Calling it Science Fiction is misleading though. Heinlein’s Speculative Fiction is a much more encompassing term. Or throw up our hands and call it all Fantasy, because then we get dragons and don’t have to quibble over where the line is between “sufficiently advanced form of technology” and magic.
Of course with a genre that broad (and I haven’t even made the argument for folding in Mystery) books get a little hard to find on the shelves. And if there’s one thing I believe in, it’s effective signposting. Heather and I used to try and come up with more helpful genre labels:
Here Be Dragons
Something Is Lurking in the Forest
The Fungus Is Among Us
Aliens!
I Suddenly Find Myself Needing to Know the Plural of Apocalypse
Sexy Fairies
A Local Village for Local People Who Are Being Picked Off One by One
Some Fantasy is creepy, some sinister, some grim, some… comforting, hopeful, escapist, fun. In all but the most relentless, there is often an assumption – often explicit, in the face of hazardous microbiomes, climate collapse, alien invasion, singularity – that Humanity Is Worth Saving.
I like those stories. I don’t like relentless-to-the-point-of-nightmares. (Battlestar Galactica, I’m looking at you.) I like heart, and humor. (Hi, Murderbot!) Even Shakespeare at his most tragic threw in a dog or a couple of clowns. There is nothing more human than laughing in the face of disaster. But I wonder. Humanity, eh?
The Three Body Problem was the book/TV show of the moment a couple years ago. I don’t necessarily recommend it; I found the characters utterly forgettable. But the central question was intriguing:
Humans send an Hello out into the universe. One day they get a reply. It says: Shut up, for the love of god shut up, because if you reply to this my people will know where to find you and they will come, and they will conquer because that is what they do, so please if you want to survive as you are, stay quiet. And the person who reads this message thinks, Hmm, well, actually I’m not so sure humans have done such a bang-up job after all, maybe it’s someone else’s turn and can it really be any worse? So she replies: Come on guys, show me what you’ve got. I for one welcome our new alien overlords.
I can’t really blame her.
There’s a dog in the coffeeshop now. His name is Waffles. I look at him and think You used to be a wolf. His fur is glossy and gold, his ears are delightfully floppy, he can’t wipe the smile off his face.
“Are you scared of dogs?” says the barista to the customer waiting for his coffee while Waffles desperately tries to sniff every part of him. He clearly isn’t happy. But what does one male adult say to another male adult in response to such a question?
Of course he’s not scared of Waffles. Who could be scared of Waffles? He’s just saying hello, he likes to sniff, he’s a good boy, he thinks he’s still a puppy. Waffles doesn’t know he is a wolf.
But I know. I remember. Am I scared of dogs? What kind of moron isn’t? I am a poorly designed fragile monkey and wolf or no wolf this thing has teeth.
I like dogs. I petsit. I throw balls, I give treats, I scratch ears. I pretend I don’t mind when they race up out of nowhere. I pretend I’m not scared of dogs and I pretend I don’t hate humans.
I look out the window here and think Look at this Shit. It’s not just dogs we’ve made; it’s traffic lights, takeaway coffee, internal combustion engines, oscillating fans, mylar balloons, double-wide strollers.
As a species we have much to answer for.
Heinlein said there were three kinds of Speculative Fiction: the what-if; the if-only; the if-this-[shit]-goes-on. All of them asking one thing, really: Is humanity worth saving?
There haven’t been wolves in England in over 600 years. Lions, more like 12,000. The countryside is covered, appropriately, with oilseed rape; maybe 2% of the trees remain. More can’t grow because the sheep and deer won’t let them. And the sheep and deer have no predators anymore.
People are too scared to reintroduce wolves. They close their eyes and imagine -- what? Teeth in the night. Howling, the moon, the untamed. They breed dogs instead. They demonize wolves and forget that dogs are wolves. They forget that people are too.
This country is too safe. We need, I think, teeth in the dark. We need howling to bring terror to the darkest hours. We are too complacent. Too many double-wide strollers and never a thought of a fat baby being snatched out of one. (But even so we would never leave one parked outside a restaurant, as we’re assured the civilized Swedes so blithely do.)
We are scared of all the wrong things. In the absence of wolves, other predators fill the ecological niche. A lion cannot threaten our village, but the next village over can. Its remnants, fleeing lions of their own, can.
Humans have been the apex predators here for far too long. It isn’t healthy. When stinging nettles are your biggest concern, you may get great literature (Day of the Triffids) but you don’t get healthy psyches. You get boredom, which leads to colonialism, which leads to hate, which leads to the Dark Side. Is it too much to lay the evils of the modern world entirely on this extended lack of wolves? Perhaps. But also, perhaps not. If we bring them back, we might find out. We might become worthy after all.
Recipe: Apparently lemon bars are entirely American. Score us another one.
