Unwound

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right".

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".

Issac Asimov - Foundation.


A few months ago, a friend of mine got in touch to say that someone in his church was looking at starting a blog on the amazing world of science fiction and needed some help getting started by someone providing something that would inspire further writing. Knowing of my passion for the subject, I was asked if I could provide such a piece, so I quickly set to work.

It didn't take me long to delve back into over 50 years of pretty well continual engagement with the genre and to start mapping out the scope and range of a realm of stories that has seen much of its popular flowering in my own lifetime. Even as I did so, I began to get ideas for other pieces that could also be written, so it really wasn't any great surprise to me that in the end, I had to submit two articles on the key themes and not just one.

Something, however, has bothered me in the weeks following my burst of somewhat nostalgic creativity, and it became more acute in the last week, particularly as I began to ponder a particular question.

What if I had not been born in the 60s, but was born, say sometime in the last twenty years, and I was encountering this realm, not principally through the 'eyes' of the golden age of such fiction, but particularly in what's currently being generated, especially as 'popular' sci-fi, now. What would my impressions and affiliation to the field be?

Well, I'd probably still be wowed by some of the visual scope of what's being done. It would appear we're now capable of putting pretty much anything on screen, from vast spacial vistas, to really strange life, to conflicts involving thousands, so story-telling has clearly come a very long way, but what of the stories themselves? What of the themes, the characters, the deep drama, the excellence of resolutions to sweeping tales and the intellectual pay-off of getting us to think deeply about ourselves?

If the recent ventures of popular long-standing shows in this field are anything to go by, then all of this has suffered terribly of late. The money to make visual 'zing' may be there, but the stories themselves, given the reaction of the died in the wool fans, leaves a great deal to be desired, and this is really troubling.

Science Fiction was never afraid to play with all kinds of ideas about us, culture, progress and these often really got you having to pause and give them time, but this was never done in a 'convert or die' fashion. If something was good enough, deep enough, smart enough, it would keep you thinking, but the days of such craft, such wisdom appear to be reaching a troubling end. Most shows now apply a world-view sledgehammer all the time , making it clear that deviation from the line expressed is a heinous deviancy of the most ugly kind, so woe betide you if you outwardly question what's going on.

It's somewhat akin to what happens in the third season of one of the recent sci-fi shows that isn't following this blandness - the Expanse.

A vast ring in space has been constructed in our solar system by an alien civilization that we know very little about. Humans from Earth, Mars and the Asteroid belt sends ships to investigate and soon discover they can penetrate the field the ring creates to explore what's inside, but this field is as deadly as it mysterious, and all manner of troubles begin to befall the intrepid crews as they seek to learn more and discover what is really happening.

Much of current media, science fiction included, is like that ring - when you recognize the sphere of cultural influence and the 'exotic' notions behind much in media at present, you realize that there are very serious hazards and pitfalls in play in where Western culture is currently heading - a kind of 'right-mind' think that is seeking to eat whole the way in which we speak, act and identify who and what we are. Business, institutions and media are swallowing this apparent 'rightness' wholesale, and it's got to be questioned.

Today, I was reminded again of how brilliant Science Fiction can be when it gets us to question what we're being told we must accept.

Christianity isn't about not asking those questions of what's going on. It's about asking them well and giving substantial answers, so if you find yourself adrift in the current miasma of what's going on at present around us, check out some 'old' stuff - both in Science Fiction and Christianity. I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised, perhaps even a little shocked, at the treasures that you'll find there.