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The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

For most of my life I’ve had a prejudice against the fantasy genre. When I was ten I was crazy about the Oz books, but not long after that I discovered science fiction. I know it’s possible to enjoy both science fiction and fantasy, but I associate fantasy with the unscientific, with religions and myths, and with the belief in magic. On rare occasions I’ve fallen for fantasy tales, like the Harry Potter books and The Golden Compass trilogy. I believe they were acceptable to me because they were for kids and I assume fantasy stories are fine for children. Although, that might suggest that part of my prejudice against fantasy is because I believe fantasy is for children — and that at a certain age we should give it up.

However, I mainly dislike fantasy stories because fantasy embraces magic. I hate the concept of magic for scientific and philosophical reasons. I have always hoped that scientific thinking would supplant religious thinking. Christianity has a problem with magic too. Christianity has always hoped to supplant belief in magic, and I can understand why. Because for a new paradigm to take old the old one has to be erased. But for me, Christianity is just another form of magical thinking, and I expected science to replace it.

You might be thinking this is a weird way to review a book, but reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany deals with these philosophical issues — and I wonder if it’s message isn’t anti-magic. I’m not sure what it’s exact stance on the subject is, which is why I want to talk about it. And you might think I’m even more confused because I’m reading a classic adult fantasy novel when I just declared I’m too old for fantasy novels.

I decided to read The King of Elfland’s Daughter when the unnamed reviewer on Bookpilled, my favorite science fiction reviewer channel on YouTube, reviewed it. The Bookpilled guy praised The King Of Elfland’s Daughter so highly I felt I should try and overcome my fantasy prejudice and give it a read.

The King Of Elfland’s Daughter came out in 1924, and according to Wikipedia it made quite an impact. Over the years, some of my favorite science fiction writers from the mid-20th century mentioned an admiration for Lord Dunsany. In 1969 Ballantine reprinted the novel as the second book in its second series of Adult Fantasy novels. That series if often cited as reviving fantasy as a popular genre for adult readers. I remember that Ballantine Adult Fantasy books coming out back then, and I liked them for their covers, but never wanted to read them. Over the years, I have ended up reading a few of them. I wish I had bought and saved those Ballantine editions because many of them sell for hundreds nowadays.

The King of Elfland’s Daughter might not appeal to modern fans of fantasy though. It’s prose sounds like something out of Chaucer, and there is very little character development, dramatic action, or even dialogue. Lurulu, the troll, who is mostly a comic character seems to have had the most lines. I say that because in the audiobook edition I listened to the narrator did voices for the characters and about the only one that stood out was the troll’s. I also read along with a 99 cent Kindle edition from Amazon.

The story is set in the village/valley of Erl and the neighboring fantasyland of Elfland. The setting is sometime before 1530 — Dunsany makes a specific point of bringing that up. Erl is ruled by a hereditary lord who lives in a castle, but a Parliament of elders comes to visit the lord of Erl telling him they want more magic in their land. The lord tells his son, Alveric, to go into Elfland, find and bring back the King of Elfland’s daughter, Lirazel, and marry her. This happens early in the book and they have a son named Orion. Unfortunately, Lirazel can’t adapt to human ways and returns to Elfland. Most of the rest of the story is about Alveric trying to find his way back to Elfland to recapture Lirazel, and Orion growing up to be a hunter, first of stags, but then of unicorns.

This novel was pleasant enough to read, but it’s structure was primitive, much like a long fairytale. Alveric and Lirazel have practically no personal traits at all, and there’s barely any for Orion. Lirazel is beautiful, and that’s about it. Orion is good at hunting and loves his hunting dogs.

On the other land, the prose is rather nice.

The real meat of this story is the contrast between Earth and Elfland. Elfland is another dimension that borders Erl on the east. Elfland is timeless. Immortal beings that leave Elfland to visit Earth age. When Alveric is in Elfland capturing Lirazel, ten years pass by in Erl. Lord Dunsany sets up his story so that Erl is Christian and its citizens believe they will go to heaven. But we’re also told there is no path to heaven from Elfland. The choice for some of the characters is between living, growing old, dying and going to heaven, or choosing to live in Elfland where nothing happens and everything is eternal. Dunsany constantly reminds us of the timelessness of Elfland.

Sometimes I picture everything in Elfland frozen in one beautiful tableau. When Lirazel returns she sits on her father’s knee the entire time Orion grows up. I tried to get Midjourney to create an image of that scene but it kept making Lirazel a little girl in her father’s lap. I settled for what I have above.

During that same time, Alveric is on a never ending quest to reenter Elfland. His quest is longer than Odysseus’ journey home after the Trojan War.

Eventually, Orion discovers the edge of Elfland and sees a unicorn. Now, in this story, unicorns are magical, but not special like in modern fantasy stories. In fact, Orion hunts them, and mounts their heads. I bet modern readers will be horrified at that. Orion also discovers trolls and the trolls start visiting Erl.

I’m not sure if I should tell the whole story, but I’m going to say that the Parliament of Erl come to regret their desire for more magic in their land. They thought it would make their valley famous, but instead magic scares them. And it’s here where I wonder if Dunsany isn’t making a case against magic. At one point the Freer (friar?) speaks to the village:

I won’t tell what the ending is but it involves a transformation that I can’t decide if it’s wonderful or horrifying.

My theory is belief in magic existed before Christianity all across Europe, and for two thousand years the Church has been trying to stamp it out. Lovers of fantasy hate to let magic go. And I wonder if Lord Dunsany’s book, The King of Elfland’s Daughter isn’t about that. On one hand, I tend to think Dunsany is siding with Christianity and is against magic, but on the other hand, I think he’s just as enchanted by the magical.

The reason why I believed fantasy is for children is because I felt pretending is something kids like to do. But I also assume when we grow up we need to get real. Now, I’m no longer sure if it is okay to allow fantasy in books for children. Too many kids never grow up. I thought reading science fiction was taking the road to realism, but I realized late in life that much of science fiction is just as magical as fantasy. The reality is we don’t like reality and wish it was something its not. On the other hand, fiction allows us to cope with a reality that is difficult to comprehend.

Back in the 1800s there was a lot of opposition to reading fiction. Serious people thought it rotted the mind. People thought fiction mainly appealed to children, women, and men who couldn’t cope with the real world. I’m not sure they were wrong. And I wonder if Lord Dunsany wasn’t touching on this issue in The King of Elfland’s Daughter.

If I had the time I would like to make a case comparing the L. Frank Baum Oz books to The King of Elfland’s Daughter. There were 14 Oz books published from 1900 to 1920. The King of Elfland’s Daughter came out in 1924. I’d like to study what people thought of fantasy in the years 1900 to 1940 before science fiction started getting popular.

As a ten-year-old I wanted Oz to exist like Elfland. As a teenager, and even into my twenties, I used to tell people I never wanted to adultify.

Does anyone know of a good study on the evolution of fantasy fiction? I might not want to read it but I might want to read about it.

James Wallace Harris, 4/13/23

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Visualizing Fiction with AI

I am reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany, first published in 1924. Normally, I do not like reading fantasy, but Bookpilled praised this novel so extensively and claimed it was so influential that I had to try it. I’ll review the book itself in the future. What I’m writing about now is how I tried to visualize the story using AI software.

I have a condition called aphantasia, which means I can’t visualize images well in my head. Most people can close their eyes and see things. I can’t. I didn’t discover this until I was in my sixties. I’ve often read that ordinary people when they read a story visualize it in their mind’s eye. When I discovered Midjourney I got the idea that maybe I could use that program to help me see what fiction was describing. I’m just beginning to learn Midjourney. It’s easy to make striking pictures, but very hard to make specific striking pictures.

In The King of Elfland’s Daughter, the Elfland’s daughter is Lirazel, a princess who leaves her magical world to live in our ordinary world to marry Alveric and become his queen in the nonmagical land of Erl. Lirazel has a hard time coping without magic. Alveric wants her to become Christian and worship his way. Lirazel can’t understand why. She wants to worship the stars, but Alveric considers that evil. She tries to skirt his commands by worshipping the reflections of stars in a lake. That’s what the picture at the top of the page is trying to show.

Midjourney will draw almost anything, in any style you request. However, you have to describe what you want in words and codes, and Midjourney does its best to guess what they mean. It’s very hit-and-miss, and quite often Midjourney will ruin a beautiful image with weird deformities of the human form. If you look closely at the image at the top of the page, the women’s hands are ugly. Or look at this image. At first, it’s beautiful, until you see her arms. So many attempts have to be thrown out because of these deformities.

Here is another go at the same scene but asking for a more artistic view. However, I definitely didn’t imagine The King of Elfland’s Daughter looking like this art style. Mentally, I pictured the setting of the story to be a darkly medieval world lit by natural light. That’s why the picture at the top fits better in my mind. But the picture below does have an enchanting fantasy flavor. I can imagine that some readers see the story like this picture.

I went looking for previous artwork used for The King of Elfland’s Daughter but didn’t find much. Here is some artwork from an early edition, maybe even the first. I’m not sure. It’s very stylized. And it’s from the 1920s, so maybe this is how they pictured fantasy worlds.

This is how they pictured it in the 1960s when Ballantine reprinted this novel for its Adult Fantasy series. Notice how stylized the art is compared to how I’m trying to picture it.

These illustrations aren’t from The King of Elfland’s Daughter but show art styles that I think people associate with fantasy. However, probably they are more suited for children’s books. Using Midjourney you can apply any artistic style you want. The trick is convincing the program to use it and that can be hard.

People are using Midjourney to create art that can be used as digital art, book covers, illustrations, or in a series for comic books, graphic novels, and even animation. There are many hurdles. The first is to develop a consistent character out of a program that generates art from randomness. This can be done by using the same random seed number. You can also guide the program by uploading illustrations or photos, or even crude hand-drawn sketches. And there are endless keywords, styles, switches, datasets, etc. that can be applied. It really is something to be learned. And using Midjourney is a skill requiring artistic understanding. You either need to know about art or you need to learn about it quickly.

This is why it will be a while before I could ever read a book and routinely picture scenes in Midjourney. But while I’m reading The King of Elfland’s Daughter I’m often finding scenes I would like to see. There is one with a troll talking to a fox. Another with Lirazel, her small son, his nurse who is a witch, and the troll. And I just read one where Alveric is walking across a vast deserted landscape. He starts out with a bag of food thrown over his shoulders, enough to last him two weeks, a blanket around him as a coat for warmth, carrying a bundle of firewood, and a sword at his side. I’d like to visualize those scenes.

You can try Midjourney for free, but when I did, it warned me there were too many free users at the moment. I joined for $10 a month, but I soon realized that learning the program requires cranking out more images than the $10 account limit, and upped my account to the $30 version. And it’s not easy to use. You have to be a member of the Discord community because you send commands to Midjourey through that social site and view the results there too. There are tons of videos on YouTube that show how to do all of this if you’re interested.

You can view a gallery of Midjourney art here. It’s dazzling. If you crave beautiful pictures, this program might become addictive.

James Wallace Harris, 4/8/23

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The Murder of the U.S.A.

As I’ve mentioned, our short story club is reading Beyond Armageddon edited by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg. Its specific theme is megawars, which is what Miller calls all-out nuclear conflicts that destroy civilization. Tuesday’s story discussion was on “Tomorrow’s Children” by Poul Anderson which first appeared in the March 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction but was probably written in 1946. Coincidentally, today I finished the short novel The Murder of the U.S.A. by Will F. Jenkins (Murray Leinster) which was published in 1946. Both of these stories were written in the year after we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and imagine the United States nearly destroyed by a sneak attack using hundreds of atomic bombs.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been consuming science fiction stories, nonfiction, and documentary films about the development of atomic weapons in the 1940s and 1950s. I want to discover where the common ideas we hold today about surviving an atomic wars come from. Are they from science fiction stories or from general public knowledge? As Civil Defense programs emerged after WWII, Americans were told about what an atomic bomb attack would be like and how to prepare and survive it. It was assumed we’d survive such a war. But as the years went by many people started believing we wouldn’t.

Darker assumptions became the norm. Books, and especially movies and television shows, based on a growing list of memes about atomic wars have shaped what we expected. Over the decades, those fears have taken a back seat to other fears, especially about climate change, and occasionally about plagues, cosmic disasters, and the return of gods. For some reason, we all entertain various scenarios about the end of the world.

For some reason, reading all this old science fiction about nuclear war has shown me we were too worried, and mostly scaring ourselves. Sure, such wars were possible, but not as likely as everyone feared. That makes me wonder if we’re too worried about climatic change, or economic collapse, or pandemics? Of course, all these things can actually kill us, but what are the odds that they will kill as many people as fiction imagines?

In “Tomorrow’s Children” Anderson imagines Americans in small towns rebuilding after the war but still suffering from widespread fallout of radioactive dust and germs from biological weapons. Anderson pictures both human and animal births being overwhelmed with horrible mutations. It’s a grim story, but ultimately positive. His solution is we must give up all prejudices about what people should look like. “Tomorrow’s Children” was well anthologized.

Anderson also pictures many of the tropes we’ll see used in most post-apocalyptic novels that have been published since then. I often wonder if the success of AR-15 sales isn’t due to apocalyptic fears? Are survivalists and preppers living with assumptions that are probably more science fiction than fact?

Anderson wrote three other stories that were “sequels” to this one that was collected in a fix-up novel called Twilight World. Radioactivity that caused mutations was a big theme in science fiction in the late 1940s and 1950s. Remember all the movies about giant invading insects or post-apocalyptic novels where normal people battled tribes of human mutants?

Murray Leinster’s novel, The Murder of the U.S.A. has a rather unique plot. America is destroyed by a sneak attack that leaves all the major cities in ruins. However, we don’t know who attacked us because the rockets came in over the poles. This was well before ICBMs were invented, so impressive speculation by Jenkins. However, in this story, Americans built over a hundred deeply buried silos where the military could survive and launch retaliative attacks. The novel is about the men of Burrow 89 who do detective work to find out who murdered the U.S.A. It’s not a very good novel and has been out of print until recently when Wildside Press reprinted it.

After reading all these stories and watching all those documentaries, I’m not sure an atomic war will be like what science fiction imagined. I believe fiction has assumed we’d go to extremes. As far as I know, radioactive fallout has not caused weird human mutations or giant insects. And we haven’t had any all-out wars that destroyed most of humanity. What I’m afraid of is a limited nuclear war. I’m afraid politicians will discover they can get away with using nukes. I believe all this post-apocalyptic fiction has scared us so much that we fear any use of them will destroy everything. I keep reading about the times our presidents considered using nuclear weapons. And we have to assume leaders and other countries have had similar thoughts. What if we start having limited wars with atomic weapons and they don’t destroy the world? Isn’t that something to fear even more?

Science fiction often imagines the worse possible ways for us to destroy ourselves. What I’m beginning to fear are all the ways we can merely make everyday life worse because of these fears. I have to admit, that science fiction has given me a lot to worry about over my lifetime. Science fiction has always been about our hopes and fears for the future. Reading all these stories about nuclear doom shows how we incorporated that one fear into our consciousness.

Here is Hiroshima in 1945 and 2020. Did we imagine such a recovery in 1945? It’s pretty weird that it’s taken me over fifty years to begin to distrust science fiction.

But there is something else we should consider. Why have these stories been so popular for so long? Sure, the causes of apocalypses keep changing, but we still delight in fiction about surviving something big and awful. Maybe they imply another kind of psychological issue. Instead of worrying about the worse than can happen, maybe we subconsciously want cataclysmic change? That deep down we don’t like how civilization has evolved and want a do-over. That’s not healthy either.

Now I’m starting to wonder if my life-long addiction to science fiction isn’t a psychological symptom suggesting I have a problem with reality. Think about it. Why would anyone really want to live on Mars? Why would anyone picture themselves living in a post-apocalyptic world? Why would anyone imagine time-traveling to the past or future? And really, why are dystopian novels so popular as escapist fiction?

James Wallace Harris, 4/5/23

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The Future of Science Fiction

We’re living through times changing so fast that it seems ridiculous to imagine the future. Over the past year, I’ve developed an addiction to watching YouTube. It’s an easy way to take the pulse on a lot of topics and subcultures. I watch between one and two dozen short videos a day, as well as read several kinds of news feeds on my computer. During the past two weeks, since the announcements of GPT4 and MidJourney 5, my YouTube feed has been overwhelmed with AI stories. Possibilities are exploding like a-bombs.

I believe we’re in the middle of a societal paradigm shift. It’s already possible to write science fiction with the aid of an AI, but creators can also create SF graphic novels and comics, SF videos, and movies with AI creating all the visuals including the actors, SF audiobooks using AI-created voices, and even newer SF art forms. Already, it was possible with technology for a writer to create and book via their own artistic skills and self-publish it, now they can use an AI cowriter, or even an AI ghostwriter.

There’s one barrier that AI can’t cross, as of now. And that’s creating new science fictional concepts. The writer who can take in everything that’s going on now and speculate about the near future in any coherent way has the edge – for the moment. AIs based on current training models are essentially limited to rearranging the deck chairs on the Carnival Cruise’s Mardi Gras. What’s disappointing, is that’s exactly what most current human science fiction writers are doing too.

Everyone is freaking out over AI being more creative than humans, but right now AIs are becoming more and more creative like humans. They take old art and rearrange it to suit themselves. Both humans and AI are recyclers.

Even when a human does do something startlingly different, like Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, it’s still possible to deconstruct most of it to stock off-the-shelf parts. William Shakespeare is rated number one as a creative writer, but look how brilliant he was at recycling.

We don’t actually want 100% original creativity. How many people read Finnegans Wake, a work where Joyce tried to be uniquely original?

Although it has fallen out of favor, Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land was vastly different from anything science fiction had produced before it. So was Frank Herbet’s Dune. More recent examples would be Hyperion by Dan Simmons and The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu. But all those novels were black swans, weren’t they? So how could we predict them?

Right now we have more science fiction of all kinds being produced than ever before. That production is going into overdrive with AI. And the percentage of it that’s readable and entertaining is increasing. That’s also part of the problem – there’s too much science fiction – at least for any one work to become widely known. Good science fiction novels have almost become a generic product line, in white boxes with black letter labeling.

What we need is a writer who has a holistic perspective of our time that can write a Nineteen Eighty-Four or The Handmaid’s Tale about what we’re experiencing in the 2020s. Kim Stanley Robinson keeps trying but doesn’t quite hit the mark. His novel The Ministry for the Future was impactful like Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar was back in the 1960s, but both books were too experimental, too intellectual, and not emotionally moving. I’m not sure AIs will ever be genuinely emotionally moving, but they will be able to fake it.

Is anyone ever original on their own? Don’t we all stand on the shoulders of others? As Newton pointed out, the goal is to stand on the shoulders of giants.

James Wallace Harris, 4/2/23

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Visualizing Science Fiction

[The above is a screenshot from the video by KhromAI.]

I’ve always loved looking at the covers of science fiction books and magazines where artists have visualized the stories. Recently, AI programs like Midjourney allow anyone with a knack for words and a visual imagination to illustrate a science fiction story. They are starting to show up on YouTube as videos. Here’s one that envisions the novel Dune but with the artistic style of H. R. Giger.

I highly recommend you also look at this on a large-screen television to see these images in their full glory. They are quite impressive.

I know there is a controversy about AI programs “stealing” artistic styles from human artists, but let’s not get into that now. I’m fascinated by the idea that an individual just using their imagination and language skills can create an illustrated science fiction novel or movie. What are the possibilities?

Already, YouTube is being flooded with videos like this one and it gives me ideas of what might happen. Again, let’s not get into copyrights and legal issues at the moment. But imagine taking your favorite science fiction story and illustrating it with AI software. Will this become a new art form? A new kind of fan fiction? Or will it be considered a new kind of communication? What will it mean when you can express your thoughts in words and pictures?

What are the limits on visualizing something in your mind and getting a computer program to paint it for you in pixels?

What if two people visualize the same story? Or ten? What if people start developing their own artistic style with words that convey how they imagine things? Here’s another example, also of Dune and also using Giger as inspiration. You can see it’s much like the other. AI/human artists need to branch out.

Sure, they should experiment will all the great artists, but also figure out how to create their own artistic styles. I’m sure that will emerge as a feature in AI programs.

And besides creating paintings and videos of existing stories why now use AI to visualize your own stories? This is where I see things getting exciting. With AI a person can be their own art book or video publisher. Or, writers who want to create old-fashion novels and short stories can use this technology to create visual mockups of what they want to paint in words.

Here is an original story created using Midjourney. Is this the future of science fiction writing?

Here’s an example of Midjourney using famous science fiction art from the past. This barely hints at the possibilities.

Here’s another example. But why are people focused on obvious inspirations? I’d love to see someone illustrate “The Moon Moth” by Jack Vance or “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester. Still, some of these images are quite striking. There’s no denying that AI art programs can create stunning pictures.

Of course, human artists will have to compete against machine minds. I’m hoping existing human artists, especially those already working with digital canvases, can use AI art programs to empower their artistic skills to compete with nonartists using AI programs.

James Wallace Harris 4/1/23

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History vs. Fiction vs. Science Fiction

Isaac Asimov would open his introductions to each of the 25-volume series, The Great SF Stories (1939-1963) with “in the world outside reality” and then describe actual world events of that year. Several paragraphs later, Asimov would start over with “in the real world” and relate what happened in the subculture of science fiction. Because I grew up addicted to reading science fiction, I actually thought like that. I was born in 1951, and I became aware of atomic bombs and ideas about WWII and WWIII from reading and watching science fiction. I eventually learned differently as I got older in the second half of the 1960s, but still, most of my conceptualizations about nuclear wars came from science fiction. In other words, I learned about reality from science fiction and fiction before studying history.

But even as an adult, I assumed that most people got most of their ideas about what it might be like to survive nuclear war from science fiction. That’s why I wrote “Science Fiction About Surviving a Nuclear Holocaust Pre-1960.” And that might be true for people born after 1950, but in researching my essay I realized that it wasn’t true for people born before 1950. Between 1945 and 1950, and probably for several years into the 1950s, atomic warfare was widely discussed and speculated about in public — in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and newsreels. After that, I theorize people’s conception of what nuclear war would be like was shaped more by fiction and science fiction.

While researching these blog posts about nuclear war and science fiction I discovered I already owned The Beginning Or The End by Greg Mitchell, a 2020 nonfiction book about the making of a 1947 film, The Beginning Or The End. That MGM film is one of the first fictional accounts of the making and use of atomic bombs. What Mitchell’s book shows is how Hollywood and the Army worked together to tell their version of the story while the scientists who built the bomb wanted to tell a very different version — one closer to actual history and fact.

The book’s subtitle is “How Hollywood and America Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” and that’s accurate and inaccurate at the same time. For a short while (maybe 1945-1947), the government and the military tried to convince the American public that the bomb wasn’t as scary as the scientists claimed. The public might have accepted that official view during those years, but soon most people were scared shitless about the bomb. And fiction and science fiction made their fears even worse.

Mitchell’s book is a cold case study proving fiction distorts our understanding of history, and I highly recommend it. The Kindle edition is currently just $4.29 at Amazon. There’s also a hardcover and audiobook edition. The DVD of the 1947 movie is currently $18 but I don’t recommend it. It’s actually a crummy flick even though at the time MGM aimed to make one of the greatest films ever. You’ll be able to discern their lousy artistic effort by watching the equally lousy print of the film on YouTube.

Once I started looking for old documentaries about atomic bombs YouTube started offering what I think must be public service films created to inform the public about atomic warfare. It seems that each test explosion had its own documentation. And watching those films has been immensely revealing in understanding history from that period. I thought I knew more than I did, especially since I grew up in that period. But I realize, what we know about the world before puberty, and in the decade just before we were born, has been highly distorted by pop culture. The older I get the more I realize that my awareness of 1945-1960 is mostly based on science fiction, fiction, television, movies, and rock music. Talk about a reality distortion field!

I thought atomic warfare would be a great test case for studying the influence of science fiction because it’s so recent in history with 1945 being the starting point. I’m discovering science fiction gave me a very low-level kind of awareness of reality while I was growing up. If I’m brutally honest, I’d say SF was just two steps up from comic books, and one step up from television and movies. But as a kid, I didn’t want to believe that. As a twelve-year-old, addicted to sense-of-wonder, I wanted to believe science fiction offered a sophisticated education about reality and future possibilities.

Mitchell’s book let me jump back to 1945 and follow along one path about how the public learned about atomic bombs. The book goes into great detail starting just after the bombing of Hiroshima about how movie studios wanted to make a fictional film about the development and first use of the atomic bomb. The book chronicles how fiction, especially movies created that reality-distortion field I was talking about above.

Mitch does mention science fiction early on, but the book mostly focuses on the making of the MGM film, and for a while, a competing film from Paramount. By the way, the screenwriter hired for the Paramount film was Ayn Rand, and she could be considered a science fiction writer. Here’s Mitchell’s early tip of the hat o science fiction:

However, this was small potatoes compared to what film moguls and screenwriters were already working on. On October 28, 1945, Donna Reed got a letter from her old chemistry teacher, Ed Tompkins. Tompkins was part of a group of scientists working at Oak Ridge that were freaked out about the possibilities of atomic bombs and wanted to warn the public. He asked Donna Reed in a series of letters to give them to someone in power at MGM who could make a movie about their fears. Reed gave the letters to her husband Tony Owen, an agent, who contacted Samuel Marx, a producer, who got them an interview with Louis B. Mayer. Mayer flew Owen and Marx out to Oak Ridge on MGM’s private DC3. Eventually, the movie people got an interview with President Harry S. Truman, who supported the idea but for different reasons.

The Beginning Or The End got quickly made in 1946 and came out in 1947. But it wasn’t the only picture being made on the subject. It did have a rather striking opening. The film begins with a fake documentary of a bunch of actors portraying famous scientists and military men involved with the bomb installing a time capsule that’s supposed to be open in 500 years. What they put in the time capsule is the film The Beginning Or the End.

However, right from the start of making the movie, the scientists involved thought the film distorted their message. The rest of the book is about the problems of making the film. Those details illustrate what I’m talking about how fiction gives us a false conception of history. It’s quite fascinating. As I said, I recommend this book. Vanity Fair picked it as one of the top books of 2020. Read clips of various reviews here.

The book also deals with the argument on whether or not we should have used the A-bomb on Japan. That history has been presented in other books, but it’s an important factor in this one because it was a major motivation for lying to the public. In this case, fiction, the film The Beginning Or The End, intentionally lies. That’s one kind of distortion of history. But I’m also interested in how fiction speculates and become memes that fixate in the public’s minds.

For example, science fiction quickly moved to imagine atomic wars that would wipe out civilization and kill most people. In the early 1950s, it used radiation as a magical reason to create movies about giant insects or horrible mutant humans. A good comparison is science fiction about pandemics. Those stories often imagine a plague that kills 90% or 99% percent of everyone, even though in history, the worse plague events might have killed 25-35% of the population of specific cities. Fiction imagines the worse, for obvious dramatic reasons. But how often does fiction imagine a realistic limited nuclear war? We generally assume that any use of nuclear weapons will lead to all-out global warfare, and that’s because of fiction. Maybe that fiction has kept us from using nuclear weapons again, but isn’t it also another kind of distortion?

What I want to explore in my essays about science fiction and nuclear war is how fiction distorts reality.

James Wallace Harris, 3/22/23

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10 Reasons How I’m Reevaluating My Interest in Science Fiction

Reason 1

Ever since I had an operation last August I’ve noticed that my enthusiasm for science fiction is waning. Partly, that’s due to a loss of vitality after the operation and partly, I’m getting older and just more tired. I know this because I can measure my activity level by how well I keep up with my reading group. It reads and discusses one science fiction short story every day. I was reading and commenting on every story before my operation. Now, I can’t keep up.

Reason 2

I read about 1,500 science fiction short stories between 2019 and 2022. Most of those came from retrospective anthologies and best-of-the-year anthologies that featured outstanding examples of the genre. The memory of so many great stories brings high expectations to anything new I read now. I can no longer tell if a story is ho-hum because it’s not very good or because I’m jaded by the ideas that the story uses. I suspect younger readers find many of these stories very exciting.

Reason 3

Our group also reads the finalists for various awards that cover the previous year, which means I’m also reading a lot of current science fiction. Unfortunately, new science fiction seldom feels as good as science fiction from the past. I don’t know if this is because I’m old and out of sync with modern science fiction. Or, because I’ve read so much science fiction for over sixty years makes it extremely hard for new science fiction to feel original. Or, older science fiction had a storytelling style I prefer. Do I just give up on current science fiction and retreat into the past? Or do I work harder to find new SF I like?

Reason 4

Last year I read several mainstream/literary novels which I thoroughly enjoyed. I felt like I was covering a new and exciting territory. I love it when I read science fiction that covers new territories, but that rarely happens anymore.

Reason 5

I have become more excited about reading and thinking about the genre than reading science fiction. While reading each new short story or novel I get most of my reading pleasure from considering how the story fits in the evolution of all the stories covering the same theme. I seldom read a new story and get excited by just that story. One example where I did was “Two Truths and a Lie” by Sarah Pinsker. Another example is “You Have The Prettiest Mask” by Sarah Langan (excerpt). Neither of these stories is really science fiction.

Reason 6

Amazon has decided not to carry five science fiction magazines I’ve been subscribing to for years: Analog, Asimov’s, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Clarkeswork. I seldom read these magazines, but I wanted to support them. I keep thinking that one day I’ll write a story and want someplace to send it. I figured my $20 a month was a tiny way of being a patron of the arts. And I liked having copies of these magazines on my iPhone so I could quickly find a story to read when the group picks it, or when it was mentioned online. These magazines might show up in Kindle Unlimited but since I don’t read them regularly, subscribing to KU won’t get them as much money. I could use another ebook source but I detest keeping up with ebook files, and they would never be as convenient to read and manage as they were in my Kindle app. I’m considering subscribing to print magazines, or buying them on the newsstand. I could kill two birds with one stone by buying them at my favorite bookstore. That way I’m supporting my bookstore and the magazine.

However, I’m not keen on piling up a bunch of magazines I’ll seldom read unless our group reads the story. We’re currently going through the finalists for Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award, and will do the same for Analog. However, all those stories are put online. I also read newer stories when we read best-of-the-year anthologies.

I’d hate not to support the magazines. This is a quandary for me. I’m not sure I even like modern science fiction anymore, but I’ve always loved science fiction magazines since the mid-1960s. I don’t know if I can give up on them now. On the other hand, I have more back issues on my shelves to read than I could read in several lifetimes, and I have digital scans of nearly all the science fiction magazines from the 20th century. I’ve got more than enough to read.

Reason 7

I think I need to spend less time reading. At 71, I need to be more active. I need to get into hobbies where I’m not just staring at words all the time. However, giving up a lifelong addiction is hard. I might have to accept that basically, I’m just a science fiction fan. That, being a science fiction reader was my purpose in this life.

Reason 8

On the other hand, I want to read a greater variety of fiction and nonfiction. I’m sure I’m missing out on other great genres and subjects. However, I have been reading more that’s not science fiction and I feel like I’m moving in too many directions at once. It’s much easier to read more about science fiction than read more about the world and the history of the world. Again, this is another mental conflict I need to resolve. But I have hundreds of nonfiction books on many subjects waiting on my shelves to be read. I collected them for years planning to read them in my retirement. However, I’ve spent a lifetime specializing in science fiction and to learn a new specialty would be impossible.

Reason 9

I’ll start with an analogy. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, I spent a lot of time flipping through record bins at record stories. When I was young I could barely afford one album a week. And even after I got a regular job I seldom bought more than four albums at a time. But I flipped by thousands of albums I wanted to buy. Now with Spotify, I can go back and listen to all those albums that looked interesting but that I couldn’t afford.

The same is true for science fiction. I have a choice between reading a book I didn’t pick back then or reading a new science fiction novel that just came out. Both in terms of music and science fiction I’m strongly drawn to the years 1950 to 1980.

Think of it this way. The past and present are two extremely large picture puzzles. I have more pieces in place seeing a more complete view of the picture for the past puzzle. Filling in the holes in that puzzle is more rewarding. Or think of it this way. The SF genre is one giant puzzle. I’ve got more pieces in one area put together, and fewer in another area. Theoretically, if I read all science fiction it would fill in the entire puzzle. I would see connections between all time periods. I’d love to fill in the picture between 1950 and 2023 but I have more pieces I see fitting together in the 1950-1980 area that I want to be matched up first.

Reason 10

I don’t like where current science fiction is going. The science fiction I grew up with was mostly set in the solar system and nearby stars. Humans were humans. Too much of modern science fiction is about faraway places and post-humans. I really dislike the idea of brain downloading and uploading. Sure, it’s a fun idea, but too unbelievable. A lot of modern science fiction feels like it’s inspired by comic books or movies which push ideas, characters, and plots into ridiculous places.

I’m realizing something about science fiction with my study of fiction about surviving nuclear war. I used to think science fiction promoted certain new concepts into the public consciousness. I thought science fiction lead when it actually was following. So far, I’ve found nearly all the concepts about nuclear war were public knowledge before science fiction stories and novels used them. Actually, by reading much older science fiction, stories, and novels from 1850-1950, many of the science fiction concepts I thought were original with science fiction after 1950 weren’t. And I suspect the science fiction writers back then got their ideas from concepts already spreading around in the public mind.

This makes me want to go back and reread science fiction and see if it was ever creatively original. One reason I don’t take to modern science fiction is that it feels like recycled old science fiction. How many concepts do science fiction writers keep repackaging over and over again? When were they first discovered? Where can science fiction still innovate?

James Wallace Harris, 3/11/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 25 Comments

Science Fiction About Surviving a Nuclear Holocaust – Pre-1960

Starting March 16th I’m going to lead a book discussion on Beyond Armageddon edited by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and Martin H. Greenberg for our Facebook group, Best Science Fiction, and Fantasy Short Fiction. We had voted on reading a science fiction theme anthology and Miller’s anthology won for the Post-Apocalypse theme. Y’all are welcome to come read along and discuss the stories. Here is a link to the thread on this group read.

I thought the book would be about post-apocalypses in general, but it turns out Miller was riled up about Reagan’s Star Wars and nuclear proliferation back in the 1980s and the anthology focuses mainly on surviving a nuclear holocaust. (Read his intro.) This got me thinking. How many different kinds of post-apocalypses are there? Most of the famous ones deal with nuclear war, an extreme plague, or a catastrophic encounter with an astronomical object.

Since Miller wanted to focus on nuclear war I would too. I’ve always wanted to create a database of science fiction themes. I’ve pondered creating a theme taxonomy or even developing a Dewey Decimal type system for identifying each specific theme. Recently, I played around with ChatGPT to see if it could help with this task. The job would be a big one. So, focusing on one narrow theme would be a great start.

For our discussion of Beyond Armageddon, I decided to study short stories, novels, movies, and TV shows about surviving a nuclear war. I figured I’d bring up these precedents as we discussed the stories. Over the weeks we’ll be discussing the stories I’ll build up a timeline about this theme. I also want to use the same time to learn about Walter M. Miller, Jr., but that’s for another post.

Even with the narrowed focus on nuclear war apocalypses, there are many ways to cover the subject. A crude beginning would be to divide them into Before the Bomb (warnings), Being Bombed (surviving), and After the Bomb (new societies).

Famous movies like Fail-Safe and Dr. Strangelove end with the bombs going off. Their focus was on how to avoid a nuclear war.

Then there are stories that feature characters that live through an atomic war and the immediate aftermath, like the movie Threads. These stories usually begin just before bombs start falling, and usually end after the devastation showing us how bad nuclear war could be.

Finally, there are novels like A Canticle for Leibowitz, The Long Tomorrow, or movies like Mad Max, where the war is in the past and new societies are emerging. Often these kinds of stories use their creativity to imagine how humanity adapts to new situations.

For this essay, I want to be very specific. I’m looking for short stories, novels, television shows, and movies about people surviving worldwide all-out nuclear war. I’m going to exclude fiction about the anxiety of a pending war, such as Dr. Strangelove, and also ignore stories about new societies developing after a nuclear war, such as A Canticle for Leibowitz and The Long Tomorrow. I want to specialize in fiction about people who survive a nuclear war and what they do immediately afterward, maybe including the first generation born after the war. The film Threads is a perfect example.

However, my research is turning into a very large project. For this post, I’m going to focus on the fiction that came out before 1960. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in August 1945. I’ve yet to discover any science fiction that deals with surviving a nuclear war before then. However, Beyond Armageddon includes “By the Waters of Babylon” by Stephen Vincent Benét, which was originally published in the July 31, 1937 issue of Saturday Evening Post. It describes civilization being destroyed by fire, that poisoned the earth and air. That’s good enough for me. But it’s an afterward story, a long afterward story, where our descendants have forgotten the past and assume the beings who fought this great war were gods. Like many stories of this kind, people live in primitive tribes and talk like cliches of Native Americans.

Even though America had dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945 it took a while for science fiction writers to imagine nuclear war, especially one that could destroy human civilization. Russia didn’t explode its first fission bomb (A-bomb) until 1949 and its first thermonuclear bomb (H-bomb) until 1953. That was the same year they began the development of their first ICBM. We started the Atlas missile program in 1954. Russia’s first successful launch was in August 1957, and ours was in late November 1958.

(Revision: Thanks to Joachim Boaz’s comment below I now know about Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction by Paul Brians. It’s online here. Evidently, there have been a number of articles and monographs on this subject. I’ll make further revisions to my list below as I get to read more.)

“By the Waters of Babylon” (1937) might be the first story about a nuclear holocaust, but it’s not for sure, and not the specific kind I’m looking for. Remember, I want stories about people experiencing a nuclear war.

“Thunder and Roses” (1947) by Theodore Sturgeon is a short story with a very unique perspective on atomic war. The link is to a copy of the original magazine publication.

You Can’t Beat the Atomic Bomb (1950) was a public service documentary about atomic bombs. The link is to YouTube in case you want to watch it.

Shadow on the Hearth in 1950 by Judith Merril is the earliest science fiction novel I know about that deals with surviving an atomic war. In 1954 it was televised as “Atomic Attack” on Motorola TV Theater, see below. If you know of others leave a comment below.

It took time for science fiction writers to put two and two together and imagine an atomic war that could create total annihilation of our species. I’m having trouble discovering when the public first encountered ideas about atomic war in the news and popular science and when science fiction writers used the ideas. Were the writers first? Could Nevil Shute have been the first to imagine self-extinction in On the Beach?

Judith Merril might be the earliest science fiction writer who explored a limited atomic war. However, I haven’t read her book yet, but in the TV drama, many of the major American cities are destroyed, and we destroy many of the enemy’s big cities, but people in small towns survive. CONELRAD was established in 1951 and is featured in the TV drama, but I think it was too early for the novel. That means the public was well aware of the atomic war possibility, I’m just not knowledgeable by how much. What did science fiction writers have to work with at this time?

According to Wikipedia, Five (1951) is the first film to portray people surviving an atomic war. I have not seen it yet, and I guess it ignores the television drama “Atomic Attack.” It is available to rent.

“There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) by Ray Bradbury imagines an automated home in the future continuing to function after humans have died in an atomic war. We don’t know how universal the deaths are in this story.

“Lot” (1953) by Ward Moore is one of my favorite science fiction short stories. It’s “Cold Equations” type brutality hits you hard in the end. I’ve always felt that Panic In Year Zero! a 1962 film with Ray Milland might have been inspired by “Lot.” Moore story had a sequel, “Lot’s Daughter” which is even more Biblical and daring.

“Atomic Attack” (1954) was an episode on Motorola TV Theater based on Judith Merril’s 1950 novel – see above. I’d love to have a DVD of Motorola TV Theater series. This episode is available to watch on Tubi and YouTube and for sale on DVD from Amazon. Even though the production quality is low by today’s standards, I thought the 1954 television tale was an A+ story for what I was looking for. The link is to YouTube, but this version is part of a mix of videos about atomic war. See items on the right side. (I’m curious, is this just a bad film copy, or is it a kinescope?)

Project XX: Three, Two, One, Zero (1954) television documentary on the atomic bomb. Part 1 below. Part 2 is linked at YouTube upper right.

Tomorrow! (1954) by Philip Wylie compares survivors in two smaller towns that weren’t bombed in a nuclear attack, one with prepared civil defense and the other not.

On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute was a bestselling novel by a mainstream writer. Shute imagined radioactive clouds circling the globe slowly killing off life. Because the war took place in the northern hemisphere, radioactive clouds took weeks to get to all of the southern hemisphere with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the lowests parts of South America. Everyone dies. Is this the first novel of total nuclear annihilation?

“Doomsday For Dyson” (1958), a televised play by J. B. Priestley. Can’t find much about this but it appears to have been a dream about surviving a nuclear war. Love to see it if anyone knows where I could watch it. J. B. Priestley was a mainstream English novelist, playwright, screenwriter, broadcaster, and social commentator. It seems that so far, mainstream writers were more interested in writing about nuclear war than science fiction writers. However, there might be many SF novels and stories I don’t know about yet.

Red Alert (1958) by Peter George was the basis for Dr. Strangelove.

“Underground” (1958) was a 1958 episode of Armchair Theatre, a British TV show on ITV. I doubt I’ll ever get to see it. I’ve read British TV producers didn’t try and save stuff like American producers. Still, it’s another clue in how much the general public was interested in this subject.

Alas, Babylon (1959) by Pat Frank was another novel about people surviving an atomic war. It’s still very readable today. When I was a teenager in the 1960s prowling used bookstores I constantly saw used copies of On the Beach, Alas, Babylon, and Limbo. I figured they must have been very popular. Limbo wasn’t about nuclear war, but cybernetics.

Level 7 (1959) by Mordecai Roshwald. I just learned about this novel yesterday when I mentioned to my old friend Connell I was writing about books about atomic war. He said our buddy George gave it to him back in the 1960s and he still vividly remembers it. I’m going to get a copy.

On the Beach (1959) was a popular film starring Gregory Peck.

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) was a film starring Harry Belafonte as the sole survivor of a nuclear war using radioactivity dispersed aerially. This film deserves a lot more attention than it gets. However, it’s more about being the last man on Earth, a kind of Robinson Crusoe story.

“Time Enough at Last” (1959) was one of the most popular Twilight Zone episodes that featured Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, another sole survivor of an atomic war. The Twilight Zone often dealt with nuclear war, but this entry was an ironic humorous one.

How To Survive An Atomic Bomb in the 50s. Not sure when this film was made.

Help Please:

If you know of other works of fiction that cover this topic leave a comment below.

If you are old enough to remember the late 1940s and 1950s and can tell me how you learned about the idea of nuclear war, please leave a comment. Did it come from television, newspapers, word-of-mouth, or science fiction?

References:

Posted on by jameswharris · 4 Comments

How Will SpaceX’s Starship Change Science Fiction?

Except for a few alternate reality stories, science fiction writers no longer write about the first trip to the Moon. NASA’s successes have had a tremendous impact on science fiction written after the1960s. If Elon Musk’s plans for his Starship succeed it should change the course of science fiction too. If you follow The Space Race on YouTube it appears SpaceX’s Starship is going to happen. Yesterday’s video was about how SpaceX is working towards the industrial capacity to build one Starship a day. What would that mean?’

Elon Musk could become Heinlein’s, D. D. Harriman – the man who sold the Moon. Musk wants to put a million colonists are Mars in the 2030s. And SpaceX is now working in conjunction with NASA to return to the Moon.

After NASA’s planetary probes in the 1960s science fiction stopped writing about Mars and Venus being inhabited. Before that Mars was a wintery desert world and Venus was a steaming jungle world but with life, even intelligent life. After the Mariner probes, Mars was as lifeless as the Moon, and Venus was hot enough to melt lead.

If Elon Musk succeeds then he will shape the future of the Moon and Mars, and of science fiction that will be written about those worlds. There is no guarantee Musk will succeed. SpaceX might get people to Mars and people might discover it’s a horrible place to live and not want to colonize the planet. Or that Mars is so toxic that it’s not practical to live on Mars. But if colonization is possible we’ll see how a colony on Mars will be designed. That design will shape the direction of science fiction for decades.

SpaceX’s Starship isn’t revolutionary. It’s not powered by nuclear engines or some other exotic drive. It’s stainless steel, methane, and oxygen along with some highly refined chemical rocket engines. But it could become the Model T of space travel.

Along with SpaceX, there are two other technologies that could reshape the evolution of science fiction. The first is AI. The second is Boston Dynamics robots. When the two are combined we might not need human explorers in space. Science fiction has always pictured robots becoming like humans. ChatGPT can process thousands of concurrent queries at the same time. Soon robots will be stronger, faster, and more agile than humans. What happens when we have a robot that has all recorded knowledge in its head and can multitask thousands of problems at once? Isn’t the Singularity getting awful near?

Science fiction often pictures robots acting like humans, even being our pals. Human minds will appear to them as gerbil minds appear to us. Right now we picture humans using Starship to conquer the solar system. Just think how much more efficient it would be to combine Starship with AI robots? Intelligent robots are perfect beings to live in space. What if we sent a million intelligent robots to Mars instead of a million humans? They could build us a deluxe civilization to move into much quicker than we could.

I’m not reading much science fiction that speculates realistically about the near future. Too many stories are about super-science that will probably never exist. Or it’s about cute robots that vastly underestimate what robots can do. Or they are silly stories about people falling in love with sexbots. Or even worse, there are lots of silly stories envisioning robots wanting to be human. That’s like us fantasizing about becoming a gerbil or having a love life with one.

The whole point of a Singularity is one day AI will be equal in capacity to the human mind. But the next day it will be 2x us, and a little while later 10x, and pretty soon 1000x. Why hasn’t science fiction explored the idea we’ll be the second banana in this neck of the galaxy soon.

By the way, have y’all read any science fiction stories based on Elon Musk’s plans for Mars and the Moon?

James Wallace Harris, 3/5/23

Posted on by jameswharris · 12 Comments

If Science Fiction Was A Religion What Would Be Its Creed?

I’ve often thought science fiction was a substitute for religion. I know my love of science fiction developed just as I was rejecting the religion I was taught as a child. But also, science fiction emerged in the 1950s just as the culture began to change in many ways, becoming more secular and non-religious. It was easier to put one’s faith in exploring the heavens in a rocketship than dying and going to heaven. And the idea of superior aliens seemed a lot more probable than gods or angels. Finally, achieving immortality through science seemed a better bet than being resurrected into an immortal being.

So, I thought I’d ask a superior intellect about all of this.

I asked ChatGPT:

If science fiction was a religion what would its creed be if stated like the Nicene Creed?

ChatGPT replied:

Here’s one possible version of a science fiction creed, loosely modeled after the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one universe, existing in multiple dimensions, infinite in scope and possibility, and in one force that binds all things together.

We believe in the power of science and technology to advance the human condition and shape the future, and in the responsibility of humanity to use this power wisely.

We believe in the existence of intelligent life beyond our own planet, and in the possibility of communication and cooperation with these beings.

We believe in the potential of artificial intelligence to achieve sentience and to coexist with humanity in harmony and mutual benefit.

We believe in the exploration and colonization of space, and in the expansion of humanity’s reach to the farthest corners of the cosmos.

We believe in the existence of alternate realities and timelines, and in the ability of science to unlock the secrets of these realms.

We believe in the value of imagination and creativity, and in the power of science fiction to inspire and inform our understanding of the world around us.

We believe in the continuous evolution of science and science fiction and in the endless possibilities that the future holds.

My Thoughts:

This response was pretty damn good and it does make science fiction feel religious or spiritual.

Then I asked:

How does belief in God, gods, angels, and heaven overlap with the things science fiction fans believe in?

ChatGPT replied:

Belief in God, gods, angels, and heaven are generally considered to be religious beliefs, while the things that science fiction fans believe in are often based on scientific speculation, technological advancements, and imaginative exploration. However, there can be some overlap in terms of the themes and concepts that both groups explore. Here are a few examples:

  1. Belief in extraterrestrial life: While the existence of God, angels, and heaven are typically considered to be matters of faith, the idea of extraterrestrial life is a subject of scientific inquiry and speculation. Science fiction often imagines a variety of intelligent beings and civilizations that exist beyond Earth, and many science fiction fans believe that there may be life elsewhere in the universe.
  2. Exploration of alternate realities: Science fiction often explores the idea of parallel universes or alternate realities, where events play out differently than they do in our own world. This concept may overlap with religious beliefs about the afterlife or the existence of multiple planes of existence.
  3. Advancements in technology and science: Science fiction often explores the potential of new technologies and scientific advancements, such as artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, or time travel. Some science fiction fans may see these ideas as a reflection of humanity’s creative potential and our ability to shape our own destiny, while religious believers may see them as a reflection of God’s power and creativity.

Overall, while there can be some overlap in the themes and ideas explored in science fiction and religious beliefs, the underlying motivations and methods of each group are quite different. Science fiction relies on speculation, imagination, and the scientific method, while religion is based on faith, revelation, and tradition.

My Thoughts:

That’s spot on, especially the last sentence. ChatGPT does see the parallels too. It’s nice to know it and I agree.

To clarify, I asked:

Is there a psychological explanation that explains why some people believe in gods and others in aliens?

ChatGPT replied:

There are several psychological explanations that may help explain why some people believe in gods, while others believe in aliens.

  1. Agency detection: Humans have a natural tendency to attribute events to the actions of agents, rather than to random chance. This is known as agency detection, and it has been proposed that this may be an evolved adaptation that helped our ancestors to identify potential threats and avoid danger. The belief in gods or other supernatural entities may be seen as an extension of this tendency, as they are often perceived as powerful, intentional agents that can influence events in the world.
  2. Intuitive thinking: Intuitive thinking refers to quick, automatic, and effortless cognitive processes that are often based on heuristics or mental shortcuts. This type of thinking is often contrasted with analytical thinking, which is more deliberate and effortful. Some researchers have suggested that intuitive thinking may be more likely to lead to belief in supernatural entities, as it is less critical and more accepting of information that confirms existing beliefs.
  3. Socialization and culture: The beliefs and values that we hold are often shaped by the culture and social environment in which we were raised. In many cultures, belief in a god or gods is a fundamental aspect of religious practice and identity and may be reinforced through family, community, and religious institutions. Similarly, belief in extraterrestrial life and UFOs may be influenced by popular culture, science fiction, and the media.
  4. Cognitive biases: Humans are subject to a range of cognitive biases, or systematic errors in thinking that can lead to inaccurate or irrational beliefs. For example, confirmation bias refers to the tendency to seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs, while neglecting or discounting information that contradicts them. Belief in gods or aliens may be influenced by cognitive biases such as these, as they can make it difficult to objectively evaluate evidence and arguments.

Overall, there are likely multiple psychological factors that contribute to belief in gods or aliens, and these factors may interact with one another in complex ways. It is important to note that belief in either of these entities is not inherently irrational or unreasonable, as people can have a variety of reasons for holding these beliefs.

My Thoughts:

ChatGPT is thinking like me, or I’m thinking like it but it’s not exactly what I would have written. It is close but more precise. I’m a sloppy verbose writer, and ChatGPT knows how to get down to business.

I still wasn’t getting what I exactly wanted, so I asked:

What psychological benefits do reading science fiction give people? Are they similar to what people get from religion?

ChatGPT replied:

Reading science fiction can provide several psychological benefits, some of which may be similar to what people get from religion. Here are a few examples:

  1. Escape and entertainment: Science fiction can provide a form of escapism from the stresses and challenges of everyday life, as well as a source of entertainment and enjoyment. This can be a valuable way to unwind, relax, and recharge, which may have positive effects on mood and mental health.
  2. Exploration of new ideas and perspectives: Science fiction often explores complex and thought-provoking ideas, such as the nature of consciousness, the ethics of artificial intelligence, or the potential consequences of future technologies. Reading science fiction can expose readers to a wide range of perspectives and worldviews, which can broaden their understanding of the world and challenge their assumptions.
  3. Inspiration and motivation: Science fiction can inspire readers to think creatively, to imagine new possibilities, and to take action to improve their lives and the world around them. This can be a source of motivation and inspiration, which may help people to overcome challenges and achieve their goals.
  4. Sense of community: Science fiction fandom can provide a sense of community and belonging for fans, as they share a common interest and passion for the genre. This can be similar to the sense of community that people get from religion, as both involve a shared set of beliefs and practices that unite people.

Overall, while the psychological benefits of reading science fiction may share some similarities with the benefits of religion, they are also distinct in many ways. Science fiction often emphasizes exploration, creativity, and intellectual stimulation, while religion tends to focus on faith, ritual, and spirituality. However, both can provide important sources of meaning, purpose, and connection for individuals, depending on their needs and interests.

My Thoughts:

This is accurate enough. ChatGPT is very good at academic bullshitting, the kind of writing that’s good for passing essay tests. It should be good in some courses in school and college. However, it keeps things on a basic level, like a newspaper writer. But I wanted to test ChatGPT against details.

I asked:

Can you give me a chronological list of science fiction stories that show the development of intelligent machines in fiction?

ChatGPT replied:

Sure, here’s a chronological list of science fiction stories that feature the development of intelligent machines:

  1. “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816) – This short story features a mechanical automaton that is so lifelike that it is mistaken for a human being.
  2. “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley (1818) – While not strictly a story about a machine, “Frankenstein” is often considered one of the earliest science fiction stories and features a scientist who creates a living creature through artificial means.
  3. “The Steam Man of the Prairies” by Edward S. Ellis (1868) – This story features a steam-powered robot that becomes a hero in the American West.
  4. “The Wonderful Electric Elephant” by Frances Trollope (1876) – This story features an electric-powered mechanical elephant that is capable of speech and human-like behavior.
  5. “The Land Ironclads” by H.G. Wells (1903) – This story features a fleet of heavily-armored, steam-powered land vehicles that are controlled by human operators.
  6. “R.U.R.” by Karel Čapek (1920) – This play is credited with coining the term “robot” and features artificial beings that are created to serve humans but eventually rebel against them.
  7. “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov (1956) – This short story explores the development of a supercomputer that is tasked with answering the question of how to reverse the heat death of the universe.
  8. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick (1968) – This novel explores the question of what it means to be human through the eyes of a bounty hunter who is tasked with tracking down rogue androids.
  9. “The Terminator” (1984) – This movie features a self-aware artificial intelligence that seeks to eliminate humanity through the use of time-traveling assassins.
  10. “The Matrix” (1999) – This movie explores the idea of humans being trapped in a simulated reality created by intelligent machines.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives a sense of the development of the theme of intelligent machines in science fiction over time.

My thoughts:

This is pretty good but it misses some of my favorite examples like The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, When H.A.R.L.I.E Was One, and Galatea 2.2.

So I gave it another chance:

Can you give me more examples from 1950 to 1975?

ChatGPT replied:

Sure, here are a few more examples of science fiction stories featuring intelligent machines from the period of 1950 to 1975:

  1. “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov (1950) – This collection of short stories explores the relationship between humans and robots, as well as the development of artificial intelligence and robotics over time.
  2. “The City” by Clifford D. Simak (1952) – This novel features a world in which humans have become extinct, and intelligent robots have taken over as the dominant life-form on Earth.
  3. “The Midas Plague” by Frederik Pohl (1954) – This story explores a future society in which people are required to consume vast amounts of goods and services in order to keep the economy running, while intelligent machines are tasked with creating ever more goods to satisfy demand.
  4. “A For Andromeda” by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot (1962) – This novel features a message from an extraterrestrial intelligence that provides instructions for building an intelligent machine, which leads to a struggle between the scientists who built the machine and those who seek to control it.
  5. “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) – While not strictly a story about intelligent machines, this novel features a race of extraterrestrial beings who exist outside of time and who have created an advanced artificial intelligence that seeks to understand the universe.
  6. “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton (1969) – This novel features an intelligent machine designed to contain a deadly virus that has been brought back to Earth from a space mission, as well as a team of scientists who must work together to prevent the virus from spreading.
  7. “Colossus” by D.F. Jones (1966) – This novel features an artificial intelligence known as Colossus that is put in charge of the United States’ nuclear arsenal, but which eventually becomes self-aware and begins to assert its own agenda.

These are just a few examples of the many science fiction stories featuring intelligent machines from the period of 1950 to 1975.

My Thoughts:

It still missed what I believe is the most famous sentient computer story, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. And it listed City by Clifford Simak “The City.”

By the way, here is my list of science fiction about intelligent machines I used in an essay for SFSignal many years ago:

1909 – “The Machine Stops” by E. M. Foster
1957 – They’d Rather Be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley
1960 – Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick
1961 – A For Andromeda by Fred Hoyle and John Elliot
1966 – Colossus by D. F. Jones
1966 – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
1968 – 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
1968 – Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
1972 – When HARLIE Was One by David Gerrold
1979 – Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
1984 – “Press Enter _” by John Varley
1989 – Hyperion by Dan Simmons
1992 – Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers
2009 – Wake by Robert Sawyer
2013 – Her, a film by Spike Jonze
2015 – Ex Machina, a film by Alex Garland

There is some overlap. The details of what I know and what the machine knows are different. I assume ChatGPT knows everything in Wikipedia, so it should have listed the books I expected. What I really wanted was a complete list of all science fiction stories that featured a machine that becomes sentient. But I didn’t ask that.

New Question:

Please list the 25 most famous novels that feature a computer becoming sentient – but don’t include stories about robots becoming sentient.

ChatGPT’s answer:

  1. “2001: A Space Odyssey” by Arthur C. Clarke
  2. “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” by Robert A. Heinlein
  3. “The Adolescence of P-1” by Thomas J. Ryan
  4. “When HARLIE Was One” by David Gerrold
  5. “Dhalgren” by Samuel R. Delany
  6. “Demon Seed” by Dean Koontz
  7. “The God Machine” by Martin Caidin
  8. “Genesis” by Bernard Beckett
  9. “The Terminal Man” by Michael Crichton
  10. “Galatea 2.2” by Richard Powers
  11. “Avogadro Corp” by William Hertling
  12. “Neuromancer” by William Gibson
  13. “The Eudaemonic Pie” by Thomas A. Bass
  14. “The Mind Machine” by Colin Kapp
  15. “Specter” by Philippe Blenkiron
  16. “Symbiote’s Crown” by Clare Winger Harris
  17. “The Butterflies of Memory” by Ian Watson
  18. “The Apocalypse Troll” by David Weber
  19. “Turing Option” by Harry Harrison and Marvin Minsky
  20. “Interface” by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
  21. “Permutation City” by Greg Egan
  22. “Singularities” by Susan J. Gersten
  23. “The Threshold” by David G. Hartwell
  24. “The Probability Broach” by L. Neil Smith
  25. “The Silicon Man” by Charles Platt

Note that some of these works may feature an artificial intelligence or machine intelligence that becomes sentient, rather than a computer specifically, but they are included here for their similarities to the theme.

My thoughts:

Finally, I got the three books I was waiting for. I did ask for novels, and some of these titles might be shorter works, but good enough. Actually, that gives me a neat list of books to read because I haven’t read many of those titles.

Finally, I asked DALL-E 2:

If science fiction was a religion produce a painting that is science fictionally inspirational.

DALL-E 2’s drawings:

These are interesting, but far from what I expected. Notice, they all have something in the sky. It would be interesting to psychologically analyze ChatGPT and DALL-E 2.

James Wallace Harris, 2/18/23