"What if...?"

In my opinion, one of the most interesting points in SF – here I mean hard SF and not Fantasy – is its capacity to ask questions about our universe and try to reply through reasonable and somewhat logical, if not possible, answers. Numerous SF authors build their stories by answering the question “What if…?”

Of course, all sorts of literature can ask good questions and answer them; but it seems to me that SF authors have special avenues of freedom to do so, for several reasons.

The first reason is that in a conventional novel, you are severely limited by natural boundaries: the story takes place in such country at such an epoch. The plot is set in a place and time which will influence the behavior of the characters if there is to be some consistency in the story. Even when place and time are not explicitly defined, the reader is generally able to infer them. On the other hand, if the action takes place not only far away on earth, but somewhere else in the universe, and in a distant past or future, those boundaries are not so strict.

You might retort that the legends and fairy tales or the fantasy novels have a lot of freedom, and probably more than SF novels. True, but the questions they ask and the answers given are not driven by logic. To take an example, in the One Thousand and One Nights stories, people use flying carpets. In Dan Simmons’ Hyperion SF novels, flying carpets are also used, on a world called Maui-Covenant; but they are called hawking mats and we understand that they use some antigravity principle through flight threads embedded in the carpet fabric, which can be charged with a battery. And that little explanation makes all the difference between the legend where the flying carper is just magic, and the SF story where the author suggests there is some technology based upon physical principles.

To go further, it is interesting to note that someone like the internationally acclaimed physicist Dr Michio Kaku studied the physical possibility of such feats as using time machines, travelling faster than light, becoming invisible and other “impossible” actions described in SF stories. He ended his study by dividing the “impossible” into three categories. In the class I impossibilities, he grouped technologies that are impossible today but that do not violate the known laws of physics; thus they might be possible within the next centuries. They include teleportation, antimatter engines, some forms of telepathy, psychokinesis and invisibility. In the class II, he includes technologies that sit “at the very edge of our understanding”: they would be possible in a matter of thousands of years and include such things as time machines, hyperspace travel or use of wormholes. In the class III he groups the technologies that violate the known laws of physics. Do you believe it? He found there are very few such impossibilities in that class.

Coming back to our matter, we thus are able to affirm that the majority of the impossible technologies described in our SF stories could be realized by science some future day.

The second reason – and to me it is a very exciting one – is that it is easier to criticize or simply evaluate a given state of affairs from a distance rather than from the heart of it. You can experiment it when you are in the heat of an exchange with, say, your step mother: you may have difficulties to completely understand her point of view. Throughout history, a fair number of satirists have used circuitous means to criticize their society or environment without suffering the leaders’ wrath and censure. Even in our more tolerant societies we are bent by non-written laws to keep more or less politically correct statements. But in SF, by setting his plot on a faraway world in an unimaginable future, the writer increases dramatically his possibilities to question all kinds of human behaviors and societies without being too worried. Thus, viewed from remote, through the eyes of aliens or machines, he or she can more easily question not only matters such as political systems or social behaviors, but details we are not even conscious of in the course of our day-to-day habits, details that weave our very ways of life. In this sense, SF may approach the philosopher's questioning way, and for me this is highly interesting. Of course that kind of strategy has been used for centuries, for instance in Gulliver'sTravels, which could be viewed as some pre-SF novel. 

Third – and that is rather specific to the SF field – the writer is free to study the dynamics of the situation as it unrolls during any length of time: in SF, periods spread upon many thousands or millions or even billions of years are not uncommon. In our society, where the vast majority of the problems we deal with are only considered in the short term – decades at most – SF can offer speculation about the very long term and ask ultimate questions such as: why we humans are there? Where did we come from? What will become of the human species and its environment in a thousand years? In a million years? What will become of our universe? Is this universe the only one in existence? And so on…

But – and that is a huge difference between (hard) SF and legendary stories – there is always to be some consistency in the unrolling of the situation and its consequences. 

Bibliography

Michio KAKU: Physics of the Impossible - A scientific exploration of the world of phasers, force fields, teleportation and time travel.Penguin Books, 2008 - London (329 pages)

Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group - New York

SF: Action, Science and Technology

“At the core of SF lies the experience of science” (Gregory Benford)

Hard SF is indeed a special branch of literature and it seems to be attached to some specific beliefs.

First, SF is from its beginning firmly anchored to a strong belief in science and technology: the soaring of SF matched the industrial development of the occidental countries. It is no coincidence that the pioneers of the genre, like H. G. Wells, wrote their books while the burgeoning industrialization was advancing at a fast pace. And nowadays, as ecological problems are rising and science is sometime regarded defiantly, more and more SF fans are turning toward Fantasy, a subgenre that uses more magic than science and dwells in some nostalgia of the past.

Second, SF wants to deal with worlds which are not metaphors in the first place, but real things. The described universe has to be realistic, so the reader can say: “If I could go to that planet, to that star, things would be indeed like that.” SF stands firmly upon empirical grounds, it deals with something to be done, to realize: it deals more with action than with dreams – even if this action represents often the fulfillment of a dream.

Thinking about these two premises, it occurred to me that the Anglo-Saxon world seems to be more attuned to action than the Latin one. In a sense that seems strange, because these countries were heavily influenced by the Roman who were rather men of action, as opposed to the Greek who provided the best philosophers, poets and artists. But the influence of Greek culture around the Mediterranean Sea was probably heavier than the Latin’s one. We can see the difference between Latin and Anglo-Saxon way of thinking emerging centuries ago, during the Middle-Age. For example, Northern Europe referred to written language whereas Southern Europe preferred the oral one. If I take the history of France as an example, there was the quarrel between Oil language in the North and Oc language in the South. The Langue d’Oc was the tongue of the ballades used by minstrels and troubadours who went from castle to castle singing songs and poems. It is said that eventually the Oil officially won, but I wonder if at heart the French people did not remain romantic troubadours thinking in Oc and dreaming of the good old times… In any case, that is the way most people see them nowadays, isn’t it?

In my opinion, SF has something to do with utilitarianism, which was an English idea invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1781, and then this philosophy was developed by John Stuart Mill. But Bentham himself was inspired by two empiricist philosophers: David Hume and John Locke. Hume, who wrote A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739, strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. John Locke, known as the Father of Liberalism, wrote Questions Concerning the Law of Nature toward 1664.

The fact that these ideas are somewhat far from the main philosophical currents in Southern Europe could explain why the seeds of SF could find a rich ground in the Anglo-Saxon literary soil and grew quickly there, while they vegetated poorly in the Latin countries.

Why SF emerged in some countries and not in others?

SF and Romanticism

So I found something of a frontier between fairy, mythical worlds and science-fiction imaginary worlds – in all this reasoning, I mean “Hard” SF of course. Then I asked myself, why couldn’t we find more French imaginary worlds? Why literary circles, and especially French ones, despise so much Science Fiction, while American people love it? What amazed me was that despite French people are taken as imaginative and creative and that a lot of French literature is based on imagination, you can’t find more than a handful of works dealing with imaginary worlds. I hadn’t any answer to those questions at the time.

Thinking about that, I found that Brian Aldiss made an interesting assumption: that the SF is a sub-genre of the Gothic mode, itself a branch of the Romantic Movement. Another Gothic sub-genre is the Western, used mainly through another medium, as movies. The two sub-genres are dealing with adventures where the individual is faced to unknown places and beings and where issues like individual freedom vs. law and order are often in the background. But SF adds a new exciting bit of its own: it brings the reader to face fears generated by change and the technological advances, which is not exactly true with the Western movies.

Old and New Countries

This parenthood can help to explain the success of SF in the American literature and also, to a certain extent, in the Russian one. And in the meantime, that could explain also why there would be so few attempts at describing completely new worlds in the Latin countries such as France but also Spain or Italy. In these old countries, all the territory has been known for millenaries and there have been no real pioneers for centuries. People are installed and don’t search for new territories to be explored and conquered.

One day I was jogging in a forest near Paris and I encountered a man who was wandering with a metal detector, searching for metal objects. We discussed a moment, and he told me that everywhere you went in France, the soil was littered by all sorts of objects down to one, two or three meters (ten feet) deep, dating from the last 5,000 years or so… He opened his bag and showed me a coin from the epoch of Napoleon III, 140 years ago, and then a copper pin dating from the Middle-Age: that is nearly 1,000 years ago. He added that this region around Paris had been so much visited that there remained almost nothing, but when he searched deep in the country, far from the big cities, he found a lot more interesting objects, such as Roman coins, more than 2,000 years old... Thus I realized concretely that in the old European countries, there is not any place where you couldn’t trace some occupation which occurred in the past thousands of years.

But that doesn’t explain why there are a lot of good British SF authors, beginning with H.G Wells and even before – the modern ones Iain M. Banks or Peter F. Hamilton are fairly talented – since their land has been occupied for nearly as long as continental Europe? There must be another factor explaining the emergence of SF; so I asked myself: what is this unknown factor? If it works for England, it must work elsewhere also.

Sources: Brian Aldiss & David Wingrove: Trillion Year Spree, The History of Science Fiction, 1973, ed. Grafton Books, coll. Paladin. 

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.

SF in different countries

Some years ago I had a phone call from one of my sons, Benoit, about his memoir for his master’s degree, which was to be in the compared literature field. So he had thought of dealing with the imaginary worlds in the American and French literature. By imaginary worlds he meant worlds built by the author from scratch, and not a mere description of another epoch or of an unknown continent. Of course, we are there in the science-fiction domain, and since he knows I am a SF fan, he asked me to help him, especially by giving him names of French works answering his criteria, when he had already plenty of American works to choose. So I told him I would think about that and answer him the next evening.

But as I searched among what I know of French literature, I discovered that it was very hard to find a mere ten novels that would match Benoit’s criteria. There are scarcely examples of French authors who created an entire world with a different set of rules, whereas you can find a lot of examples in the English literature and many more yet in the US one. In the French classical literary realm, I searched hard to find three stories: Gargantua from Rabelais – the story of the adventures of a giant, written in 1534, nearly two centuries before Gulliver’s Travels –, Voyages dans la Lune (Travels to the Moon) from Cyrano de Bergerac, written in 1657, and Micromegas from Voltaire, written in 1752. And watching closely those imaginary worlds, I found the first universe was a simple copy of our own, and the two others were short stories where the dramatis personae are just pretexts to allow a strong critic of our social habits. Even in Jules Vernes’ novels I could not really find something like an entirely different world. The adventures of his heroes take place in the world of his time without any significant modification, except perhaps Voyage to the Centre of Earth, which depicts an underworld very similar to the earth one hundred million years ago. Using Brian Aldiss’ words, I would say that these stories are more transpositions of reality than fantasies. Scanning the twentieth century, I remembered only two or three French modern novels, such as Rosny Aîné’s two excellent stories: “La mort de la terre” (Death of the World) and Xipehuz, written around 1910, the latter being one of the finest descriptions of aliens I ever found; but unfortunately it is only a very short story; I thought also of René Barjavel’s La nuit des temps, (The Night of Times) which Benoit chose finally.

On the other hand, the English spoken literature displays a huge number of authors –mostly American, but some new good English authors as well – who tried to invent new worlds. Among the old classics, I can think for instance about the worlds created in Bishop Francis Godwin’s Man in the Moone (1638), Margaret Cavendish’s The Description of a New World called the Blazing World (1666) or Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1721). Or, in a more inward sense, I could cite Mary Shelley’s Frankestein (1818) and the tales from Edgar Allan Poe (between 1832 and 1845). Nearer us in time, to find an imaginary world I can search into H. G. Wells’ novels such as The Time machine (1895) or, in a lesser extent, into Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1931). I could add Olaf Stapledon’s powerful works of imagination such as First and Last Men (1932) or Star Maker (1937).

And in the modern era, there are hundreds of novels dealing with imaginary worlds; just from memory I can cite Franck Herbert’s Dune, Arthur Clarke’s Rama series, Larry Niven’s Ringworld, Smoke Ring or Mote series, Dan Simmons’ Hyperion series, David Brin’s Uplift series, Greg Bear’s Eon, its prequel Legacy and it sequel Infinity, J.J. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring series, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series or Robert Forward’s Dragon’s Egg and so on…

Thinking about S-F

From where do we come? And where are we going?

To these fundamental questions, Sci-Fi novels have their own answers and that is why I read them with concern. Through the more or less sophisticated stories laid by the author, you often find a quest of an absolute or an elsewhere that today’s science or technology cannot offer. Since less people turn to religion to answer such questions, S-F has its place. And the questions are all the more forthrightly studied that the plots are taking place farther in the future and farther away from here and now. Then the author can afford a freedom he wouldn’t dare to use in classical settings.

It seems to me that a Sci-Fi novel can often show, perhaps more than in other types of novels, its author’s deep ideology and models, because his freedom to express his fantasies without being constrained – or being less constrained – by realistic rules or even literary standards. To take an example in the political field, the liberal economic system is blazingly apparent in a number of novels, even when the set-up is put into an advanced alien civilization. In my opinion, that is simply because the American capitalistic system seems to be the best economic system to some Sci-Fi authors.

Well, I don’t want here to discuss the compared merits of capitalism against socialism or whatever the socioeconomic system can be; my point is that we humans have a very biased view of reality, strongly colored by our historical, economic and social environment. And, ironically enough, that bias shows rather more when you are describing an alien society supposed to be very advanced. Some authors are very explicit about that - I think for instance about Larry Niven, who discusses why he chose such and such type of society in his novels – meanwhile other authors are probably less conscious of it. I much enjoyed E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen adventures, but couldn’t help smiling at the naiveté of his descriptions of civilizations and characters, that copied the American society of his time. 

How I Discovered Sci-Fi

I think I began to read science-fiction books at the age of ten – my elder sister was a Sci-Fi fan and did read the French magazine “Fiction” in which were edited mainly translations of American SF short stories, and excerpts of some larger novels from time to time. Thus I remember being captivated by Brian Aldiss’ novel Hothouse that I did read spread on the carpet in our living-room.

And I began to read the stories in English before the age of fourteen through special circumstances. Let me explain the story: as a French boy, I happened to be a boarder in a private religious school, which was managed by a congregation named the Brothers of Christian Schools. In the evening after the lessons and also after dinner, we had long hours of study in a large study room, watched by an overseer who walked between the rows of desks, ensuring that we did “real work”. That is, we were to be learning something or writing, but reading ordinary books was forbidden; we were there to study our lessons and not to do idle things such as reading novels.

It happens that I was rather quick as a boy – I am speaking about that time, because now I wonder… – and generally I had completed my work before the end of the allotted study time; therefore I had nothing to do during these long evenings sessions. And I was eager to read anything rather than waiting for the time to pass, so I devised a stratagem: I began to borrow English books from the school’s library. The first time the overseer saw me reading a book, he told me severely:    
-“You, there! Give me this book you are reading! Don’t you know it is forbidden?”       
-“But, sir…”  
-“No but. Give me that!”      
I handed him the book. It was one of these abridged books that use a limited number of words: by this time, having begun my English courses less than two years before, I was not able to read a true book yet. I am not completely sure of my memory, but it may have been an abridged version of David Copperfield or some other tale from Dickens. When he saw the title, the overseer opened the book to be sure, and then handed it back to me.            
-“OK, you can go on” and he resumed his tour.

I understood he couldn’t read properly English; and thus, from that day on, I had the freedom to read as many books I wanted, provided they would be not written in French! Spurred by my desire to read, I made quick progress in English, and at the end of the year I could bring in true English books. That is how I began to read original American and English Sci-Fi novels, and not their French translation. After a year or two, I realized the translations were often made in haste and not very well done – except for the major pieces of work – thus I decided to always read the books in their original language, provided of course I could understand it!