SCIENCE FICTION
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might classify under the heading: "Superstitions."
In the
Divine Comedy,
Beatrice transports Dante from planet to
planet; in Father Kircher's
Iter Extaticum,
an angel does the job; we
are not yet in SF, which implies that the journey is made as a result of
techniques developed by man. But these techniques will allow us to enter
into contact with beings to whom we can attribute knowledge
we
do
not possess, techniques we do not understand.
It
might, of course, occur
to one of them to come to Earth, to carry off one of
us
and transport
him
elsewhere by means which there is no longer any need to explain.
The difference between such a being and Kircher's angel becomes infin–
itesimal; only the language has changed. As a matter of fact, it is
necessary today, in order to gain a sufficient suspension of disbelief, that
the being be described in the same way as a being that man might have
discovered on another planet. Thus we could unite within SF all the
narratives of phantoms and demons, all the old myths dealing with
superior beings which intervene in the life of men. Certain tales by
H. P. Lovecraft illustrate this possibility.
C. S. Lewis begins his curious antimodern trilogy with a novel
which has all of SF's characteristics:
Out of the Silent Planet.
Two
wicked scientists transport a young philologist to Mars by means of a
spaceship furnished with every modern convenience. In the second
volume,
Perelandra,
the author drops his mask: it is an angel who
transports the philologist
to
Venus; as for the scientists, they are Satan's
henchmen.
III
We see that all kinds of merchandise can be sold under the label
SF ; and that all kinds of merchandise seek to be packaged under this
label. Hence it seems that SF represents the normal form of mythology
in our time: a form which is not only capable of revealing profoundly
new themes, but capable of integrating all the themes of the old literature.
Despite several splendid successes, we cannot help thinking that SF
is keeping very few of its promises.
This is because SF, by extending itself, is denaturing itself; it is
gradually losing its specificity. It furnishes a very particular element of
credibility; this element is increasingly weakened when it is utilized
without discernment. SF is fragile, and the enormous circulation it has
achieved in recent years merely renders it more so.
We have already noted that the flight to ultra-distant planets and
epochs, which seems at first glance a conquest, actually masks the authors'
incapacity
to
imagine in a coherent fashion, in conformity with the
