Revelation in Science Fiction

Written for a school assignment.

Essays | Writing | Assignment

John Campbell once described science fiction as being texts that give an "honest effort at prophetic extrapolation". Robert Heinlein defined the genre as consisting of stories set in a place "different from here-and-now" but which are also "not at variance with observed facts". James Bailey said it must involve some "imaginary invention or discovery" and must explore the "consequent adventures and experiences" of that invention.

There have been various definitions of sci-fi over the years, none of which entirely line up, but which each share some commonalities. They tend to describe sci-fi texts as ones that have a focus on realism, that serve as predictions of the future, that explore technologies and discoveries, and that explore the consequences of those technologies and discoveries. These conventions are quite universal across the genre, and they give us a general idea of what sci-fi is.

But is it possible for us to look deeper? To find some aspects of science fiction that are more interesting, if less commonly occurring?

Spoiler warning for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Philip Dicks' Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which I will henceforth be shortening to "Androids".

Part 1: People

We'll start our search by looking at how characters are represented in sci-fi. One thing commonly noted is, actually, the lack of character; many sci-fi stories feature characters that are one-dimensional, or that are without any character at all.

In Frankenstein, the family has little personality except for their shared love for Victor, and in how they give him company. What's important about these sorts of characters, really, isn't what they are, but what they do, and how that serves the plot. In Frankenstein, the key thing Victor's family do is die, which serves the plot in making Victor realise the horror of his creation.

These characters are one-dimensional because they aren't really characters; they're plot devices, created by the author to serve some purpose in the story. By taking focus away from them, it lets the author explore other ideas, and use the characters to do so.

Other characters in science fiction instead tend to be representations of ideas, of ideologies, and of worldviews. Victor is representative of the scientific mind — of the thirst for discovery and invention. Clerval and Elizabeth, meanwhile, are representatives of the poets — not of the creator, but of the admirers of creation.

These characters are also one-dimensional, and this is again because they aren't really representations of people — they are representations of ideas, given an animated, human form. In doing this, authors explore not the arcs of characters, but the interplay of ideas. After all, when we go into sci-fi, we don't expect character dramas; we expect idea dramas.

Part 2: Societies

One of the commonly noted traits of science fiction stories is how their worlds tend to relate to our world, either being set in the future or in an alternative history. However, more than that, sci-fi worlds tend to resemble our world.

Androids was written during the cold war, which is a fact that's evident in the text. Besides being set in the aftermath of nuclear annihilation and in a very urbanly-described setting that is directly connected to modern San Francisco, there is also a reading of the text where androids are representative of communists — in that they are viewed as "evil beings that live in our midst, that look just like us, and that are seeking to overthrow our society". The conflict between Buster Friendly and Wilbur Mercer as they "fight over our souls", too, seems to parallel the conflict between Capitalism and Communism. These parallels don't line up entirely, but the feelings of paranoia and of ideological conflict are definitely represented within the text.

Another thing of note is the language used by the characters of the book; it's very colloquial. They use slang, calling androids "andys", and people's sentences are short and unpoetic, not filled with any of the whimsy one might find in more romantic or fantastical novels.

Perhaps this all happens because audiences expect a degree of realism in sci-fi — but on the other hand, it could be seen as an explicit attempt on the hand of the author to connect the world to ours.

Before we move on, I'd like to look at what relation this has to characters. Specifically, I'd like to note how the stories of the characters in sci-fi tend to reflect the wider stories that occur through the society of the text.

Rick's story in Androids involves him realising that empathy isn't a distinguishing mark that can tell androids apart from humans. This is in parallel to a wider story in the novel involving Mercer. Mercer is the religious figurehead of Mercerism, a religion that centres on the idea of having empathy for other people and animals. By the end of the story, Mercer is exposed as a fraud, specifically by someone named Buster Friendly, who is, appropriately, an android.

With this idea of parallelism in mind, it becomes more clear why characters are representative of ideas and ideologies — authors create them as avatars of aspects of their society. Sci-fi readers expect and want grand narratives and deep worldbuilding, but it's the personal stories that are most touching. Through parallelism, the author gets the best of both worlds.

Part 3: Revelation

I've left several questions unaddressed in this discussion, like "What sorts of ideas do authors explore with their characters" or "Why do authors try to connect the fictional world to our world?". I'll answer those questions now, and I believe the answer to both of them has something to do with what I call "Revelation".

See, Frankensteini is a rather religious text. Over the course of the story, Victor is the creator of a creature that goes on to destroy everything he loves. Meanwhile, he spends time in nature — in God's creation, which, unlike Victor's, is near-perfect. Shelley describes it so:

"The immense mountains and precipices that overhung me on every side — the sound of the river raging among the rocks, and the dashing of the waterfalls around, spoke of a power mighty as Omnipotence... Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty."

What Victor realises over the text is that his creation is incompatible with God's creation — more so, that his creation is abhorrent compared to God's. That is his revelation. Victor is, as discussed before, reflective of the scientific part of his society, and his society is a representation of parts of ours. Through him, Mary Shelley is thus saying that none of Man's creations can ever live up to God.

Androids on the other hand, is a very existential text. One of its revelations is to do with entropy, with the idea that everything in the world is slowly declining towards dust, or as John Isidore puts it: "Kipple". This idea is explored in Dick's descriptions:

"Silence... It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered grey wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn't worked in all the time Isidore had lived here... It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it — the silence — meant to supplant all things tangible... The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won."

Novels of all genres often involve a character learning something, but in sci-fi, this often isn't a moral lesson, but an intellectual one — a discovery about the nature of the universe and of our place in it. Furthermore, in linking the characters to the societies they are in, authors show they aren't individual revelations, but societal revelations, and by likening these fictional societies to our society, authors show it is a universal revelation, which applies as much to us as to them. This is done so us readers come to that same revelation; Mary Shelley aims for us to realise man cannot imitate God, just us Philip Dick aims for us to realise that everything falls to kipple.

Conclusion

Not all science fiction texts follow this structure. Notably, the works of Isaac Asimov deal with a single speculative technology and its particular consequences, rather than revelations on the nature of the world. His works do however follow some of those smaller conventions, they still have a lack of focus on characters, and present a setting resemblant of our own.

Perhaps, as Norman Spinrad puts it: "Science fiction is anything published as science fiction."