In Revelation Space
(2000), the name of Alastair Reynolds’ ship Nostalgia
for Infinity communicates what was once a systemic view in sf. With his
ship’s name, Reynolds invokes the post-war attitudes of the atomic age and its
concomitant sf narratives. The reigning monomyth of the atomic age was that
with the secrets of science unlocked, progress was inevitable, humans would
soon achieve a utopian existence. But instead of achieving utopia in the 20th
century, humans irradiated nuclear weapons testing sites and fought endless wars
in the name of ideology and for the control of resources. With the dream demeaned,
sf dropped its utopian narratives in favor of telling stories that reflected a cultural
collapse.
To properly tell the story of science fiction’s journey from trading
in narratives of cultural and scientific progress to those of collapse, we will
trace the beginnings of space opera in sf with its connection to Hugo Gernsback
and H.L. Gold and then move through its evolution to show how sf tropes were first
appropriated to reflect the monomyth of progress and then reappropriated to reflect
a collapse in progress as a culturally unifying belief. Reynolds novels reflect
the death of progress by reappropriating generic tropes. Reynolds tells alien
invasion narratives that reflect contemporary political techniques for
colonizing territories. He also presents the once proud image of the space ship
to gesture toward cultural collapse. Cyberpunk science fiction emphasizes a
disconnect between technological progress and the human condition,
demonstrating that scientific and technological progress does not necessarily
scale along with improvements to the average person’s quality of life.
Cyberpunk even considers the negative effects of postmodern progress. While the
20th century saw great advances in medicine for the common man,
pharmaceutical developments are most visible as newly synthesized drugs,
available on the street. William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” (1981) exemplifies changes in the cultural
outlook coming at the end of the 20th century. Gibson gestures to
evidence that the era of an unchecked belief in systemic social, economic, and
political progress had thoroughly collapsed, replaced by the autonomy of the
individual.
Science fiction has long been read as a commentary on contemporary society. Robert Scholes argues to this end, writing that “fiction . . . offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way” (29). Damien Broderick agrees with Scholes, viewing science fiction as engaging the objective world:
Science fiction has long been read as a commentary on contemporary society. Robert Scholes argues to this end, writing that “fiction . . . offers us a world clearly and radically discontinuous from the one we know, yet returns to confront that known world in some cognitive way” (29). Damien Broderick agrees with Scholes, viewing science fiction as engaging the objective world:
If English-language science fiction of the last 60 or 70
years began pretty much as formulaic
adventure fiction, it has developed (at its best) into a set of writing and reading
protocols articulated about and foregrounding aspects of the objective
world (as science tries to do), through the engaging invention of stories about
imagined subjects. (xii)
Broderick and Scholes both
argue that the imaginative worlds of science fiction are most productively
viewed as a commentary on the real world.
Ralph Cohen says that genre concepts arise, change, and
decline for historical reasons. Pawel Frelik qualifies Cohen’s “historical
reasons,” writing that “genres are fluid and tenuous constructions generated by
the interaction of various claims and practices by writers, producers,
distributors, marketers, readers, fans, critics, and other discursive agents”
(22). Cohen argues that science fiction consists of texts that “alter the genre
by adding, contradicting, or changing” constituent elements such as fictional
background, tropes, images, and narrative conventions (204). The sum of those
constituent elements make up a genre’s megatext. A megatext can be understood
as a topography for the thematic and structural elements that comprise genre
fiction.
Roz Kaveney, in From
Alien to Matrix shows that a genre is made up of “stylistic or narrative
tropes,” and that writers will “consciously echo earlier use of those tropes”
(51). Kaveney says that this process “is a way of taking issue with the
political and social assumptions implicit in an earlier use of the material”
(51). It is also this process that can cause tropes to either wear out or
evolve into something different. Kaveney maintains that “placing tropes in an
ongoing dialogue . . . has endlessly refined them” (110). The refinement of
tropes causes them to take on the characteristics of a palimpsest. As a particular
trope changes its tenor, it continues to convey, even in diminished form, its
earlier meanings. So, the space ship works incredibly well as an image of
collapse, because of the dissonance between its function as an image of
progress and its later function as an image of collapse.
The definition and scope of space opera has developed
over its history. At its onset, space opera was a narrative form for mapping
cultural progress. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback laid out his idea of progressivism
in science fiction:
[Sf stories were] always instructive. They supply
knowledge . . . in a very palatable
form . . . New adventures pictured for us in the scientification of today are not at all
impossible of realization tomorrow . . . Many great science stories destined to be of historical
interest are still to be written . . . Posterity
will point to them as having blazed a
new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress
as well. (Clute 311)
Gernsback upheld sf as a genre
of progress. He believed sf writers should prophesy a better world borne of
technology. This credo of sf, to consider cultural and environmental changes in
human society as a result of new scientific and technological developments, is
why the idea took precedence over individuals in sf’s pages. Over sf’s history,
most critics have largely supported the position that the idea is king in sf,
including David Ketterer who describes sf as concerned principally “with the
expression of ideas rather than with character” (Brooks-Rose 81) and Kingsley
Amis who views the idea as the hero in science fiction. In sf, the idea is
tantamount to progress, meaning that progress is often read as the hero in sf. While
Gernsback and Gold championed sf as the literature of progress through the
vehicle of scientific discoveries and their application in new technology, over
the course of several decades of the genre, progressivist views in sf have
gradually faded away.
A move away from science fiction as the genre of progress
came from realist science fiction writers like Isaac Asimov. Instead of viewing
technology as a portal into the future, Asimov was interested in the practical applications
of technology. Asimov explains that his hard sf stories “feature authentic
scientific knowledge and depend upon it for plot development and plot
resolution” (6). Certainly, Asimov thought that much of the proposed futures in
sf would one day become reality but, unlike Gernsback, this didn’t necessarily
translate to a brighter world of progress; rather, it merely pointed to a
different, changed world carrying all of its social and political ills forward.
The
Gernsback Continuum (1981) reconsiders the effects of historical narrative
as material reality, suggesting that any attempt to negotiate the past through
a single frame of reference can have deadly effects in the present and future
[197]. - Lisa Yaszek
The early days of American science fiction were marked by
an Americentrism reflecting a strong sense of American ingenuity and progress.
Aldous Huxley summed up this rampant Americentrism, claiming that “the future
of America is the future of the world” (Jones 4). But the belief in pure
progress fails to hold up against the backdrop of anthropogenic climate change,
coal ash waste, drones as assassination bots, and twenty-first century
America’s antithesis of universal healthcare. An important break with the
narratives of progress came in the 1980s with the cyberpunk fiction of William
Gibson, Rudy Rucker, George Alec Effinger, and Bruce Sterling. Since the ‘80s,
space opera has taken from cyberpunk a sense of fragmentation lifted from the
pages of the postmodern condition.
In William Gibson’s “The Gernsbach Continuum”, a photojournalist is assigned to document
modern architecture in the American West for a work called The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was. The
photographer discovers an odd vision. He sees a utopian city full of images of
progress patterned after a cultural projection of the future from the ‘30s and
40’s. The vision was too simple; it missed the glaring problems of organizing
society. The photographer considers that the dreamers of the past never
considered “pollution, the finite bounds of fossil fuel, or foreign wars” (33).
The photographer saw:
The
illuminated city: searchlights swept the sky for the sheer joy of it. I
imagined them thronging the plazas of white marble, orderly and alert, their
bright eyes shining with enthusiasm for their floodlit avenues and silver cars.
It had all the sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda. [33]
Here, overreaching expectations
of the future betrays the era’s missing sense of realism.
More than commenting on the unreal expectations for
progress in the atomic age, Gibson comments on a shift that took place in the science
fiction genre. During the atomic age, Hugo Gernsback proffered a vision of
technology leading to utopia, but as the Cold War and ideological differences
between communist and capitalist societies continued over the course of the
20th century, it was clear that sf’s utopic dream was unreachable. After witnessing
the reality of such sf ideas as space travel, nuclear capability, computer
technology, and satellite communications and realizing that none of these things,
on their own, alleviated human problems, it was clear that the old Gernsback
brand of expectations for the impact of technology on humanity was askew. Once
it was clear that nuclear capability--as energy and weaponry--did not place a
boon in the hands of mankind leading to utopian life, it became obvious that
any technology would similarly fail to provide access to utopia.
In “The Gernsbach Continuum”, Gibson compares the past’s grammar of the future to the covers of
pulp science fiction magazines from sf’s golden age. The magazines gave birth
to a series of iconic images; they branded sf. What the photographer in
Gibson’s story finds difficult is that in the ‘80s there are completely
different culturally encoded meanings invested in all the old iconography.
While the golden era represented sleek technology like starships, super
computers, and ray guns--all of these being various sf tropes--, decades later,
new meanings for the images emerged. The photographer is most surprised by the
similarity to a euro-fascist utopia as evinced in his comment about, “the
sinister fruitiness of Hitler Youth propaganda.”
The photographer perceives that the architects of the
atomic age wished to give all of their works a grand scale. The grand scale reflects
a belief in the limitlessness of human achievement. In the photographer’s
vision, the technology of the past functions perfectly. But reality often
dispels the power of dreams. As an example, skyscrapers of the ‘30s added
zeppelin docks to their roofs. Zeppelin docks crowned skyscrapers of the era in
New York City. But not long after making the futuristic docks, it was discovered
that wind shear from super tall buildings made docking zeppelins there impossible.
The future in Gibson’s cyberpunk world is one of disillusionment,
a collective vision that everything is falling apart. For example, consider the
computer as image. Technology itself changes over time and while that
particular image would have been a social one with connotations for larger
society, now it has become an image standing for the individual. In space
operas of the ‘30s and ’40’s, like A.E. Van Vogt’s World of Null A (1945), the fortress of the computer dominates the
city. Vogt’s computer was a socially organizing entity, rationally ordering
society. Vogt’s computer embodies Plato’s idea of the philosopher king and is
responsible for the evolution of human society.
In the ‘50s the computer retained a larger social significance, gesturing to Van Vogt’s computer that orders and controls society. In Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1959) a supercomputer organizes the overthrow of despotic rule. Decades later, however, the computer was stripped of this particular investiture. In practice, the computer functioned as a tool to be used by individuals, not as a socially-organizing overmind. In earlier decades, before computers were a reality (other than basic calculating programs like the Turing machine) they were completely uncontextualized, meaning that there was still the ability to map onto them whatever meanings an sf writer might dream up. But now, we know what computers do, and it is not, as is the premise of Heinlein’s aforementioned novel, to lead a coup d’etat or, a la Van Vogt to subtly influence the thinking patterns of an entire society.
In the ‘50s the computer retained a larger social significance, gesturing to Van Vogt’s computer that orders and controls society. In Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1959) a supercomputer organizes the overthrow of despotic rule. Decades later, however, the computer was stripped of this particular investiture. In practice, the computer functioned as a tool to be used by individuals, not as a socially-organizing overmind. In earlier decades, before computers were a reality (other than basic calculating programs like the Turing machine) they were completely uncontextualized, meaning that there was still the ability to map onto them whatever meanings an sf writer might dream up. But now, we know what computers do, and it is not, as is the premise of Heinlein’s aforementioned novel, to lead a coup d’etat or, a la Van Vogt to subtly influence the thinking patterns of an entire society.
In the world of technology as both a sign and promise of
progress the jet and spaceship became a great icon. In the ‘50s, jets were made
to look fast, and, in the ‘60s, spaceships were supposed to give off the
visceral feel of seeing the future. Built with chrome and steel alloy,
spaceships served as a pure image of progress. The ‘80s image was a lot
different. Technology like the walkman and the personal computer, while images
of motion and power, were utilitarian looking, serving their intended purpose
rather than advertising for some future time. In the ‘80s, technology came to
symbolize corporate control and authority.
The spaceship is a site of the changing trope in space
opera. The trope of the spaceship in earlier science fiction might refer to
progress and unhindered expansion. As an example, the unfathomable speed of
E.E. “Doc” Smith’s ships symbolize such unlimited progress. Getting into and exploring
space was a great social project in the twentieth century. The spaceship was
the emblematic focus of such a project, and early sf was informed by cultural
feelings of the greatness of a nation through their achievements in such spheres
as space travel. Adam Roberts says that “spaceships are the emblems of the
technology that produces them; a technology of cultural reproduction, rather
than science” (154). In America, the ship most certainly referred to the
automobile and the ease in which anyone could now get beyond old borders,
especially with the building of highway systems across the continent. The great
speed of ships, with their ability to cover sidereal distances between worlds
and stars, had its analogy in making this world smaller, lessening the distance
between cultures - in effect, heterogenizing the universe. But by the ‘80s, the
space ship had become a signifier for unchecked Republican spending.
Multimillion dollar space toilets and the explosion of the 196-billion-dollar
Challenger in 1986 scuttled much of the previous decades’ wonder and excitement
about space travel. As the nation collectively watched the Challenger explode
on their TV sets, the feeling that the government was flushing taxpayer’s money
down space-as-toilet was palpable. Thereafter, NASA has seen diminished
funding. The ship also came to stand for competition with America’s great
atomic and space age enemy, Russia. Russia’s space program had achieved several
firsts ahead of the US space program, including Yuri Gagarin’s 108-minute
flight in space. So, while the space ship stood for progress, it also carried
the anxiety of the progress of the other as well as a drain on the overall
resources of the US economy.
Reynold’s ships, often hidden and capable of faster than
light speeds, indicate an altered expectation of progress through technology. One
of Reynold’s ships in The Prefect (2007), the Accompaniment of Shadows, is given a discrete name as opposed to
Smith’s Skylark, a symbolic name
meant to draw attention to itself and to broader cultural links. Another one of
Reynold’s ship names, Nostalgia for
Infinity, from Revelation Space, carries
a yearning for something that cannot be grasped. But the Nostalgia is infected by the melding plague, a virus infecting
nanotechnology. The plague, though mostly checked by Ilia Volyova, threatens to
destroy the massive ship. Here, Reynolds points out that the greatness and
capacity for the infinite that ships of this caliber were, in an earlier genric
time, supposed to signify is no longer possible. Now, these ships can only
remind us of the utopian and progressivist ideas that ships once evoked.
Reynolds’ great ships are not piloted by emissaries of a great culture or
nation-state either. They are in the hands of self-interested groups called
ultranauts, enterprising capitalists trying to out-compete all with no sense of
a larger social conscience.
The image of the ship has been undercut by a cultural
shift in science fiction. Now, the gigantic is no longer automatically
awe-inspiring. The big dumb object is now understood as too big to matter or,
worse, a waste of resources. As in the case of big things in the real world
like the Titanic or the world trade centers, big things are often very
susceptible to destruction. In the new wave genre of sf, authors became
fascinated with inner space, drawn to molecular elements because of their staggering
impact on life. Nikolas Rose’s treatment of molecularization in The Politics of Life Itself discusses
how the gaze of the sciences turn to the molecular level became a way of
redefining life itself. Rose finds that “life as information has replaced life
as organic unity” (45). This understanding undercuts the superiority of the
vast. From it, we get images where small things destroy huge things. Consider Independence Day, in which a huge alien
ship is crippled and rendered useless by individually-piloted fighter ships.
The conflict between big and small reads as the modern image of a virus attacking
hulking biotic life.
Another trope that has shifted over time is the alien
invasion narrative. Alien invasion narratives are related to lost race narratives.
Lost race narratives celebrate the achievements of Western civilization. The
lost race tale, like the invasion narrative, typically brings a technologically
advanced group into the domain of an underdeveloped species. By juxtaposing the
two groups, the primitivism of the lost race underscores the intellectual,
social, and technological achievements of the West. On the other hand, alien
invasion stories generally pit a supposedly superior race against mankind, so
that man can demonstrate his ingenuity while triumphing over his would-be
oppressor. Though outmoded in every aspect, man, the problem solver, uses
reason, courage, and willpower to outmode the invaders. But the alien invasion
trope, unlike the space ship trope, did not always signify progress. Early
appearances of alien invasions include H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897), which comments on British colonialism.
Wells’ aliens represent British colonial forces, thereby making British people
stand in for colonized groups. This forced change in perspective allows us to
question the colonial project. But Wells is not interested in human agency with
his invasion tale. The superior Martian power is not stopped by any human
effort, but by their own lack of a developed tolerance for earthborn pathogens.
Generally, of course, aliens in invasion narratives are stereotypically “bad.” Aliens
have stood in as an analogy for the Nazi and the Communist alike. Often, as
writes Darryl Jones in It Came from the
1950s, the “paranoid fantasies of invasion and mutation” of the ‘50s
symbolized the real fear of, say, a Russian invasion or nuclear attack (3).
However, the alien invasion cycle began to get overworked by lesser themes.
Kaveney writes that while it had initially been a way to discuss how:
colonialism
and racism had become by mid-century a way of discussing the cold war, American
spy paranoia and the fear of a leveling mass culture. At the century’s end, its
discourse had come to deal almost entirely with a purely personal autonomy and
specifically with embattled heteronormative masculinity. (51)
In recent years, it has become
commonplace to conflate the apocalyptic tale of invasion or destruction,
whether by aliens, zombies, or nuclear holocaust with the narratives Kaveney
describes that deal with “embattled heteronormative masculinity,” Sean of the Dead, Bubba Ho’tep, The Road,
and Independence Day all serving as
examples of the trend. In Shaun of the
Dead, the ever encroaching zombie hoard is a vehicle for bringing the male
protagonist into a moment of catharsis, in which he must deal with his social
failings, whether as a son, friend, or boyfriend. In Independence Day, Captain Steven Hiller, played by Will Smith, is frowned
upon for his relationship to a stripper. Successfully deflecting the alien
attack makes up for his morally questionable relationship choice, proving his
rightful place as head of his family.
In Schismatrix (1985)
Bruce Sterling’s take on the entrance of aliens into human society functions as
the balancing intervention of a wiser, more enlightened other. The aliens are
purely beneficent. When they arrive, unexpectedly, they create a new source of
trade and wealth, immediately ending internecine struggles between the Shapers
and Mechanists. But the era of peace ushered in by the aliens does not last.
Despite the economic intervention of an intelligent species, humans are
incapable of overcoming their nature. The Mechanists and Shapers eventually
resume their antagonistic relationship. The perpetual conflict of Sterling’s
future races is analogous to the state of the world stage. After the atomic
age, after the space age, and well into the digital age, conflict remains. Cyberpunk
demonstrates that no amount of progress can prevent human conflicts.
Alastair Reynolds’ alien invasion in Revelation Space is a frightening vision of progress. His aliens, the Inhibitors, are an
ancient machine race and the creators of a cosmic system for the detection and
destruction of technologically advanced species. Even though the inhibitors are
long gone, they continue to enforce their hegemony. The system they created
scans for evidence of intelligent lifeforms capable of space travel. To
maintain equilibrium in the universe and ensure their own hegemony, the inhibitors
destroy intelligent species before they can spread beyond their home planet.
Reynold’s describes how this alien system of invasion works in Revelation Space.
The Inhibitors seeded the galaxy with machines designed
to detect the emergence of life
and then suppress it. For a long time it looked like they worked as planned - that’s
why the galaxy isn’t teeming today . . . Their machines
worked fine for a few hundred million years, but then stuff started to go wrong. They
started failing; not working as efficiently as intended. Intelligent cultures began
to emerge which would have previously
been suppressed at birth. (539)
This form of power has its
echoes in the political history and contemporary political mission of Western nations
that maintain power by toppling governments and setting up puppet regimes.
Reynolds, tipping his hat to Wells, sets up his aliens as an enemy, with their
oppressive way of dealing with nascent powers. This trick of cognitive
estrangement forces the Western reader to take sides ideologically against
themselves, to see that their own culture is oppressive to other groups.
With the inhibitors, Reynolds comments on the replication
of Western capitalism that forces itself onto underdeveloped nations. While
invasion narratives based on colonialism placed importance on occupying
particular spaces, the aliens in these stories must maintain a physical
presence. For example, In Wells’ The War of the Worlds, the aliens even bring their own plants along with them. The plants,
along with the Martians and their tripods, illustrate the takeover of physical
space. In this old system of takeover, the topos of colonized space must be
changed to, as closely as possible, approximate the topos of the homeland. It
is not enough to take over a region, it must be physically altered in the image
of the homeland. This physical alteration is a move toward understanding the more
complete takeover of regions first practiced by colonial Empires and now the
standard practice by modern Empires. Rather than altering the physical space to
look like the homeland, these modern invasions seek to alter political,
economic, and cultural systems in the project of reproducing the conditions of
the metropole.
Ever since the British Empire created the British East
India Company, the most successful invasions have not figured around occupying
physical space, but about winning ideological battles, culturally indoctrinating
the youth of occupied regions, and pacifying citizens through the wealth of an
improved economy. Invasions patterned after the British East India Company are
more mercantile than militaristic. It costs far too much in hard currency and
human lives to march armies into battle. By influencing target populations
ideologically, colonial powers exert influence over regions while minimizing
cost and risk. The image of a military invasion like that found in Ender’s Game can provide the shock and
awe required to get a 19-and-counting-series book deal, but it resonates most
strongly with images out of history, whether of Persians pouring into Greece,
the Golden Horde on horseback, or Nazis pillaging Poland. While the 21st
century has continued to see bloody civil wars and military force applied to
regions, the future of politics is in ideological invasions and economic
interventions. This is why science fiction narratives rarely bother with the
old alien invasion model. Roz Kaveney notes that the plethora of alien
spaceships in Mars Attacks and the
shadow of an alien spaceship cast over the American flag planted on the moon in
Independence Day is now just a joke
(46). That model of invasion is over and done with. The new model, where the
invading force is visible in the form of corporations and political emissaries,
is now the more powerful one. Reynolds’ narratives focus on the pervasiveness
of controlling systems of power long after the physical presence, or even
existence, of the cultures that first birthed the controlling ideas have
disappeared.
Reynolds has updated science fiction tropes, including the
spaceship and the alien invasion, encoding into them cultural commentary apropos
to the contemporary world.
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