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Will Humanity Ever Give Up Its Faith in Irrational Beliefs?

I consider the story of Noah’s Ark one of the oldest science fiction stories because it uses theoretical technology to solve a problem imagined from speculation. That famous story from Genesis was a retelling of an even older story. Well-educated people know that the story of Noah’s Ark is fiction, that the concept is beyond reason, but that doesn’t keep millions of people believing it happened as described. It’s a belief that a certain percent of humanity won’t reject, despite all the logic against it.

The history of our species includes a lengthy list of bullshit concepts that some people continue to embrace no matter how much proof they are given to disprove what they believe. Why is that? And why am I bringing it up on a site devoted to science fiction?

I believe science fiction fans are just as irrational about their beloved beliefs in irrational concepts. And their defense of their beliefs comes down to the same rationale as people who want to believe in religious concepts: faith. We have faith in futures we want to become reality, in the same way that some believers have faith in heaven. We might even be atheists that deny everything metaphysical, but we can’t give up on faster-than-light travel, galactic empires, downloading minds, living in virtual worlds as digital beings, transhumanism, and various methods of achieving immortality, among other things.

We rationalize our faith by embracing the idea that science and technology will evolve to give us everything we want, that they have no limits. We cling to theoretical scientific papers that claim that wormhole travel and warp drives are possible. We love our science fiction novels and movies and can’t bear the idea that the future would be so dull as not give us everything we hope for. We are like the faithful who want eternal life so bad that they can’t imagine anything else is possible.

We cling to our cherished desires for two reasons. First, and foremost, we can’t let go of what we want. We won’t let hope die. We embrace faith in beliefs like we cling to life itself. But second, we believe in the power of the mind. We might not consciously understand this, but we embrace the idea that reality is constructed from thoughts, and like Dorothy’s lessons in The Wizard of Oz, it’s only a matter of believing.

Yesterday, I read a wonderful science fiction story based on this idea, “Hesperia and Glory” by Ann Leckie. You can listen to an audio reading here. Leckie recreates the flavor of Weird Tales, telling about a Martian on Earth who wants to go home. The structure of her narrative, a letter, with eye-witness testimony, was a common technique used in the 19th and early 20th century fiction to convey a sense of “this was real!” But the story is explicitly about the power of thought. Listen to the story. (It’s doubtful, you’ll be able to find a copy to read since it hasn’t been widely reprinted.)

This story reminds me of a personal decision I made over fifty years ago. I was into Eastern religions, esoteric beliefs, New Age psychologies, and hallucinogenic drugs. Many of which promoted the power of the mind. I had some very intense experiences, some of which were quite powerful and scary. I gave up chasing esoteric knowledge because of that fear, with the decision to reject the belief in the power of thought. I decided there was only one reality, and my mind could not alter it. That’s also the decision of the narrator of “Hesperia and Glory.” Like the narrator of this story, I have wondered if my success involves the power of the mind. I can scare myself by contemplating there isn’t a consistent external reality, but infinite realities generated by thoughts.

But see, that’s the thing. It is, or it isn’t. If an external reality exists, and it is described by science and not a creation of thought, then it’s important to give up all the bullshit concepts we keep trying to bring about with our thinking. If people continue to act on believing in their illogical beliefs, we can never construct a truly workable society because we can’t work together. We’re like people living in The City & The City by China Miéville, where there was two realities in one physical location. But that was only two. Imagine the complications of over eight billion realities competing for existence.

And if reality is a construction of thought, then anything is possible, and you really don’t want that. If you think you do, then you haven’t gone very far into thought driven reality. If it’s not madness, we’re in big trouble.

If you study history, you’ll know that societies aren’t stable. Nothing lasts. And it’s because we have too many conflicting beliefs, especially beliefs in bullshit concepts. Even if reality is a consistent externality, it doesn’t mean it can’t be corrupted by false beliefs.

I believe science is the only cognitive tool we’ve developed to consistently explain reality. Myths, religions, philosophy, magic, thought power, esoteric and New Age concepts, etc. all fail. Science if far from perfect, has a tremendously learning curve, and doesn’t give clear easy answers. But we need to become more scientific. I also believe science fiction needs to become more scientific.

Einstein didn’t like quantum physics because of its spooky qualities. Be careful rationalizing your beliefs on quantum physics. Just because observation appears to affect the quantum world doesn’t mean that it does. It might suggest a limitation to observation, or that the quantum world works very differently. We have to be careful with even what science theorizes, because we’re very good at making shit up even when we’re trying not to.

Take for instance warp drives. A recent scientific paper has given a lot of people hope that traveling faster-than-light is possible. But as Sabine Hossenfelder pointed out by close examination of the mathematics of that paper, that the math requires a mass equal to 0.667 mass of the Sun to generate a one kilometer warp field. Watch these two videos and tell me if you really believe warp drives are possible.

Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist who has been among a group of scientists recently who have criticized physics for chasing too many theoretical mathematical models. It seems that modern physics, especially partical physics, have gotten a long ways away from experimental science, and they believe that’s dangerous.

I feel science fiction has gotten too far away from science. That science fiction has become a generator of bullshit ideas. Even worse, it’s converting millions to its beliefs in these bogus concepts, and that’s corrupting minds in the same way religion is holding us back. Hardcore science fiction fans bitterly complain about the intrusion of magical fantasy in their genre but they fail to recognize that most of what they call science fiction is science fantasy.

Believing that we’ll invent faster-than-light travel is very close to believing you might find a magic lamp with a wish granting genie. And thinking warp drives are theoretically possible is like defending the idea that all plant and animal life on Earth came from those preserved by Noah in a big boat four thousand years ago.

Just because you’re an atheist regarding religion, and subscribe to The Skeptical Inquirer to debunk pseudo-science, doesn’t mean you’re all scientific and rational when it comes to science fiction.

You may think there is no harm in pretending that our future might lead to something like the Culture novels, but how do you feel about people who claim the Earth is flat, or believe everything they’re told when visiting the Creation Museum? Look what belief in religion has done to us.

Watch these two videos. They are timelines of the evolution of esoteric ideas. Like a snowball rolling downhill growing bigger, these concepts over time have gathered a growing number of believers, and sometimes making huge impact on history.

James Wallace Harris, 9/2/24

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Science Fiction for Boys and Girls

I’ve been on a vacation from reading science fiction but yesterday I read two SF stories to see if I wanted to come home. The first was “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer published online at Uncanny Magazine. The second was “Detonation Boulevard” by Alastair Reynolds published online at Tor.com now called Reactor. The Kritzer story has won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the Reynolds story has the pole position in Best of British Science Fiction 2023 edited by Donna Scott.

What struck me about both were the gender generalizations I could make about each. I know it’s sexist to make generalizations about gender but how do you explain the differences I sense in post-apocalyptic books written by women and those by men?

“The Year Without Sunshine” is about a neighborhood that experiences a small, maybe temporary, apocalypse. The story is very readable, uplifting, moving, positive, and suggests people will cooperate to survive. It made me tear up many times. However, it ignores the common tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction that American men use in related stories where civilization collapses. In those stories it’s time to whip out the guns and go full auto on being Darwinian.

I felt “The Year Without Sunshine” leaned towards the feminine side of things because I enjoy the sub-genre of post-apocalyptic fiction, and the examples I can recall written by women are different than the ones I can recall by American men. I also sense a difference between American and British post-apocalyptic novels. Most American post-apocalyptic novels written by guys bring back the Wild West, usually with a Mad Max tone. Whereas many British post-apocalyptic novels could be called cozy catastrophes.

Examples of post-apocalyptic novels written by women that pop into my mind are Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing, Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. A couple recent British post-apocalyptic novels that come to mind are The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff and Survivors by Terry Nation (the basis of a BBC TV show back in the 1970s).

Naomi Kritzer presents a view in her story that I feel is both feminine and more mature than most typical science fiction. She presents a realistic future with what I consider unrealistic hope. Alaistair Reynolds presents a completely fantasy future that’s squarely aimed at the stereotype story for boys.

While reading “The Year Without Sunshine,” which I loved, Kritzer’s male characters were too nice, even the ones that were supposed to be bad. I can’t but believe that they were how Kritzer hoped guys would act in her fictionalized situation. Unfortunately, tough times are when the true nature of males will come through. I’d say the 2023 film Leave the World Behind is more like how I predict things will happen, especially the scene when the characters played by Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke confront the Kevin Bacon character hoping to barter for medicine. That’s how men will be when they are still somewhat civilized and rational, but I also expect the real reality will be like The Road by Cormac McCarthy. In “The Year Without Sunshine” too many people readily want to help Susan, who has COPD, and either give or trade her canisters of propane to keep her oxygen generator going. I don’t think that would happen. But it is the way mature people should wish it will be.

I’m not criticizing Kritzer’s story when I claim some of her males act unrealistic in that situation. I have my fantasies and my speculations, and they are different from the kinds of science fiction I’ve read, and I believe because I’m male. I could be wrong, and people, all people will act more like Kritzer’s characters in such a real-life situation.

“A Year Without Sunshine” is immensely popular and loved. It’s the kind of story that readers of The New Yorker would have enjoyed too because it’s SF that’s relevant to today and to literary readers.

In “Detonation Boulevard” Alastair Reynolds gives us the boys fantasy of space travel. It’s a visually exciting story that would make an eye-popping science fiction film. Just study the above artwork for it from Reactor. Imagine a race under a sky full of Jupiter! When I was twelve, I would have loved this story and considered it thrilling. Cyborgs on Io, a moon of Jupiter, race gigantic moon buggies completely around its circumference. At 72, that seemed silly. Like Kritzer’s hopeful fantasy for how people should act when civilization collapses, Reynolds is a hopeful fantasy for the future when we can have car races all over the solar system. But it is also an unrealistic fantasy that ignores the reality of space exploration and ignores all the scientific extrapolations about the future of Earth. It’s what boys want, of all ages.

Without giving too much of a spoiler, I did like the mature insight of the older cyborg and how it tried to pass it on to the younger one. Reynolds offers us a twist near the end, but I thought it contrived for modern audiences.

I remember back in the 1970s there were several articles in mainstream magazines by major literary writers attacking science fiction for being immature, claiming the genre offered power fantasies for adolescent boys. Readers and writers in the genre were outraged and insulted, but there is a certain amount of truth in those attacks. It’s interesting at the same time those criticisms were being made Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ were publishing works that began to mutate the genre towards more maturity.

Back in the late 1950s, my sister Becky and I formed two clubs. She called hers the Please and Thank You Club for the girls on our street, and I called my club The Eagles club for us boys. “The Year Without Sunshine” would fit nicely in a Please and Thank You Club, while Detonation Boulevard” would fit in with the Eagles.

I’m currently reading My Brilliant Friend by Elene Ferrante and Rabbit, Run by John Updike while on vacation from science fiction. It’s interesting to compare the gender perspectives of their characters to those in science fiction. Ferrante begins her book with two eight-year-old girls whose perceptions of the world were far more mature than I was at that age. I know it’s sexist to observe differences in males and females, but whenever I read literary work by women writers, I’m described powers of observations regarding other people’s emotions that I’ve never had. I saw that in Kritzer’s story too, but not Reynold’s.

It’s like trying to imagine how dogs perceive the world through smells when their sense of smell is thousands of times more powerful than ours. I can’t help but believe I am blind to things that women can perceive. Sure, it could just be me. And sure, it’s possible that plenty of males have this skill too, or plenty of females don’t. There are people who have theorized that Elena Ferrante could be a male. She has kept her identity secret. However, most of her fans hate that idea because they consider Ferrante such a perfect example of female perception. I guess it’s theoretically possible for a male writer to perfectly imitate the best female writer – but I doubt it. Reynolds tries to portray a female character in his story, but I don’t think he even came close.

I have heard, in person, and online, many males criticize the state of modern science fiction bellyaching that women writers have taken over and changed the genre. The genre is constantly evolving, and improving, and I think it’s possible that some of those improvements are due to female insight. But what has gone missing that the males want back?

Unfortantely, I think it’s what was bad about science fiction, something I once loved, and something that only a few girls admired at the time. Part of it is illustrated by “Detonation Boulevard.” And that is the immature childhood dreams of science fiction. We just don’t want to grow up, and that’s the old style science fiction that guys mostly loved, and some girls did too, both now and then. That quality is irrisistable fun and make believe. It’s why Transformers were so popular. It’s why the comic book culture has gained appeal with all ages and genders. It’s why we don’t want to grow up and adolescence now extends for decades. It’s why people are addicted to video games and crave virtual reality. Science fiction was always the 12-year-old boy’s daydreaming come true. It’s also why young wives want to divorce their immature husbands. However, that immaturity of story action is widely popular, even with girls and women.

But it ain’t helpful for growing up in a the real world. It doesn’t matters in a story like “Detonation Boulevard,” but it does in stories like “A Year Without Sunshine.” That story has no alpha males, no assholes that demand or take what they want. And those kind of guys will show up with things fall apart. It had a couple of teens that lamely tried to take what they wanted, but that made the story somewhat less realistic. There’s also a different between vicarious violence for fun, and fictional violence that portrays the real world.

I guess I’m making a case for more realism in science fiction. I think young people, of either gender, want less realism. But isn’t it the realistic details of “A Year Without Sunshine” that made it worthy of a Hugo and Nebula? To make his story somewhat realistic, Reynolds had to have cyborgs rather than humans. But wouldn’t two AI robots competing on Io been even more realistic, more gritty, hard, and believable, especially if we were shown how their knowledge and ability to perceive reality was hundreds of time more powerful than human beings? Robots are perfect for Io, we’re not. We still want to be the heroes of space exploration, but I don’t think we will.

I’m also listening to the audiobook of A City On Mars by Kelly and Zack Weinersmith. It’s subtitle is: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through? Kelly Weinersmith is a professor of biosciences and she takes a long hard look at the final frontier dream. Her husband Zack illustrates the book. On the dedication page she writes:

The book brings realism to the dreams of science fiction and space enthusiasts. Even pointing out some harsh truths, I think the Weinersmiths are still overly optimistic. I’ve been reading widely on the possibilities of space exploration and the limitations of what we have to work with leave little room for what science fiction has dreamed. But even if technology could give us the colonization of Mars, only delusional people will want to live there.

I know it’s sexist to say women writers have something to offer that is unique to them, but I think we need their gender’s perspective. But I also think even more, we need more maturity of the kind they have. Maybe I’m too old to be reading a children’s literature. Maybe it’s unfair to be inside stories for children expecting more grownup’s perspectives.

When I read these two stories this weekend I felt I was reading the fantasies from two different genders of young people, stories for girls and boys. Two stories that imagined a positive future, although one was more realistic and mature than the other.

Sure, my sample size is two, but they’re consistent with many other science fiction stories I’ve read. Personally I think the genders are no closer in understanding each other than the Democrats and Republicans, and that all youth, and most adults have a grasp of reality that’s only slightly superior to reality TV. We just aren’t a rational species. Most people accept that fantasy and science fiction are merely ways to pretend, especially for children, but I believe what we pretend, especially as children, says something about how we will think when we grow up.

Both “A Year Without Sunshine” and “Detonation Boulevard” are good stories. I just enjoyed “A Year Without Sunshine” a great deal more. Is it sexist of me to say I like it more because it offers a female perspective I don’t get in post-apocalyptic tales written by males?

If you disagree that there is a difference go read “A Boy and His Dog” by Harlan Ellison, and then read “A Year Without Sunshine.” I can’t find an online copy, but here’s an audio reading at YouTube. It also won a Nebula award, and was nominated for a Hugo. I can’t believe Ellison hasn’t been canceled because of this story. You might have it in one of these anthologies. I can’t believe I once admired this story – it’s truly repellant.

JWH

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Farewell, Earth’s Bliss by D. G. Compton

Let’s imagine two science fiction writers. The first is a person who wants to avoid a lifetime of working the nine-to-five grind and decides they want to become a science fiction writer. This person studies all the classics and bestselling SF novels and writes what they hope readers will passionately love and make them a million dollars. The second is a person who thinks deeply about life and has what they believe is a brilliant philosophical insight. Their inspiration is to use science fiction to convey their insights into humanity to the rest of us.

Whose book do you want to read?

I read Farewell, Earth’s Bliss by D. G. Compton because my favorite YouTube reviewer, Bookpilled, praised it highly in two videos. He warned the novel was one of the bleakest books he’s ever read. The story is grim indeed. Not as existentially dark as The Road by Cormac McCarthy, or as depressingly dystopian as Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, or even as bleak as those literary novels that make you want to kill yourself, such as The Painted Bird by Jerzey Kosinski, or The Tin Drum by Günter Grass.

Back in the mid-sixties, science fiction was changing, and it was interesting that in 1966, two science fiction novels came out about shipping convicts into space. The most famous of the two was The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein. A forgotten title was Farewell, Earth’s Bliss by D. G. Compton. I find it odd, that right in the middle of the 1960s great space race, when all the excitement and glamor was about how to get to the Moon, and during the thrilling Project Gemini missions two science fiction authors would imagine the Moon and Mars as a Botany Bay prison colony. Instead of sending people with the Right Stuff into space, Heinlein and Compton imagine sending people with the Wrong Stuff. Why? In 1967, Robert Silverberg would publish “Hawksbill Station” about using time travel to exile criminals to the Cambrian period. (I should compare all three someday.)

I believe in the 1950s, Heinlein wanted to be more than the biggest fish in a small pond. He was already the most successful science fiction writer in the world. I can’t prove this, but my guess is he saw the potential of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in 1957 and wanted to swim in the bigger pond Rand created, so he came out with Stranger in a Strange Land in 1961. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was Heinlein’s third book he used as a soapbox to express his philosophical and political ideas. My other guess is D. G. Compton was inspired by New Worlds magazine, and the initial stages of the New Wave and decided to take a piss on science fiction, the space race, and humanity. Heinlein’s view of a penal colony on the Moon wasn’t exactly positive, although he thought it was. He saw his story as recreating the American Revolution. Maybe I need to reread and reanalyze that story. I don’t think Compton had a chance to read Heinlein’s book, so it wasn’t a reaction to it, but it is worthwhile to consider them together as two views SF takes on 1966.

Farewell, Earth’s Bliss is about twenty-four new one-way exiles to Mars. Compton uses several point-of-view characters to project a multifaceted take on humanity. All the people on Mars are convicts, and they shape their own society. Their life is brutal. They’ve found they can eat lichen and one small Martian animal they call a rabbit. Everything else must be recycled from the spaceships bringing the prisoners to Mars twice each Martian year. It’s an extremely hard and bleak existence. This isn’t Star Trek, another science fiction story that came out in 1966.

Compton’s insights deal with racism, feminism, gender, homosexuality, government, brutality, inequality, religion, and other subjects that feel completely contemporary to today. Most of the insights Compton explores didn’t need to be set on Mars. Because they are, it makes us question the desire to explore other worlds.

Ultimately, Farewell, Earth’s Bliss ends in a kind of dark Darwinian optimism. Was Compton trying to be funny? Ironic? Satirical? Existential? Compton uses his novel to show how everyone and all societies are flawed, that life is grim, but there’s a kind of nobleness in surviving, even if you’re killing others to do so.

Like Joachim Boaz at his blog Science Fiction and Other Ruminations, I’ve been into reading science fiction that is critical of the final frontier dream. As a kid, Mars was my Land of Oz, my Big Rock Candy Mountain, my Shangri La. Compton laughs at people like me in Farewell, Earth’s Bliss. Boaz also reviews Farewell, Earth’s Bliss, and rates it 4.5 out of 5. Now that I’m older, I realize the fallacy of my fantasies. Mars would be a horrific place to live.

Over the decades I’ve tried reading D. G. Compton’s work, but I usually give up because his stories were too grim, too adult. But it seems like in the past year that everyone is rediscovering Farewell, Earth’s Bliss and Compton.

What’s the point of exploring the depressing side of reality? Compton makes Mars very unappealing. Years ago, there was this story about people volunteering for a one-way trip to Mars. A lot of people said they would sign up. Mars has always been the Middle Earth for science fiction. No matter how grimly realistic it is portrayed, readers still find it a magical destination to daydream about. I think Compton is asking why people would fantasize about Mars like that.

The leader of the criminals is a ruthless man who is smart enough to manipulate people yet is unaware of his own delusions. He reminds me of Donald Trump. And the laws the criminals choose to live by remind me of what MAGA people want. They embrace religion, even insane religious ideas, reject education because they want to protect their kids from intellectuals, and they want punish rule breakers and people who are different harshly to maintain the orderliness of their community.

I used to think that spreading humanity across the galaxy was the purpose of our species. I haven’t felt that way for years. Reading Farewell, Earth’s Bliss makes me think we shouldn’t infect the rest of the universe with our madness. Compton sees us like cockroaches that are impossible to kill.

Is that the kind of science fiction you’d want to read?

Why?

Amazon currently has Farewell, Earth’s Bliss as a $1.99 Kindle ebook.

James Wallace Harris, 8/12/24

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Applied Science Fiction: The Many Ways I Use SF

My friend Mike texted me this morning that he had just finished reading The Frequent Troubles of Our Days by Rebecca Donner, about an American woman living in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. She led a Nazi resistance group. Mike said he was so exhausted and depressed after finishing that book that he wanted to read a science fiction book. Mike has always disagreed with me when I said that science fiction was mostly escapist literature but admitted that that’s how he wanted to use it right now.

Growing up, my family moved around a lot, so I went to over a dozen schools in several states. Plus, my parents became alcoholic. My childhood should have been grim. However, I always found ways to be happy, and one of them was by reading science fiction.

I grew up expecting two things from science fiction. First, it was escapism. I preferred reading science fiction over watching television. But, since I was young, and growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, I also used science fiction to think about the future. I wanted science fiction to speculate about real possibilities. Reading science fiction gave me certain expectations about the future.

Later, I used science fiction to socialize when I got into fandom. Science fiction gave me things to talk about with other people, and subjects to write about in fanzines, and on the internet. For a while I even wanted to write science fiction, so it gave me an artistic goal. I can also say, science fiction gave me hope for the future, because I wanted some of its speculation to come true. And nowadays the history of science fiction gives me something to study and to also write about.

Science fiction also provides a mental framework for speculating. It can be a mental tool like Einstein’s thought experiments.

However, something is changing in me. I assume it’s from getting older. But I also think it’s because reality intrudes more than ever. Life is never easy, and it feels like it’s getting harder. Politics and climate change are grabbing everyone by their shirtfront and slapping them around. A nicer image is to say politics and climate change are like a Zen master caning us about our head and shoulders demanding that we pay attention.

I still crave the escapes science fiction used to offer, but it’s getting harder to find.

I’m reading several books on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. That was another very real time. People realized they could throw off the church and monarchy and choose their own way of thinking and government. The revolution caused a lot of arguments, killing, and wars over all the speculated possibilities.

We’ve had over two hundred years of the kind of political freedom people back then wanted, but it hasn’t worked out. The same factions fighting for power are still fighting for power. We can’t configure a political system that isn’t corrupted by the strong and wealthy. Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Jefferson, Locke, and others speculated about all kinds of ideals we could achieve.

We know we need capitalism to generate work and wealth for everyone, that we need democracy to create political equality, and we need universal education to solve our problems. But we can’t find the right combination that doesn’t lead to oligarchy and plutocracy. And neither the oligarchs, plutocrats, and voters will make the right decisions for the planet and each other. We always make our choices based on greed and self-interest. In other words, Darwinian evolution is what wins.

So, it’s become harder for me to find books about galloping about the galaxy that makes me forget about the problems on Earth. And if I only criticize science fiction for not dealing with real problems, I bum people out and they don’t want to talk or socialize with me. And if I can’t write about science fiction, I’ve lost that use too.

I should focus on the best science fiction that lets me forget, to read and write about the best kinds of science fiction escapism. My current crisis right now is finding that kind of science fiction. It can’t be stupid. It can’t be silly. It can’t be what’s already been done way too many times.

I am reminded of the film Sullivan’s Travels. It was made back in the depression and is about a movie director who wants to make serious movies about serious times. By accident, he ends up being on a chain gang in the south. It’s a miserable existence. One night they get to see a movie, a comedy, and all those tortured souls laugh their heads off. The director realizes that miserable people want movies that make them forget.

That’s a positive message that I’ve accepted for most of my life. However, the movie doesn’t point out, that when the comedy is over, the cons are still living in a rat infested swamp, with little to eat, and their existence is working on the chain gang

Would giving them a copy of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus help them either?

Are our only choices escapism or existentialism?

SF writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, John Brunner, and Kim Stanley Robinson have explored other ideas, but don’t they all end up being dystopian? We’ve given up on utopia. Young people seem to love dystopian novels about plucky young individuals making mighty blows against the empire.

Damn, I’m being a downer again. I’m not depressed. I enjoy analyzing my problems, but that analysis tends to depress other people. Sorry about that. Let’s see if I can end this essay with something positive.

For some reason I can always fall back on the novels of Philip K. Dick. He accepts the world is insane. He focuses on little people struggling to cope and survive. And he sees the world in weird and entertaining ways. I might even say reading PKD can be therapeutic.

Oh, and I find reading long books about the French Revolution tremendously fascinating. Is that just another form of escapism? It feels like I’m learning about reality. Or is that an illusion? Damn, I’m getting into PKD territory.

Yeah, I know I’m weird. But it’s how I cope.

James Wallace Harris, 7/31/24

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Is It Possible, Or Is It Magic?

“Enchanted Village” by A. E. van Vogt has been extensively reprinted. It first appeared in the July 1950 issue of Other Worlds Science Fiction. I just read the story in Possible Worlds of Science Fiction edited by Groff Conklin. I first read it in The Great SF Stories 12 (1950) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg several years ago, although today, I had no memory of reading it before. I can’t tell if it’s a forgettable story, or I’m just forgetting everything.

Bill Jenner is the lone survivor of the first mission to Mars after his rocket crashes. Jenner crosses hundreds of miles of Martian desert on foot with just a bit of food and one bag of water. Jenner thinks he’s saved when he stumbles upon a deserted alien village.

The story is nicely told. Who doesn’t love a Robinson Crusoe type story? Isn’t that why The Martian by Andy Weir was a bestseller and blockbuster? “Enchanted Village” takes a left turn though, one that reminds me of Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. It’s amusing how A. E. van Vogt anticipated so many modern science fiction stories (Forbidden Planet, Star Trek, Alien, etc.).

Jenner eventually realizes the village is an organism or machine, even an intelligent one, and he must learn to communicate with it. The village produces food automatically in low troughs but is poison to Jenner. Through a series of observations Jenner discovers the village could make food for him, but he doesn’t have enough human food for it to model.

Now here is where you should leave this essay if you don’t want spoilers.

“Is it possible?” is the number one criterion I use to define and judge science fiction. All too often science fiction readers are given magic rather than honest speculation. There is nothing wrong with magic in a story if you enjoy fantasies, but the belief in magic is why our species never grows up. To me, fantasy is the fentanyl of fiction. It will make you feel great, but eventually, it will kill you.

The surprise ending of “Enchanted Village” is when Bill Jenner dies, he wakes up to discover he’s a kind of creature that can consume the nourishment the village provides. Bill Jenner is reborn. We are not told how. We are not told anything, but that Jenner now has sharp teeth and a snout allowing him to slurp up the alien food. I pictured the reborn Jenner looking like a lizard creature, suitable for the dry Martian desert.

The alien village is like Jesus, or other deities that tell us to accept them and be saved. Van Vogt’s use of the word enchanted should have warned us this was a story about magic. I don’t know if van Vogt was intentionally parodying religion, or he just needed a quick ending to sell a story. It’s interesting to compare “Enchanted Village” to “A Martian Odyssey” by Stanley G. Weinbaum. That story has strange aliens that accomplish bizarre feats, but I believe it’s within the realm of possibility, and honest science-fictional speculation.

Even with my criticism, I enjoyed the story. It’s the old fashion kind of pre-NASA science fiction I’ve always liked most. But then, science fiction was my substitute for religion. I wanted to believe in the fantasies that science fiction sold me. If we could only fly beyond the Earth, they would all come true. I never really wanted to grow up in Earthly reality but be reborn in outer space. I’ve always known that science fiction was just storytelling, but it did leave me with a kind of secret hope that I should have ignored. There’s a reason Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses, it’s because it makes us want to believe in magic. There’s a safe kind of making believing while turning pages, but if you let science fictional beliefs go beyond them, they can be dangerous.

If you think I’m being silly, read “Racked by Pain and Enraptured by a Right-Wing Miracle Cure” from yesterday’s New York Times. It’s quite moving, and I feel deserves some kind of journalism award. These people hope for a science fictional cure, ones I’ve seen in science fiction stories.

I’m getting worried that I’m becoming too critical of science fiction, and I should stop reviewing it. I don’t want to come across as a downer. I know science fiction should be judged just on its merit as a story, but I can’t help but evaluate it psychologically and philosophically as a kind of hope for the future. I assume my growing doubts and rejection of SF is because I’m getting older and thinking about how things have impacted me psychologically.

James Wallace Harris, 7/29/24

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When Did You First Grok the Major Concepts of Science Fiction?

Our minds are like large language models (LLM) used in artificial intelligence (AI). We must be exposed to words and concepts before we think about them. Few people can conceive of new concepts on their own. Take for instance the idea of dinosaurs. Can you remember when you first acquired the imagery and ideas about dinosaurs? Or remember the process?

I remember being in elementary school and trading a kid for four plastic dinosaurs. I knew about dinosaurs only vaguely – just a kind of giant animal. The kid told me their names: brontosaurus, triceratops, stegosaurus, and tyrannosaurus. I couldn’t spell those names, or even pronounce them — I might have remembered them at the time as bronto, tops, stego and rex. I didn’t understand about prehistory, or archeology. This might have been after The Flintstones came on TV in 1960 when I was eight or nine, so I probably assumed dinosaurs and people coexisted somewhere. Even then I remember having dreams about dinosaurs when I was six. My dreams were about people living with dinosaurs and having to walk through giant piles of dinosaur shit. They were just humongous creatures that made people feel little.

Unless the concept of dinosaurs come from some kind of ancestral memory, I had learned about them previously somehow. I probably saw them on TV or in a picture book. Like LLMs, my dreams, and conscious concepts about dinosaurs were confused and surreal, sort of like AI art that hallucinating. Eventually, around the time I was ten, I started reading nonfiction books, and I probably read about dinosaurs. I didn’t understand the timescale or science behind them, even then.

I was twelve before I understood the concept of science fiction. But I had been exposed to many science-fictional concepts before that. I struggle now to recall how rocket ships, space travel, aliens, robots, interplanetary and interstellar travel, apocalypses, and time travel first came into my young mind.

I was born in 1951 but I didn’t learn what “science fiction” meant until 1964. That means before I was thirteen, science fiction as a concept didn’t exist to me even though I encountered science fiction movies, television shows, comics, and books. The school libraries I used didn’t have science fiction sections. The Homestead Air Force base library I used did have a science fiction section, but it was in the adult area, which I didn’t visit until 1964 when I was in the eighth grade.

My earliest introduction to science fiction was in the 1950s where I caught old science fiction movies on television, and from a few TV shows for kids that were science fiction. I’m sure some SF themes came from The Twilight Zone which began in October 1959, around the time I turned eight. I didn’t know what the term science fiction described then even if I heard it. They just had space travel and robots, concepts I liked. In the 5th and 6th grade I occasionally found books with space travel or robots in the school library. I remember going up and down the bookshelves trying to spot them. One of the first books I discovered after Tom Swift Jr. and Danny Dunn, was the When Worlds Collide/Afterwards Worlds Collide omnibus. This was in the sixth grade, and I remember my teacher reading a bit of A Wrinkle in Time after lunch every day. If she mentioned the phrase science fiction, I can’t recall.

Then I found The War of the Worlds, Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mysterious Island in the Scholastic Books flyer handed out at school in the seventh grade. They were the first science fiction books I owned. Maybe the term was on the cover, but I don’t remember if I noticed. Finally, I found the science fiction section in the eighth grade, and I understood the concept well enough to know that it pointed to the kinds of books I loved to read. I still didn’t understand genre, or anything about the history of science fiction.

However, my point here is even before I read science fiction, I had encountered several of the main concepts of science fiction. I had vague notions of rocket ships long before I understood the solar system or the galaxy. The 1950s was a time when people often talked about UFOs. I had a vague idea about aliens from the skies. One of the scariest films I saw on TV as a kid of the 1953 film, Invader from Mars, about a boy who sees a flying saucer land in a field behind his house. I was about the age of the kid in the film, so I really identified with him. The invaders were taking over the bodies of humans. That was also true of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). I don’t think aliens were ever good during this period.

There were other science fiction movies I saw before I understood what science fiction was, that had a profound impact on me. They were The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Destination Moon (1950), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), and Target Earth (1954). I think I saw them when I was in the fifth and sixth grade, but maybe earlier. However, I think I had vague notions about rockets, space travel, and aliens from even earlier sources I can’t remember. I know my parents never mentioned these concepts, nor my teachers. The 1950s weren’t like today where science fiction is everywhere. I didn’t meet another science fiction reader until I was in the tenth grade, in March of 1967. It was the middle of the night, and I was traveling to Miami with my mother and sister on a Greyhound bus, and got to talking to a young guy in the army.

I do know I didn’t understand time travel until after I knew about science fiction. It was when they showed The Time Machine (1960) on NBC’s Saturday Night at the Movies, I think sometime in 1965 or 1966. I was in the ninth grade. The idea just blew me away. I had not read The Time Machine by H. G. Wells before that. I might have been exposed to other time travel stories by then, but I don’t think so because the film really made an impact on me.

I had encountered the concept of surviving in a post-apocalyptic world often in science fiction books and movies, but it wasn’t until I read Earth Abides by George R. Stewart in my second year of college that I truly grokked the concept. And it’s taken me decades of reading to explore all the variations and history of the concept.

If you’ve ever “conversed” with an AI, you’ll know what I’m talking about when I say that you can sense where LLMs get their awareness of a concept by knowing the sources they studied. You can’t really blame AI minds for producing crappy answers when you understand how you got your own crappy versions of concepts.

A lot of people only understand science fiction concepts from watching Star Trek, or other TV shows or movies. I’m sure interstellar travel is a hazy thought in their minds. It’s only until you read books by rocket scientists, astronomers, and physicists that those hazy thoughts crystalize into any kind of detail picture. And realistic understanding takes a lot of work.

One reason why computer scientists are having trouble improving on the accuracy of AI minds is because AI minds go through the same learning process we do, and it’s exceedingly difficult to fill in all the details on any concept, especially when we learn so much from fiction and gossip.

Science fiction generated a lot of concepts people love, but they’re only vaguely conceived, in much the same way as a child goes through processing them. You can deepen your knowledge about all the main science-fictional concepts by reading a lot of science fiction. Like how LLMs learn. But to fully grok these concepts you must read science books, but even popular science books can’t perfectly convey the details of learning science at the experimental and mathematical level, something I’m not sure LLMs can do yet.

I wrote this essay to help me remember. I wanted to remember a time in my childhood when I first encountered different concepts popular in science fiction. But I also wanted to remember the details of my childhood. And I wanted to remember the names of the books and movies. I’m forgetting such details. For several of the movies, I had to use Google and Wikipedia to recall the names of films that I’ve seen many times over my lifetime. I write these essays to keep details in my mind to help me to remember them. If I don’t write these essays I forget more and more.

I find AI and LLMs very enlightening because how they work is close to how we work. I assume that current LLMs aren’t conscious. At one time I wasn’t conscious either. I think self-awareness came to me around age four. But the years between then and adolescence were years of vague awareness of how reality worked. Even at 72, I realize that we never grok anything fully. We’re always filling in more details. It’s quite revealing to do a mental archeological dig into my mind, to explore the layers of awareness. It’s also sobering to discover that many concepts we cling to are vague, even faulty, or fantasies.

This has been a fun exercise, trying to remember when I first experienced the sense of wonder when confronting a new science-fictional idea. I could write a whole lot more, even a long, detailed memoir, and never be finished. But this is enough for now.

Can you remember the evolution of science-fictional concepts in your memory?

James Wallace Harris, 7/23/24

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Solving My Problem with Science Fiction

I’ve become overly critical of science fiction lately, and that worries me. Too much of what I read feels childish, simplistic, and obvious. I mentioned this to my friend Mike, and he pointed out that most of science fiction isn’t particularly good, and that’s true of all forms of literature, not just science fiction. That reminded me of Sturgeon’s Law — “ninety percent of everything is crap.”

I started thinking about that. When you’re a kid, the first ten science fiction books you read are all fantastic. But as you get older, you start encountering books that aren’t as exciting. As we age, we become more discerning, and eventually jaded. That’s my problem, I’m old, jaded, and have read too much science fiction. Every new story I read must live up to all the best science fiction stories I’ve ever read.

I think we need to amend Sturgeon’s Law. It needs a sliding scale. When you’re young, 10% is crap. In middle age, it might be 50%. However old Sturgeon was when he made his law, it was 90%. But at 72, I feel it’s 99%. And that’s depressing me.

Mike also gave me the solution. He said he and his wife are rewatching their favorite movies because many films they were trying were disappointing.

Because I’m in a short story reading group on Facebook, I’ve read about fifteen hundred stories in the last four years. I’ve just ODed on SF. Obviously, I need to cut way back on my sci-fi reading, explore other kinds of reading, and when I do read science fiction, read, or reread, the classics. Focus on what’s good and stop trying to read everything in the genre.

The reality is I’m getting old and don’t have that much reading time left, so why not concentrate on the best? I also need to explore new reading territory. I’m currently reading Volume 11 of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. I started with the last volume simply because it was on sale at Audible. I know practically nothing about European history, so it’s extremely fascinating. I’m supplementing the book with The Great Courses lecture series: Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon, taught be Suzanne M. Desan, Ph.D. Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison. I access The Great Courses Plus through Amazon Prime for $7.99 a month.

What I’m learning is blowing my mind, kind of how I felt when I first discovered science fiction. The I-should-have-had-a-V8-slap-to-the-head takeaway here is “It’s new ideas stupid.”

And that’s my real problem with being old and having read too much science fiction. I seldom find something new in the genre anymore. I need to give it a rest. I can’t give it up completely, so I’m going to concentrate on studying the classics. Go deep instead of chasing novelty.

This will have a positive side effect. I need to thin out my book collection. That’s another thing about getting old. A lifetime accumulation of junk starts to become a burden. I’ll keep the classics and jettison the rest. This reminds me of Destination Moon, an old science fiction film from the early 1950s. A crew on the first rocket ship to the Moon uses up too much fuel on landing and can’t take off again. The solution is to jettison everything they can, including space suits, and even the radio to reduce their mass to match the fuel that is left. That’s a great metaphor for getting old. It gets harder and harder to take off. The solution is to lighten the load.

James Wallace Harris, 7/22/24

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Is Science Fiction Dead?

The April 8, 1966, cover of Time Magazine asked in large letters: Is God Dead? I would have answered yes, because starting in late 1963, when I turned twelve, I began to struggle with the idea of believing in God. Before I turned fourteen in late 1965, I had decided I was an atheist. It wasn’t an easy decision. Decades later, I realized that I had given up God and had embraced science fiction as a substitute for religion.

If someone had told me that at the time I would have vehemently denied it because I passionately believed I couldn’t be fooled by make believe concepts. I was for science all the way. Of course, when you’re thirteen years old you’re a dumb ass but don’t know it. I couldn’t see I was substituting one set of wishes for another.

If you look at the concept of God as a hypothesis to explain reality, then we would have to say that concept has been rejected long ago by well educated people thinking in complex and multiplex terms. That doesn’t mean that people have stopped believing in God. Nearly every concept every imagined still has its believers. For explaining reality, science surpassed religion a long time ago.

I believe science fiction as a concept that emerged in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s proposed a central hypothesis. That humanity was destined to explore the solar system, the galaxy, and even the universe. Science fiction has proposed many possible concepts that may or may not exist or will exist, but space travel is its big idea.

I believe science fiction’s core belief is space is the final frontier, that space travel is humanity’s manifest destiny, and our existential purpose. I was a true believer in that assumption for most of my life. I now doubt it. I’m becoming an atheist to my chosen religion, science fiction.

If you study science, intergalactic travel will be almost impossible. And even the colonization of the solar system really isn’t practical or in the end, desirable. The claim that we need to get all our genetic eggs off one planet really isn’t practical either as we learn just how adapted humans are to Earth.

Science fiction also proposed another hypothesis, that we will build intelligent machines. That looks like it will be proven correct. And it’s obvious that intelligent machines are suited to explore the solar system and even the galaxy.

Like God and religion, there will always be believers because they’re beliefs that appeal to people. I think the Star Trek/Star Wars type believers will keep the space travel belief and the genre alive. However, I think science fiction’s core concept of humanity conquering space is dead for a growing number of once believers.

Where does that leave readers who love reading science fiction? It makes science fiction about zooming around the galaxy into fantasy, and people still love reading fantasy novels. There will always be simplex true believers who refuse to give up their belief in the final frontier, and there will be complex thinkers who argue the pros and cons. But for some, like people who have rejected God as the cause of reality, there are a growing number of people who consider science fiction about space travel dead.

Ever since the French revolution, the idea of creating a society rejecting God and religion has been considered. I think it’s time for the science fiction faithful to consider a future where humans never colonize the planets or go to the stars. I think it’s time to clean out many cherished science fictional concepts. Space travel and time travel appear to be dead or dying. We’ll probably make it to the Moon again, and even Mars, but we’ll discover that neither place is what science fiction promised. It won’t be a big adventure. Religion promised heaven, while science fiction promised the stars as a substitute. Neither will come true. Neither will be our existential purpose. Everywhere we can go in the solar system is just rocks existing in extremely harsh environments unsuitable for humans.

We need to ask: What can we do best in reality? More than likely that means staying on Earth. Ironically, we’re doing everything we can to make it uninhabitable for humans.

The other big hypothesis of science fiction is first contact with aliens. That might happen via SETI and observational astronomy.

The oldest science fictional concept is surviving an apocalypse. That’s a possibility. Science fiction has frequently explored the idea of civilization collapsing, or humans mutating. Since our species has a history of evolving, that’s a practical consideration.

Religion evolves and mutates. Science fiction will too. But I think the core concept of each has died. Religion and science fiction offer comforting beliefs to people who need them. But that doesn’t mean they are realistic or part of reality.

I don’t think most modern readers of science fiction consider it being anything other than entertainment. Hugo Gernsback, John W. Campbell, and Robert A. Heinlein didn’t think that. They believed science fiction was a kind of philosophy, an approach to understanding reality. That belief is dying out.

I feel like a Jesuit who rejects God and religion late in life.

James Wallace Harris, 7/20/24

The 55th anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the Moon

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“Another Word for Map is Faith” by Christopher Rowe

“Another Word for Map is Faith” by Christopher Rowe first appeared in the August 2006 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You can read it here and listen to it here. I’m not sure if I would call this story science fiction or fantasy, but it’s a “What if the power of faith in Jesus were real and scientists from different scientific disciplines were disciples” kind of story. The story attempts, I believe, to surprise us like “The Nine Billion Names of God” or “The Star” by Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip Jose Farmer’s “Sail On, Sail On.” However, the surprise was a letdown for me, yet the story does have a neat religious take on things.

“Another Word for Map is Faith” is about a young geography professor named Sandy and a group of her graduate students who are out in the field studying cartography. Their faith in Jesus tells them that Jesus wants geography to match the maps they have in old books. That is a neat metaphor for those who believe in the literal interpretation of The Bible.

Evidently, society has suffered some kind of collapse. It doesn’t seem to be from war or disease, in fact, it might be due to the balkanization of Christianity, where diverse groups feel that Jesus intended something different. I don’t know if “Another Word for Map is Faith” is an antireligious story, or just a religious idea expressed in a story.

This story is all about its speculative ideas with little characterization, setting, or worldbuilding. I wish Rowe had fleshed out the conflicts between the different believers in Jesus rather than depending on a surprise ending. I’m surprised our current society isn’t more segmented by what the faithful believe — just remember all the religious wars of history.

I wanted “Another Word for Map is Faith” to be more literary to make the story more valuable. The ideas are good, but the presentation isn’t strong enough to make it memorable. Contrast it with “Servants of the Map” by Andra Barrett. Unfortunately, I can’t link to that story to read online. However, you can use the “Read sample” feature at Amazon to read the first several pages to get an idea of how the writing differs from “Another Word for Map is Faith.”

Here are samples of how each story opens. First “Another Word for Map is Faith” and second “Servants of the Map.” Both stories are about surveyors in an exotic location. Both are concerned with maps. Both involve a mystery. Rowe’s prose is nice enough but lacks the richness of Barrett’s. Barrett has more concrete details, and that makes an enormous difference. I don’t mean to be too hard on Rowe. My main complaint about science fiction is it focuses too much on a science fictional idea and not enough on giving the story the texture of reality. Both stories are a kind of fantasy. However, Barrett makes her made up tale more realistic with the increased density of significant details.

I read this story because my science fiction short story group is going to discuss it soon. Unfortunately, “Another Word for Map is Faith” only reinforces my current dissatisfaction with science fiction. The story isn’t bad at all for what’s being published within the science fiction genre. It was anthologized in three of the best-of-the-year anthologies. But it is no match for literary work like “Servants of the Map.”

There is nothing wrong with science fiction, but if you only read science fiction and fantasy, you’ll miss the full spectrum of what fiction can produce.

James Wallace Harris, 7/15/24

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The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing

What would it be like to experience living through an emerging apocalyptic crisis? Forget about sinister aliens conquering the Earth, or silly zombie invasions, or even biker gangs running around in their skimpy S&M outfits. No, what would it be like if civilization collapsed, and you had to live in an emerging dark age? Reading The Memoirs of a Survivor by Doris Lessing will make you think about it.

It’s what the English call a cozy catastrophe. An unspecified crisis happens, and England slowly unravels. An unnamed narrator, of unspecified gender writes in their memoir about living through such an event. They eventually take in a twelve-year-old girl named Emily, and her pet named Hugo. Hugo is sometimes described as looking like a cat or dog, and it sometimes purrs and other times whimpers. Lessing likes to explore both gender and species identity.

The memoirs narrate two story threads. The more interesting of the two involves the narrator watching society fall apart while Emily grows up. The second thread is episodes in the narrator’s fantasy life, which might be called exploring inner space. This is a science fiction novel that was published in 1974, when Ursula K. Le Guin was becoming famous as a women science fiction writer. Lessing’s style is much different from other women writing science fiction in the 1970s. Imagine Virginia Woolf writing a post-apocalyptic novel.

Doris Lessing (1919-2013) was a British novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007. She also wrote several science-fiction novels, including the five-volume Canopus in Argos (1979-1983) series as well as The Memoirs of a Survivor. She was most famous for her novel The Golden Notebook (1962), which is considered a story of inner space written at the dawn of exploring outer space. Lessing was born in what’s now called Iran and grew up in what was called Rhodesia. She moved to England as a young woman, becoming a writer, and radical.

Lessing’s birth was one year before Isaac Asimov’s, so if she had been considered a science fiction writer, she would have been among the Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov generation. However, her science fiction reminds me of the Ballard-Brunner-Aldiss generation. The Memoirs of a Survivor came out in the era of the best-selling nonfiction books about threats to civilization: The Limits of Growth, The Population Bomb, Future Shock. Those same books inspired John Brunner’s novels Stand on Zanzibar, The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. The 1970s felt like a pre-apocalyptic time, like our 2020s.

The Memoirs of a Survivor is a very British post-apocalyptic novel, far cozier than American novels covering the same theme. American male writers like to imagine life after the apocalypse as a new wild west. American female writers picture things a good less violent but acknowledge our violent heritage. British writers of both genders often write about characters getting along after the collapse. Their novels do have violence, but it’s not all kill-or-be-kill. The Memoir of a Survivor has a small amount of violence, even some guns, but it’s very minimal.

The setting is a city where the lights and water still work, but the economy is coming undone, and refugees from other parts of the country that have totally collapsed, are streaming through on their way north. The unnamed narrator, presumably an older woman because of how she characterizes people and things, watches the slow unfolding of the collapse from her window. The story become more interesting when a man abandons Emily and Hugo to her care.

Lessing is rather ambiguous in The Memoirs of a Survivor. The gender of the narrator isn’t clear, but the narrator’s personality feels like an old woman. Emily is quite well-defined by the narrator, who spends most of her time observing her and Hugo. Lessing had taken in a young adolescent girl, Jenny Diski, for a while in her life, and I assume much of the novel comes from that experience. Although, Lessing had three children of her own, so she had plenty of experience observing children growing up.

There are two parallel stories within the novel. The one I liked best was about Emily, her growth, and her fascination with the hordes of young people streaming through the city. In the other thread, the narrator stares at a wall, and fantasizes about exploring other apartments in the city, where she cleans, repairs, and paints. Lessing has said this is an autobiography of dreams. I felt it was a metaphor for repairing society because the narrator is always trying to renovate the rooms. However, these fantasies are important for the ending.

What’s beautiful about The Memoirs of a Survivor is it describes the early days of an apocalypse. Young people are on the move, anxious to build a new society, while older people huddle in their houses and apartments, trying to maintain and remember the old society. Since I feel we’re in the early years of a slow decline, The Memoirs of a Survivor is an interesting read for our times. Sadly, this book isn’t well known. There’s no ebook or audiobook edition, although it’s still available in trade paper. I looked everywhere for an audiobook edition because the writing is lovely and serene. I wanted to hear this story, rather than read it because I prefer listening to literary writing.

The growth and transformation of Emily is described in psychological detail that is realistic for most young girls of any time. When Emily first saw the refugees, she desperately wanted to join them but felt rebuffed. She decided to make her own clothes, which the narrator and I felt was a way of creating her own identity. At first, her outfits sounded like something Stevie Nicks would have designed for the bedroom, witchy lingerie, but Emily never even wore them outside. Next, her designs seemed like Madonna’s outfits from the early 1980s. Finally, Emily designed something close to punk and grunge. Remember, this novel was written in the early seventies.

The story is noticeably quiet, and the details of Emily’s relationship with her pet, Hugo, are heart wrenching. Emily wants to run away with the young people but can’t go because she knows they will eat Hugo. Obviously, Hugo is her emotional anchor after losing her parents, but she’s moving into the boy-crazy years. Emily, and many of the city girls fall in love with the various young men who are the leaders of the various roving bands, and these young men take advantage of their attractive powers to create harems of little adoring girls. I wonder if that’s how things were in our cave dwelling days — all the young women wanting the alpha male.

Like I said, The Memoirs of a Survivor is not a Mad Max post-apocalypse. Lessing tells us some people have guns, but guns aren’t part of the story. When you read this story it’s not hard to think about people living in Haiti or Sudan, or the many other countries in the world with failing economies, decaying infrastructures, gangs, which send out hordes of refugees into countries with more civilization.

This novel will make you think about what you would do if things fell apart. What if the electricity stopped working and water stopped flowing from your taps? What would you do? Would you join a group marching north to better economies? Or would you hunker down, learning to live with less, giving up money to barter, accepting violence and mob rule? Would you learn how to grow food and make things?

The Memoirs of a Survivor is like Earth Abides by George R. Stewart in that it assumes the young will quickly invent new ways out of the old, while the youngest children, who were never educated, will become feral. Gerald, a young leader whom Emily loves, does everything he can to save these feral children. What would you do with them? Ish, in Earth Abides, had a tremendous insight into their future survival, but I think Lessing’s take was more cynical, and maybe realistic.

I doubt current generations of science fiction readers will find this novel very appealing. I think it’s becoming a forgotten novel. And I tend to feel Lessing is becoming a forgotten writer, even though her name continues to show up now and then, such as this recent piece “10 of the best Booker Prize-nominated books with a political slant” that includes Lessing’s novel, The Good Terrorist.

I would have rated The Memoirs of a Survivor 5-stars if it had only been about Emily and the collapse. The inner space sequences dragged the story down. However, if I reread this book in the future I might like those part better. For now, 4-stars.

James Wallace Harris, 7/8/24