Kevin Ahearn writes about...

Travesties of Science Fiction

Bewildering Stories :

In stating that the Korean scientist who purposely faked cloning research should be awarded both the Nebula and Hugo, I was dead serious [“2005 SF Awards,” in issue 181].

Science fiction is a lie and always has been. Shelley, Verne, Wells, Orwell and Stevenson told incredible lies to reveal indelible truths. The bigger the lie, the greater the truth, the better the science fiction. Or so it used to be.

Before the smoke and ash of 9/11 had settled, a tale of “Weapons of Mass Destruction” was told, backed by reams of scientific data. The Congress and the American people bought it. Whether or not the current administration purposely concocted a lie to get us into war will be argued by historians for years to come, but thousands of dead later, these is no doubt that the Iraqi nuclear/chemical/biological threat was science fiction.

But Washington’s novel propaganda was just for openers. In churches, courtrooms and classrooms across America, “Intelligent Design” arose to take on Darwinian evolution in a battle to decide the education of our children.

Is the universe so complex that it had to be the “design” of a higher power? This is a question of faith often partnered with religious belief, yet dozens of books, written by highly qualified scientists, have been published with dozens more to come containing definitive proof that Darwin was wrong: Man was NOT the result of countless mutations over billions of years, but “designed” by an “intelligent” cosmic power.

Yes, these scientists have proof, as if the creation of the cosmos was a “third rate burglary” with fingerprints left everywhere for all to see.

Show me a sf novel that can stand tall next to such an incredible lie. Or is this science fiction an indelible truth?

Alternate history, once an sf staple, is now going international. Iran is scheduling a conference this year to “research the topic of the Holocaust and all its dimensions in the future.” At the behest Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who said in a speech, “They [the West] have invented a myth that Jews were massacred, and place this above God, religions and the prophets” and sponsored by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and the Organization of the Islamic Conference “and in consultation with other countries to pursue this issue” that the Nazi “Final Solution” was science fiction.

Gee, is the Ku Klux Klan waiting in the wings, with scientific documentation proving that slavery never happened? Yeah! Africans invaded this country wearing chains (A clever disguise!) and have been plotting secretly for more than three centuries to overthrow White America.

Native Americans were never mistreated by European invaders. The tribal chiefs conspired to have their people slaughtered and swindled. A small price to pay in exchange for the casino rights later on. Scientific proof is on its way.

And you thought sf appeared only as books, movies and short stories? Welcome to the New Millennium.

Kevin Ahearn

Copyright © 2006 by Kevin Ahearn

Kevin, you make a point that has a long and illustrious history:

[Adeimantus] But which stories do you mean, and what fault do you find with them?

[Socrates] A fault which is most serious, the fault of telling a lie, and, what is more, a bad lie.

[Adeimantus] But when is this fault committed?

[Socrates] Whenever an erroneous representation is made of the nature of gods and heroes — as when a painter paints a portrait not having the shadow of a likeness to the original. [...]

Then God, if he be good, is not the author of all things, as the many assert, but he is the cause of a few things only and not of most things that occur to men. For few are the goods of human life and many are the evils, and the good is to be attributed to God alone; of the evils the causes are to be sought elsewhere, and not in him.

Plato, The Republic, II: Education of the Guardians

Plato’s respect for both the gods and literature have their equivalent today. Although poetry and fiction do not literally imitate reality, they ought to represent a higher reality. To the extent that they metaphorically accede to truth, they constitute a “noble lie.” Plato’s representation of Socrates is an example.

However, La Rochefoucauld was right: “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” Both science and art — which includes science fiction — are virtuous to the extent that they strive to discover and understand truth. Kevin rightly decries deceitful fictions that are disguised as science or rationality and are designed to manipulate the ignorant towards evil ends.

Plato’s solution, censorship, might not have been practical even in the ancient city states. Today it is out of the question. We must rely on Thomas Jefferson’s byword: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And that vigilance requires protest, especially when bad lies come in hypocritical disguises.

Don