Sci-Fi and Fantasy: Why I like one and not the other

I write science fiction. I read science fiction. I love science fiction.

But why?

Today I read two highly-aclaimed short stories by fantasy writers. Both recently won awards. Both were well-written. Both were well-constructed stories. Both were really, really boring.

Which is a puzzle. Why shouldn't I like fantasy when I like sci-fi so much? Both genres take the reader on journeys into worlds invented and strange, fabulous and wonderful. Just because some worlds contain soul-stealing demons, why should they be less interesting than ones containing mind-stealing aliens? Both genres utilise inventiveness and novelty, and both explore the consequences for their characters of the new ideas they introduce. So why does fantasy leave me cold?

Well, I think I know the answer. The ennui that crept over me as I read these two stories today (rushed over me in one case) showed me just where the fault lay with each piece.

Firstly, they were not real. The novelty, the ideas, the situations, were all just completely made up. Souls, demons, dragons, magic, witches, gods, and all the other paraphernalia of fantasy worlds, are completely and utterly fictional. They bear no relation to the real world whatsoever - except as issues in the psychology of people who actually believe in such things. If you put characters - however realistic - in worlds of magic swords and dreaming gods, my reaction is 'So what?' because such worlds do not and never could exist. It's irrelevant what people would do when confronted by a binding spell because such a situation will never, ever arise.

Secondly, the characters weren't real either. Yes, alright, some of the characters were real enough - ordinary people with ordinary personalities, but there were also purely evil creatures - or creatures inhabited by pure evil, evil spirits, etc.. Sometimes (sadly, not infrequently) you find purely good ones as well. Even if such characters have only minor roles, it spoils the whole story. Like gods and goblins, such creatures do not happen in the world, or in any conceivable real world.

OK. I can hear you clamouring to come back at me on that. Lots of people believe in fairies and angels and such. What's so awful about having them in a story? Nothing, I say, as long as you don't mind me not reading it.

Alright, you ask, why are aliens and cosmic minds and transhumans so much better than elves and magicians? What makes faster-than-light travel and phasers and teleports better than bracelets of power and ley lines and magic pyramids? Well, on the one hand you have things which could exist, are extrapolations of what we already know, or are justifiable leaps of imagination based on actual reality, on the other hand you have things for which there is no plausible way for them ever to exist and which often, quite explicitly, exclude themselves from possibility by being ostentatiously supernatural (as in 'not natural').

Of course, some science fiction (some of the most famous and most popular) also relies on magic. Dune, Star Trek, and Babylon 5 (to name the tiniest few) use ideas like telepathy and telekinesis, Star Wars has The Force - ideas that are clearly in the realms of the supernatural rather than the scientific. For me, such lapses into fantasy spoil a good sci-fi story. By all means confront your characters with superhuman robots and hand-held beam weapons, uploaded brains and wars in space - these are things we might all have to deal with one day soon. But don't make them have to worry about telepathic aliens because (uless they're using wireless networks to connect their brain implants) that just aint gonna happen.

That's why I consider science fiction a completely different genre to fantasy: it is reality-based, fantasy is not. That's why I only like sci-fi and not fantasy: I like to imagine and play with what really could happen, not with absurd impossibilities. That's why I had to force myself to get to the end of these two award-winning stories rather than dump them after the first mention of dark forces: because it seems childish to read stories about things that cannot ever possibly exist.

Singularity: What's the Point?

I like blogs that mull ideas.

One idea that is uber-trendy in sci-fi just now is 'the singularity'. It's basically Raymond Kurzweil's prediction that, one day soon, our understanding and technical sophistication will enable the emergence of human-machine hybrids (or just intelligent machines in some versions) which, with exponentially-increasing speed, will rapidly 'upgrade' themselves beyond our understanding. It's a version of the future that tends to end badly for the poor hom saps left behind. So get your brains augmented now guys or you'll miss the boat.

I suppose I'm rather sceptical. Kurzweil's writings tend to be all breathless and excited, with half-formed ideas shooting out in all directions. Wonderful to nibble at now and then but ultimately unsatisfying - like chocolate eclairs. It's not that there is nothing in it - far from it - I just don't see it going the way Kurzweil so obviously longs for it to go. Nor do I see advances in biology, computing, AI, nanotech, etc. ever amounting to a 'singularity' as such. (I wish he'd called it 'The Phase Transition' or something more sensible - 'singularity' is such a bad name for it.) It's hard to believe humans could ever create anything 'transhuman' or, if by some miracle we did, it's hard to see us ever letting it survive. (I also have a strong suspicion that anything 'transhuman' would be so flawed it wouldn't survive long in the wild anyway.)

There is a sense in which the path to transhumanity started when we first began using tools and building shelters - certainly when we stopped hunting and gathering and started farming. Building that first city was probably our biggest mistake! It's hard - probably impossible - deliberately to go back from where you are once that process has started. Of course, there are forces outside our control (climate change, peak oil, pandemics, religion) which could drive us backwards whether we like it or not. Perhaps, if we could develop our intelligence a bit, we would all see what a silly mistake it had all been and take another path.

Anyway, thanks to Sue Lange, writing as Scusteister Schwamp, for reminding me about all this with her Singularity Watch blog. Sue seems to see us all ending up in completely artificial environments one day but I don't see it as inevitable. Some may want it. Many will not. Personally, I would like to live forever - but I'm not holding my breath waiting for the singularity to make it possible.

Science Looks At Fiction

I love science. I love writing fiction. I even enjoy programming. So an article in last week's New Scientist was especially interesting to me. Keith Oatley, a cognitive scientist from the University of Toronto, has been studying the effects of fiction on personality and emotion. His conclusion is that there is a strong effect. He and his collaborators found that people who read fiction (as opposed to non-fiction) actually become more like the characters in the stories. He likens fiction to a simulation of a social world, created by the author, which then runs in the minds of the readers. Reading involves exercising empathy to identify with the characters and, through a kind of social learning, the absorption of some of their traits.

Oatley's finding is that reading fiction improves social skills and gives fiction readers 'substantially greater empathy.' He therefore believes it is generally beneficial to a society. Of course, he might be slightly biased. Oakley, as well as being a scientist, is also a writer of fiction.

But I like the idea that when I write fiction I am also writing a simulation of a world that will run in people's minds. It is an idea that squares pretty well with how I have always thought of writing fiction – although for me, the greatest pleasure in doing it is to create a simulation that will run in my own mind.

Yet I can't help feeling a little anxious about all this. If people are learning social skills, learning to understand people and their interactions, from fiction, doesn't this mean fiction writers have a strong moral obligation to represent the world truthfully and accurately? Doesn't it at least mean they should be intelligent and wise enough that what they write isn't stupid or plain wrong?

Many years ago, I used to study 'argumentation' – the modern incarnation of rhetoric. Ancient rhetoricians such as Aristotle (pictured), Plato and Cicero, understood that effective argument could be a force for good as well as ill. Aristotle in particular believed that only moral men should be taught these potentially dangerous skills. It is pretty obvious that persuasive arguers who might use the craft of rhetoric for their own ends and without regard for morality or truth, can do immense damage to society. Look at the way the USA and the UK were persuaded to invade and conquer Iraq.

If fiction – apparently harmless entertainments like novels and short stories – can have such a strong influence on the reader's mental construction of social reality, maybe we should be more careful about what we read – and what we write. Should only moral people be allowed to write fiction? Should publishers and editors take their share of the blame for what damage an inaccurate or untruthful depiction might do?

Oatley has not directly investigated the other kinds of fiction in our world – films and games, for example – but he suspects they will be found to have a similarly powerful effect on personality and social understanding as literature does. Now that really does make me worried.