Authors are apt to develop certain
peccadillos in their writing. You would not have to read many stories by Nelson
S. Bond before realizing he loved telling tales of the ‘fourth dimension’;
Isaac Asimov’s fondness for robots is well-documented; Ray Bradbury loved Mars
so much he spoke often of his desire to be buried on the Red Planet.
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| Ray Bradbury loved Mars so much, he got the first martian drivers' license. (Image Via File770.com) |
For some authors, these recurring ideas are
merely quirks. Unfortunately, for others their obsessions become quasi-religious
themes for which they feel the need to evangelize. Particularly within science fiction and fantasy, this tendency has undermined the later
works of many great authors.
As we look over the ranks of authors in
speculative fiction, we not only see those who had recurring themes but also a
desire to see their fiction become reality. There is precedent for such
transmogrification: Jules Verne lived long enough to see submarines such as his
Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues Under the
Sea (1870) become practical inventions; H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1898) became an infamous hoax and panic in the
hands of radio maestro Orson Welles in 1938. Further, Wells wrote of tank-like
vehicles in The Land Ironclads (1903)
and then saw tanks appear in real life. Although Wells confessed he knew the
idea of the tank was not original to him, he still said of the first tanks:
“They were my grandchildren - I felt a little like King Lear when first I read
about them.”
To some extent, fans of speculative fiction
are prepared for epistemological musings from their authors,
perhaps the more so
when there is a shade of doubt as to whether the author’s belief or evidence is
genuine. For instance, some of the bile directed to authors Orson Scott Card
and Stephanie Meyer derives from their status as believing Mormons.
Non-believers take offence when they perceive elements in those authors’
fiction that they view as an exhortation of the authors’ faith or exist to
convert the audience.
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| Battlestar Galactica is basically just the Book Of Mormon in space. (Image via Space.ca) |
As fans of speculative fiction, how far can
you and I take the Death of the Author Theory? Based on the sales of Call of Cthulhu, H. P. Lovecraft remains
fandom’s favourite virulently racist uncle. Is it icky to know Theodore
Sturgeon and his wife were swingers? If you learned Fritz Leiber was a
practicing pagan how would it affect your reading of his sword & sorcery
tales?
I can speak plainly of one speculative
fiction author whose beliefs interfered with my ability to enjoy his work. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle remains best known for his Sherlock Holmes tales but for our
purposes, we remember him for his five Professor Challenger stories (beginning
with The Lost World, 1912). Although
Doyle’s protagonists tended to be sound, rational men (Holmes, Challenger)
Doyle
himself drifted into the less-than-rational realm of spiritualism. Doyle
believed not only in the power of séances but (notoriously) fell for the
Cottingley Fairies hoax. This influenced Doyle’s Challenger novel The Land of Mist (1926), told as work of
spiritualism advocacy wherein Challenger and his friends were exposed to
spiritualism and all went from skeptics to firm believers. As I do not believe in séances, I found this novel extremely difficult to appreciate. I enjoy ghost
stories that send a chill down my spine, unnerve me enough to think ‘what if
it’s true?’ I do not at all enjoy stories where the author repeatedly tries to
convince me, ‘oh no, these ghosts truly exist – just wait, I will convince
you.’ One of those whom Doyle did convince was J. B. Rhine, the man who
coined the term ‘extrasensory perception’ (ESP).
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| Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pictured here with a fake ghost, hoped he would be remembered for his writings on spiritualism more than his Sherlock Holmes stories. (Image via prairieghosts.com) |
Ayn Rand is one science fiction author
whose personal philosophies have a large life outside of their fiction. Rand’s
philosophy of objectivism was born in her fiction and developed a large
following that remains closely aligned to libertarian-leaning politics of
today. Further, her fiction influenced many in the science fiction fields. Her
fans have included: Famous Monsters of
Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman, author Ray Bradbury (who said of The Fountainhead (1943) “It gave me
courage to just stand and say to people, 'Go away and leave me alone.'”), comic
book artists Steve Ditko & Trevor Von Eeden, author Terry Goodkind, and
performer Penn Jillette (renowned for his towering performance on TV’s Babylon 5). Although objectivism
seemingly reached its peak in the 1970s and the recent film adaptations of Atlas Shrugged (2011-14) were subject to
ridicule, Rand’s philosophy remains effervescent.
From a certain perspective, the most
successful science fiction author of all time is L. Ron Hubbard. Although
Hubbard never won a Hugo or a Nebula for his fiction, how many other authors in
his field can claim to have developed a powerful international
organization/religion? Perhaps it is hard (or painful) for science fiction
fandom to recall it now, but when Hubbard introduced Dianetics in 1950
he was
met with glowing reviews from seemingly all corners. Boosters included such as
authors James Blish (who is a Hugo
winner and resides in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame) and Hubbard’s early
ally A. E. Van Vogt (Science Fiction Hall of Fame). Excepting Lester Del Rey
and Theodore Sturgeon (Hugo winner, Nebula winner and Science Fiction Hall of
Fame; he recalled Hubbard saying to him: “If a man really wanted to make a
million dollars, the best way to do it would be to start his own religion.”),
virtually all of science fiction passively let Hubbard tell them how
‘clear’ they were. Hubbard’s Church of Scientology remains a powerful and
influential body in spite of the motion picture flop Battlefield Earth (2000) and despite Hubbard’s nearest brush with
prestige in the sci-fi community being his controversial 1987 Hugo nomination
for Black Genesis.
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| From a certain perspective, Hubbard is one of the most successful authors of all time. (Image via Bridgepublications.com) |
Another proponent of Dianetics was one of
science fiction’s most lauded names: John W. Campbell (Hugo winner, Science
Fiction Hall of Fame). Campbell wrote only one well-remembered story (Who Goes There?, 1938) but his tenure as
editor of Astounding Science Fiction
(later Analog; 1937-71) produced some
of the most consistently great sci-fi literature in the medium’s history. Yet
despite his accolades, he was a racist, a homophobe and a believer in
pseudoscience. His pseudoscience beliefs frequently interrupted the pages of Astounding to champion the hokum of not
only Dianetics but also ESP, the Dean Drive, the Bridey Murphy hoax and the
Hieronymus Machine.
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| As it turns out, there is no secret lost civilization living beneath the Earth's surface. (image Via Wikipedia.org) |
Editor Raymond Palmer of Amazing Stories (1938-49) fell along
similar lines to those of Campbell, but courted controversy in the 1940s when
he presented various stories by Richard Sharpe Shaver as though his fanciful
tales of an underground civilization were factual accounts. The ‘ShaverMystery’ ended in 1948 (due in part to complaints from Amazing Stories readers) but Palmer, embittered by the series’ end,
leaned hard into similar ideas. His magazines (such as Fate) ventured outside the bounds of science fiction in order to serve
as proponents for all the related pseudoscience, parapsychology, cryptozoology,
UFOlogy and suchlike.
In the instance of television’s Star Trek (1966-69), the rabid fandom that
sprang up around that program seemed to spur its creator Gene Roddenberry into
fashioning a philosophy to support it. When the series
returned with the feature film Star Trek:
The Motion Picture (1979) Roddenberry opted to jettison much of the
interpersonal sparring and
emotionalism of the television version, believing it
antithetical to the ‘utopianism’ he retroactively believed Star Trek embodied. Regarding Roddenberry’s novelization of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Darren
Mooney felt it “almost reads like the sacred text of a utopian cult.” This
sense of utopianism would permeate the remainder of Roddenberry’s contributions
to the franchise (Star Trek: The Next
Generation, 1987) but would be noticeably absent elsewhere in that
franchise (i.e., Star Trek II: The Wrath
of Khan, 1982).
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| Star Trek sometimes seems like a Utopian Cult. It's adherents are caught up in a holy war over which captain is better. (Image via Pintrest.com) |
There are also those science fiction creators
who have unintentionally caused a belief system to spring up without intending to. Robert A.
Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land
(1961) helped inspire the creation of the Church of All Worlds, a religion that
persists to this very day.
We of fandom have often encouraged the idea that
our favourite creators are more than mere tellers of tales; they are ‘visionaries’ or
perhaps ‘futurists.’ Doyle, Rand, Hubbard, Campbell, Palmer and Roddenberry
each reached points in their careers where the applause of their fans was not
enough; they felt the need to use their stage as a means to impart some
philosophy or impart ‘secret knowledge.’
Many fans no longer worship the science
fiction author as ardently as before – but perhaps only because the pantheon of
science fiction gods is constantly wheeling out new deities to affirm.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made of (Free Press, 1998).
John R. Eller, Becoming Ray Bradbury (University of Illinois Press, 2011).
Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (Dover, 1957).
L. Ron Hubbard, Theodore Sturgeon and
Lester Del Rey, The Dianetics Question
(Marvel Science Stories, May 1951).
Darren Mooney, Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry (Review) https://them0vieblog.com/2014/06/04/star-trek-the-motion-picture-by-gene-roddenberry-review/
Jonathan Rosen, Doubles: Wilkie Collins’s Shadow Selves (The New Yorker, July 25
2011).
H. G. Wells, War and the Future (Simon & Schuster, 1917).
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