SF and the race between education and catastrophe

A further instalment in George Hay's musings on Science Fiction as a source of social inventions.

H. G. Wells used to say that his tombstone should have engraved on it: 'I told you so, you damned fools!' In the event, I don't think it was, but, had it been, there might have been some justification. Most of the shibboleths of the Greens today - population control, pollution, the decimation of forests and of entire species - were set out by him generations ago and in no uncertain terms. So why has it taken so long for these messages to be taken on board? It is well worth asking this question, because, if an answer can be found, then future prophets might have to spend less time crying in the wilderness, and, even if this does not benefit us today, it could certainly be of considerable help in - oh. let's say 2070. And if we can't think that far ahead, God help the human race which, when that day comes, will still be suffering the effects made by ourselves and our recent forbears.

Wells, after all, was hardly alone in his preachments. Peter Nicholls' 'Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction' quotes Erasmus Darwin as predicting in 1802 war in the air, submarines and skyscraper cities, going on up from there to George Orwell's '1984' (1949) and Kurt Vonnegut's automation nightmare 'Player Piano' (1952). Such one-off shots could be quoted indefinitely but it might be more useful to draw the attention of readers, not just to technological prophecies, but to the writings of authors with more understanding of the causes underlying historical downturns. The most awe-inspiring of these must surely be Olaf Stapledon's 'Last and First Men' (1930), which employs a time-scale of 2,000 million years to describe the rise and fall of 18 races of men. 'The emigration of the 5th Men to Venus is an early example of Terraforming and the construction of the 9th men to adapt them for Neptune is an early example of Pantropy.' These last two technologies remain staples of current Science Fiction: the chief value of Stapledon's work, however, is simply the beneficial effects it has upon the minds of readers by shifting the goal-posts in terms of timespan. (He later went on to beat his own record by setting out, in 'Star-Maker' (1937) the history of intelligent life in the entire universe!)

More recently Issac Asimov's 'Foundation' (1942) and its sequels had something of the same effect. Because of his skills in plotting and narrative Asimov here reached an immense readership, and countless thousands who might never have brought themselves to study Roman history have here had it represented for them in terms of future stellar history. At around the same time Poul Anderson was setting out on his extended 'Tehnic History' series of stories and novels, dealing, again, with interstellar empires and trading wars written with cultural resonances which are seldom found in Asimov

While Anderson's work is far from doom-ridden, it is remarkable how often he equates large and late space-empires with decadence, and this is a useful lesson.

If we recall our original question - why does it take so long for us to learn the lessons that SF fictional history teaches? - then we have to come back to Wells' old dictum that we are describing a race between education and catastrophe. Those who have read the books mentioned above have absorbed useful lessons, just as earlier men and women did learn from the study of Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'. Looking at today's collapsing old orders and growing internicine wars, one might be cynical about this, but who is to say that we might not be that much worse off if Gibbon et al had never written? In particular, should we not ask how much of the current slaughter in central Europe might not have been avoided had Western SF been widely available in those parts? Above all, and in the light of the collapse of publishing today, is it not of the very greatest irnportance that the works concerned be made part of our educational curriculum?

George Hay, 5b All Saints Street, Hastings, East Sussex TN34 33N (tel 0424 420634).