Focused Literary Studies

Transcription

1 Focused Literary Studies FANTASY AND SCIENCE-FICTION People say that what we re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don t think that s what we re really seeking. I think that what we re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. Sit in a room and read and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988)

2 We want wisdom. We want hope. We want to be good. Therefore we sometimes tell ourselves warning stories that deal with the darker side of some of our other wants. As William Blake noted long ago, the human imagination drives the world. At first it drove only the human world, which was once very small in comparison to the huge and powerful natural world around it. Now we're close to being in control of everything except earthquakes and the weather. But it is still the human imagination, in all its diversity, that directs what we do with our tools. Literature is an uttering, or outering, of the human imagination. It lets the shadowy forms of thought and feeling heaven, hell, monsters, angels and all out into the light, where we can take a good look at them and perhaps come to a better understanding of who we are and what we want, and what the limits to those wants may be. Understanding the imagination is no longer a pastime, but a necessity; because increasingly, if we can imagine it, we'll be able to do it. Margaret Atwood, interview with The Guardian (2005) DEFINITIONS Speculative fiction A broad form of storytelling in which key elements are based on speculation and imagination rather than realism or ordinary life. Fantasy (literature or film) A form of speculative fiction defined primarily by its use of magic or the supernatural as a key component in the narrative. As a form of storytelling, fantasy has its origins in mythology, legend, and folklore. Science-fiction A form of speculative fiction which explores the implications of some aspect of technology on society and attempts to extrapolate the logical implications of this technology as it develops in the future. Pulp magazine A type of inexpensive fiction magazine published on low-quality wood pulp paper. Pulp magazines were extremely popular in the early twentieth century, and were a common platform for fantasy, science fiction, and horror stories. Trope An element of plot, characterization, setting, or use of language that recurs throughout a genre of storytelling.

3 AN APPETITE FOR WONDER The oldest story ever written is the Babylonian mythological adventure The Epic of Gilgamesh. Written in Mesopotamia on clay tablets 3,000 years ago, it is impossibly ancient yet strangely familiar. It is essentially a quest story, the first ever told. It tells of a mighty hero named Gilgamesh who is one-third god and two-thirds man. He is on a journey to find the secret to eternal life. He battles ogres, manscorpions, and a magical bull. He tries and fails to save a friend, and learns of a worldwide flood sent by the gods. He resists the amorous attentions of a goddess. He travels to the land of the dead. Though a deeply flawed character Gilgamesh begins the story as a somewhat depraved and arrogant king Gilgamesh becomes a hero. He is the first hero in world literature. There is a Gilgamesh in all of us. We are all flawed, and troubled. We are all aware of the reality of death. We all long for greatness. And, like Gilgamesh, we all find ourselves on a quest. The American literary scholar Joseph Campbell, a world renowned expert in mythology, famously called this quest the hero s journey. In his seminal 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces Campbell argues that the foundational myths from all of the world s ancient cultures share a common underlying trope: a hero embarks on a journey from which he (or she) may never return. As envisioned by Campbell, the journey involves a series of stages. Not every fantasy story contains every stage; some focus in on one or two stages while others present the stages in an order different from the standard description. In general, however, Campbell saw the hero s journey unfolding in the following pattern (I m condensing it here somewhat, but you ll get the general idea): 1. The hero receives a call to adventure to leave the ordinary world. 2. After leaving the ordinary world, the hero embarks on a road of trials a metaphor for challenges and suffering.

4 3. Eventually the hero must face death, aided by allies and a mentor. He may die literally or figuratively and then be resurrected. 4. After facing death, the hero is given a great reward a boon and may then decide to return to the ordinary world. 5. Upon returning to the ordinary world with the boon, the hero has now become something greater than himself (or herself). The boon is used to improve, even save, the world. From Gilgamesh to Harry Potter, the hero s journey seems to describe every fantasy story ever told. The word fantasy derives from the medieval French word phantasie meaning vision or imagination. The word fantasy connotes the impossible a world of magic, wonder, and the supernatural. In one sense, this is a good way to start thinking about what fantasy means. Regardless of how we attempt to define it (and definitions of this sort of thing are extremely tricky), fantasy is as old as human culture. But if we trace the line of human history through Europe, we see something very different take shape beginning with Nicholas Copernicus in the 15 th century, who asserted a heliocentric (sun-centered) cosmos, and concluding with Isaac Newton in the 17 th century, who proposed universal laws and a Mechanical Universe. This era became known as the Scientific Revolution. And where there is science, there is science-fiction. Many critics think that the first science-fiction story ever told was Mary Shelley s novel Frankenstein (1818), written when the author was just nineteen years old! Victor Frankenstein, the novel s protagonist, is another Gilgamesh, with one central difference. His power does not come from the gods, but from science. On a simple level, we could say that fantasy stories are about magic and science-fiction stories are about technology, but the distinction between fantasy and science fiction usually isn t quite so obvious. Science-fiction stories aren t simply about technology, but about imaginary technology, and some of the future tech described in science-fiction stories doesn t seem that much different from magic. Consider the following observation by the American horror writer Stephen King, who has written a great deal of both fantasy and science-fiction: The dividing line between fantasy and science-fiction (for properly speaking, fantasy is what it is; the horror genre is only a subset of the larger genre) is a subject that comes up at some point at almost every fantasy or science-fiction convention held (and for those of you unaware of the subculture, there are literally hundreds each year). It s a trap, this matter of definition, and I can t think of a more boring academic subject. I ll content myself with stating the obvious inarguables: both are works of the imagination, and both try to create worlds which do not exist, cannot exist, or do not exist yet. There is a difference, of course, but you can draw your own borderline, if you want and if you try, you may find that it s a very squiggley border indeed. Stephen King, Danse Macabre (1981)

5 For example, consider the comic panel below. Anthropomorphic animals are a common staple in both fantasy and science-fiction. The story below could be either one. Perhaps the animals speak and reason because they are magical beings, fantastic creatures from the mysterious Land Beyond Our Own. Or perhaps they are the result of a genetic experiment in Uplifting Lower Life-Forms to Self-Awareness. Does it matter? In one sense it does, because the reason these animals speak will shape the kind of story being told. Yet regardless of the genre label we use, the scene remains unchanged. My point is that there is a difference between fantasy and science-fiction, and it is a meaningful difference, but the difference is more important in some stories than in others. In other stories the difference is barely relevant. In case you re curious, the panel is from the post-apocalyptic science-fiction comic book Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth, a monthly series published by DC Comics from The animals of the fictional world explored in Kamandi have achieved human-level intelligence and sapience due to the effects of a super-drug called Cortexin (the most sophisticated level of the mammalian brain is the cortex get it?) combined with mutation by radiation from a global catastrophe called The Great Disaster. It is a story clearly intended as science-fiction. Yet the science invoked is very much nonsense science, of the mad scientist variety (what the American writer and game designer Steve Jackson once called Science! as opposed to science ). The story of Kamandi has more in common with the fantasy of The Wizard of Oz than it does with many science-fiction stories. So the genre lines aren t always that clear, or that meaningful. We ll discuss the genre distinctions more in our first week. They are important, but they can only take us so far. Arguably, the common elements of science-fiction and fantasy are far more important than the differences. Like fantasy, science-fiction seems intimately connected to the hero s journey. It is another kind of myth-making. I quote Margaret Atwood on this point at the beginning of this course overview, and the writers of The Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction make a similar (if more prosaic) observation:

6 Mythology in sf reflects a familiar truth, that in undergoing social and technological change we do not escape the old altogether, but carry it encysted within us. The totally new is by its nature almost impossible for sf writers or anyone else to envisage. Far more commonly, they work out ancient patterns of love and death, aspiration and reconciliation in a new context. from The Encyclopedia of Science-Fiction, 3rd edition (ed. John Clute) I like that last sentence in particular because I think it sums up the entire purpose of what we re doing this semester: This course is an exploration of how ancient patterns of love and death, aspiration and reconciliation are played out in science-fiction and fantasy. In doing so we will consider a number of essential topics, including: Mythology, folklore, and legends The hero s journey Themes, tropes, and archetypes in fantasy and science-fiction Fairy tales, anthropomorphic fables, epic fantasy, pulp fantasy Victorian science-fiction, pulp science-fiction, cyberpunk science-fiction Adaptation from text to screen: fantasy and science-fiction literature to film There will be many other topics addressed. Our approach, by necessity, will be a very broad survey. It would be impossible in a high school course (or even a university level course) to do justice to the vast range of fantasy and science-fiction literature written throughout human history. What I hope to do instead is give you a sense of some of the great texts that illustrate these two essential modes of storytelling and that have profoundly influenced our culture in countless ways. In the end, these stories are really about us. They speak to the deepest yearnings of the human heart and they boldly and loudly confront the challenges and trials that define the human condition. Shakespeare famously described storytelling as a mirror that we hold up to nature. Lewis Carroll thought that the mirror what he called a looking-glass could also function as a door to imaginary and fantastic places. One of those places perhaps the most important place is ourselves. Let s begin.