Why I Read Science Fiction
[thoughts from a ~burning woman ~]
For years I've been challenged for my preferred choice of reading material: science fiction. Yes, perhaps long ago it was just entertainment, fun stuff, 'what if' possibilities without much seriousness to it. That all changed the day I realized (and admitted to myself) that much of the Bible is futuristic science fiction in its own right.
People have always been fascinated by stories. From the times of the tribal story tellers, the wandering minstrels, the great writers like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, tales were told, weaved from the imagination of these story-makers. Fantasy fiction in romance, politics and history remains the number one choice for readers. So it isn't the "fantasy" aspect that bothers some. Why is "science fiction" held suspect?
That's simple: more than any other fiction, it challenges time and space. It dares go "where no man has gone before" and make it seem possible. Good sci-fi makes a believer out of the reader, it won't let you get away with just mindless entertainment. It will make you think; make you question the very essence of your life. It is open-ended. A reader can finish a book and muse on what can come next because really, futuristic tales shatter the shell of time, opening infinite possibilities. Once open, that book never closes.
One more thing that good sci-fi does: it expresses parables that, despite being set in what some would term an impossible future, describe what is actually going on right now on this planet. I think that is what unnerves some people: the realism in that kind of fiction.
Here's a quote from one author who got so caught up in a story (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick - subsequently made into a movie called Blade Runner) that he wrote his own sequels to it. In his second Blade Runner novel, Replicant Night, he has his main character, Deckard, the ex blade runner, replicant-killer cop, discuss with an acquaintance the conundrum of deciding what makes a human; how to tell if a being who looks human is human.
"There are some mystical types who believe that being human isn't an inherent, genetically based condition at all. Humans don't decide who's human and who's not; that's taken care of by something outside them. Way outside. There's supposedly an aspect of God that's called the Eye of Compassion... and it can only see suffering; it's blind to everything else. And those things that it sees, the suffering ones, those are what are fully human. Anything else is... something less. So there may have been a time when the things that we consider to be human may actually have been that way... but not anymore. The Eye doesn't see us, you and I Deckard [because] we're part of that which causes suffering. The ones who used to be the [1*]replicants -- the ones we made -- they suffer at our hands. They suffer and the Eye of Compassion sees them and judges them to be human. They become human. It's the gaze of the Eye -- it's ability to empathize with other creatures -- that determines who's human. It's nothing we do."
(Replicant Night by K.W. Jeter)
The Teachers I interact with do not call the people of Earth human. They call them Earthians or pseudo-human. An artificial or counterfeit creature. Of course they are quite correct. Man's oldest literature attests to this fact, that Earthians did not naturally evolve here, but were created, or cloned. They are replicants, short-lived imitations of their creators. To become human they would have had to develop certain traits that would rise above the others and eventually become the dominant and natural aspect. The big one, of course was empathy and that can only happen through the practice of compassion. So much for that, huh?
So I go browsing through a used book store, grab a handful of science fiction paperbacks and in one of them I find validation for the deepest thoughts I've been trained to keep foremost in my mind when interacting with life.
I would have never found this in what passes for religious instruction anywhere in today's world. That comment is as true as it is sad because if the very people who claim to believe in a compassionate deity cannot demonstrate that aspect of it - the Eye of Compassion - then why do they bother at all?
And if these people who believe IN God, be they Muslims, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus or what have you, cannot demonstrate the very basis for any divine worship, then who is supposed to show us the way? Is it any wonder that those who pray invoke a "God" with over a billion faces hiding billions of conflicting characteristics?
If I [2*]believed "IN" God and if I were of those who pray I'd say, "Thank you God for science fiction writers" because I learned more about redemption and compassion from Asimov, Herbert, Jeter and Simmons (to name but a few) than I ever learned during decades of attending Christian religious worship.
[1*]Replicants were androids created by the Tyrell Corporation as slaves for far-flung colonial worlds. They came alive full grown and had a four-year life span built into them, to prevent any of them from returning to earth. The females were sterile. Replicants who turned out blemished in some way, or who were not purchased, were "retired" (killed) and their bodies recycled. A replicant looked completely human. In fact Eldon Tyrell, owner and CEO of the Tyrell Corporation boasted that his replicants were "more human than human."
(information taken from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Blade Runner, by Philip K. Dick)
[2*] For the record, I do not have to believe in God because I know from personal experience that God exists. "Believing in" or "faith" is for those who cannot know, those who are not allowed to "see" their God and must be satisfied with 3rd party claims about that God; those who must rely on hunches or deduce their God's activity from bits and pieces of observed phenomena.
Micke
(got a couple "AD Notifies", but they're not working correctly)
She Will Manifest Into Your Next New Girlfriend ( Can Take Weeks,Months To Manifest) But It In Time Will Be Girl You Want To Meet In (Photo) Person...Can't Believe It-Huh!
You Believe Read Science Fiction!
Etal: What's Feelings Got To Do With It!?
TRASK