Commentary
Space, man
Agnostics anonymous
Any attempt to locate humanity in the cosmos aspires to the
condition of science fiction. It's well known that L. Ron Hubbard
was a science fiction writer, his crowning work being the
cosmological fables of Scientology. But anyone who takes
religion seriously enough to try to imagine it real ends up working
in the same genre. Harold Bloom described the literary effect of
Paradise Lost as akin to the most powerful science fiction. The
lineaments of William Blake's religious art, as well as his ideas,
can be glimpsed in a thousand sci-fi graphic novels.
When it comes to putting people in the universe, science fiction
is the only game in town, since almost all ostensibly serious
fiction will only concern itself with the parochial trivia of human
life and history. So why doesn't Christianity make more of it? Tim
LaHaye's Left Behind series doesn't count as it is sadistic
wish-fulfillment with no science. C.S. Lewis had a go at Christian
science fiction but his The Space Trilogy perhaps tells us why he
hasn't had many successors. In that, space exploration becomes a
way of spreading fallen human sinfulness to other planets.
Lewis feared that the drive away from the Earth was motivated by
an anthropocentric humanism, which he associated with H.G. Wells
and Prometheus. But this humility is anything but. The Christian
God, like all gods, is a local god. His triumphal sway over parts
of the Earth looks less impressive when viewed from a satellite
swaying in low earth orbit. A mere 1,200 miles or so above the peak
of Mount Olympus and all the other mountains where mankind's early
tribal deities resided, their cosmic remit very obviously runs
out.
Scientific humanism may be vainglorious, but mentally and
physically venturing up into or down into the universe necessarily
brings humility. Humankind on a cosmic scale is an intrinsically
humble object of consideration. Science fiction at its best
is an attempt to humanize the perspectives that science forces on
us. Projecting humanity into the void is an imaginative act
that takes on religious dimensions, whether science fiction depicts
a holy cosmic presence (as in the visionary portentousness of
2001: A space odyssey), or whether it gives us (in the title of an
old Kingsley Amis study of sci-fi), New Maps of Hell.
Science fiction is widely regarded by some folk as silly. But
then, so is religion. A lot of people laughed at the news in late
September that the 'Nazi Space Buddha was a Meteorite' but this is
the world we actually live in. If you want people to take your
outlandish stories seriously, you could at least make them
exciting.