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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

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“The Alley Man” by Philip José Farmer

I’ve been trying to lay off science fiction for a while, but I haven’t gone completely cold turkey. Every once in a while I’ll open an anthology and try reading a story to see if any are worth returning to my addiction. Time after time I’ve only found watery beer and went back to literary fiction and nonfiction. Today I read “The Alley Man” by Philip José Farmer. That story is pure SF heroin, you can shoot it up here.

“The Alley Man” is a masterpiece. What’s ironic is it may not even be science fiction or fantasy. Like most great fiction, it’s ambiguous. Old Man Paley may or may not be a Neanderthal. He may or may not be immortal. He is one ugly dude who lives in a shanty at a dump with two old women way past their prime. The June 1959 cover illustration of the story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is misleading. Paley only has one arm, having lost the other arm in an epic battle with Cro Magnon men, or a railroad accident.

“The Alley Man” is lovely character development and storytelling. The story has a prose density that most science fiction stories lack. There is great complexity in Old Man Paley. I remember reading this story decades ago, when I was a science fiction true believer, so I assumed Old Man Paley was immortal. But with this reading I realized that Farmer had something far more multiplex in mind. I consider “The Alley Man” on par with “Fondly Fahrenheit” by Alfred Bester, “Coming Attraction” by Fritz Leiber, and “The Moon Moth” by Jack Vance.

Why did I like this story so much, when so many other science fiction stories have been a disappointment to me? I really enjoyed the characterization and prose. But I also liked the fact it was set on Earth and in the present. Even though it was published in 1959, it still felt like it could have happened in 2024. It wasn’t about the future, space travel, aliens, or robots, which I feel are themes that have been over-explored in SF.

“The Alley Man” makes me want to read more short fiction by Philip José Farmer.

But for now, I’m going back to the short novel I was reading, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, a 1925 comic novel. I’m not ready to go back to a steady diet of science fiction just yet, but I will sample it from time to time.

I got the idea to read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes from this YouTuber.

James Wallace Harris, 7/3/24

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After London by Richard Jefferies

There are certain science fictional concepts that are worth a lifetime of contemplation. The apocalypse is one of the oldest. It often involves humanity facing a population collapse, usually along with the fall of civilization, and on rare occasions it explores the idea of the extinction of homo sapiens. Thinking about apocalypses is older than history, with God or gods usually being the cause, but since the Enlightenment we’ve speculated more often about nature destroying us and our societies, and in recent times, we’ve imagined self-destruction on a global level.

I’ve been wondering when the idea of humanity dying off and life marching on without us was first imagined. Humans have always been rather egocentric and assumed we were the crown of creation, and the center of the universe. But 20th century science fiction has sometimes pictured Earth without people. Maybe we’re replaced by mutants, post-humans, robots, intelligent animals, or even imagining life on Earth without sentience.

After London by Richard Jefferies was first published in 1885 that comes near to imagining life on Earth without us in its first five chapters. You can read After London online, download an ebook edition, or listen to an audiobook edition. After London is one of the earliest examples of a post-apocalyptic novel. Set in England hundreds of years after the collapse of civilization, it imagines nature and human society transformed.

Over the past few months, I’ve been reading books about the history of reading. I’m currently listening to Pamela by Samuel Richardson which was first published in 1740. It’s considered by some to be the first English novel. It was the first novel published in America, by Ben Franklin no less, in 1745. This study makes me want to study the earliest examples of science fiction and its major concepts.

The novel has evolved over the centuries, but also, what readers want from novels has evolved too. Before fiction was popular, reading religious texts was popular. Then came what might be called speculative moralizing, which blended storytelling with moral instruction. Eventually, writers and readers dropped most of the sermonizing, and went to straight storytelling.

However, there were writers who liked to speculate about society and the future, which often included philosophy and morality. Utopian novels became a vogue, especially in the 19th century. Some of these novels we’d call science fiction today, but that term didn’t exist when they were written. My theory is science fiction evolved out of certain kinds of fictional speculation in the 19th century.

Richard Jefferies (1848-1887) was a nature writer and novelist, who liked to focus on rural life, and had a bit of a mystic streak. He was also fascinated by catastrophes, which inspired After London. And I assume he read Charles Darwin. Jefferies didn’t like what industrialization was doing to nature so it might be obvious that he fantasized about a world without it. Jefferies could have read The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley or read earlier poetry on the subject, especially Le Dernier Homme by Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, or “Darkness” by Lord Byron.

I’d love to see a history of the idea of the last man on Earth. Even more, I’d love to see a history of speculation about life on Earth after humans are gone. If you know of any, leave a comment below.

Part I (chapters 1-5) of After London is called “The Relapse into Barbarism,” and is the most profound part of the novel. In this section Jefferies imagines what will happen to plant and animal life after the collapse of civilization. He comes close to describing a world without people, but ultimately brings in humanity so he can tell a traditional story. Part 1 is quite detailed about how nature will react when people leave.

By the thirtieth year there was not one single open place, the hills only excepted, where a man could walk, unless he followed the tracks of wild creatures or cut himself a path. The ditches, of course, had long since become full of leaves and dead branches, so that the water which should have run off down them stagnated, and presently spread out into the hollow places and by the corner of what had once been fields, forming marshes where the horsetails, flags, and sedges hid the water.

You can listen to more of this elegant description with the audiobook reading on YouTube:

The first part of After London reminded me of The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, a 2007 nonfiction work that imagined what life on Earth would be like if suddenly all humans disappeared. The book inspired three television series: Life After People, Aftermath: Population Zero, and The Future is Wild. All are available to watch on YouTube. Or read more from the book online.

“Part II: Wild England” is twenty-eight chapters that tell a story set in this future world. It’s about a young man named Sir Felix who goes on an adventure, allowing Jefferies to describe an aristocratic feudal society in a post-apocalyptic England. It’s a fun story, but not philosophically great. Felix is a nerdy guy in a macho society. However, chapters 22-24 have Felix exploring the remains of a decayed city from our civilization. Again, this has become a standard feature in modern post-apocalyptic science fiction. I assume this was inspired by 19th century explorations of ancient Egypt.

Descriptions of dead human or alien civilizations are among my favorite themes in science fiction. There’s something about walking through ancient dead cities that creates a profound sense of wonder in me. I believe that’s why “By the Waters of Babylon” (1937) by Stephen Vincent Benet was so evocative and why “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury is so beautiful. Of course, Bradbury was inspired by Sara Teasdale’s 1918 poem “There Will Come Soft Rain.” It was composed at the end of WWI and the beginning of the Spanish Flu.

“There Will Come Soft Rains”

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

I find it utterly serene to meditate on images of Earth without us, which is why I liked the beginning of After London so much, and why I love the book The World Without Us and all the documentaries made from it. If we self-destruct it will be our own fault, and I think we are in the process of doing away with ourselves. I doubt we will go extinct anytime soon, but I do think science fiction should imagine what we might become more realistically. We need more post-apocalyptic novels that moralize, philosophize, and instruct rather than use after-the-collapse settings for adventure stories.

When I was younger, I pictured humans spreading out across the galaxy. I realize that’s as naive as imagining we’ll all go to heaven or flying reindeer. We might get as far as Mars, but I doubt we’ll ever go further. I can imagine us creating a new sentient species of intelligent machines that will explore space. Machines are perfect for space, we’re not.

Richard Jefferies just couldn’t imagine Earth without people. He pictures us regressing to a feudal society. We can read After London and use Sir Felix as a stand in for modern man, or even the average science fiction fan trying to live in that new world. Poul Anderson often wrote about how he believes humanity couldn’t handle complex societies, and that feudal societies were about as complex as we could manage. We’re certainly heading there. It’s a shame we couldn’t build a sustainable global humanistic society.

Richard Jefferies pictures us falling back toward medieval England. If you look around the world right now, just examine what’s happening to the poor in failed states. That’s our future. It’s rather scary. You’d think we’d try to do more to avoid such a fate.

Like I said at the beginning of this essay, contemplating apocalypses is a worthwhile pursuit for a whole lifetime. It’s a shame we’ve turned contemplating the apocalypse into silly escapisms, such as imagining civilization being brought down by zombies, vampires, and sightless aliens. Sure, such stories are fun, but we’re all sitting in deck chairs on the Titanic, shouldn’t authors write stories about how to avoid icebergs? We don’t need to think about zombies getting us, but to live with extreme heat, killer storms, and economic collapses. (Just imagine the United States without home insurance.)

Before people started reading fiction, they read religious speculation that advocated moral living. The earliest forms of fiction included lessons in how to live properly. We might need to go back to that. In the early days of novels, some people wanted to ban frivolous storytelling for the same reason people wanted to keep kids from playing on smartphones. But having fun won out, and fiction jettisoned the instructive element. When I was young, I used to think it absurd that fiction could be considered bad for people. But getting old living in a self-destructive society, I’m changing my mind.

If you know of any science fiction stories that imagine life on Earth without humans leave a comment. Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men imagined several post human species. Many science fiction writers have imagined robots replacing us. Clifford Simak’s City uses conversations between intelligent dogs and robots to introduce stories about our species who is no longer on Earth.

Also, if you know of any histories of speculation about the end of the world or human extinction, let me know in the comments too.

James Wallace Harris, 6/22/24

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Taking a Vacation from Science Fiction

I’ve realized that I’ve been overindulging in science fiction, so I’ve decided to take a vacation from the genre. Science fiction has been a life-long addiction that I don’t think I can ever give up, but I do need to go into rehab for a while. I don’t know for how long.

I’ve read about fifteen hundred science fiction short stories in the last five years, and I feel like a kid who has snuck off with a whole bag of Oreos. To continue the comparison, science fiction is mostly dessert, and I need to fill up on some real food for a while.

I’m not sure how much I will be posting here in the coming months. I’ll probably still think about science fiction as a topic, and who knows, I might fall off the wagon from time to time.

I’ve been hoping to find a new kind of science fiction. Science fiction is geared to the young, and I’m getting old enough where I can’t pretend that I’m young anymore. I need to find science fiction aimed at people in their social security years. I’ve even thought about trying to write a science fiction novel that’s age appropriate for myself.

Looking back, I rediscovered science fiction in 2002 when I joined Audible.com. It became all too apparent I was reliving my youth by listening to all my favorite science fiction stories I read growing up. Then about five years ago I got into short science fiction and collecting old science fiction magazines and fanzines. Hell, I was then trying to relive my past.

In my youth, science fiction was about the future. Now in my old age, science fiction is about the past. But I’ve burnt out on nostalgia. Living in the 2020s, the future has become hyper-real. There’s too much going on. Reading old science fiction is like being an ostrich sticking its head in a hole in the ground. For years now I’ve been trying to find new science fiction that was relevant to now, but it’s just not there. Modern science fiction merely recycles old science fiction or recapitulates old science fiction. The genre really needs another New Wave.

I’ve thought about creating a taxonomy of science fiction themes and writing a history about how each theme has been rediscovered many times over the last two centuries. But I need some vacation time even before I consider that project.

I own over a thousand nonfiction and literary novels I haven’t read. That’s where I’m heading for my vacation. I’ll report on them at Auxiliary Memory blog.

Too much is happening in the real world right now. Strangely, life is more science fictional than science fiction. Between AI, a shakeup in cosmology, climate change, robots, space exploration, wars, fascism, sexual revolutions, and many possible apocalyptic scenarios, who needs to read science fiction anymore?

Things are about to get heavy in the next few decades. I’m guessing science fiction and fantasy are so damn popular right now because they are a great hideout from reality.

James Wallace Harris, 6/19/24