I read a lot of Harlan Ellison (worked on The Outer Limits, 80’s Twilight Zone, Babylon 5), and I was wondering what people thought of this quote from him:
[S]cience fiction is the only 100% hopeful fiction. That is to say, inherent in the form is, “There will be a tomorrow”. If you read a science fiction story, it says, “This will happen tomorrow”. Now that’s very positive, that’s very pragmatic, “We’ll be here tomorrow. We may be unhappy, we may be all living like maggots, but we’ll be here.” So that means it’s 100% positive.
Ellison has even said that his short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is optimistic, because in the climax, there is still room for self-sacrifice and defiance to authority.
I guess it comes down to whether you think a bleak future is better than no future at all.
Shameless plug for my work if you like Ellison or want to learn more: https://ndhfilms.com/ellison
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The entire cyberpunk genre is about corporations destroying society and the planet for profit and is near-future sci-fi. Dune is about how human nature doesn’t change, the same revolutions occurring again and again over thousands of years, with humans always being on the verge of self extinction and the only escape being to destroy civilization so hard that any conflict will always leave survivors that have had no contact with anyone else in millennia. Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy presents a world where the entire universe is utter chaos, worlds can be destroyed by a clerical error, and cosmically powerful beings do random things for shits and giggles. Starship Troopers, Warhammer, and Starcraft depict humans becoming the bad guys at an interstellar scale.
So, no, sci-fi is not inherently hopeful.
I think the hope is more … meta.
Science fiction is a brand of speculative fiction- it’s fundamentally asking “what if”. The darker side of sci-fi is a warning, and the hope is we pay attention.
I think what makes this argument true is that it’s FICTION. Even in a dystopia that is super bleak, with an ending where everyone dies, we can remain hopeful that it’s cautionary fiction.
You could make similar arguments about any other fiction or genre as well. “All dark comedies are hopeful because they show the human ability to make light of bleak and tragically ironic situations”. “All horror movies are hopeful because the fictional creature at the center of the story cannot be real”.
No. On the Beach by Nevil Shute is a sci fi story about the survivors of a global nuclear war in Australia, and as a warning against the futility of war everyone eventually dies of radiation poisoning.
Ellison was trolling. He did that a lot.
That’s true. The video that this quote comes is actually about Ellison trolling someone (and in a pretty mean way, too).
I read his hopefulness about having a future as being in the context of the fear of total global annihilation through nuclear war.
Tons od science fiction is current social issues in a new context which allows for lots of preconceptions to be ignored.
I don’t know about hopeful, but I’ve always thought it was human-empowering. When I was getting into scifi there were a lot of post-apocalyptic novels (yes, even for children) and in most cases the world was in the state it was because of our choices, for good or bad.
Obligatory “I love Harlan Ellison.”
The only hope I see in it is the idea that humans will survive, and even a few of them will still mean well/have morals, ethics, sincerity, conscience, or any self-awareness … things that make the continuation of the species something resembling a good or even okay outcome, as opposed to an outright blight upon the universe.
The amount of suffering portrayed is of little consequence to this, as we have plenty of suffering historically and in the now. Very, very few of those suffering the worst seem to prefer not existing, outside of the affluent countries, and I don’t accept value judgements on such things from any but the first-person perspective.
That’s a good point, thank you.
