Science Fiction and Dystopia-Part Two

Science fiction, being a fantasy, is by definition escapist. Fans would probably prefer that real life not intrude upon their fantasies. They would rather escape. Nonetheless, reality intrudes, especially in the form of politics. Why is that?

There are two kinds of people in the world, those for whom everything is political and those for whom only political things are political. People in the second group can get along pretty well without giving much thought to politics. People in the first group on the other hand have to insert politics into everything. Their sense of outrage requires them to act, and by acting, impose their will upon everyone around them. They are the kind of people C.S. Lewis called moral busybodies, what we might as well call progressives. They simply cannot rest. They simply cannot leave things alone. The things they can't leave alone include science fiction.

As a fantasy about the future, science fiction has a built-in flaw, i.e., its tendency to become politicized. Left alone, science fiction is escapist fun, or, at the other extreme, big, ambitious, and thought-provoking. But science fiction won't be left alone for as long as there are moral busybodies at work, for they have carved out an exclusive claim to the future. The future once belonged to everyone equally, including writers and readers of science fiction. Now the future belongs only to progressives. If you don't agree with them, you are on the wrong side of history and will be banished from participation in the future. If that requires only your silence, good. If your silence comes only with your being eliminated, well, these things are sometimes necessary. It's as though the future has become simply an extension of history, and because history is known, the future can be known as well. And because history has become a science, explicable by materialist methods, the history of the future is predictable and controllable. It is a simple unwinding. (1)

The idea of history as a science seems to have come from Marx, whose philosophies have been relabeled as scientific socialism, dialectical materialism, and historical materialism. The idea that the future, as an extension of history, can be predicted by scientific means may have entered science fiction by way of Isaac Asimov, who was, incidentally, a materialist. The economist Paul Krugman, a progressive if there ever was one, was inspired by Asimov and his concept of psychohistory from the Foundation series. Here's a quote from "The Deflationist: How Paul Krugman Found Politics" by Larissa Macfarquhar from The New Yorker, March 1, 2010: 

Krugman explained that he'd become an economist because of science fiction. When he was a boy, he'd read Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" trilogy and become obsessed with the central character, Hari Seldon. Seldon was a "psychohistorian"--a scientist with such a precise understanding of the mechanics of society that he could predict the course of events thousands of years into the future and save mankind from centuries of barbarism. He couldn't predict individual behavior--that was too hard--but it didn't matter, because history was determined not by individuals but by laws and hidden forces. [Emphasis added.]

Note the dismissal of the individual, the materialist and collectivist "understanding of the mechanics of society," and the belief in "laws and hidden forces." I'll call on C.S. Lewis once again:

I have great hopes [writes the demon Screwtape] that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect, a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the Enemy [i.e., God]. . . . If once we can produce our perfect work--the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls "Forces" while denying the existence of "spirits"--then the end of the war will be in sight. (Ch. VII)

Note the use of the word forces in both quotes. Same word, same meaning.

Like Isaac Asimov, C.S. Lewis wrote science fiction (or science fantasy). Unlike Asimov and Marx, he was a man of faith. Unlike Paul Krugman, he was a conservative. Here is his take on the future, all from The Screwtape Letters (1942) and all in words of advice given by the demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood, who is trying to win over his human "patient":

Don't waste time trying to make him think materialism is true! Make him think it is strong or stark or courageous--that it is the philosophy of the future. That's the sort of thing he cares about. (Ch. I)

[W]e want a man hagridden by the Future--haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth--ready to break the Enemy's [i.e., God's] commands in the present if by doing so we make him think he can attain one or avert the other. . . . (Ch. XV)

We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now . . . . (Ch. XV)

Of a proposed course of action He [i.e., the Enemy, God] wants men, so far as I can see, to ask very simple questions: Is it righteous? Is it prudent? Is it possible? Now, if we can keep men asking: "Is it in accordance with the general movement of our time? Is it progressive or reactionary? Is this the way History is going?" (2) they will neglect the relevant questions. (Ch. XXV)

We have trained them [i.e., men] to think of the future as a promised land which favored heroes attain--not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. (Ch. XXV)

Here, then, is the Progressive, a materialist, "a man hagridden by the Future," one who believes that history is an unalterable force that merely extends into the future, one who believes that the future is attainable only by "favored heroes." His program is twofold. First, to prevent what he believes to be hell on earth by preventing people from being free and therefore some from being unhappy. (The disorder of freedom is a hated condition to the Progressive.) Second, to bring about his vision of heaven on earth, a utopia of perfect order and perfect happiness. Utopia, another word for Dystopia, requires perfect order because without perfect order, people will remain free and imperfect, thus human. In the mind of the Progressive, the future belongs only to him and shall be by his command Utopia. Because science fiction is about the future, it, too, must be utopian, belongs only to the Progressive, and must be made under his command.

To be continued . . .

Notes

(1) Our current president--Paul Krugman, too--likes to use that phrase, "on the wrong side of history," as if he and his coreligionists know the difference between right and wrong, as if they and they alone are capable of seeing how history unfolds. Here is another of the  president's claims to the future: In 2012 he issued a fatwa by pronouncing, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam." That one paid off earlier this year with the slaughter of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists. Now, from Charlie Hebdo, there is silence.
(2) In other words, "Is it on the right side of history?"

Copyright 2015, 2023 Terence E. Hanley