’t about the science. Or the technology, as it’s become. Gone are the days of discovering some new scientific principle in Science Fiction, and now it tends to focus on some new technology that can do “X”. However, I believe this is somewhat of a natural progression in storytelling. I don’t have references or links here, so I’m going to wave my hands6 here. Someone said that for some movie, they didn’t want to do the usual thing of explaining how things worked, because it wasn’t essential to the story. This was, in fact, a masterstroke. However, it had to be done at a specific time in the evolution of the genre.
A brief digression #
If you go back and look at TV shows from a long time ago (for some definition of “long”), you’ll see establishing shots every time a location changes (think how often you saw the Brady Bunch home!). We still have establishing shots in TV series now, but they’re usually very quick, because audiences are used to seeing a quick 2 second clip of a place to know “the things you’re about to see take place here”. More recently, establishing shots are more about time of day, or “a feeling”, or a transition shot. My point is that it became time to give up the “Through the inverse flow of time, I discovered the new conjecture of confluent residual flow, which, using a special crystal tuned to the resonant frequency of the Universe, allows my Time Machine to move forward in time!” explanations. You can say “It’s a time machine”, and be done with it. The only time people need to explain the “invention” (based on the unmentioned scientific principles) is if it’s a plot point (“I realized as I was building the frobnitz that it could be used to destroy the space-time continuum!”).
It’s about the story, and what the author is trying to tell in the story (not “how cool is it to use jet-packs!”, but a exploration of what society would be like if we had jet-packs7. Or invisibility. Or time travel.).
Science Fiction grows up (or, it evolves) #
Science Fiction fans are ripe for parody and disparagement precisely because they have, like all of us, things they like and things they don’t. Let’s consider three things:
- There are things that are “objectively” true
- There are things that are “subjectively” true
- There are things that are neither, but we don’t care
We, as humans, can hold these three things in our brains at the same time. I hold that the parody and mockery of Science Fiction fans is usually between items one and two, and the derision and disparagement is between items two and three. I used the term “suspension of disbelief” because that is instrumental in allowing us to enjoy ourselves when watching a show. There is a fourth, of course, but we don’t like to talk about it:
- There are things that are demonstrably not true, and we can’t help but care
The problem with this forth item is that you’re never sure when you’re going to have it slapped upside your head like a dead fish. I was watching a film that made the unforgivable sin of having two characters drive to Oregon to have a clandestine conversation while pumping their own gas. At the time, the only place you could pump your own gas in Oregon was at a commercial (read: unoccupied, for commercial vehicles) gas station. It ripped me out of the movie, and I really had a hard time getting back into the movie8.
While I argue that the story is the important bit, it should not be at the expense of the audience. What I mean by that is you can’t tell a story and invoke the fourth item. When the audience knows something is false, the story breaks. It’s that simple.
Science Fiction fans generally argue amongst themselves between items one and two, with the occasional argument about things between items two and three9. Folks who are not part of that group cannot help but feel there is no difference between items two or three, and all the arguments are silly because clearly everything being discussed is either in item one or four. Usually item four, because to a non-Science Fiction fan, what’s in item one is clear, and everything else is in item four.
As audiences have gotten more exposed to ideas about Science and Technology, we’ve gone from kids reading comic books about space aliens to books about space aliens to movies about space aliens to “entertainment” that talks about social issues of the day, by using the settings of Science Fiction to illuminate truths that we (generally) don’t want to acknowledge10.
Why I’m ranting #
I have no idea why I’m ranting about Science Fiction. Except to say that all “genre” fiction has a point. I love mysteries as much as I love spy novels, and even the occasional bit o’ literature11. What all these genres have in common is that, aside from the vehicle they’re using, they’re trying to tell a story about something. The form is entertaining, but often times the underlying messages are important (be they about communication and perception (Arrival), about race and race relations (about 30% of Star Trek: The Original Series), or about segregation (District 9). It is a tool we can use to examine our own society and conditions we experience, but once removed. I think it’s a technique Science Fiction is particularly well suited to. While a Whodunnit might ask the question “What is it about us that motivates us to murder another human”, or literature my more directly confront the realities of the society we live in, Science Fiction gives us a way to look through a telescope at something “not us” and yet recognize the “us” in them.
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I’m lookin’ at you, N. K. Jemisin. ↩︎
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To be clear, I’m using it like Justice Potter Stewart did. ↩︎
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I am referring to Einstein here, but read the article. If you look at the footnotes (and, clearly, you are the type to read footnotes, since, you know, you’re reading this) you’ll see citations for things like “There Is No Spooky Action at a Distance in Quantum Mechanics”, and “Entanglement is spooky, but not action at a distance”. Of course, there is alsy “Action at a Distance in Quantum Mechanics”. So who knows. It’s science, after all, and it’s (fully) settled. Settled enough to predict, yes, but not settled enough to predict everything. :-) ↩︎
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The episode, Vis À Vis, is completely focused on. . . not the ship. Like so much in Science Fiction, the story is not about the technology. More about that later. And anyway, Steth’s ship used a Coaxial Drive. The Sikarian’s actually fold space to travel without need of a ship. Yow! ↩︎
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Man, the things I find when I’m writing these. No wonder people read Wikipedia like I used to read the Encyclopedia. ↩︎
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Even more than normal! ↩︎
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Come on, folks! It’s 2024! We were supposed to have so much more than merely jet-packs! ↩︎
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And, clearly, the fact I’m writing about it multiple decades after I saw it should indicating just how much that carp smelled when it smacked me. Also, don’t google “fish slap”. :-) ↩︎
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See The Big Bang Theory (any episode) for examples of both. ↩︎
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Sigh. Sometimes not so subtly, as in the case of the last episode of ST:TOS, Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. I kinda sometimes I hate myself for knowing all the titles. . . ↩︎
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Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (wikipedia entry). ↩︎