Science Fiction

What does SF have to say to the Christian?

• Humans are complex, mysterious, unknowable

• Social commentary

• Problem of evil

• Technology

• Perspective on the future

What does the Christian have to say to SF?

• Strong moral compass - more of right/wrong than only progress

Hard SF

Modelled on “hard sciences” - written around known scientific facts, not un-proven theories

• Star Trek

Soft SF

Modelled on “soft sciences” - or the science fades into the background

• Star wars

Metaphysics

Going beyond the sciences - talks about spirituality/Christianity

Singularity

Accumulation of AI surpassing/overtaking human life and knowledge

Materialist Magician

Looking back to magic while simultaneously looking ahead to scienticism, without reconilication of the two

Key features of Flatland

• Ch1-12: Organization of “this world” - Flatland (establishment of a baseline reality)

• Ch13-22: Encounters with “other worlds”

Development of a society based on distinctions - a social commentary on the strictness/oppression of social expectations

The revelation “of another dimension” (The Gospel of the Three Dimensions) in Flatland is similar to what biblical passage?

Ezekiel ch1 - the revelation of heaven

Genre of Flatland

• Romance - adventure

• Satire (distortion/exaggeration to reform society) - outrageous beliefs about women

• Philosophical Tale

Tesseract

A 4th-dimension

• A wrinkle in time

• Interstellon

• Avengers

Hermeneutics

Interpretation

How is the world hierarchically organized in Flatland?

Quantity - # of sides = class

Shapes with more sides are of a higher social group

Wallace Stevens and Hermeneutics

• The additions of new dimensions in Flatland understanding demonstrates the challenge - to draw bigger “hermeneutical circles” and incorporate more into your understanding

• Reflection on human ability to grasp reality - maintaining your own understanding is much easier

Flatland - a voice from pointland, representing…

The pointland Monarch:

• Egotism

• Solipsism (I don’t know if anyone else exists and its just me)

• “I” theism

• Autonomous self

• Subjectivism

Novum

“Novelty” - every sci-fi novel should include something new

Ender’s Game incorporates the genre of ______ with SF

fantasy - the giant in the game

Genres in Ender’s Game

• SF

• Fantasty

• Speculative fiction

• Bildungsroman (the story of growth/development) - coming of age story

• Socio-political satire

• War story - stakes are high

• Psychological horror

C.S Lewis “On Science Fiction” - three kinds of stories

1. Intellect: Flatland - free of emotion

2. The postulate which liberates consequences - points to a moral extrapolative

3. Marvelous: Quality, flavor, additions to life

Postulate

Suggest or assume the existence, fact, or truth of something as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or belief

C.S Lewis - three kinds of SF

1. Free play of the intellect stories (Flatland)

2. Postulate/consequences stories (Dr. Jekyll/Mr.Hyde)

3. Wonder stories that “expand our range of possible experience” (Perelandra)

Themes/tensions in Ender’s Game

• Religion in a post-religious society

• Power vs peace

• Natural growth vs manipulation

• Needs of many vs the needs of one

• Childhood vs adulthood

• Technological progress vs loss of humanity

• “Teachers” vs “students”

• Neccessary violence (just war theory) vs cruelity -

• Power vs love

Game theory

Strategic interactions to maximize gains

• Classic example - the prisoner’s dilema

Game theory strategies

• Maximax strategy: No hedging risk in order to attain maximum benefit

• Maximin strategy: Hedging risk in order to avoid worst outcome

• Dominant strategy: Best outcome for the play irrespective of what other participants decide to do

• Pure strategy: Do the same thing each time

• Mixed strategy: Mixing things up to keep opponent guessing

Zero-sum game

One player’s gain is always equal to another player’s loss, resulting in a net gain of zero for all participants (ex: rock paper scissors, chess, poker)

Non zero-sum game

Both benefit from the transaction - the sum of gains/losses is sometimes more/less than what the players began with

Mimetic Desire

Someone else wants something, which causes you to also desire that thing

(imagining/copying desires of the model - instead of own independent wants)

• Related to making rivals/scapegoating others - mimetic desire often causes tension and scapegoating is a way to relieve that tension

Scapgoating

Offloading blame on someone else - the necessity to need someone to blame

• When mimetic rivalry reaches a critical point, a society will often identify a single individual to blame for the conflict, which allows the community to unite against the scapegoat and expel them from the community

Mimetic desire theory is created by _____

Girard

Perelandra genre

• SF

• Romance (adventure)

• Fantasty - dragons, myths, paradise (perfect world, ga

Eldila in Perelandra

An angel - discussed as a scientific phenomenon - defined to the point of possibility, but then moves beyond what is describable

Worldbuilding - two sides

Author’s side: Conceiving - making a fictional place (language, history, geography)

Reader’s side - the narrating - goal of getting the author to share the same vision

Principles of worldbuilding

1. Give it properties: within experience and outside of normal human experience

2. Interact with it: (environment)

3. Give it a name: participation with the text - co-narration

4. Sensory info: tactile, gustatory - description

5. Metaphor/simile/compare/contrast

6. Imagination even beyond language

“Sui genesis”

“Of its own class” - unclassifiable

Augustine and the 4 states of the soul

1. Posse-peccare: The state of being able to sin/able to not sin

2. Non posse non peccare: The state of not being able not to sin - Weston

3. Posse non peccare: The state of being able not to sin (current state of Christians)’

4. Non posse peccare: The state of being unable to sin - future glory and redemption

Catechetical

Question/Answer format - often used in a church setting

Dialogical

Literature talks through - symbolizes,

Metaphor

Takes the more known thing (vehicle) and uses it to make the less known thing tangible (tenor)

Antithesis

Stark contrast

Allusion

References to persons, places, things, or literary or historical stories in a work of literature

Mythic allusions in Perelandra

• Garden of Eden

• Floating islands - throughout Greek mythology

• Jesus’ temptation - temptation of the green lady

Protoevanelium

The first mention of the good news

• Genesis 3:15 - “…he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel”

Temptations deployed by the unman to tempt the green lady

• Make her “older” (wiser) a full woman of the world - independent

• Vanity - robe, mirror

• Greatness and beauty

• Teach “death” - in abundance

• Procession of tragic women, who sacrificed something - failed or succeeded - everyone has done it

• Incremental steps - lies with a lot of truth mixed in (a fine line between truth and myth)

Hegelianism

Philosophy of Hegel that places ultimate reality in ideas rather than in things

• Moral implications: The self is spirit - all things “spirit” must be good - including both the good and the bad

Gebbeth

When a person is no longer in control of themselves, a walking dead

• Ex: Weston - degredation from described as Weston - to Weston’s voice - to Weston’s “mouth”

Genre of Slaughterhouse 5

• SF

• Satire - Horration - meant to correct society, distort the mimetic mirror

• Juvenalian: Unsure whether to laugh/cry - but without higher purpose

• Stream of consciousness

• Nonlinear memories - experiences

• War story/anti-war story

• No heroes

• Anthropology - study of humans (semi-autobiographical)

Two types of satire in Slaughterhouse 5

Horation: Meant to correct society, witty and amusing tone

Juvenalian: Causes laughter/crying - to invoke anger or pessimism in the reader

“Memento Mori”

Remember that you’re going to die

Models of Time

• Presentist view of the universe - only the present exists

• Block universe - past/present/future exist simultaneously

• The growing block universe - past/present, but not the future

Representations of Time in Slaughterhosue 5

• Cyclical or linear

• Progressive, regressive

• Living all moments simultaneously

Black/dark humor

Laughter as a response to frustration - when we can’t do anything - we turn to laughter or tears

Time according to the Tralfamadorians

• Block universe - past, present, and future all exist

• Phrase “so it goes” - death - only a bad condition in one moment

• Exist in the 4th dimension - “unstuck” in time

To the tralfamadorians, time is viewed as a _______, not like beads on a string (one at a time)

Mountain range

Tone of Slaughterhouse 5

• Black/dark humor

• Absurdism

• Deeply tragic, but numb to everything

• Dramatis personae (character) - “Billy Pilgrim” - traveling through time

“Quietist” work

No free will, fatalist

• Is free will an illusion?

• The past, present, and future aren’t changeable

• Nihilism “nothing”

• Stoicism

• Predestination

SF tropes

• Aliens

• Mutations

• Hidden Knowledge

• Interdimensionality

• Time travel

• Apocalypse

3 Major ways to bring Christian truth into SF

1. Encounter the numinous (“the spiritual divine”) in nature and account for supernatural in scientific terms (elida as angels)

2. Encounter unfallen creatures and square with human longing (ex: Perelandra)

3. Encounter supernatural evil in humanity (Canticle for Leibowitz, A Wrinkle in Time)

Slaughterhouse 5 - anti….

• Anti-war

• Anti-religion

• Anti-hope

• Anti-American (nationalism)

• Anti-free will

Stoicism

Future truths are always set

In Slaugherhouse 5, there is no mention of _____ or _____

good or evil

• Combination of good with bad at unique moments - doesn’t differentiate between the two

• Antithesis - deadly with beautiful - fatal plane crash occurred on Sugarbush Mountain

Visidual Christianity

The symbols have been emptied of all meaning

Beatification

Announce formally in the Catholic church that someone has lived a holy life - first step in becoming a saint

Author of Canticle for Leibowiz

Walter M Miller (1923-1996)

• Engineer, served in WW2 - during bombing of the Monte Cassino monastery

• Later in life converted to Christianity

Author of Flatland

Edwin A. Abbott (1838-1926)

• Schoolmaster/headmaster, Anglican Priest

Theophany

The sudden appearance of God

Author of Ender’s Game

Orson Scott Card (1951-)

• Mormon

Utopia

“No place”

Dystopia

The inverse - nightmarish future - planned by social engineers and politicans

Every ____ started as someone’s _____

dystopia, utopia

Darko Suvin

SF scholar and theorist on cognitive estrangement

Cognitive Estrangement

• Similar to defamiliarization

• SF requires both the presence/interaction of estrangment and cognition

Estrangement

“Imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment”

Cognition

Unlike fantasy, SF stories maintain “cognitive believability” - a bridge of plausibility

Novum

“New ideas” in SF stories

ex: Space travel, time travel, VR, singularity (when technology will exceed human intelligence)

Three historical stages in Canticle

1. Neo-medieval: Authority, tradition (of. the church), Technology of transmission, transduction

2. Neo-renaissance - Enlightenment: revival of knowledge, deduction/induction, experiment

3. Neo-modern

Canticle: _____ of history

Cycles

Repetition of key images:

• Buzzards

• Wandering Jew

• Patch over the eye

• Francis

3 Periods in Canticle

I: Arkos - Art/Science/Sanctity/Power

II:Paulo - Thon Tateo - Galileo - Progress/Decay

III:Zerchi - Modern

Kardaschev Scale

Used to measure a civilization’s technological advancements based on energy use:

Type I: Harnesses all the energy of its planet - even the weather systems - volcanos (100-1000 years in the future)

Type II: Harnesses all the energy of its star (stellar) - Star Trek

Type III: Harnesses all the energy of its galaxy (galactic) - star wars

Knowledge vs comprehension

Knowledge: to discover, belief, care for, hold dearly (Francis Bacon, Lewis, Robert Heinlein

Comprehension: Grasp together as a whole, manipulation (Weston - seizing, violent)