(Notes toward something bigger – if I get the chance to
write it)
Sixty
years and one day ago (March 8, 1957), Robert Bloch delivered a paper at the
University College of the University of Chicago. He was one of four authors
asked to make presentations on the subject of science fiction and social
criticism. The other three were Robert A. Heinlein, C. M. Kornbluth and Alfred
Bester.
Among
such luminaries, you would think, perhaps, Bloch would take a back seat, but it
is Bloch’s essay which spoke most clearly to me when I read it again just
recently.
The
best way to appreciate it, of course, is to find a copy of The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination
and Social Criticism (1959,
Advent:Chicago, Third Edition 1969). You’ll avoid any impressions gathered more
from my selections and interpretations.
Every now and
then, I stick my nose in a book and find something interesting. There’s no
rhyme or reason to it; no plan. I grab a book off the shelf because I hear it
calling to me. Many books call to me, and they do it all the time. But some
call louder than others.
I’ll look at a
book and it looks back at me. You have a few dozen other things to read, but
you pull it off the shelf because it looks back at you in that certain way. I’m
sure it’s happened to you as well.
With this book –
well, the series occurred in the 1950s, when science fiction (at least in the
short form), was a bastion of social criticism. Literary trends were moving
away from the gritty realism of the pre-war years. And U. of C. was a natural
place to have this kind of confab, because the faculty and students (if not the
administration) always leaned pretty strongly to the left (except in the
Economics department, even pre-Milton Friedman). U. of C. also had one of the
first science fiction clubs in the area. The stars were aligned.
Heinlein’s speech
reads like a speech from Robert Heinlein. The funny thing about Heinlein is
that, whether you find him entertaining or infuriating (or both), he writes
like a man who has worked out his story and is damn well going to stick to it.
It reads like either an “official statement,” a cover story, or an alibi. You
can chain him to a rack, apply red-hot pokers to any part of him, but he won’t
break his story, so don’t even try.
Kornbluth starts
out stating that there’s no social criticism in science fiction, then he goes
into a very effective close reading of 1984.
What he accomplishes, mostly, is demonstrating that he maintains high literary
standards, knows the territory of any able literary critic of the time, and
concludes that most contemporary science fiction, with notable exceptions,
doesn’t quite make the grade.
Bester, in his
sly way, tries to dissuade his audience from looking to science fiction for
social criticism. He values science fiction as a necessary diversion. He’s not
writing off science fiction, because that diversion, he believes, is important
to intellectual growth. It’s as if he’s trying to say, if you’ll excuse my
summarizing, that science fiction works better when it doesn’t deliberately
try to address important topics, but rather, unconsciously, touches the
sympathetic vibrations of the human experience.
Bloch, however,
is forever casting a leering eye at the entire process. He jokes and puns, as
if he wishes to impress you that he is the least serious of this volume’s
contributors, but almost from the outset he delivers the most serious message
of them all.
After making a
few initial jokes and puns, he very briefly outlines a number of American
novels that may be considered social criticism. He then presents a long list of
science fiction novels and places them into three categories: Man Against
Nature, Man Against Himself, and Man Against Man.
Throughout his
speech he mentions exceptions, but he finds the majority of science fiction
novels that engage in what can be considered social criticism somewhat
simplistic
And just how does this wide assortment of
writers view the world of the present and the extrapolated society of the
future? Ignoring the extra-terrestrial invaders, ignoring the gadgetry,
ignoring the universal disaster background, one encounters a fundamental
dramatic premise known to all eminent critics who are six years old or older.
The world is plainly divided into ‘cops and robbers,’ ‘cowboys and Indians’ or
‘good guys and bad guys.’
There’s
a reason, of course. People who have come to revere science almost as a
religion place great faith in the ability of technologists to safeguard our
future.”
The criticism, as
it were, in many “socially critical” science fiction novels, is that the bad
guys are not paying enough attention – or too much attention, in the wrong way –
to science.
Bloch lists and
annotates a number of common elements he finds in these novels. All the words
in caps come from Bloch, so excuse me if I don’t put them all in quotes. 1.)
There’s a TOTALITARIAN STATE; 2.) there’s an UNDERGROUND bent on toppling said state;
3.) the use by one side or the other of FORCIBLE PSYCHOTHERAPUTIC TECHNIQUES; 4.)
the assumption that SCIENCE WILL GO ALONG WITH THE GAG – especially when it
involves brainwashing; 5.) ECONOMIC INCENTIVE – the motivation on either side
of the battle is to make a buck (Milton Friedman would be proud); 6.) A
VARIATION OF PRESENT DAY ‘ANGLO-SAXON’ CULTURE WILL CONTINUE TO RULE THE WORLD;
7.) when it comes to space exploration WE WILL COLONIZE AND RULE THE NATIVES;
8.) THE FUTURE HOLDS LITTLE BASIC CHANGE
in human nature; 9.) INDIVIDUALISM IS DEAD.
The
hero rebels, yes – but not superimpose his own notions upon society; merely to
restore the ‘normal’ culture and value-standards of the mass-minds of the
twentieth century. You won’t find him fighting in defense of incest,
homosexuality, free love, nihilism, the Single Tax, abolition of individual
property-rights, euthanasia or the castration of the tonsils of Elvis Presley.
Stripped right down to the bare essentials, our hero just wants to kick the
rascals out and put in a sound business administration …
When
we review these premises, we discover that most social criticism in science
fiction novels is not directed against present-day society at all … Our
authors, by and large, seem to believe wholly in the profit-incentive; in the
trend to superimpose obedience and conformity by means of forcible
conditioning; in the enduring liaison between the government, the military and
scientists and technologists; in Anglo-Saxon cultural supremacy, if not
necessarily outright ‘white supremacy’; in the sexual, aesthetic and religious
mores of the day. Their criticism of the totalitarian states they envision is
merely a matter of degree. They attempt to show the apparent dangers of
allowing one group to ‘go a little too far’; actually, reduced to its essence, they
merely echo Lord Acton’s dictum that ‘Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’
Hence
the necessity of rebellion in the form of some sort of Underground movement.
But this is always assumed to be just a temporary measure; ruthless because one
must ‘fight fire with fire’ and the ends justify the means. The implication is
that once Law and order are restored, everything will settle down to a general
approximation of life as it is lived today – if not in actuality, at least in
the pages of Better Homes and
Gardens.
Science fiction,
as it were, rebels against the status quo when it is not the
currently-recognized status quo.
When it comes to
scientific and technological progress, the science fiction of his day is brilliantly
inventive. But whether it occurs fifty, one hundred, or a thousand years in the
future, the basic social structure remains the same – or an effort is made to
restore it.
But
when it comes to a question of personal ethics, when it comes to a question of
social justice – again and again we run right smack into our old friend Mike
Hammer [Mickey Spillane was referenced earlier] in disguise.
How,
in this marvelous world of the future, does one go about settling an argument?
With
the same old punch in the jaw … the same old kick in the guts … the same old
bullet in the same old belly.
The suggestion
throughout his talk is that if the world can change in such striking ways
technologically, why would it not change human behavior as well? And why doesn’t
the current (for his time) science fiction novel address this possibility?
The
science fiction field has often been likened to a literary world in miniature.
But one searches in vain through that world for a Jesus Christ … a Sydney
carton… or even a George Babbitt or a Leopold Bloom.
The
common man is seldom the hero; if so, he doesn’t remain so very long, but
becomes a Key Figure …
Isaac
Asimov recently pointed out that science fiction heroes are permitted to be
intelligent. This is admirable. And yet, emotionally, most of them are
primitive and immature.
Where
is the science fiction novel with the ordinary family man as hero … or the
teacher … or the creative artist … or the philosopher? Where is the science
fiction novel that contents itself with showing us the everyday world of the
future, devoid of Master Spies and Master Technicians and Master Psychologists
and Master Criminals?
He hastens to
mention the exceptions. He also hastens to exclude short fiction from his
admitted generalizations. And he states a possible reason for the shortcoming
of science fiction novels (as opposed to short fiction): publishers won’t allow much more than this
sheltering of the status quo in its content; readers won’t buy such highfalutin (and “radical”) books.
And here I am, in
2017, sixty years into Robert Bloch’s future, fascinated that Bloch is the only
author among the four concerned that in the decades proceeding from 1957 a few
differences may arise in the social order and that science fiction might address those differences.
Bloch himself, on
the subject, seems rather sanguine.
But
is science fiction, therefore, failing in its function of social criticism?
Quite
the contrary.
When
a literature of imaginative speculation steadfastly adheres to the conventional
outlook of the community regarding heroes and standards of values, it is indeed
offering the most important kind of social criticism – unconscious social
criticism.
With
its totalitarian societies, its repudiation of individual activity in every
role save that of the self-appointed leader and avenger, science fiction
dramatizes the dilemma which torments modern man. It provides a very accurate
mirror of our own problems, and of our own beliefs which fail to solve these
problems.
Gazing
into that mirror, we might find it profitable to indulge in a bit of that
reflection.
Of course, much
in this essay puts me in mind of the recent battles within the science fiction
community: the calls by some to return the field to its 1950s “heyday,” or
perhaps to “make science fiction great again.” What does that really mean?
I wouldn’t
speculate as to whether Bloch would be gratified to see a move to greater
representation of diversity in the field, but I wonder if the generalizations
he made in 1957 would be true in 2017. Maybe not in the media, which still
seems tied to the conventions of the previous century, but at least in its
literature. Wouldn’t it?
And what about
now? What generalizations could we make about science fiction and social
criticism today?
And, presuming
that we have made some progress, how
does the future look from here? It may still prove profitable to regard that mirror reflection.
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