1.2 Science Fiction

1.2.a Concept and approach

Science Fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.

James E. Gunn. Introduction, The Road To Science Fiction, Vol 1, NEL, New York 1977

A revealing way of describing science fiction is to say that it is part of a literary mode which one may call "fabril". "Fabril" is the opposite of "Pastoral". But while "the pastoral" is an established and much-discussed literary mode, recognized as such since early antiquity, its dark opposite has not yet been accepted, or even named, by the law-givers of literature. Yet the opposition is a clear one. Pastoral literature is rural, nostalgic, conservative. It idealizes the past and tends to convert complexities into simplicity; its central image is the shepherd. Fabril literature (of which science fiction is now by far the most prominent genre) is overwhelmingly urban, distruptive, future-oriented, eager for novelty; its central images is the "faber", the smith or blacksmith in older usage, but now extended in science fiction to mean the creator of artefacts in general--metallic, crystalline, genetic, or even social.

Tom Shippey. Introduction, The Oxford Book of Science Fiction Stories, (Oxford, 1992)

It [science fiction] should be defined as a fictional tale determined by the hegemonic literary device of a locus and/or dramatis personae that (1) are radically or at least significantly different from empirical times, places, and characters of "mimetic" or "naturalist" fiction, but (2) are nonetheless--to the extent that SF differs from other "fantastic" genres, that is, ensembles of fictional tales without empirical validation--simultaneously perceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of the author's epoch.

D. Suvin. Preface, Metamorphoses Of Science Fiction, (Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, 1979)

Regarding The Lord of the Rings, Gunn's definition of science-fiction offers no doubt about being applied to the book, mostly when it deals with change; the ancient world of Middle-earth fades with the end of the Third Age of the Sun. In addition, the presence of the Ring and the evil powers of Sauron threaten the Free Peoples up to the point of extinction. The concept of Fabril literature displayed by Shippey wouldn't be suitable at its entire, insofar The Lord of the Rings is not set in a distant, not even in a near future. But the interesting point in his definition is the figure of the "faber", a term which fits both Sauron and Saruman like a glove. Sauron, the impersonation of evil, is a powerful blacksmith, skilled in the Elvish art of the forge, and thus he creates some artifacts to control people: the Rings of Power. Saruman, whose Elvish name means "man of skill", breeds the new monster-race of the Uruk-Hai and fills Isengard with machines and melting iron. The definition given by Suvin is a perfect justification for the magic and the creatures of Middle-earth. Most creatures (as explained at the beginning of part II of this study) are amazed by the discovery of others who they thought were just characters from a tale. For instance, the case of the Riders of Rohan and Ents when they meet Hobbits, or the moment when Sam sees an oliphaunt. Anyway, the internal norms of the author's own narrative make possible the presence and acceptance of such wonderful creatures, as well as the magic that keeps a lidless eye alive in flames and brings a wizard back from death.

1.2.b Examples

About Tolkien's dislike of technification one can say that though he was not the only one, he approached it with a different scope than, for instance, his contemporary, George Orwell, who in his novel 1984 depicted future highly-technified cities inhabited by robot-minded, sad, tired human beings, or Ray Bradbury, who talked about knowledge, power and censorship also in future societies in Fahrenheit 451. Orwell depicted a repressive society in 1984, controlled by thought-reading spy screens at the homes of people and the omnipresent image of the Big Brother, an ever-seeing Eye in the likes of Tolkien's watch-tower of Mordor, crowned with a lidless eye wreathed in flames in constant search for the One Ring. It is said that Orwell's novel was a portrait/foresight of the upcoming Stalinist regime, which is a much more creditable analogy than those between Tolkien and Nazism or even with Russian Socialism itself, for Saruman was at times like the head of a steel-factory who had at his command a crowd of enslaved workers, were it orcs or humans from Orthanc (an opinion from the critics always rejected by Tolkien). Bradbury was very similar in style to Orwell, for he used ultra-modern technification for criticism in highly politicised texts, namely Fahrenheit 451. Tolkien also made literary use of chemicals and mechanical devices, but they set them in a very long past, so though an improvement at war they looked archaic, much more basic than those invented by the other two authors. And on the other hand, he didn't present them as 'magic' either, so concerning the presence and criticism of technology in his works, Tolkien cannot be placed neither as a Science-Fiction writer nor as a strict Sword-and-Sorcery one.

Concerning 'visionaries', we must not yet forget Jules Verne, because he was one of the pioneering authors to combine not only adventure and exotism, but also technology and fiction. Though seen as a pro-technologist, much more convinced of future improvements, Verne was not in fact happy at all with technology for though he always portraited them as astonishing devices, it was just a merchandising trick from a salesman of literature provided by his editor, Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Even so, the most of his stories end up with the main characters staying home and promising themselves to lead a quieter life in the future, for they have had enough experiencing the dangers of scientific explorations in a balloon over the jungle or rocket-trips to outer space and back. In his essay Jules Verne: Father of Science Fiction?, John Derbyshire declares that Verne was mostly a Tech-Fiction writer toying around with 'the fanciful possibilities of technology'. For Derbyshire, H. G. Wells would be a more suitable candidate to name as Father of true Science Fiction, but unfortunately Wells narrative-genre stands quite far off Tolkien's standards for he depicted advanced sciences and technology in his present-day. For instance, The Time Machine is a series of time-jumps in which Wells gives his opinion on the past, the present and the expectations about the future, technology playing the main role insofar a machine acts as the major plotting device.

There is also the fact that Tolkien referred to Middle-Earth as an early version of actual planet Earth, long before the actual Age of Men as we know it. But Tolkien set natural evolution aside and forgot about dinosaurs and hominids and showed himself not as an evolutionist but as a Christian for he depicted a god to be the Maker of Mankind and all living beings. This stains of realism helped the creation of an English Mythology, for Tolkien had a convincing setting to develop his revisions of History and Myth. Of course many could rightly say that settings had been declared to be older variations of actual places completely at will, but it was due to literary needs, a license from the author to both illustrate and catch the reader's attention. These accusations had already been made to Sir Walter Scott, for he was said to ruin History by mixing it with complete fiction. But Scott's aim was precisely to catch the attention of the readers to teach them English History, or at least to make it in a more entertaining mood, at times very romantic, others greatly epic. Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History and Theory of Texts professor Jerome J. McGann, in his essay Walter Scott's Romantic Postmodernity, defines Scott's fictional style as follows (quoted from my webpage on English Narrative):

Scott discovered that, indeed, facts are better than fiction; he wrote of events from real life and not "the fine-spun cobwebs of the brain."

[...]

Scott's greatness is not the product of a 'search for form' or some ingeniously contrived 'skill'. It derives from his insight into the precise and complex dynamisms of society and history. This repudiation of Aestheticism comes with a critique of traditional, uncritical views of Scott. "What in Scott has been called very superficially 'authenticity of local colour' is in actual fact [the] artistic demonstration of historical reality. It is the portrayal of the broad living basis of historical events in their intricacy and complexity, in their manifold interaction with acting individuals".

But for the critics of Romaticism (according to McGann) James and Lukács Scott was not a 'true' writer at all. James had a Flaubertian argument concerning fiction, a realistic viewpoint which couldn't allow the libertinage of mixing actual facts and people from History with fictional characters, nor the contrary. History and fiction couldn't be put together for their juxtaposition would end in contradiction and so it could never reflect reality. For Lukács, who developed his criticism 50 years after James, Walter Scott had been taken for a romantic writer, when in fact he had renounced to classical Romaticism and thus conquered it. Scott was firmly against (in the words of McGann) "lyrical-subjectivist absolute", the essence of traditional Romanticism. Scott's heroes, according to Lukács, couldn't get measured in the terms of Gothic and Byronic tradition, unlike the rest of Romantic heroic characters. And according to McGann, in addition "Lukács says nothing about the elaborate comic apparatus that Scott created to support and transmit his novels to the public. This material seems to have struck as inconsequential to Scott's great project: the epic portrayal of human beings struggling within an "Historical necessity . . . of the most severe, implacable kind" Was this historical necessity the same urge Tolkien felt for an English Mythology?