SF, Myths and Fairy Tales

I have been captivated by imaginary worlds, but I couldn't find a lot of them in theFrench literature. I thought it could be for several reasons: either because my knowledge of the field is too shallow, or my definition of imaginary worlds isn’t adequate, or really they aren’t there, and I couldn’t help trying to put forward some hypothesis for an explanation.

My knowledge of the field
Difficult to assess your own knowledge, isn't it? I can only say that I have been reading SF novels for more than 40 years. But, as everybody knows, if you begin a moron you remain a moron. So I will let down this topic...

A question of definition

First I had to refine the definition of an imaginary world. For centuries there have been two fields dealing with such subjects, first the religious and mythic one, and second the fantasy or fairy one. These two fields were often intertwined but nevertheless different. If I look at such a religious book as The Apocalypse, I will find a striking imaginary world, and if I search among the myths of creation like The Myth of Gilgamesh, the Rg-Veda, The Genesis, or even the Popol Vuh, the Mayan book of origins, I find they share some of the same material. I will find it also in the fairytales, from the Arabic Thousand and One Tales to the Fairy Tales from the French Charles Perrault or the tales from the Grimm Brothers.

Why didn’t we take those works into account when searching with my son for some examples in the French literature? Because they didn’t appear to belong to the same literary current.


SF and Fairy Tales

First, I think the main difference between the fairy worlds and the world described in, say, Dune, lies in the effort of the author to create a coherent, self consistent whole and not merely a figment of the imagination. Obviously the difference has something to do with the introduction of technology, where the marvels described are not the fruit of some magic but of understandable forces or tools. In Dune, the rigors of the climate of the dry bleak world of Arrakis have repercussions upon all levels of existence, and Herbert gives such attention to details that we could make a precise ecological study of that world. We could say the same for Tolkien’s universe for which such a study has been effectively conducted. On the other hand, Charles Perrault or the Grimm brothers didn’t bother to describe in detail the world in which they put their characters. Therefore it could be that the fairytales haven’t the same logical consistency as the SF worlds.

It occurred to me, reading again parts of a book I purchased more than twenty years ago, Cosmos, from Carl Sagan, that there is another difference between SF and fairy imaginary worlds: the first are generally as large as planet-sized systems or more, while the last are only places without definite boundaries. For most people up to some centuries ago, the whole known universe was limited to Earth, – or a limited portion of it – and that the word “world” was mainly used to point at any enclosed system; we retain today the same sense when we are speaking about the world of sport, of the media… Whereas in Science Fiction novels, the name “world” generally applies to a whole planet or to a system of planets.

SF and Mythology
So far I have dealt with fairytales, but it’s a bit more difficult to make any difference with the religious or mythological worlds. As a matter of fact, the two arguments I found to differentiate fairytales from SF imaginary universes don’t apply there:  
- These mythic universes are often coherent ones; they result from centuries of trials by men to explain the world as it appears to be.
- Their scale is also a cosmic one, dealing with the origin and the end of the universe.

Thus I reasoned that between the great myths and Science-Fiction, perhaps there is only a difference in degree. I think of Miriam Allen deFord’s word: “Science Fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities.” So, in Science Fiction the worlds are built, and we can always find (or believe there are) material reasons explaining why they are thus and not differently cast; whereas in fantasy, and also in mythology, they are simply imagined or dreamed, and if there are any tentative explanations, they deal with powers you have to believe in without being able to understand them. Mythology and religion appeal to faith, SF appeals to reason – within limits.