Call to Arms: Working for Tomorrow Beneath the SF Banner Today
(Or, How You can Save the World, Build Utopias, Make Children
Smarter, and Maybe Plant a Few Trees)
by Christopher McKitterick
Originally published in
ANALOG magazine, January 1996.
THE PROBLEM; THE SOLUTION
Science fiction's readers take the long view. We picture the human animal as
part of a species whose skin is multicolored, whose voice is multilingual, whose
home is multinational, whose future is unified. On the other hand, traditional
(mundane) culture - usually in power - sees those borders and tongues and hues as
signs of difference, and it sees difference as dangerous. David Hartwell defines
science fiction readers as having "an impatience with the way things are, an
ironic, sometimes sarcastic attitude toward everyday things... a desire for
change" (Age of Wonders 3). Traditional culture sees change as dangerous, and
also the future, because tomorrow's world will, without doubt, be different from
now. Look at the changes today's oldsters have seen in the past decades.
Not only is traditional culture afraid of change, but it also searches for ways
to avoid it and, thus, maintain the status quo indefinitely. Keep in mind that
the first definition of "tradition" in Webster's New World Dictionary is "a
surrender or betrayal." By shunning creative uses of technology, by failing to
seize upon opportunities that paradigm shifts provide such as solar power and
daily life on the moon or asteroids, by imposing yesterday's values and
traditions where they are inappropriate-on the future-mundane culture is
assuring humanity's collapse. They are betraying our children's children.
Tomorrow as utopia faces an even greater bugaboo. Today, we bear the crushing
weight of our past forays into violence against ourselves and our world, the
legacy our fathers and our fathers' fathers ad infinitum left us. We, every one
of us, need to unshackle ourselves from the fears imposed by tradition and think
like SF readers in our everyday affairs. That is, we need to use the
illumination provided by our rational minds and our creativity to light the
rough, branching path to tomorrow. Science fiction does this best:
"...perhaps the most important function of science fiction is to neutralize the
future, to remove the natural fear that humanity feels for the unknown, to
present the alien as at least endurable and perhaps even acceptable." (James
Gunn, Inside Science Fiction 152)
In one sentence, Gunn sums up the nature of SF. Our fiction takes away fear of
the future, the unknown, and the other, and replaces the vacuum left behind with
visions.
True, not much of today's SF is laden with hopeful visions, though the balance
is not necessarily unhopeful - rather, most contemporary SF is about people
facing difficulties they need to overcome. But even someone reading a dystopic
story about the year 2294 is reading a story that assumes we have, at least,
survived until 2294 - no small feat. In addition, reading a dystopic story might
prod someone to say, "It doesn't have to be that way," or "Dammit! I won't let
that happen. What can I do?"
There is something we can do, and it involves leading every possible young
person into the fold of SF and SF-thinking. More on one way to do that a little
later.
THE SCIENCE FICTION MENTALITY
"If the scientists have the future in their bones, then the traditional culture
responds by wishing that the future did not exist."
That's C.P. Snow, from his "The Two Cultures" lectures. Here, Snow touches on
the danger of allowing the traditional culture to mold our children, of ignoring
SF's messages and warnings.
If scientists and SF fans have the future in our bones, then mundanes must be
anemic. For it is surely the hope of unlimited frontiers, of lands where we can
grow and prosper, that gives the species its red-blooded vigor. "[SF's]
philosophy is optimistic and scientific," (Inside Science Fiction 46) writes
James Gunn. What kind of future lies in wait for a species that is pessimistic
and irrational?
Clearly, this is why the mundanes have such an anemic view of the future, why
books like On the Beach, The Handmaid's Tale, and 1984 were written not by SF
people but by those steeped in the mundane world. All three of these posit
dreadful futures in which people are irrational and hopeless-in fact, these are
unlikely futures wherein science only ruins life and change only damages our
present-day "accomplishments." Moreover, the futures in these books seem
unlikely and unrealistic, the products of mundane minds. -Or, more to the
point, the products of minds squelched by mundane vision. Traditional mundane
thought tends to assume the future will be like the past, and new problems can
only be solved using old solutions. Science-fiction thought, however, is
forward-looking, and even our dystopias show creativity-SF is unafraid to see
every possibility, grand or gutter.
The Foundation Trilogy gives humanity a galactic empire, and though the empire
collapses, humanity reclaims it and creates something even greater. The Helliconia trilogy deposits humanity on a horrible world where the future means
assured suffering and likely collapse. But-being humans-the people break that
cycle. In The Puppet Masters, Heinlein curses the world with an awful invasion.
But-always but!-we emerge victorious through human inventiveness and even
stretch our already-expanded frontiers. Joan Vinge sets The Snow Queen amid a
future society where people are still people-good or sinful, self-sacrificing
or decadent, damaged or hurtful-but she gives humanity a number of worlds and
captures that so-important element in all of us, the sense of wonder. Even in
The Forever War, a book with a powerfully critical view of our species, Joe Haldeman shows humanity overcoming great and innumerable obstacles and, at long
last, developing something like utopia.
Perhaps SF's purpose is to urge us on toward important things, toward a future
in which we can survive; it certainly urges us toward the stars. SF, as
functional art, helps men and women dream great dreams-and recognize great
nightmares before they happen, so we can stop them. "Nothing is impossible if
man wants to do it" (Gunn, ISF 140). But without dreams, there is no future.
So what gives today's youth dreams of a positive future? The space program was
important to us as a species, but now it has lapsed-mostly because of an
unfortunate coupling of politics and mundane fears. SF reminds us what the space
program's true goals ought to be; SF stirs our souls to see solutions while
helping us to shape and attain our dreams. Indeed, SF gives us our dreams. And
SF promises that dreams will, one day, return to us the reality of space.
Yet.... Will we become spacemen, spread our seed throughout the stars? We have a
long way to go, many obstacles to cross on our dimly illuminated path into the
future. Gunn has this to say:
"I don't have a great deal of confidence in that future because there are so
many things that could go wrong-a final war, a natural catastrophe, a major
depression, or, most of all, a terminal energy shortage that would drop the
level of our technological civilization below the point necessary to support
space colonization. Perhaps most important is a failure of will, a loss of faith
in human possibilities, a disappearance of the spirit to take risks, to
adventure, that sent the Pilgrims west across the Atlantic and the pioneers west
across this continent." (ISF 132)
Clearly, we face a crisis. There is little need to debate this; one need only
watch the nightly news or take a close look at our cities. The need to
orchestrate change is urgent. We must spread the SF way of thought because SF
offers choices and alternative futures; it encourages the adventurous spirit and
faith in human nature. Science fiction offers, or at least illuminates, hope. At
the same time that it provides excitement and an escape from a life that
sometimes feels unendurable, SF also replaces despair with dreams, and dreams
offer hope.
Even if tomorrow will be bad, at least there will be a tomorrow, SF says, and if
there is a tomorrow, there will be one after that-and that time's inhabitants
will have the opportunity to change their tomorrow's tomorrow....
Robert Heinlein, in a speech to the Third Annual World SF Convention at Denver
in 1941, said, "Science fiction fans differ from most of the rest of the race by
thinking in terms of racial magnitude-not even centuries but thousands of
years." SF eyesight is never myopic; indeed, it often watches its individuals
through a telescope, and that telescope happens to be able to see light not only
from the past but also the light of the future. Extending our sights so far
necessarily makes us recognize problems we won't even come across for millennia,
though it also forces us to face them and, therefore, plan long-term.
A taste of the dream, as served up by James Gunn:
"...the effort to settle space would re-invigorate our society, turn us outward
rather than inward against ourselves, give us new confidence in ourselves as a
people, be a moral substitute for war and other aggressions... it may reduce the
psychological pressures that make groups focus on small differences between them
rather than the great, common human experience that unites them, and it will
certainly mean that all of humanity's future will not be tied to one fragile
world capable of being destroyed by accident or rash decision...
"...the benefits [of settling space] for the human spirit may be incalculable...
we should dream great dreams and plan great deeds. What we do in this world is
not always for ourselves. Occasionally-not often enough, to be sure-we think
of others, of our children or our grandchildren or the children of the species
to which we belong. We should do one magnificent thing for them every
generation." (ISF 132, my emphasis)
That last sentence remains brightly framed in my mind: "We should do one
magnificent thing for [the children] every generation." This is why I'm writing,
and why I hope you will join me in doing one thing-one thing which may very
well give today's youth the tools to do a magnificent thing. And, having been
part of that process, we will have participated in a magnificent thing, as the
man who tightens a bolt on a rocket booster's fuel pump is part of the Lunar
Colony's great discoveries.
SF AS EDUCATIONAL TOOL
"[SF] offers the opportunity to stretch the imagination as well as exercise the
mind; it can dramatize contemporary problems and consider other ways of
existing, behaving, organizing, perceiving, thinking. It is a literature of
ideas and a literature of change-it can be a literature of education." (ISF 14)
Didn't I mention earlier that we can change the world through SF? Here's a hint:
Do you remember when you first began reading those wonderful, imaginative works?
"Immersed in it. Bathing in it, drowning in it; for the adolescent who leans
this way [SF] can be better than sex. More accessible, more compelling"
(Hartwell, Age of Wonders 3). Hartwell goes on to state that "the real golden
age of science fiction is twelve" (AoW 3). However, "most new readers have to go
through a process of SF education and familiarization before they can love it" (AoW
7).
Well, I don't intend to try to convert every SF fan into a junior-high school
teacher. I have a much more modest proposal.
TOMORROW AND WHAT YOU CAN DO
H.G. Wells, from his 1902 speech, "The Discovery of the Future":
"All this world is heavy with the promise of greater things, and a day will
come, one day in the succession of days, when beings who are now latent in our
thoughts and hidden in our loins, shall stand upon this Earth as one stands upon
a footstool and shall laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars."
We can stimulate the SF mind that dwells within all humans, that is our natural
expression once we rid ourselves of the poison of the past, of the heavy and
obsolete traditions that weigh us down and make us fearful of the magnificence
that sleeps hidden in the blankets of tomorrow, and the other unimaginables in
tomorrows after that. Because SF takes us to the future, tomorrow is no longer
the unknown. Once it is no longer unknown, tomorrow can be seen as the place
where dreams come true.
So we must reach out our hands toward the future-toward the youth of today who
will be the policy-makers of that approaching time. In our hands we must bear
the literature of enlightenment, a searchlight to show them glimpses of the hazy
future. Today's youth must pick up that light and use it to illuminate problems
hidden in mundane shadows. Dark ages fall very quickly, yet can last eternally.
A MODEST PROPOSAL
I won't suggest we eat the children of mundanes. Nor should we even eat the
mundanes. Chances are, we would be destroyed soon after the first banquet.
SF fandom possesses a vast, untapped potential. You, who count yourself among
its numbers, already know this and may even be frustrated. Perhaps you wish you
could do something to save the world, but you haven't yet invented a replicator
or sustainable fusion reactor. So what can we do? Certainly, a group of people
who consider their brains their most important feature can do something.
I propose something very simple, something that could be put fully into effect
in days or-at most-months. It would cost virtually nothing, require very
little effort (or as much as you are willing), and reap great rewards: Picture a
future where spaceship exhausts seam the sky, their miniature stars reflected
off the gleaming domes of cities-cum-utopias, clean water flowing in the rivers
that link the cities, and cheap, safe power for everyone; the planets invisible
to the eye but metaphorically in our societal backyard. The whole race
cooperates on building all this-and it never would have happened without that
cooperation. The stars lie nearly within our grasp as mighty interstellar craft
fuel up near Jupiter....
How? Here's a start:
- Participate in our SF-donation
program. See [page] for more information.
The following items, 2-8, are from the original essay; I foresee using my SF
centers to help coordinate efforts as described below, as well.
- Local fan groups (or individuals) collect used SF magazines and books.
Perhaps we can convince editors to donate their returns, or bookstores to hand
over returns to these groups.
- Sort (as much as is reasonable) into age groups: SF suitable for children, SF
suitable for adolescents. Be careful about sex and language, because most mundanes
are uptight in these arenas. But do not censor, because the idea here is to cause
change, to subvert what is wrong with today's world.
- Pick someone from your group who is diplomatic and can speak the language of
the mundanes. Remember that many of us scare the most conservative mundanes, and
we will be dealing in large part with those entrenched in institutions: e.g.,
conservatives. But also remember that many teachers-at least the young
ones-desire change and wish to have a part and place in it.
- Contact local schools and/or youth organizations and tell them you are
willing to set up an SF distribution time/place- likely they will be pleased,
because any reading is an improvement for many kids these days. Ask about
procedures, what's allowed, etc. Poke around among people you know in these
organizations until you find someone fired up about saving the world. (A fan
would be most excellent here.) I suggest working through institutions because
they are where we'll find concentrations of young minds.
- Regularly provide kids with SF. Note that I mean written SF, because, as
Robert Scholes argues, "language is as swift as thought itself and can reach
beyond what is, or seems, to what may or may not be, with the speed of a
synapse. Until the mind can speak in its own tongueless images, the word will be
its fleetest and most delicate instrument of communication" (Structural Fabulation 38). (Also consider that Scholes calls fiction "a shaping force" [SF
33], and that he re-names SF "didactic romance" [SF 28]-in fact, it would seem
that he identifies SF's most important function as teaching medium from which
readers draw moral lessons.)
- Discuss their readings and ideas with the kids, informally, perhaps wherever
the fan group meets. Schools or youth clubs might reserve a room for this. Don't
talk down to them-remember how adult you felt at their age. Also remember that
these are the people who will run the world in a few short years.
- If you're willing to spend the time, be the kind of mentor you wish you had
had then. Just meeting with a boy or girl once or twice a month to talk about
the exciting ideas s/he found in the novel by Vinge, or the story by Sturgeon,
will stamp an indelible impression on her/him.
Remember, most of us were first consumed with the idea-fire SF fuels while still
young, usually between 10-16 years old: "As is the way with addictions, this one
is mostly contracted in adolescence or not at all," writes Kingsley Amis (New
Maps of Hell 246). Elsewhere in his book, Amis argues that SF (and I propose it
is the best at this) enables society to criticize itself; SF treats elements of
society as variables, not constants. And SF is more than a tool for social
criticism; in his April 1926 Amazing Stories editorial, Hugo Gernsback wrote,
"the very best of these modern writers of scientifiction have the knack of
imparting knowledge, and even inspiration, without once making us aware that we
are being taught" ("A New Sort of Magazine," p.3).
Why embark on this plan? Gunn answers best:
"Let us consider what we do and why we do it, and whether, in the final
analysis, we have made our world-our science fiction world-better for having
lived in it." (ISF 160)
Because SF makes its readers look at the world in new ways, it sets the stage
for change. Because SF requires knowledge of certain things to either fully
understand or get the most out of the work, it prompts its readers to seek out
more information.... Say, doesn't that sound familiar? This is what our schools
are supposed to do.
We must do one magnificent thing for the children of our species every
generation, else we risk slow or fast extinction. Will tomorrow's adults be
capable of doing something magnificent for their children, even imagining it? Or
will they simply continue to ensure the downfall of our civilization and
ecosystem? We can teach them to use the tools of SF to unshackle themselves from
their burdensome legacies.
It is up to us, today, to ensure tomorrow.
-wait-
Do you have more (or better) ideas? Comments, suggestions? Would you like
support or rapport in starting a program to save the world through science
fiction? Write me and I'll share your ideas on this site.
I also plan to go to cons and even set up some panels where we can
discuss this plan in more detail-or come up with others, because I cannot say
this is the only way. I am willing to work for this because tomorrow matters to
me. Does the future matter enough to work for it?
"From the viewpoint of our distant descendants, no matter what their alien
forms, ways, beliefs, the ultimate crime is not murder, but stupidity, as
pollution, global war, civil strife, and other contemporary carelessnesses that
threaten racial survival are stupid. In a metaphorical sense, science fiction
might be considered letters from the future, from our children, urging us to be
careful of their world." (ISF 42)
Do you want to be part of doing one magnificent thing? Will you pass on those
letters from the future, or will you allow the mundanes to go one mucking things
up and poisoning tomorrow's minds? A possible you, 20 years from now, might have
two responses:
"I could have done something magnificent," or-as you attach your rebreather to
walk to the market-"I should have..."
WORKS CITED
Amis, Kingsley. New Maps of Hell. New York: Ballantine Books, 1960.
Gernsback, Hugo. "A New Sort of Magazine." Amazing Stories, April 1926.
Gunn, James. Inside Science Fiction: Essays on Fantastic Literature. San
Bernardino, CA: The Borgo Press, 1992.
Guralnik, David B. Webster's New World Dictionary. New York: Simon and Schuster,
1984.
Hartwell, David. Age of Wonders. New York: Walker & Co., 1984.
Heinlein, Robert A. "Third Annual World Science Fiction Convention Address."
Denver, 1941.
Scholes, Robert. Structural Fabulation. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame Press, 1975.
Snow, C.P. "The Two Cultures." London, 1962.
Wells, H.G. "The Discovery of the Future." New York, 1902.
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