Right Wing Nation

Sturgeon’s Law, ironically (or appropriately, depending on how you look at it) was proposed by Theodore Sturgeon, a Sci-Fi writer, after years of defending the genre from critics. There are two corollaries (we’ll be primarily concerned with the better known second corollary):

1. Nothing is always absolutely so
2. Ninety percent of everything is crap

The problem Sci-Fi writers and fans have always had, the problem Sturgeon ignored, is this: If you’re going to play the game, you have to play by the rules. You can’t create your own rules, then complain when they don’t let you play.

If Sci-Fi is going to be literature, then like every other genre of literature, it must revolve around the characters and the plot.

I’m not knocking Sci-Fi. I’ve been a Sci-Fi geek for decades. But something has happened over the last twenty years that has made Sturgeon’s Law inapplicable, since far more than 90% of Sci-Fi these days is crap — and here, I’m referring primarily to filmed Sci-Fi, either television or movies.

Well, somethings have happened. The first was Gene Roddenberry (yes, I know, I’ve ranted about the Star Trek franchise before, but this is not a Roddenberry rant, and I’ll try to constrain myself, okay?)

It’s not about the tecnhology, stupid

This is one of the two ways in which Roddenberry degraded Sci-Fi. In the Roddenberry universe, there’s a gadget that does everything. In addition to phasers and breaking the speed of light, we have transporters, replicators, holodecks, time travel, you name it, there is no technological barrier some group on the franchise has not broken.

Phasers are fine, I suppose, although ray guns are just this side of silly, and in Sci-Fi, you pretty much have to have dispensed with Einstein. Holodecks, while extremely annoying because they encourage all kinds of idiotic plots, are, with a sufficient amount of computing power, feasible (well, provided that the dimensions of the created environment do not exceed those of the physical space, as they so often did in the franchise, you know, like when they went mountain climbing on the holodeck).

Transporters and replicators, however, well, don’t get me started. I said I wouldn’t rant, and I won’t. They violate the probability principle, discussed below. But back to the point.

The problem with having a neat techno-gizmo-gadget that does anything you want it to do is that the technology becomes a deus ex machina, as it did in the Roddenberry franchise shows. Scotty was always reconfiguring the dilithium crystals to solve whatever problem had arisen, and then there was the tricorder, which seemed to be sort of an all-purpose magical box.

A great Sci-Fi author, Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” but he was referring to perception, not reality. Technology is always distinguishable from magic in one fundamental way: Technology is constrained by scientific laws, and magic is not. Roddenberry’s world did not have technology; it had magic devices presented as if they were technology. When they were constrained by laws, those laws were conveniently forgotten or changed at whim, as the writers needed, hence “reconfiguring the dilithium crystals,” or “sending a gravimetric burst” or pick your favorite example of magic-as-technology every other episode.

It is a necessary precondition of Sci-Fi that the author must create a world constrained by laws. The author (or writer) with artistic integrity creates his world and consistently subjects everyone and everything in it to those laws. The hack writer creates his world, then dispenses with or changes the laws whenever it suits him. Roddenberry and his writers were, by that criterion, hacks. That they used (mostly, but not entirely) actual scientific concepts which they then perverted at will in order to get characters out of situations makes the Star Trek franchise bad Sci-Fi.

It’s probability, not possibility

Sci-Fi authors are far too imaginative, or perhaps imaginative in inappropriate ways. Because we must suspend disbelief to read (or watch) and enjoy Sci-Fi, the world and the scientific laws which govern it may be improbable. The events and the plot, however, cannot cross the improbability line, lest they become absurd.

Yesterday, I saw a particularly ridiculous episode of Voyager in which they transported “photonic matter” onto the ship from a star. The “photonic matter” (except that it had suddenly become “photonic energy,” but why would anyone in Sci-Fi worry about the distinction between matter and energy?) had somehow leaked into the holodeck system, where one of the characters was running a Beowulf program. The “photonic whatever” (matter? energy? do the writers know there is a difference?) turned out to be a (wait for it) “photonic lifeform” and became Grendel in the holodeck program.

Where do I start with this drivel — and it is drivel, from beginning to end. And what was I talking about, since I am mentally ranting, even though I’m not ranting here . . . oh yes.

Yes, it’s possible that “photonic matter” could have 1) developed into some kind of living being, and 2) evolved intelligence, but then, it’s also possible that those grains of salt in your shaker are actually nanodevices the Illuminati use to track your every movement for some nefarious purpose. Nearly anything is possible.

The operating principle is not possibility, but probability. So while a “photonic lifeform” is technically possible, it’s immeasurably improbable. It is so improbable that it’s ridiculous. But let’s forget that, and say it’s likely that “photonic matter” would be alive and intelligent.

Is it possible that this “photonic lifeform” would morph into Grendel on the holodeck? Well sure, but it’s possible that we’re being controlled by reptilian aliens masquerading as human beings. It may be possible, but it’s not very probable, is it? No? So why did these writers produce this nonsense? (Answer: Because they’re hacks.)

Put a moratorium on clichés

I said above that Sci-Fi authors are imaginative in the wrong ways, and here’s why. Sci-Fi is plagued by tired themes that have been beaten to death over the last fifty years and need to be retired for at least the next hundred. “There are things man was not meant to know/do!” is one that’s been with us since the beginning of the genre, and is so old and dead that it needs to be discarded. Yet authors seem incapable of coming up with anything but these dead, tired, whipped to death themes. They just dress them up in new ways, and that’s not imaginative, at least not in the right way.

However, there are two of these themes that almost ensure bad Sci-Fi: Utopianism, and it’s antithesis, dystopianism.

Like any other theme, these were both interesting when they first appeared. But by the time Ryker was spouting such idiotic lines as, “We no longer enslave animals for food production” on television, utopianism had become a parody of itself (hence, the idiocy of the line). Mad Max was cool, but by the time we got Waterworld, dystopianism had become farcical.

Of all the dead clichés in Sci-Fi, these two annoy me more than any others, because they’re both so inherently ludicrous, because they almost always overwhelm the story, and because they nearly always lead the writer into abject stupidity. Neither is original, and neither is interesting. Both need to go. Permanently.

Fantasy is not Sci-Fi

Back in the 60s and 70s, there was a war going on between the hard-core Sci-Fi folks and the squishy, not-very-scientific speculative fiction folks. I fall firmly into the former camp, although I did think at the time that some of my fellows were anal to the point of being silly.

That war no longer rages as it did then, and the speculative fiction folks seem to have won. So at Barnes and Noble, Sci-Fi and Fantasy are shelved together, and the Sci-Fi Channel is more likely to be airing a werewolf movie than a space flick. And crucially, nobody seems to notice.

This is important because I believe that the victory of the squishy, not-very-interested-in-science speculative fiction folks is the reason that shows revolving around magic, such as the Roddenberry franchise, are presented as if they were Sci-Fi. I also believe this victory is the reason that possibility rules, and nobody much cares about probability.

Understand that I’m not knocking Fantasy. But it isn’t Sci-Fi. Magic isn’t science, even when it’s presented as if it were.

Plenty of highly educated science geeks love speculative fiction, and don’t much care that it is presented as if it were Sci-Fi, but they are not the general populace. Back in the 60s when the hardcore Sci-Fi v. squishy not-so-sci speculative fiction war was at its hottest, we lived in a heavily science-oriented society.

That’s no longer true. We now live in a society in which science is under siege from all sides, and people now believe in “alternative medicine,” crystals, auras, chakras, chi-energy, aromatherapy, feng shui, accupuncture, “organic food” and “body toxins,” oh, the list never ends. The fundamental irony is that all of these forms of magic, just like the Star Trek franchise, use para-scientific babble to legitimize their magic.

The language of science, then, is still highly valued, but science itself, not so much.

And these are not correspondent in some way to religion. Magic has supplanted science to a large degree precisely because in order for the magic to be legitimate, it must somehow be presented as if it were science.

I’m not implying causation here. Whether there is any, I cannot say. But “magic-as-science” predominates both in our society and Sci-Fi.

But waving crystals to heal somebody is magic, not science, just as the Roddenberry franchise is Fantasy, not Sci-Fi.

Good Sci-Fi

Both Battlestar Galactica and Blade Runner are not only good, but great Sci-Fi, for mostly the same reasons.

Neither falls prey to the traps that the Star Trek franchise exemplifies. In BSG, there are only two identifiable areas in which the world is more technologically advanced than we are: Space travel (like I said, you pretty much have to dispense with relativity to have Sci-Fi) and artificial intelligence (the people created the cylons, recall). There are no ray guns — the weapons shoot bullets. There are no transporters or replicators or holodecks. The technology in BSG is so minimal that it cannot detract from the characters and the story.

Few, if any, of the events in the plot cross the probability line. There is a spiritual streak in the show, undeniably (the show is supposed to be heavily Mormon influenced, much as The Magic Flute is Masonic, although I don’t know enough about the LDS to comment on that), so we have Six, Boomer, and Roslin sharing the same dream, for example, but — and here is the crucial point — it isn’t portrayed as if it were science. The dream is a dream, and nobody knows why or how they’re all sharing it. It isn’t “reconfiguring the dilithium crystals,” because it isn’t presented as if it were science.

The same is true of Blade Runner. We get hints of lots and lots of advanced technology, particularly in the scenery, but very little of it is part of the story. It never intrudes, much less takes over, as it does in every episode of the Roddenberry franchise. None of the events is so improbable that it cannot be believed.

Most importantly, both BSG and Blade Runner are about the characters and the story, and never contradict their own laws. Never is magic presented as if it were science, and in both, science really has very little to do with the story. And that’s because good Sci-Fi, like any other genre of literature, is about the characters and the story.

If we’re talking about literary Sci-Fi, books or short stories and not movies or television, then great Sci-Fi authors abound. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, the list goes on and on. And so do great novels, at least one of which was written by a one-hit wonder (Dune). In fact, my favorite Sci-Fi novel, er, novels, er, series isn’t, as you might imagine, prototypical hardcore Sci-Fi. The science is minimal, but it follows all of the rules (or I would find it incredibly annoying). I refer to the Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe. The Foundation Trilogy, I, Robot, Ender’s Game, Stranger in a Strange Land, Childhood’s End, Cities in Flight, again, the list goes on and on.

The problem with Sci-Fi on film is, I think, that writers are far too tempted to substitute gizmoness and special effects for substance, which is an even larger problem than in novels, because of the time limits involved — see I, Robot, the recent movie, as an example, and I Am Legend as an all too rare counterexample. Here, again, BSG excels, as the writers pack the maximum amount of substance into each episode, with only a few exceptions. Then, there are the Sci-Fi novels that are so complex that they cannot be successfully filmed — and speaking of, I read the other day that they’re going to film Dune again, a project that’s doomed before it begins — but that’s another topic for another day.

We need more shows and movies that revolve around the characters and plot, with less technowizardry and fewer special effects. I’m not holding my breath waiting for either.

As an addendum, unlike all of the Star Trek geeks, I rather liked Enterprise, precisely because they didn’t have a magic gadget for everything, and weren’t able to use gadgets as deus ex machina devices. I thought Enterprise jumped the shark when the writers introduced the time travel nonsense, pulling the show back down into the same, tired, not-very-sci Sci-Fi camp as the other shows.

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