“Sic itur ad astra”: An Ode to Science Fiction and the Individual

Geraint Hughes

A professor of mine once told me that a classic was a work that was always relevant, no matter the time or place. The particular classic he had in mind was Natsume Soseki’s Japanese novel Kokoro (1914), an introspective masterpiece on the changes the Meiji Restoration and modernization had wrought on Japanese society—particularly on the individual. His definition made sense in the context of the work he chose. Japan has certainly undergone continuous profound changes in both society and the idea of self since Kokoro was published, and still constantly seeks to frame current events with references to the novel. To expand on the reach of his definition though, I would argue it fits not just one modern novel but the entire genre of literary classics—a body of work that our civilization has been continually referencing and holding up as a mirror to itself. These are works we constantly seek to reinterpret and reference to ground our own modern experiences, drawing upon the references and themes within. The title of this essay is an example, a callback to a line from the Aeneid (a work both ancient and classical to the Western canon). To go even further, think of all the literary classics that we continually reference today, the ones we had to read and dissect in high school—Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Hamlet. Do they fit the description my professor provided? We certainly argue about them, turn them into films, try to ban them, and make memes about them. While you think about that, I want to write about the relevance of a different type of genre than that of the high school English class and its often heavy-handed, dogmatic approach towards literature. What is the relevance of science fiction and its own classics?

Science fiction as a whole is pretty easy to defend. It’s the blaster and rocket-heavy half of my favorite literary genre—the two-headed chimera of sci-fi/fantasy. This is the genre, after all, that gave us the words robot and cyberspace, and it is defined by the exploration of ideas and following the consequences of those ideas to their natural conclusion (what separates well-written science fiction from bad is that the good does not lose sight of character, pace, and plot while writing about these ideas). Exploring concepts this way is a powerful tool for observing and critiquing society, testing hypotheses, and general thinking about possibilities. This is what science fiction allows us to do, and it is first and foremost why we should read it.

Before I sound too much like an M.F.A. program, perhaps a better way to think about science fiction is through discussing some of the works themselves and their relevance to our tumultuous times. Let’s work with the hits—the works that exemplify the tropes and images the name “sci-fi” conjures. Keeping the above definition of a classic in mind then, what is the greatest science-fiction novel of all time? How would such a work necessarily be the most relevant, the most “classical”? Two main contenders immediately come to my (admittedly biased) mind. Is it Frank Herbert’s mystical Dune (1965) or Isaac Asimov’s mathematical Foundation (1951)? Dune is about a messiah, Paul Atreides, a prophet born to reshape the galaxy he lives in, who is cast out by his peers and leads a movement across the galaxy to become the emperor. Foundation is about a society of engineers, merchants, and encyclopedists; the eponymous Foundation, struggling to rebuild civilization in the face of galactic collapse. Two different stories, one a psychological work, a painting of an exceptional individual—the portrait of the Messiah as a young man; the other a sociological one, the story of a society working together in the face of overwhelming circumstances. Both are rightfully acclaimed (so long as we ignore some of the later Dune books) and considered classics of the sci-fi genre. Dune won the Hugo and Nebula awards while the Foundation series won the dramatically named one-off Hugo Award for Best Series of All Time (purportedly made for the sole purpose of rewarding The Lord of the Rings). I don’t want to exaggerate too much or create a stark dichotomy though. Neither are solely psychological versus sociological works. Herbert writes vividly about the challenges of religion and environment and how they shape society, while Asimov applies his formidable intellect to how the impact of individuals pushes Foundation forwards.

Your answer to which is best might have something to do with how you prefer your stories. Do you prefer to have a central protagonist—a hero, if you will—or do you prefer stories with a wide cast of characters (a la A Song of Ice and Fire) who are presented as buffeted by great forces which they struggle to overcome? I know my answer: Dune. Like many people, I am drawn to personal narratives, and I love stories of individuals overcoming challenges through their own inherent genius and drive. But is Dune relevant to our society today? Its themes certainly are. Tales of ecological collapse, religion seeping through society, oligarchical monopolies, and decadent murderous aristocracies could have been ripped from yesterday’s headlines. Additionally, our collective attraction to genius is, of course, as strong as ever. While we no longer hold genius as something divine—a gift from the gods—we prize genius and those who wield it. One only has to look at sales of Steve Jobs’ official biography, the top-selling book the year it was released. Or to see the recurring tales of the lone genius, the wandering Byronic hero, the Messiah figure, all of which are widely popular. This notion of genius and agency is particularly beloved in the US; our notions of American Exceptionalism prizing the individual who is able to overcome adversity to rise to the top of their field. Such people, capable of using their genius, their divinely-endowed natural talent, abound in science fiction: Luke Skywalker, Ender Wiggin, and Lauren Oya Olamina (the protagonist of Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower) spring to mind. Even if they occasionally seem more like walking archetypes (courtesy of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces) or deconstructions thereof, they have the agency to control their lives and overcome the challenges they face when we often feel lacking in our own challenges.

Now, this notion of heroism is where things become interesting with Dune, and it is what makes the novel such a relevant read. The book and its sequels serve to deconstruct all these heroic archetypes. Paul, the hero of the series, the messiah, the central character, eventually turns against the religion and empire he had established (spoiler alert) and wanders into the desert of the planet Arrakis (the titular Dune) preaching against all he has built. Herbert himself, in writing Dune, sought to expose this narrative of the messianic hero as false: “Don't give over all of your critical faculties to people in power, no matter how admirable those people may appear to be. Beneath the hero's facade, you will find a human being who makes human mistakes. Enormous problems arise when human mistakes are made on the grand scale available to a superhero.” Herbert captures the fallible nature of heroes and our worship of them. 

However, despite his lessons, we still hold up individuals; we still latch on to them. We put people on pedestals and then take them down just as swiftly when we discover the flaws—the imperfect humanity in them (for reference, see “milkshake duck” on how this phenomenon is amplified and reflected in the internet age). This is the tragedy of our modern republic: our all-too-ready habit of giving our power and responsibility to those with glib tongues and cheap solutions. It supports an entire industry of award shows and personages of the year. It supports feel-good pieces in the media exalting ordinary people able to do something extraordinary surrounding their or others’ circumstances as opposed to seeking to understand and correct why we suffer from those circumstances in the first place. 

Now, I should specify that this is not to undermine the value of an everyday decent act. The kindness of strangers and the desire to do right by your fellow human beings are necessities like oxygen or water. What frustrates me so often is how one person steps up and is lauded (as they should be, it is worth stating) for something society as a whole is afraid to fix. We would not need to celebrate Greta Thunberg if we were more devoted to escaping the perils of climate change, we would not need to celebrate the Parkland survivors if we were more devoted to gun reform, and we would not need to have our medical debts covered by Gofundme pages if our healthcare system actually worked. So, while Dune is relevant in teaching us the dangers of heroism (and its associated acts: populism and cults of personality), perhaps a work that would be even more relevant is one talking about the decline of society and our collective inability to overcome the Tragedy of the Commons. 

Isaac Asimov at his desk, dreaming up great ideas with his muttonchops.

Fortunately, we have the other work mentioned at the start of this piece: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. For an antidote to heroism, look no further. There are many excellent science fiction works that focus on societies and the struggles they experience over time (even if they do so through the prism of characters and protagonists): Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, Larry Niven’s Ringworld, and Vernor Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep. What distinguishes Asimov is his ability in depicting decline; not quickly as happens in The Martian Chronicles and Ringworld—destroyed in nuclear fire and metal-eating bacteria respectively (again, spoilers)—but slowly, over the course of centuries (“no one sinks to the bottom all at once”). Asimov was trying to write a sci-fi version of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and shows how society can be made to withstand such collapses. Knowledge of technology is lost gradually: first at the peripheries then moving quicker and quicker towards the center as understanding turns into ritual and dogma. Trends that far exceed any single individual drive drove the collapse of the Roman Empire. To counteract this requires a group—the Foundation—to come together and preserve knowledge. The lesson for our current age is, I feel, impossible to ignore. Humanity will survive and prosper only if we progress together. In this time of partisanship and division, how’s that for relevancy?

Science fiction allows writers like Asimov and Herbert to explore the consequences of individualism and the consequences of sociological forces. It allows them to write stories with technology far beyond what we are currently capable of, but to have the essential human needs and longing remains constant. In a way, science fiction seems to me to offer a clearer view of the essential essence of humanity (which I imagine would smell like moist earth after rain). By separating us from familiar surroundings, it allows our emotions, personalities, and beings to come into sharper focus. 

You can disagree with my choices in this essay. I haven’t mentioned Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein, or Ursula Le Guin. I haven’t mentioned William Gibson, whose work is incredibly relevant and a far more damning indictment of the present than anyone else I have written about here. I have focused exclusively on Western authors and settings, not mentioning Cixin Liu, Nora K. Jemisin, or the works of Nancy Farmer. I espoused the importance of the Hugo Award as being an objective metric when, after all, it was given to that failed classicist J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter and that one with the Foreigners in it (aka The Goblet of Fire). But aside from high-minded remonstrances on why I am tired of heroism (and implied populism), what prompted me to write this? While Dune may be getting a new movie starring the boy wonder Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides and there are always whispers of some studio being brave enough to try and adapt Asimov’s work, I hold out hope considering past failures. Looking back at our modernity, I suppose that science fiction seems to be the best way to capture its contradictions (such as the way Black Mirror neatly encapsulates the perils of modern technology or magical realism postcolonial societies). I firmly believe in the importance of what each of the writers I have talked about in this essay (except Rowling) have to say as well as the continued relevance of their work—the classical nature of it. Classics form a dialogue with the past—how we compare ourselves to our collective history. But, what science fiction does is form a dialogue with the future, a mirror (black or otherwise) to the consequences of our actions.