Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth (19 page)

There is of course a pagan worldview possible before Christianity is introduced, and heretical or breakaway worldviews copying only some aspects of Christianity, such as Islam or Mormonism. But as a practical matter, classical paganism has been absorbed into the Christian worldview and baptized, so that one cannot be an Aristotelian or Neoplatonist or Stoic without gravitating toward Christianity. Neopaganism has nothing to do with paganism except its name: Neopagans are Spiritualists, men seeking an undemanding form of spirituality without the demands of a strict moral code. Pre-Christian schools of thought would tend to gravitate nearer the center, with Oriental religions such as Taoism toward the spiritual, Oriental systems like Confucianism toward the ethical, (away from the individual), and Greek philosophy toward the reason.

We can also assign the various Protestant sects positions nearer and farther from the center. Calvinists and Lutherans, for example, who have a deep mistrust both of Aristotelian philosophy and organized religion, might be placed either westward or southward of the very center, more spiritual or more individual, or, due to their greater keenness to avoid the evils of drink and concupiscence, the Puritans might be placed immediately to the east, closer to the ethical pole.

But this would involve needless complications, and give an appearance of particularity where none exists: this chart is good only as a very rude overview of what large numbers of smart people, taken as a group, have in common in their thinking, and the commonality is one of mood and worldview, not one of specific philosophical axioms.

We science fiction fans can, however, place any author famous for any strong opinions without much debate on this map. (We are only identifying how the way each portrays his characters betrays his view of man in the cosmos, not making any bold assumption about what the author himself might think on a given issue.)

Heinlein and the John W. Campbell, Jr. authors, whether conservative or liberal on any particular question, portrayed in their books a view of man as strong and independent, a creature evolved to explore, expand, and conquer: they are Worldly Men, ranging to the north. Ursula K. Le Guin portrayed a view of man as a creature best served by seeking a tranquil life, preferably in a bucolic setting. She is to the south, a Spiritualist, specifically a Taoist. China Mieville is an Ideologue; Michael Moorcock is a Nihilist.

Armed with this perhaps over complex and inefficient classification system, the stance of Tancredi Dalton, and perhaps of Keith Laumer, becomes more clear. Like a character in a Noir story, Tan is a tarnished knight, someone who does the right thing despite the jeers and brickbats of the world, not for the greater glory of God and recompense in heaven, but for no glory and without recompense. It is an absurdly bitter worldview, for it calls upon men to embrace the tribulations and torments of martyrdom, but denies them the martyr’s palm in heaven. The most you can hope for is the quiet nod of fatherly approval from your own conscience.

Dalton’s stance is that of a purely Worldly Man who has pulled away from the spiritual axis of the map so far that the question is not even raised once in the text, and the only mention of God is in the context of what not to pretend to be. But he is still near enough to the center to admire and promote Christian ideals of knightly behavior, such as mercy toward a fallen foe, or such as keeping one’s word of honor, which have clear justification in the Christian worldview but only sentimental justification, or none, in a pagan worldview or a pragmatic one.

But Dalton is drifting, rudderless and unanchored, toward the drear and muddy waters of Nihilism. The only source of his moral code is a brusque Darwinian view of the inevitability of war, due, (of all stupid things), to population pressures and pollution increases. This view cannot logically justify honor toward a fallen foe nor self-sacrifice when faced by a dilemma, but it can justify those things in terms of mood and worldview, that is, man is presented as being both foolish and brave for climbing from the safe tree to the dangerous lion-haunted grasslands, and this foolhardiness will carry him one day to the stars, but will not banish the lion from the haunted darkness, nor make it lie down with the lamb.

This is the point of view of a Western man, raised in a culture seeped with Christian notions of chivalry and fair play and equality and nobility, but who has lost confidence in the center. It is the point of view of the knight errant who lacks faith in the crusade, and hides the red cross he wears.

We must also add a historical note to put this in perspective:

The 1970′s, when this was written, at the height of the Cold War, was a low point, perhaps the lowest point, in the confidence of the West.

Christianity was slowly being shoved out of the public square as old-fashioned, unscientific, absurd and repressive, and being replaced by an incoherent mush of Darwinism, which said that man was a beast; Freudianism, which said that morals were unhealthy but uninhibited self-indulgence and selfishness was healthy because the mind of man was an irrational machine; Marxism, which said that all human society was a ruthless war between oppressor and oppressed; and Nietzscheanism, which said that God was dead. So man was no longer the apex of created life, no longer a rational animal, no longer a political animal, and no longer could turn to any higher power for help.

The Cold War was being fought during an era when we were continually being told by our intellectual class that we were in the wrong but that our mortal enemies, the vilest lying-ass butchers and mass murderers in history, were in the right.

But the decline and loss of confidence of the West has roots earlier than that: the disaster of World War One had far greater repercussions overseas than here, but our artists and novelists took their inspiration from the European intelligentsia, sitting among the graves and memorials of the Great War which did not end war after all, amid the toppled crowns and the crumbling cathedrals. The intellectuals told the world that the war had not been to stop barbaric German aggression, but instead had occurred for no reason and to no point. Christianity had failed to stop the horror. The intellectuals, seeking a more fashionable home than the discredited Church, fled to each quarter of the mental map given above, to silly spiritualism and barbaric nihilism or to cold and optimistic rationalism, but most of all, as a stampede, they fled toward the crusade of the Great Dream of socialism.

Americans reacted with disdain and a crusade of their own against the Red Menace. This is clear enough in the writings of the 1930′s and 1940′s that at least half of the popular authors were unimpressed with this utterly unchristian and starkly anti-American, (and anti-human), worldview that was proving so alluring to the shattered Europeans. The classical Noir story, the whole detective genre as defined by Hammett and Chandler and their many epigones, comes from that era. Each is a tale of a lonely individual using his brawn and brains to overcome corruption and the collapse.

Each is a tale of medieval knighthood, a tale of King Arthur, but not of Arthur finding the Holy Grail, no: Noir stories are each a tale of Arthur on the margin of the sea watching in grim yet dry eyed sorrow as the tired but gold eagles of Rome disappear over the horizon, leaving England forever, and watching behind him the lamps of civilization go out, with none to reignite them but him.

Keith Laumer was a fan and epigone of the hard-boiled school of writing, and all his serious characters are serious in the Chandler and Hammett motif. A Noir hero, even a Space Navy hero, cannot appeal to any higher power or higher authority for his moral standard, but only to an unspoken and hard-won hardheadedness which admits of no more compromises, no matter how weary the load continuing to bear him down.

That is what I now see rereading this simple morality play as an adult which I did not see as a youth: Tan Dalton has to speak those last four words and refuse, or, at least, express caution about, rushing toward any reward which will recompense him for his loss.

The Worldly Man can maintain his optimism about leaving God on the sidelines and concentrating on building up the strength of the city and the wealth of the marketplace. Wars and famines come. The rains come and the flood.

When that happens, he has three basic choices: he can react with childish petulance, and demand the world and everything in it be revised to make war and poverty impossible. That is the reaction that is half a step toward the Ideologue. That is where you find Isaac Asimov or Arthur C. Clarke and all the other confident Worldly Men of science fiction when the future they predicted turns out darker than we hoped: they tell you not to lose hope because the experts in the government will fix it. Man is infinitely pliant and pliable, and any day now we can expect utopia to be discovered in a lab. This folly at least has the gleam of optimism.

Or he can react with stoicism and cynicism, and tell himself not to believe life’s fairy-tales, and to make the needed sacrifices not for any particular reason, but only because of his own isolated but understated heroism. That is the reaction that is half a step toward the Nihilist. There is where you find Tan Dalton, and perhaps Keith Laumer and Bob Heinlein and all the other confident Worldly Men of science fiction when the future they predicted turns out darker than you hoped: they start talking about how each man is an island, and owes no other man anything. Man will never improve nor change, and the heroic man who sees what is right for himself and works for himself and triumphs for himself will never change, nor bend, nor yield. Man is not pliant. This folly at least has the dignity of pessimism.

Or, he can realize that worldliness by its very nature and inevitably leads to disappointment if it is not based on otherworldliness. Even as all math is based on principles not themselves open to mathematical proof or disproof, even as all physics is based on assumptions no physical experiment can prove or disprove, the Worldly Man, when he realizes the simple truth that all nature is based on the supernatural, only then can he restore God to the central place in his life and in his society. Only then can that man have a rational view of life that does not idolize rationality. Such idolatry is not rational at all, but is instead a reluctant cynicism, a yearning for the untarnished ideals of yore, and an irrational desire to be good even at the cost of a present evil for which the cynic sees no future recompense.

The Nebula Awards have just honored Gene Wolfe with a Grandmastership. The honor is overdue, and all lovers of literature should rejoice. Gene Wolfe is the Luis Borges of North America. He is the greatest living author writing in the English language today, and I do not confine that remark to genre authors. I mean he is better than any mainstream authors at their best, better in the very aspects of the craft in which they take most pride. The beauty, nuance, and manner of his prose, the depth and realism of his characterization, his ability to give each character a unique and memorable voice and speech-mannerism, the profundity of the themes he addresses, the dry and trenchant wit, the relevance to daily concerns, the ability to open the eyes of the readers to the horror and wonder of life—I defy anyone to name his superior in craft and execution either in the genre or out of it.

With no little satisfaction, I was contemplating this victory for one of my favorite authors, (not to mention a fellow member of the famous Secret Conspiracy of Catholic Science Fiction Authors), when I was reminded of the larger question: When we honor an author, if the honor is not just flattery but is honestly meant, then we are honoring him for his skill, inspiration, and pertinacity in accomplishing a goal we admire. What is the goal of science fiction?

The obvious answer is that we science fiction writers, like all entertainers, are paid to tell entertaining tales, and must not cheat the audience who pays us of what they have a right to expect in return. That answer is sound enough as far as it goes, but it begs the larger question of what constitutes honest entertainment. What is it? More importantly, what is it for?

And in this case, the question was not just about pay but honor, which is a payment more rare and precious than gold. One only honors those who accomplish their duty. What, if any, be our duties as authors to literature, to our audience in particular and society in general, and to the truth?

The answer may perhaps be most easily seen if we look at it negatively. We might see what the duty is if we ask what is the source of the disappointment, (or even outrage), seen when such an honor is denied.

You will frequently hear the complaint in science fiction circles that mainstream literature does not take science fiction seriously. This complaint is partly fair and partly unfair.

The complaint is fair to the degree that those who serve as watchdogs over the standards of good taste and moral edification in fine literature are not doing their duty justly and impartially. If, instead doing their duty justly, the watchdogs are excluding from public attention memorable works of art on arbitrary or elitist grounds, we have a right to complain. Or, (more to the point), if the watchdogs are adversaries rather than advocates of good taste and edification in fine literature, we not only have the right to complain, we have the right to riot, to storm their Bastille, and haul the snobs off to the guillotine of public scorn.

The complaint is unfair to the degree that we who write science fiction literature decide to write hackwork space-adventure stories or vampire romances instead of reaching as if with the quill of an angel of fire toward the highest ambition of literature.

It is also unfair to complain that science fiction is snubbed by the watchdogs of literature if we are talking about cases where it is not. By this, I mean, if we are talking about any book which becomes known to the general public either despite the watchdogs, (overleaping the fences whose narrow door they guard), or welcomed by the watchdogs.

Specifically, I mean books like
Nineteen Eighty-four
by George Orwell,
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley, or even
Atlas Shrugged
by Ayn Rand. These books, whether praised or excoriated, are not now ignored by the watchdogs of literature nor by the general public. Indeed, the word “Orwellian” has passed into public use to describe the art of using impudent absurdities as propaganda weapons—and the word “Orwellian” did not become famous due to a reference to
Down And Out In Paris And London
or any other book written under the name Orwell, but only because of his Science Fiction novel.