Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth

by John C. Wright

  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.

  Gene Wolfe, Genre Work, and Literary Duty

  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.

  For that matter, the complaint is unfair if it is anachronistic. When I was young, science fiction was written for boys, published in paperback, meant as cheap mass-market entertainment to be read once and forgotten, and spoke to such deep and lasting question of the human condition as were addressed by the average episode of The Twilight Zone or the average superhero comic book—by which I do not mean they lacked all depth, merely that they touched on deep issues only in a glancing way, meant to produce a startled or jarring moment of awe or irony or wonder, not to provoke lingering meditation on sublime truths.

  This has changed in my lifetime. Science fiction is now so much part of the mainstream that opinion-makers, pundits, political leaders and others who speak on serious topics make references to Star Wars or The Lord Of The Rings without hesitation or blush or, (more significantly), without any fear of being misunderstood.

  Part of this is demographics: the youth in the 1950′s did not surrender their comic books and paperback space operas upon reaching old age in the 2000′s. Pundits make passing reference to popular stories, not because they are great stories, (they may or may not be), but because they are popular.

  Part of this is the result of the evolution, (whether unintentional or as a byproduct of editorial crusades), within the genre itself: science fiction stories routinely tackle deeper issues in a deeper way than were seen in the early days. In other words, the watchdogs are less likely to scorn science fiction, first, because they grew up with it, and, second, because science fiction in the main is no longer as crude and juvenile as once it was.

  I am assuming that any reader who is in sympathy with modern ideas, or, rather, postmodern anti-ideas reads the opening dozen paragraphs above with a growing sense of vague discomfort, or a stalking suspicion that he has strayed into a moral atmosphere alien to his particular mental outlook. ‘Who in the world…’ (our hypothetical postmodernist may well ask) ‘…dares talk about good taste these days, or truth, or beauty, or believes that art has an innate and natural role determined by objective rules of moral reasoning which impose an obligation on the artist to serve some greater good? Truth? What is truth?’

  Good question, Pontius! Well, for one, I talk about truth because that is what honest men talk about. What good is served in talking lies?

  To believe that truth is true is not due to daring, but due to humility: the honest man does not think he gets a veto over reality. A humble man says you don’t vote on laws of nature, you cannot create reality, and you did not father yourself out of nothing.

  A postmodern man says truth is fluid and subjective. This both makes man less than an animal, for it says his brain is not suited for survival in reality because his brain does not give him true information about reality; and more than a god, for it says that, like a god, each man creates his own universe; and more than god, for not even a god can create himself of himself from himself. Pagan gods, who are not eternal, like Zeus, have to be born from Saturn or Uranus or Chaos, and so cannot be his own maker. The God of Abraham, who is eternal, cannot from his position of primal perfection evolve into something more perfect, because to perfect perfection is a paradox. But the self-made reality-creating modern man somehow does what both pagan and Christian divinities cannot.

  That this stance involves intolerable logical self-contradiction does not shame the postmodernist into rethinking the bumper sticker slogans of his position. As befits creatures both above gods and below beasts, they have no shame. Shame is a human characteristic, befitting humble men.

  But let us return from this digression to the question at hand: what is entertainment? What is it for? (And, let us not forget to return to the larger question of why we honor those who successfully entertain us, rather than just pay them.)

  The humble man of whom I just spoke will be shocked to learn that entertainment, at least as far as fiction is concerned, is untrue. Even from the beginning it was so. The events in The Iliad did not happen literally as described, and even if there was such a war, Ares and Aphrodite were not wounded in it, nor did the heroes of Achaia utter their oratories, vaunts, and defiance in such perfect dactylic hexameters. Fiction by definition is untrue, but none save the most literal fool is fooled by this untruth, for it is not meant to fool.

  What is it meant for? That answer is known to everyone who asks: Fiction is untruth that serves truth. Or, in other words, art is the magic by which the muses express truths that cannot be expressed as truthfully by mere literal words, nor as memorably, adroitly, or trenchantly.

  In all this there is a divine irony, a heavenly cunning, for the muses use lies, which are the instruments of hell, against the hellish goal of magnifying ugliness and deadening our lives, instead use those lies to tell truths larger than literal words can carry, granting us richer life and deeper.

  At this point, both any hypothetical honest man and the postmodern man reading these words must be blinking in puzzlement at that last sentence.

  Perhaps their eyes drift from this essay to their nearby bookshelf, where they see a science fiction book about, for example, an immortal amnesiac with a double-brain using his superhuman mind-powers to teleport galaxies into collision or destroy and recreate timespace; or another book starring a half-clad yet fully buxom princess from the fourth dimension who is abducted by a lascivious sea-monster; or a book about a giant spaceship made of gold; or a book about a Texas gunslinger trying to fight off an invasion of space monsters.

  Whereupon the honest man and the postmodern man no doubt, (when done laughing), must say in unison: “No, sir, you go too far! Entertainment is not about some profound and cosmic truth of human nature. It is about beguiling an idle afternoon with adventure stories. Entertainment is the amusement of the imagination. Entertainment is diversion, divertissement, and distraction.”

  Well said. But, O hypothetical honest man and dishonest postmodern man, from what do the readers of such tales seek diversion? From what must they be distracted?

  I am not sure how a postmodern man would answer. A modern man from the previous generation might say that the artist and the audience were slightly at odds, for the audience wanted to be diverted from the boredom which comes from a bourgeoisie existence of oppressive racist wife-beating hypocrisy (or whatever), and the artist, as a loyal servant of the cause of ushering in socialist femmtopia (or whatever) had the task of subverting the tastes and hence the loyalties and political sentiments of the audience, and winning their hearts over to the revolution. Other moder
nists were rebels without so clear cut a cause, or none at all, but wanted to express dissatisfaction with the world as it was, and draw attention to social problems that needed fixing; but their approach and basic psychology was the same as the revolutionaries, they were merely not so consistent and fixed in purpose.

  But postmodernists are famed for their lack of belief in any socialist or Christian or spiritualist or utopian “narrative” which they regard, one and all, as malign attempts to seduce or subvert the natural loyalties of man. (And in their criticism of what I have here called the modernist man, they are exactly right: what writers of the modernist school wrote was propaganda, not true art). Logically, this means the postmodernist is estopped from seducing or subverting the reader’s loyalties to a new scheme of life, (if I may use a useful but obscure legal term—I mean they have lost the right to do that which they condemn in others).

  Now, I am not going to disagree with the modernists, but will say instead they are not bold enough to tell the whole truth. Writing stories about beggars and orphans so as to raise public indignation as part of a program of social reform is diversion from the dangerous self-satisfaction that arises from living a too-comfortable life, but there is clearly something here beyond mere diversion. The artist is attempting to call forward the better angels of their nature in the readers.

  But I draw your attention to the fact, which you may look into your own heart and confirm for yourself, that even allegedly shallow adventure stories, or romances, are more than mere diversion. I know a man who, as a boy, read A Princess Of Mars—of which a less realistic and more boyish adventure yarn cannot be imagined, nor one having less to do with conditions on Earth — but the lesson he took from it was to treat women chivalrously and with honor, to be objects of love more akin to worship than to the sordid mutual exploitation or animal attraction which modernists denigrate love to be. Again, I know a man who, as a boy, so loved Star Wars, that he decided to live his life as should a Jedi Knight, putting right and truth above all things, even if he lacked the mind-powers and buzzing glow-swords. Chivalry and righteousness are not unimportant things. They are not the most important things, of course, but they are more important than life, and ergo worth dying for.