Writing outside one’s field
Even a good writer can take a pratfall once he writes outside his field.
Nicholas Wade has written a thoroughly brilliant and engaging book on the recent discoveries in genetics, and the influence these discoveries are having on prehistory and history, linguistics, paleoanthropology, and the related fields. The science is remarkable and the influence is wide-ranging, even revolutionary.
But, instead of praising this books many merits, I will only mention one flaw on page 275. In a section titled Future Directions of Human Evolution, he commits the following howler:
“The most improbable feature of science fiction movies is not the faster-than-light travel or the transporter beams but a feature that audiences accept without a second thought: the people. The inhabitants of the far future are always portrayed as looking and behaving exactly like the people today.”
You think he could have asked a grad student, or his local twelve-year-old SF fan, to find out if this statement is true. Is this indeed how the far future is always portrayed in SF? Always? Does no one assume a golden age of remote strangeness?
It is well that Mr. Wade restricted his comments to science fiction MOVIES, because, of course, the notion that our far future descendents will differ, and may differ radically, from our contemporaries, is one of the foundational themes, nay, it is the foundational theme of science fiction literature.
Name the first science fiction book that took place in the far future. Jules Verne’s romances were usually set in the contemporary world, or perhaps a century or two hence. No: the two works that dealt with the far future were THE TIME MACHINE, by HG Wells, and LAST AND FIRST MEN by Olaf Stabledon.
The single and whole point of the Wellsian future of AD 802701 was that evolution would differentiate the social classes into aboveground and belowground dwellers, adapted over eons to their environments, and bring forth a race of helpless, gracile Eloi, and robust, anthropophagous Morlocks.
Stabledon not only postulates evolution continuing, he details the future history of the next seventeen races of man, some of which are due to scientific tampering, others due to changes forces by changed environments.
The Martians from Wells’ WAR OF THE WORLDS, are, of course, merely humans molded by additional eons of evolutionary pressure. They are creatures composed entirely of brain, with large and sensitive hands, since the hands and the brain are the human advantages in reproduction. The Martians also wiped out all germs and other morbid microscopic life on their planet, and adapted, through evolution, to that clean and sterile environment, and were unable to adapt to ours. WAR OF THE WORLDS, in effect, is about nothing but Darwinian mechanisms of human adaptation.
Perhaps he is thinking of Space Opera, like GALACTIC PATROL by Doc EE Smith? Ah, but no: the Dutch Valerians are in that fine work said to be robust and strong due to Darwinian adaptation to the heavier gravity of that world. Maybe he is thinking of pulp adventure like PRINCESS OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs? Ah, but no: the Martians of Barsoom are said to be frail and light (at least compared to earthmen) due to the lighter gravity of that world.
It is also well that Mr. Wade restricted his comment to movies, because even the relatively pop-culture sciffy we all know and love on television deals with, nay, dwells on the concept of far future human evolution. To take an example from the top of my head, the Organians from STAR TREK the original series, claim that they are what human beings will one day evolve into: indestructible, godlike beings of pure energy. To take another, the Final Humans glimpsed at the very end of BABYLON FIVE are Vorlon-like superbeings also made of energy. Are there humans in SF movies who tend to look and act just like modern homo sapiens? To be sure, there are. Most of them hail from the Twenty-Fifth Century, or from a galaxy long ago and far, far away: in neither of these two cases would there be any evolutionary divergence to speak of. But when the far future is involved, even relatively lackluster SF will assume an evolution to a godlike superman or a devolution back to post-apocalyptic caveman. Far from being unknown in SF, this is actually a commonplace.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
