Science Friction

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

It all started with a letter, dated December 1943, that began, “I wish to disagree, somewhat violently, with you over a passage on page 43 of Perelandra .” The writer was Arthur C. Clarke, later to be renowned as the author of the science-fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey , and the recipient was C. S. Lewis, the premier Christian apologist of the time.

Clarke felt that Lewis’ description of Professor Weston, the villain of Perelandra , cast an unfair light on science-fiction enthusiasts and space-travel advocates. “I can assure you from personal experiences that most devotees of science fiction are biased far more towards pacifism than militarism,” he wrote. “I believe that astronautics more than any other single development will accelerate the coming of age of our species. National rivalries . . . will finally appear in their proper perspective when they can be seen against the background of the stars.”

In a later age of intercontinental missiles and spy satellites, it is hard not to smile at the naivete of these sentiments. Even in the 1940s, within a year of Clarke’s letter, England and Antwerp were bombarded by V-2 missiles, the creations of fellow space enthusiasts in Germany. Although Clarke tried to distance himself from the “stories of interplanetary imperialism and destruction” that are “the stock in trade of the hack writer,” he did not seem to grasp the real root of Lewis’ concern. The problem was not merely the extension of warfare and its exploitation on an interplanetary scale. It was also the science-fiction claim that mankind itself—fallen and corrupt, as Lewis knew—should be imagined as extending across the cosmos.

This was neither the first nor the last time that religion and science—or, more properly, scientism , the mystical and literary celebration of science—have squared off, with science fiction as the battleground. Again and again, in the history of the genre of science fiction, religious themes have been examined, debated, proposed, and pilloried. On one level, this seems counterintuitive: Surely science fiction should concern itself with science . Yet over and over again, we find science-fiction stories dealing with themes implicitly or explicitly religious.

In a 2009 article in City Journal , Benjamin Plotinsky suggested that writers turned to religion—and specifically to Christianity—for metaphors when the collapse of the Soviet Union made political themes seem less immediately relevant than they had been. There may be something to this, even though Plotinsky undermines his own thesis by predicting that religious themes will not be abandoned, even as the war on terror provides a new political focus.

Meanwhile, in another article on the topic, this time in Christianity Today , James Herrick claimed that, in the spate of religious science fiction over the last few years, readers get “a taste of transcendence without the moral accountability or costly interpersonal commitments of a church.” This is a narrow judgment. Even before C. S. Lewis wrote, some of the best science fiction was being written and read by individuals deeply committed to their faith. An anti-utopian vision is as common as a utopian vision in science fiction, and a strong strain of suspicion of science runs through the entire genre. Many stories have promised that science would deliver what has been only hazily promised by religion. But many, many other stories have warned against the dangers of such hubris.

This conversation spans decades, and it began in the pulp magazines long before it found its way into the prestigious science journals. Well-written science fiction with religious themes has always found an audience. Arthur C. Clarke’s own 1956 story “The Star” (in which a Jesuit starship crewman learns that the star of Bethlehem was a nova that destroyed an advanced civilization), James Blish’s 1959 A Case of Conscience (in which Fr. Ruiz-Sanchez is confronted by the Lithians, a race with no concept of God, sin, or the afterlife), and Walter M. Miller’s 1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz (in which monks preserve civilization after nuclear war) all won Hugos, the best-of-the-year awards in science fiction.

One may wonder why so many of these stories deal with the Catholic Church. Blish himself raised that question in his essay “Cathedrals in Space.” His explanation—that all of them express “a common chiliastic panic, so that the choice of the most complex, best organized, and oldest body of Christian dogma as an intellectual background is only natural”—isn’t quite convincing. Simpler is the old line that the Catholic Church is the only church that always seems to be The Church. For that matter, Catholicism tends to be more visually interesting and dramatic than most other forms of Christianity. Putting a priest in full regalia on the cover of a book with an enigmatic alien is just more intriguing than showing a Baptist minister in a three-piece suit.

Some, like H. L. Gold, editor of Galaxy Magazine , disliked these themes. He told Blish that he would take the short-story version of A Case of Conscience only if “there’s some way we can get rid of this religious jazz—I run a family magazine.” That was, in fact, the typical response of genre science fiction until about 1950, when Blish and others began pushing the boundaries.

Another way around the discomfort that editors felt was to treat religion in a sociological manner, as a means of controlling large populations. This avoided the necessity of determining whether the theological underpinnings of a given faith were valid. In fact, the default presumption was that all creeds are shams. This agreed with what the readers knew, or thought they knew, from history. The Inquisition, Calvin’s Geneva, and the Salem witch trials showed—as readers were congratulated for knowing—that religion enforces obedience and conformity through superstition and fear.

These historical models were, for many years, fairly common templates for future terrestrial or extraterrestrial societies. Thus, there were stories like Robert A. Heinlein’s “If This Goes On—,” about a rebellion against a tyrannical church that has taken over America. The Bene Gesserit in Frank Herbert’s Dune might look like an order of nuns, but their purpose is neither good works nor mystical contemplation. Instead, they use mélange-enhanced mental powers and artificial myths and prophecies to further their centuries-long scientific breeding program. Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is feminist science fiction describing a United States where women are oppressed by a rigid theocracy.

A third standard approach was satire, in which all social conventions are considered arbitrary. Thus you could have societies where nudity is conventional ( The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov) and eating in public is taboo (Mack Reynolds’ “Speakeasy”). In this approach, religion often was portrayed as especially arbitrary. In Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle’s Inferno , a deceased science-fiction writer named Allen Carpenter finds himself in the hell described by Dante. A demon has just pointed out one of the damned who “founded a religion that masks as a form of lay psychiatry.” Carpenter naturally objects to being put in the same class, insisting that he was just a writer:

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Dante Meets Vatican II in Sci-Fi Hell

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:32:00 -0400

“Hard s-f” is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes scientific accuracy. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are two of its most successful practitioners. In 1976 they teamed up to write Inferno , a novel that might be characterized as hard fantasy. The premise was simple. Allen Carpenter falls out of an eighth-story window and wakes up in the Hell described by Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy . Carpenter, a modern agnostic and science-fiction writer who wrote under the name Carpentier, tries to convince himself that he has been resuscitated thousands of years in the future by advanced technology. Eventually, however, he is forced to conclude that his revival is due to the supernatural rather than super science. This sets up the main question of the novel: If Dante’s description of Hell was literal and precise, what is the purpose of Hell, and what does the existence of Hell say about a God described as compassionate and forgiving?

As Dante was guided through Hell by Virgil, so Carpenter is given his own Italian guide, a somewhat mysterious man known only as Benito. Benito informs Carpenter that there is an exit from Hell, but, just as in Dante’s telling, one first must pass through into Hell’s deepest level.

Like its model, the Niven-Pournelle Inferno is in part a cultural travelogue in which Carpenter and the reader get to meet the famous and ponder their fates. Carpenter runs into Billy the Kid, Henry VIII, and Vlad the Impaler, the real life Dracula. He witnesses the punishment of corrupt environmentalists and real estate developers. And, as in Dante’s version, we occasionally hear the sound of personal axes grinding. Kurt Vonnegut may have a tomb complete with blinking neon SO IT GOES sign because he made up false religions, but it is clear that Niven and Pournelle put him in the sixth circle for different reasons.

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Science Friction

Dante Meets Vatican II in Sci-Fi Hell