Communion Of Dreams

A good friend sent me a link to a Sunday Times commentary by Bryan Appleyard titled “Why don’t we love science fiction?”. Here’s the opening paragraph:

In the 1970s, Kingsley Amis, Arthur C Clarke and Brian Aldiss were judging a contest for the best science-fiction novel of the year. They were going to give the prize to Grimus, Salman Rushdie’s first novel. At the last minute, however, the publishers withdrew the book from the award. They didn’t want Grimus on the SF shelves. “Had it won,” Aldiss, the wry, 82-year-old godfather of British SF, observes, “he would have been labelled a science-fiction writer, and nobody would have heard of him again.”

Painfully true. Of course, had this happened, Rushdie may have been able to avoid that whole fatwa business which had him in hiding for a while. Sadly, SF writers aren’t taken seriously enough to even warrant killing for their sacrilege.

Then why read science fiction, let alone write the stuff? Appleyard has a good handle on this:

“The truth is,” Aldiss has written, “that we are at last living in an SF scenario.” A collapsing environment, a hyperconnected world, suicide bombers, perpetual surveillance, the discovery of other solar systems, novel pathogens, tourists in space, children drugged with behaviour controllers – it’s all coming true at last. Aldiss thinks this makes SF redundant. I disagree. In such a climate, it is the conventionally literary that is threatened, and SF comes into its own as the most hardcore realism.

He explores more of this in his column, which I heartily recommend reading. Not that this will change things for most people, of course - there is a deep-seated prejudice against SF, even within significant portions of the SF community. Why? Well, as Appleyard says, good SF - the stuff that lasts and has an impact - is about examining our own dark nature and fears about where our science will lead us. And that is just a little too stark for many people, who want escapism more than they want to confront the prospect of what we are doing to ourselves and our environment. I think that this is why such fantastic yet formulaic SF as Star Wars or even Star Trek tends to be much more popular than the more nitty-gritty stuff.

Now, I enjoy a good, upbeat ending as much as the next person. Communion of Dreams has such an ending, though there is pain and loss. But look at where Communion starts - in a world made worse by our foolish actions and fears, a grim view of both our future and ourselves. Getting past that is difficult for many people.

Well, I do love science fiction - for all the reasons Appleyard has cited, and all that I have written about on this blog. I guess for me it comes down to being willing to take a long, cold look at reality - because only when you really understand exactly what problems you have can you make an effective change. SF allows us to do that, if it is well written and honest. But I long ago learned that most people prefer a pretty lie to honest truth.

Jim Downey