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The role of Science Fiction in Freethought
Posted on: June 17, 2010 - 6:26am
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The role of Science Fiction in Freethought
I have been an avid sci fi fan since early childhood. These wonderful books were my first taste of freethought and greatly enhanced my budding passion for science. Anyone else feel the same way?
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Although not one of the SF greats and not even a significant minor (When Worlds Collide) Philip Wylie's books polemics were what got me started thinking straight. I remember Generation of Vipers as the significant book.
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Also a Sci Fi fan, apart from the Christian-inspired work of CS Lewis.
I do like a lot of Sci-Fantasy, and some categories of Fantasy in general, but I could not get thru his "Out of the Silent Planet" series, the Christian dogma behind it became too obtrusive for me to ignore.
That also stopped me following the Battlestar Galactica series.
But the best stories really provide a beautiful and inspiring alternative to the Religious perspective.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Hmmm... I don't feel this way.
I did like sci fi books from an early age, but I don't see the genre having those effects. I don't see how sci fi books are examples of freethought. They often require people to ignore logic and reason in order for them to make sense. I can see how at an early age it piqued my curiosity in science a little bit. However, when I actually began to learn more about science and how far removed and much more tedious most science is from the things described in those books, its effects on my views of science became much more tenuous.
I don't understand why the Christians I meet find it so confusing that I care about the fact that they are wasting huge amounts of time and resources playing with their imaginary friend. Even non-confrontational religion hurts atheists because we live in a society which is constantly wasting resources and rejecting rational thinking.
I do. Star Trek, along with a lot of the hard sci-fi stuff I read at an early age, gave me a respect for science and critical thinking that contributed to a desire to question my own beliefs about theism.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I enjoyed Battlestar Galactica very much but the theism, and especially the ending, pissed me off royally. The implication that digging in the mud with an stick is somehow superior to technology is just stupid. Well, unless you like disease, parasites and starvation...
I believe Caprica is taking a different stance. Monotheism is being portrayed as the fanatical nutjob it so often has been.
I read my first sci-fi in the third grade. They had a mushroom farm in the basement and one grew large enough they could use it as a rocket ship. I knew it was total BS, but the idea of going to other planets - not just the moon, boring - really intrigued me. And I started with the old guys - Arthur C. Clarke, Issac Asimov, E.E. "Doc" Smith - who were all scientists. And their fiction at least made a nod at being plausible.
Now, the there are a few who work at being scientific - David Weber in particular. But I find myself drawn to the ones with a sociological bent. What would happen if a society were like this? Or that? Sherri S. Tepper, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Lois MacMaster Bujold. And I like some fantasy - Ms. Bujold again, some Piers Anthony, Ray Bradbury, Ms. Bradley again, early Barbara Hambly (her mysteries and historical fiction are good as well), Mercedes Lackey, Tolkein. I did gothic for awhile - Edgar Allen Poe, James Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Theodore Sturgeon, Harlan Ellison. But I find the new vampire and were novels rather boring and too much like soft porn. Other people having sex -- eeewwwwww. Ellison steps over that line a time or two.
I have a love hate relationship with Star Trek. I loved it as a teen when it first started. The seemingly never ending sequels were a drag. A few of the movies were good, some sucked. I really, really liked the new one. I felt it had a good feel for the original with good special effects and not the cheep cheesy stuff in the TV series.
I have always hated BattleStar. Loved Red Dwarf. Loved Firefly. I find most of the stuff on TV to be the same old, same old that has been done 200 times already. The Terminator was that - yeah, yeah, time paradoxes.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Uh, why don't I answer the question? Duh.
I don't know if they enhanced my passion for science. They certainly gave me a non-rosy glasses view of our society. The early guys stuck with a scientific inquiry of their surroundings and so instilled some of the same in me. But I think you can get the same if you are a big fan of mysteries or CSI and the like.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I named my daughter after Honor Harrington. Shhh, don't tell anyone.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
She would be a great role model for any young woman. My opinion.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
The first sci-fi I've ever read was the story collection Heavy planet. (Niven, Asimov, Henlein, Tevis, Piper, etc...) I was a kid and some of the stories were pretty hardcore, you know, topology and dimensional stuff like Moebius sheet or tesseract. But sci-fi always was my favorite genre. I've tried some fantasy and horror, but only the best pieces and only rarely.
Fortunately, I don't mind reading e-books straight from the computer screen, and I don't mind hunting for them across... places hard to find and decipher obscure e-book formats.
Besides that, I sometimes read esoteric textbooks and I mostly understand them.
Not all books I can get are translated to my language. I'm very glad my english is so good, because it allows me to read the books almost comfortably. There's always a few unknown bookish words per page, but unless I'm lazy I translate them right away.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I always thought so.
I like names that invoke some meaning, and I appreciated that her name has plenty of meaning. My name is Mark because my parents were religious...but I always told people I was named after Mars, god of war after I found out it was a root of Mark in a baby name book. To a little boy sounded a lot more interesting than the alternative. Well, it still does I suppose.
Then Jessica Alba had to go name her kid Honor too, like a big copy cat. On the upside now I just tell everyone that both of my daughters have the same name. Most people just look confused, then roll their eyes. No-one appreciates high-brow humor anymore.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Heck yeah! Sci Fi really influenced my love of science and scientific progress, even when it was ridiculous fantasy. Now I tend to prefer the hard sci fi that is more grounded in real scientific principles. Alastair Reynolds does a great job of taking real science to extreme limits of believability.
This is something that I have started to ponder lately too, as part of a greater musing on the sources of supernatural memes.
A tentative starting idea is that Science Fantasy is generally bollocks as there is often a quasi-religious / supernatural assumption present, whereas sci-fi usually doesn't have this.
This won't be true of all fantasy, but I suspect there is a higher correlation.
A lot of it should carry the ratings warning 'This program contains supernatural themes'.
In order test this idea I started examining Dr Who, but alas, the fact that it is a kids' program eventually wore me down and I had to give up.
I was also dragged along to see Avatar.
The 3D stuff was interesting for half an hour, but alas the film soon became unwatchable.
I eventually had to walk out, but not before noticing that I couldn't remember a single joke of any form in the film.
As for the supernatural themes in it, I am undecided.
There was a simplistic form of paganism, but it didn't seem too literal.
I didn't see the end of the film though.
I can go along with fantasy, even certain kinds of supernatural elements.
I don't know if I can really pin down what kind of fantasy/magic elements I can go with and which piss me off.
CS Lewis's specifically Christian allusions certainly kill it for me.
I think if there appears to be some structure or system behind the magic, IOW it is not quite "anything goes", that helps.
Some of the episodes of the new Dr Who work for me, but the hit rate of recent episodes is falling significantly for me.
Dunno if the spinoff 'Torchwood' (that title is an anagram of 'doctor who' ) is seen in the US, but I have been entertained by recent broadcast episodes, a bit more than current Dr Who.
I found 'Avatar' as a fairly satisfactory experience, seen at a fully digital/3D equipped theater.
To get into fantasy, and to a lesser extent Sci-Fi, does require a certain ability for a willing 'suspension of disbelief'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Here's the cut off for me. I just figured it out.
Futuristic sci-fi doesn't bother me. Like Avatar or Start Trek. So we don't have FTL drive or worm drive or warp drive or any other way of circumventing the speed of light limitations. Maybe one day someone will figure something out. Okay? It's a fun concept even if highly unlikely. Suspend disbelief.
Or else, like the hand held communicators in the original Star Trek. If you aren't old enough to remember, that was totally unreal when it came out. There were darn few cell phones and the first ones were the size of a lunch box - a large lunch box. And what do we all have now? My husband's cell even has an option for tones when you open the thing - so he made it chirp as close as he could to the old Star Trek communicators.
Fantasy is the same way. Give me a new twist, easy on the woo, and I'll play along. We even go watch some of the new animated movies just for fun. I'm looking forward to "Despicable Me". Looks hilarious, sort of like the old Coyote and Road Runner cartoons.
But what I can not tolerate is the "sci-fi" that is placed near our own time with junk science in it. "Day After Tomorrow" - come on. "2012" - give me a f-break. I didn't even go watch "Independence Day". Someone leaked to me that the way they bring down the mother ship is to create a virus on their Mac. And how did they know the mother ship used binary code, that they could create code that would run on that operating system, that there was a vulnerability that they could exploit in that OS? "Jurassic Park" was just as bad. The jar between what I know as good science in reality and the junk on the screen puts me out of the theater in a hurry.
So the "science" needs to be far enough away from now that I can't pick holes in it.
For me, "Avatar" was a mish mash of sci-fi not quite hokey and fantastic ecology. The story line has been used by countless other authors and it was hokey, too. But the visuals sucked me in far enough I could watch it to the end. Pretty, mindless, pretty mindless.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I have a problem with 'hard science' Sci-Fi when the author makes some fundamental error in the actual science. It doesn't usually stop me reading if the plot is good enough, but it keeps bugging me, especially when the plot depends on the 'error' to some degree. Even minor errors like that bug me in that context.
I think there were one or two stories by Peter F Hamilton which annoyed me in this respect, but the story was more than good enough to keep me reading.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Well Bob, I can tell you that I read the C. S. Lewis trilogy back when I was a theist and even then, it just was not very good. He ought not to have bothered. Other works of his were fine from that perspective, just not his lame attempt at sci-fi.
Now if you want some stuff that is actually good, if loaded with theistic material, you might try the Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan (with Brian Sanderson working to finish the series from the original notes). If you have not cracked it yet, it is a battle between a very real evil vs. a good which never shows up, imperfect humans, at least three religious cults and powerful magic users who are mostly morally ambiguous at the best of times.
You might also like the Cold Fire trilogy by C. S. Friedman. The sci-fi is only just enough to set up a fantasy world with lots of magic going around. I can't say much else about it as the whole religion thing gets revealed very slowly by the author and involves good becoming evil and, well...
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I quite like the WoT series. I don't have a problem with Theistic themes in general, I treat that as just another myth. It was something about the way Lewis introduced the Xian concepts, maybe you could see that as an example of how he failed in that series, as you say, coupled with my specific distaste for the core Xian theology.
My only problem with the WoT series is the sheer size of the canvas, the number of events and characters, which makes it hard to keep track of the details of the narrative, over the many years it has taken for them to be written and published. Which is why I am waiting till the final volume is out so I can pick up the story and read through to the conclusion more-or-less straight through.
I like the way the Stargate TV series handled religious themes. It did not directly confront specifically Xian beliefs, but introduced other religions which wove in allusions to various Xian ideas, and frequently used the stories to demonstrate the problems that religious faith and dogma can lead to.
I think I have mentioned this elsewhere, but my favorite fantasy series is Stephen Donaldson's 'Chronicles of Thomas Covenant', which I always think of as truly 'grown-up' fantasy, by contrast with Tolkien's LotR, which I generally enjoyed, but which struck me as being just a bit too 'fairy-tale' like. BTW I found the film trilogy of LotR more engaging than the books.
I also got hooked on the 'Sword of Truth' series by Terry Goodkind, and stuff by David Zindell, and A A Attanasio.
For magnificent, tightly-written, hard Sci-Fi, I don't think I can go past Iain M Banks, particular the ones set in the world of 'The Culture'.
I might have a look at C S Friedman. Such recommendations from someone who seems to share some of my preferences is valuable, since there are so many books out there, and some of them turn out to be so disappointing.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I suppose this is the gist of it. Myths and metaphors are valuable and essential.
I still have my concerns though, as the medium is also a message.
Stories about golden geese are fine, but we've seen what overexposure to myth can do to people.
I'd better go and look further into the role of myth in society. In a few decades I'll have a clearer opinion.
Suspending disbelief is ultra-gist. Cheers.
Hokey and unoriginal the Avatar story was, but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. I've always been considered a bit of a grumpy bastard. At least it was easy on the woo.
That's what I need to grapple further with too.
Meta-gist.
I am always surprised when people don't know how many times a particular concept has been explored in sci-fi. For a pseudo-scientific novel of sentient planets, try the Powers That Be series by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Scarborough. And I don't think I can pin down just one human-alien love affair. Maybe the Chanur series by CJ Cherryh. The Terminator was also a rehash of how many time paradox sci-fi stories? There were people in the audience at a university theater where I first saw the movie who seemed to think it was a brandy new idea. Nah, the story line was boring and so predictable. I stayed with it for the action and Arnie was so fine as a young man. He's just another old fart now.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I suppose it isn't just sci-fi, it is said that all fiction can be loosely classified into seven basic plots. Just as well there's one born every minute.
It has been quite a while since I read any sci-fi, or even much fiction; I'm tending more towards history (and forums).
Never enough hours in the day.
Yeah, I had an entire semester of English Lit - The Journey. Internal, external, ancient, modern, until I was totally bored and didn't want to journey anywhere ever again. The fun part is if the author manages to put a new twist on an old plot.
I going through some recommendations I got from this forum. And then it will probably be back to - I have nothing to read.
Says the person with an entire room of books stacked three deep on the shelves and overflowing onto the floor.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
Not that you are necessarily asking, but I'm always chary of making recommendations, as I have little idea what people's tastes are.
At present I'm ploughing through Pepys' diary online, which has the advantage of informed annotation. It'd probably bore most people to self-mutilation though.
I like sci-fi because it allows the author to explore issues (even taboo issues) without actually dealing with them explicitly. So, yeah, lots of good stuff out there.... I like old-skool stuff like H.G. Wells, Asimov, and Clarke too.
“Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid.”
Count me in with "most" people.
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.