Speaking to Tristan about The Mandalorian on the GP podcast last week got me thinking about the genre of Science fiction. I’ve never enjoyed sci-fi, and I want to clear up why that is.
Science fiction is theoretically the most imaginative genre. It is the genre in which writers create speculative futures for society, or dream up whole new worlds with species, creatures and cultures on different planets. It’s also the genre best equipped for exploration of the deeper themes; humanity and human consciousness, our relationship with technology, it’s advancements and ramifications. Science fiction asks the big questions, boldly exploring the final frontier of space and time. So why doesn’t it interest me at all?
Well to begin with, that’s not entirely true. There are examples of science fiction that I do enjoy. Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale are both technically works of science fiction. I’m also impressed by many episodes of Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s warning against technology that’s just been announced for a sixth season. But the larger works, the sci-fi versions of high fantasy, the Star Treks and the Star Wars, even Dune, they’ve never captured my attention.
I think the problem is that it’s too big. When the physical space the story has to explore is as large as entire solar systems or galaxies, there’s simply too much room for possibility. I appreciate that fantasy can be accused of this too: Middle Earth, Westeros and Earthsea are all extremely large, so much so that the authors elected to include intimidating maps on the first pages of each novel. The scale of these imaginary worlds can be overwhelming at first, but at least it’s delivered to us in a way most can understand. I’ve always liked the map in a fantasy novel, for me it helps bring the world to life and it’s fun to visualise a character’s journey and plot it as the story progresses. This doesn’t work however, when the story space is literally space. You can’t plot a map of a galaxy and include it inside the front cover. Distances between planets are impossible for us to visualise and can only be interpreted in numerical terms.
There are enough stories on one planet to last an eternity.
Most episodes of The Mandalorian see our hero landing on a different planet, usually with the intention of repairing his ship, when he encounters the locals and gets pulled into their drama. It’s the classic journey tale: a hero getting from point A to point B and overcoming the obstacles they experience along the way. It’s the structure as old as time. But in each episode, the Mandalorian spends presumably no more than a few weeks on each planet, and this makes me think… If he came to earth and landed in Glasgow for a few days, solved a local dispute and then jetted off to Mars, he would have barely experienced a tiny fraction of the human race and all there is on planet earth. So presumably this is the same for all the communities he visits on each different planet in each episode. In fiction, space travel is linked closely to maritime exploration. Spaceships are ships, with bridges manned by captain and crew, and they dock at space stations. There’s even frequent reference to space pirates. The Mandalorian travels through galaxies in much the same way as Ulysses meanders lost around the Mediterranean. But these aren’t remote dessert islands he’s stopping off at, they’re each an entire planet. There are enough stories on one planet to last an eternity, adding multiple more galaxies in overwhelms me and ruins my immersion.
A writer is free to make up any kind of imagined reality, as long as there is a firm set of rules to back it up.
Verisimilitude is the art of obeying the rules you have created for your own fiction. In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, magic has rules. A person with the ability to use magic can’t simply do anything they want, and these constrictions are a crucial narrative technique. Without them the plot falls apart. A writer is free to make up any kind of imagined reality, as long as there is a firm set of rules to back it up. An audience doesn’t have to believe in them, but it is essential they understand the parameters of the world in which the story is taking place. When sci-fi invites us to imagine the unexplored frontiers of space, the rules are completely alien- pun intended. The writer has to explain the fictional scientific and technological developments, the species and behaviour of the society, even the rules of gravity and time. (This is already a lot to ask of an audience before you add in multiple planets and new societies) Time is a uniquely complicated one, and time travel is a trope I have a particular distaste for. When a story introduces the concept of travelling in time, it not only becomes unnecessarily complicated as different realities start colliding all over the place, but it usually burdens the plot with a sense of extreme pretentiousness as well. Yes, Chris Nolan, I’m talking to you. It becomes hard to have verisimilitude when you have to keep re-justifying the rules. Doctor Who is another example of pretty much giving up on the idea of verisimilitude and reinventing the rules week to week for new ideas and plot conveniences. The science-fiction writer too frequently seems to be trying to abandon plausibility even within their imagined realm and ask the audience to simply be along for the ride.
Fantasy augments the reality that we know, sci-fi invents an entirely new one.
I know this sounds like a strange criticism, but I think what I’m saying is that it’s too imaginative. You see, while fantasy augments the reality that we know, sci-fi invents an entirely new one. It’s too much to absorb all at once. The rules are too lax, the possibilities of space and time too endless. For me, the point in the story is lost amongst the sheer scale of the story space and the realm of possibility.
The examples of science fiction I like all remain on earth. In addition to the ones I’ve already mentioned, District 9, The Road and Frankenstein, are all routed firmly of the surface of this planet, and thus take place in a story space I understand. Each of these stories adds a science fiction element to a realm which the audience is familiar with and thus can explore that element in a way that’s imaginative and entertaining without asking the audience to suspend their disbelief or even abandon their attempts to understand. It is also worth mentioning that ‘science fiction’ is an umbrella term that hangs over many subgenres, some of which I appreciate. These include the Post Apocalypse, (The Last of Us) the Dystopia, (A Brave New World, Herland) and that specific period of YA dystopian fiction the late noughties brought us. (The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner) So perhaps it’s unfair for me to say I don’t like science fiction, perhaps it’s more accurate to say I don’t like its tropes: space exploration, new planets, time travel. Yet these are the tropes most associated with the wider genre, and the ones that come up the most in the quintessential examples of sci-fi work. Perhaps that is why I find myself shying away with acute disinterest when I hear a new release is going to be set in space.
If you want to see what an alien landing in Glasgow would look like, check out Under the Skin, a sci-fi horror with Scarlett Johansson.
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