Introduction to SF

Ninety percent of [science fiction] is crud, but then, ninety percent of everything is crud.^[1]

—Theodore Sturgeon

What is SF? That sounds easy enough to answer. After all, we know SF when we see it, don’t we? There are spaceships and aliens and little green men. Maybe there are even androids and time travel and sects of mystical warrior wizards… Warrior wizards? That’s not SF! As you can see, the generic distinctions start to break down. That’s an allusion to the Star Wars franchise by the way. Do you think the Star Wars franchise is science fiction or fantasy? On one hand, it has all the trappings of spaceships and aliens and androids, but on the other hand, the plot is an epic fantasy adventure, complete with swash-buckling and magic. The same for Marvel. Is it SF? Or is it fantastic mythology, complete with tiers of gods and demigods?

The genre of science fiction relies fundamentally upon “hard” sciences such as astronomy, chemistry, biology, physics, and engineering, but also “soft” sciences such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, and economics. We emphasize the word fundamentally because while other unreal genres do rely on these cognitive models, only SF does so categorically and foundationally. Science fiction does, of course, draw upon the spiritual and mystical, only these are not usually its primary or foundational modes. This definition is broad enough that many texts from many different cultures around the world and from different time periods can co-exist within it, and yet it is specific enough that we can make meaningful distinctions between science fiction and fantasy in general.

With a future-oriented vision that critiques contemporary reality, the form of SF possesses great inherent liberatory potential.^[2] SF casts our current conditions as malleable and changeable, as conditions that people might overcome or to which they may succumb. This liberation is merely potential because there is much science fiction content that is reactionary, juvenile wish-fulfillment (the crud mentioned in the epigraph above). Yet consider The Jetsons (1962), a show with which most readers will have a passing familiarity. On one hand, the show does little to reimagine the nuclear family as the primary economic unity of society, and many of the technological advances (such as Rosey the robot) are clearly designed to support this economic unit. A certain status quo that sees women as merely homemakers persists. On the other hand, the most tedious forms of labor have been taken over by robots, creating a great deal of freedom from work for all (except in the case of George, the father, who inexplicably works for a sprocket manufacturer). As wish-fulfillment, The Jetsons declares, “Look how future technologies will make life easier!”

Despite these advances in robotics and technologies, The Jetsons forces us to contemplate the absurdity of a world where labor is replaced by sophisticated robots, yet George must still work every day to support his family’s consumerism. When we reflect on this contradiction, it becomes clear that the system represented in The Jetsons offers an inherent critique of contemporary reality; if we truly desire to live in an advanced future free of labor, hunger, etc., we must recognize how the ideology of atomized, economized, consuming nuclear families works against that utopian impulse. This implicit sort of critique highlights the liberatory potential contained in all SF. It asks us to consider the human and ethical dimension of our technological and scientific advances, makes our own reality seem strange and changeable through scientifically extrapolated difference, and offers a vision of humanity controlling the stars and its own destiny.

With the proceeding descriptions in mind—science fiction as a form of future-oriented literature that critically reflects upon contemporary reality in an inherently liberatory way—let us return to the question asked above. Is the Star Wars franchise science fiction or fantasy? Well, the answer is both. On one hand, if we were to remove from the story the Manichaeism worldview that sees reality in terms of black and white, good and evil, the story would fail; and, on the other hand, if we were to remove the engineering, robotics, and ecology, the story would still fail all the same. After all, a galactic adventure would not be very exciting if it were confined to a single planet. Tuned to the “force” and to science, the Star Wars franchise contains both fantasy and SF in near equal measure.

What does Star Wars have to offer in terms of liberatory potential? On one hand, this might seem apparent. As the Empire gains power, the Rebel forces resist, seemingly locked in a never-ending battle for freedom from oppressive forces. The Rebels place their hope in the Jedi, “heroes” who will come to their aid, but the hope for heroes is anything but revolutionary. It is not heroes who make history after all, but ordinary human beings just like us. To its credit, the Star Wars franchise offers a complex critique of the Jedi as hero figures, but the true liberatory potential of Star Wars rests somewhere tangential to the apparent plot line. All across the galaxy, material actors have everywhere transformed and/or adapted to some of the harshest imaginable environments. In this sense, it should be no surprise that the shows and films return again and again to the inhabitants of the once-ocean, now-desert planet Tatooine.

It would be remiss not to mention the Star Trek vs. Star Wars debate. Which is better science fiction? Why? Why would such a question even be important? SF fans are no strangers to esoteric arguments of these sorts, and they usually are touted as indicators of one’s bona fides. SF shares a close relationship to paraliterary cultures, cultures such as fandoms that form up around a shared love (think cosplay). Star Wars enjoyed more mainstream success, but Star Trek generated one of the most intense and long-lived fandoms of SF history, affectionately termed Trekkies. Star Trek attracted people otherwise marginalized by society; that is, in Star Trek’s vision of the future, even outcasts, racial others, people with disabilities, and so forth, contribute to the mission “to explore strange new worlds and new civilizations.” The Star Trek world is built upon a vision of a technologically mediated future that creates the conditions for a diverse and pluralistic society. The bulwark against chaos is this society itself, not the heroism of a band of mystic space knights. In this sense, Star Trek achieves a harmony of form and content that Star Wars sometimes lacks.

What do you think? What’s SF to you? Which do you consider better SF, Star Wars or Star Trek? Why?