Why I Stopped Reading Sci-fi

Throughout the last century, I obsessively read science fiction ... what would now be thought of as classic sci-fi but which was then the mainstream.  For me, authors like Asimov, Heinlein, Zelazny and Bradbury defined bad science fiction in a way that ruined me for the sort of dreck being written today.  I've tried a few authors over the years; I've even slogged my way to the end of several novels, but without much pleasure.

For the most part, the writing in modern sci-fi is juvenile; the plot development as well.  No substantial risks are ever taken with the book's theme.  Usually it boils down to pap like, "racism is bad" or "cooperation is necessary."  These are themes that might be news to a 12-y.o., but thank you, I've digested these gems of wisdom already.  It's even worse when the plot, characters and general context of the novel resembles taking a modern day story and crossing out "car" and writing in "spaceship."

But the quintessential sort of bad science fiction -- and eternally the most popular form of sci-fi -- is any story in which a technology that is built turns on its master so that everything goes disastrously wrong.  For my money, 2001: a Space Odyssey is the supreme example of absolute garbage ever written and slapped onto film.  Of course it's popular.  It preaches the endlessly popular theme, "science is bad."  The theme that is at the center of climate-change-isn't-real, covid-isn't-real, too much computer use is toxic, cellphones are toxic, power lines are toxic, the world is flat, everything is a conspiracy and so on.  What is Hal?  A machine.  And what does Hal do?  Turns on mankind.  And oh, wow, so deep!  See, humans invented tools, and tools create misery, aha!  If only we had never created tools, we'd all be so happy now!  Thank you, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

I'm certain that most readers here fall into two categories: those of you who have no idea who Rousseau was, and those of you who love him to death.  There might be a very, very tiny fraction of you who have read him, are familiar with him and recognize what a miserable, ignorant prat he was.  But I doubt it.  Voltaire thought him a prat.  Voltaire and I would have gotten along.

This is not, however, a post about Rousseau.  I learned a long, long time ago that people who love Rousseau are far past having any rational comprehension about the man's writing, while people who have no idea about Rousseau just don't give a shit.  If you're the former, fuck you.  If you're the latter, look up Rousseau on wikipedia and believe whatever you like.  If you're older than 25, and you haven't read Rousseau yet, you're sure to find him so unconscionably boring that I have little doubt you won't get far.  I read Rousseau's Confessions sometime when I was about 17, in high school.  Then I read a smattering of works by him in university, in my late 20s.  What a prat.

Rousseau died in 1778, well before the French Revolution that seized on his writings and used them to build guillotines and commit all sorts of atrocities in the name of "natural law" and "justice."  We can be quite sure that Mary Shelley, born in 1797, the future writer of Frankenstein, was fed a steady diet of both Voltaire and Rousseau.  I don't know who here has ever read Frankenstein.  I imagine most of you have seen one or more versions of the book committed to film, but let me rush to say that those are all way, way off the message in the book.  Usually, it's presumed that Frankenstein, the scientist, builds the monster, who turns on the scientist and then, as a monster, rampages throughout the countryside until he's destroyed.

Um, no.  For one thing, at the end of the book, both the scientist and the "monster" are alive (for one thing, the book is written by Frankenstein in 1st person; though I vaguely remember some postscript by the ship captain that might have said that Frankenstein was dead; it's been some years; maybe it's time to read it again).

Rousseau argued vehemently in his writings that human beings are naturally peaceful and kind, but that society makes them into monsters.  It is the famous and hopelessly wrong notion of "the noble savage," a concept that is still pitched today but has been proved wrong for only two centuries and a bit more.  Frankenstein is a novel about how a perfectly empty vessel of a creation is made into a monster by the truly awful way that it's treated.  Which then, faced with such ruthless injustice, acts as it is taught to act.  For those who haven't read the book, or who have read an expurgated version of it, the distinction might seem subtle.  For the remainder of my audience, the difference is staggering.

Frankenstein's monster is taught to be a monster, and so it sets out to wreak vengeance.  Hal is built to be a computer; it is in no way taught to be a monster, but it becomes one anyway, because ... well, because the author thought it would play better that way.  And it certainly did.  It played great.  It is really popular and really beloved ... none of which exempts the ridiculousness of the premise.

Nor does it excuse the decades of science fiction that is so, so anxious to get in on that sweet, sweet fear-mongering gravy that 2001 has made over the decades.  Fear sells.  And the irrational fear that we will build machines that will ultimately bring about our destruction sells best of all.  We can't open a science website anywhere on the internet without hearing shrill, terrified cries that A.I. is destined to dig our graves.  Of course, this stuff works best with ignorant, panicky people who haven't any personal experience with either science or technology ... which is most of the world ... and even scientists have a tendency to buy in because there is no such discipline as "science."  People in physics freak out about studies in neurology, while neurologists freak out about space; the astronomers sweat bullets about psychology while the psychologists lie awake at night worrying about contagious diseases.  Everyone in their own field is ignorant about every other, and so they're all ready to be sold on the science fiction horror scenario that's based on some flimsy concept not in their bailywick.  And thankfully, we have the internet to make sure we promote every terror every day.

Personally, I find it hard to convince readers that even a scientist, especially one that has a name popular enough that they will be encouraged to speak "candidly" on Big Think, is more likely to be promoting themselves in order to vie for grants and graft than they are interested in speaking the truth.  I mean, after all, if Max Tegmark is actually FULL OF SHIT when he talks about the terror-horror of A.I., what consequence does he face?  I can't think of a "leading scientist" today that hasn't shrugged his shoulders at some point and said, "Well, we can't predict the future."  Fair enough.  But why, then, do they spend so much time predicting the future whenever someone turns a camera in their direction?

In good science fiction, all the technology that's built works exactly like it is supposed to work.  The computers all function like machines, the robots perform the labours they're built to perform, the algorithms and formulas produce the results they were intended to produce.  It's the humans that fuck up and commit atrocities, not the machines and not the science.  It is made perfectly clear that Rousseau had his head up his ass and that technology and advancement have served to make our lives vastly better every step along the way ... and would have done even more if the dumb-ass, doom-crying dead-brained shitheeled selfish miserly greedy wrathful pig-ignorant humans might have been taken out of the equation.  In good science fiction, the heroes are those who use their education, intelligence and innovation to make fools out of the ignorant -- just as it actually happens, every day, in real life.  

Every day, trained and experienced doctors are saving lives and doing their level best to manage the terror-horror of this real disease ravaging the population, using every ounce of profoundly complex and effective technical equipment and innovation they can possibly lay their hands on.  The real crisis at present comes in two forms: (1) we don't have ENOUGH equipment, in the form of ICU beds and other innovations, to keep as many people alive as we ought to; and (2) we don't have enough trained, knowledgable persons in the medical field to manage an infectious disease on this scale.

A bad science fiction novel would invent some technological breakthrough that spread the disease and the disaster more quickly, promoting suffering and the deaths of hundreds of millions, feeding what the public fears to hear and wants to hear.

A good science fiction novel would have the experts cure the disease, only to find themselves restrained from saving the people by stupid people in power.  But it's okay, because the experts would then use their knowledge and reason to get around the morons and save the people anyway -- although that would require the writer to actually figure out a way to use knowledge to get around morons.

See, bad science fiction doesn't require any intelligence to write.  But good science fiction ... well, to write good science fiction, you have to actually innovate.  That's why we see so little of it.

Anyway ... I was supposed to be writing a post about why I don't employ the D&D game rule where golems have a percentage of getting out of control and slaughtering their creators.  My personal feeling is that golems ought to do exactly what they're built to do.  Full page here.