Science and Fiction

I must begin with a warning. Science fiction is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people are simply not interested in it; others suspect it of a rather base materialism. And, of course, there is much bad science fiction. One may invent a canal to Mars, or occupy oneself with teratology and some hippopine monstrosity, without producing anything of value. It is not enough to manufacture strange creatures. One must fit one’s creatures to their environments.

What, then, is the aim of fiction in general? I should say that it is to construct imaginary situations which are, in some sense, true in spirit. They must interest us, delight us and stimulate us. They may epitomise some aspect of life; they may serve as symbols which quicken both the mind and the feelings. At their best they create a new awareness. They open windows. They enable us to apprehend something significant which, without the fiction, we might never have clearly seen.

The straight novel accepts the current background of science and puts personal relations in the focus. It is “about” people. The author’s imagination plays upon human character and human events, and makes them concrete. The historical novel—if these rather barbarous labels may be allowed—combines history and fiction in order to make a period live. In that case the imagination plays upon a past human society and gives it concrete form.

The propaganda novel uses fiction to put across social, religious or political ideas. Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is an obvious example. But if propaganda fiction is to be genuine art, the propaganda must be subordinated to the art. The imagination plays upon the idea and makes it concrete.

Any fiction, if it is to be art, must fuse its materials into a whole. It must attain unity of form and some harmony of emotion. And yet—we must beware of the tyranny of a convention. The novel critic demands—too poetically—“pucker” novels, as strictly formed, in their own way, as sonnets. There is certainly a place for such novels, but there is also a place for other kinds of fiction.

Let us consider science in fiction, in general. Any fiction must do one of two things. It must either assume the current scientific view of the world, as Galsworthy normally does, or it must deliberately violate that view for a purpose. David Garnett’s Lady into Fox violates it. So does Orwell’s Animal Farm.

Science, in this broad sense, entered early fiction. Dante’s Divine Comedy accepts the science of its age and consciously employs it for a religious purpose. But the focus, observe, is God and man. The old fairy stories and the voyages of Sinbad accept the ordinary world and add magic—a sort of science beyond science. Sinbad may be lifted by a bird much too large to fly according to our mechanics. Unicorns, griffins and dragons could enter the accepted picture of nature. Milton, similarly, accepts both old and new science.

Angels were plausible to the Middle Ages, though they are not mechanically plausible to us. Their anatomy, if taken literally, is bad mechanics. The centre of gravity is wrong. What was formerly plausible has become impossible within our scientific convention.

Once again, orthodox novel standards are not applicable. There may be no people, no heroine, no love and no tale in the ordinary sense. The interest may lie in a new scientific possibility. Newtonian physics gives place to relativity, and fiction begins to play with timeless travel—with entering the timeless and returning. Interest moves also from physics to biology, and perhaps from biology toward the paranormal: telepathy and precognition.

Haldane, in Possible Worlds, offers suggestions of this kind: specious presents linked together, or circular lives. J. B. Priestley, in Berkeley Square, also plays with time, under an influence which may be compared with Ouspensky.

As science becomes more precise, fiction must keep pace with it. Swift’s Lilliputians did not violate the science of Swift’s own day, but they would violate ours; such creatures, taken literally, would not be viable. We forgive Swift because we adopt his convention. We too may break our own convention for a definite purpose, as Orwell does in Animal Farm. But the truer a fiction is to current science, the more plausible it will be.

In the special case of “science fiction,” scientific ideas are themselves in the focus. Here I think we must distinguish two very different things. The first is imaginative doodling, which is escapism. Much of the material in the science-fiction magazines belongs to this class. It is the modern equivalent of the old fairy story: robots, giant spiders, sheer marvels. It is often scientifically poor and humanly atrocious. And there is the love theme.

The second kind is serious science fiction. The early stories of Wells provide the great examples. Their aim is mind-stretching: they give concrete life to abstract possibilities. Consider The Star, or the tripod Martians of The War of the Worlds; consider Star-Begotten; consider The Time Machine, or the pill which made a man light.

There are, I suggest, three rules in the game of science fiction. First, it should conform to current scientific ideas sufficiently to be plausible. Secondly, it should imaginatively explore further possibilities—this is imaginative exploration, not serious prophecy. It must create, but create within the scientific framework which it has accepted. Thirdly, it must be humanly plausible and significant: the imagined world ought to be a symbol for current man. The best works of this kind may become myths for a scientific age.

I turn now to some notes on masters. Wells I have already dealt with. Jules Verne gave us the voyage to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

Haldane has written what he calls stories for children—the Mr Leakey stories; the rats, for example. He has played also with such ideas as the abolition of pain and its reversal. Karel Čapek’s War of the Newts, like The Insect Play, uses fantasy as an anti-capitalist symbol. Régis Messac offers La Cité des Asphyxiés and Quinzinzinzilli; M. P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud.

In John Gloag’s Tomorrow’s Yesterday there are flaws: intelligent cats which would not have evolved. Manna considers a provision which makes people lazy. There are also The New Pleasure, The Pendulum, with its post-death experience, and 99%, with inherited memories.

We must contrast science fiction proper with fantasies which are not primarily scientific. David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus is a science poem—the yellow water, for instance—but with high aesthetic value and spiritual symbolism. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, with its conflict of Satanic and angelic powers, and Perelandra and the later books, are anti-scientific. And there are the Screwtape Letters—overtones!—witty, with good psychology, though the fundamental assumptions are false.

There are many other border-line or non-scientific fantasies: Morland Bishop’s The Star Called Wormwood; Anatole France’s Penguin Island and The Revolt of the Angels; Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin; and J. C. Powys’s Morwyn, which is anti-scientific and magical. Samuel Butler’s Erewhon is another example. There are Murray Constantine’s Proud Man and Swastika Night.

T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone is anti-modern in temper, but it contains a fine play with time. Merlyn possesses his extraordinary collection, including cigarette cards; there is the hat incident; and the boy Arthur is seen in relation to the King Arthur whom he is to become.

How does the artificer set to work upon such a fiction? He consults scientific friends; he discovers the rules of the game. The process may be compared with what I have elsewhere called the vital art.

Last and First Men began with an Anglesey vision and with the figure of the stout Cortes. I attempted to present successive human species. The first step was a superman; later came various extravagances—the Great Brains, the flying men, the Martians and the Venusians. I missed the time-scale: two million years. I also missed Hitler—but not atomic power. There were also the attempt to suggest a transcendence of time, and spirit.

In Star Maker I used a larger canvas and a more philosophical intention. I imagined many types of beings, including plant-men and the “Other Man”; I imagined societies of worlds, cosmical progress and cosmical death. Behind them all stood the fiction of the Maker as artist.

The aim of Odd John was to present a plausible superman. I tried to do this, first, by extrapolating known human powers and, secondly, by hinting at powers qualitatively new. With Sirius there were the original “vision” and Waddington’s story of an experiment upon rats. The problem was to endow a non-human mammal with human intelligence and then work out the consequences. I had to choose the beast and the environment; and there was the conflict of natures.

L. H. Myers commented upon Last and First Men. Rebecca West said of Star Maker that it was as though Milton had given Paradise Lost to the author of Bradshaw to rewrite.

My own aims have been to write modern myths. No doubt they will seem very crude to a later age. I have tried to make them scientifically plausible, to work out possibilities and possible futures, and to juggle with time. I have tried to make symbols—true in principle, perhaps—of man-in-the-cosmos. I have tried also to relate science to religion, and to explore the potentialities of man as a vessel of the spirit.

A note: in Last and First Men the theme is the vicissitudes of man. In Star Maker, and again in Death into Life, the concern is spirit and the other. Odd John—my best science fiction, perhaps?—offers a glimpse of a superhuman being. Sirius places human intelligence in a dog. Flames offers wild biology, but once more the underlying concern is spirit.

Among the special examples are the use of atomic power; the Great Brains; the Flying Men; the Martians; the vegetable world; and the long-legged race which follows the sun.

There is the psychological exploration—the exploration of the effects of person upon person.

And we had to invent environments. Normal environments lead to normal creatures, and there was some hard work here. Hence the queer environments: a world without gravity; a world of great gravity; fire.

This sheet bears only the Liverpool University Library archive stamp and the reference STAP. F 8/5.