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Authors: Gerry Canavan
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Brunner is a good example of how stories can help here, and have. He did often represent science in a mode of reckless hubris, making the environmental situation worse; but he was writing in the era of the atomic bomb and thalidomide and DDT being sprayed in the streets. There was a postwar moment, in other words, when the scientific community was painfully overconfident in its ability to manipulate the world for human good. In essence they were being unscientific in this attitude, because they were acting on a belief not based on enough evidence to justify it. Their confidence was an arrogance, but having just won the biggest war in history (by way of radar, penicillin, and the atom bomb), as a community they lost their head and thought âWe can do anything!â
But the scientific community is very self-regarding and reiterative; it is always trying to make a better scientific method, it is explicitly an unfinished project at all times, and implicitly, maybe even unconsciously, it is a utopian project trying to push history in directions that will reduce suffering and increase justice. So now the 1950s moment of hubris looks embarrassing to the scientific community, and in general there is a much more careful attitude and methodology.Science is better than it was in the 1950s, in ways that can be demonstrated; here too we have to historicize, to be aware of change and progress. In that longer account, Brunnerâs books were one part of the corrective to the 1950s moment of hubris, joining the stories of Rachel Carson and many other sources of critique from all directions.
Thereâs always going to be the need for this kind of self-examination and corrective action. We are better now at doing science, partly because weâre better at doing theory, and partly because science fiction retold all the old stories about pride going before a fall. However, weâre still allowing capitalism to shape our actions and wreck the Earth, meaning our bio-infrastructure, meaning ourselves. So our culture is not yet scientific enough; when it becomes so, we will be making more rapid progress toward both justice and sustainability, as the two are stranded parts of the same project. At least this is the story Iâm trying to tell.
Of Further Interest
GERRY CANAVAN
What follows is an annotated list of selected SF works (very broadly defined) that stake out some position on questions of ecological futurity and the environment. Not all of the authors and creators listed necessarily understood themselves to be producing âecological SF ,â and by no means are all of these texts equally recommended from either a political or an aesthetic perspective. All, however, are at least potentially of interest to readers interested in the way SF has both drawn from and influenced ecological thinking and environmentalist politics.
Literature and Nonfiction
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy . Earth is demolished to build an interstellar highway in this timeless satire of progress, technology, capitalism, bureaucracy, life, the universe, and everything. Adamsâs concern for the environment is also evident in his elegiac Last Chance to See (1989), cowritten with Mark Carwadine, on endangered species across the globe.
Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972). Rabbits are people, too.
Chris Adrian, The Childrenâs Hospital (2006). A hospital must shut its doors and become a completely self-sustaining entity following a global flood in this American magical realist novel.
Brian Aldiss, Non-Stop (1958; Starship in the United States). The novel explores life inside the artificial environment of a generational starship that has lost all memory of its mission or even that it is a spaceship at all. Aldiss fans might also be interested in Hothouse (1962), set on a hot future Earth whose new temperature has caused the entire planet to be completely overrun with plant life, as well as White Mars, or,
Brunner is a good example of how stories can help here, and have. He did often represent science in a mode of reckless hubris, making the environmental situation worse; but he was writing in the era of the atomic bomb and thalidomide and DDT being sprayed in the streets. There was a postwar moment, in other words, when the scientific community was painfully overconfident in its ability to manipulate the world for human good. In essence they were being unscientific in this attitude, because they were acting on a belief not based on enough evidence to justify it. Their confidence was an arrogance, but having just won the biggest war in history (by way of radar, penicillin, and the atom bomb), as a community they lost their head and thought âWe can do anything!â
But the scientific community is very self-regarding and reiterative; it is always trying to make a better scientific method, it is explicitly an unfinished project at all times, and implicitly, maybe even unconsciously, it is a utopian project trying to push history in directions that will reduce suffering and increase justice. So now the 1950s moment of hubris looks embarrassing to the scientific community, and in general there is a much more careful attitude and methodology.Science is better than it was in the 1950s, in ways that can be demonstrated; here too we have to historicize, to be aware of change and progress. In that longer account, Brunnerâs books were one part of the corrective to the 1950s moment of hubris, joining the stories of Rachel Carson and many other sources of critique from all directions.
Thereâs always going to be the need for this kind of self-examination and corrective action. We are better now at doing science, partly because weâre better at doing theory, and partly because science fiction retold all the old stories about pride going before a fall. However, weâre still allowing capitalism to shape our actions and wreck the Earth, meaning our bio-infrastructure, meaning ourselves. So our culture is not yet scientific enough; when it becomes so, we will be making more rapid progress toward both justice and sustainability, as the two are stranded parts of the same project. At least this is the story Iâm trying to tell.
Of Further Interest
GERRY CANAVAN
What follows is an annotated list of selected SF works (very broadly defined) that stake out some position on questions of ecological futurity and the environment. Not all of the authors and creators listed necessarily understood themselves to be producing âecological SF ,â and by no means are all of these texts equally recommended from either a political or an aesthetic perspective. All, however, are at least potentially of interest to readers interested in the way SF has both drawn from and influenced ecological thinking and environmentalist politics.
Literature and Nonfiction
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikerâs Guide to the Galaxy . Earth is demolished to build an interstellar highway in this timeless satire of progress, technology, capitalism, bureaucracy, life, the universe, and everything. Adamsâs concern for the environment is also evident in his elegiac Last Chance to See (1989), cowritten with Mark Carwadine, on endangered species across the globe.
Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972). Rabbits are people, too.
Chris Adrian, The Childrenâs Hospital (2006). A hospital must shut its doors and become a completely self-sustaining entity following a global flood in this American magical realist novel.
Brian Aldiss, Non-Stop (1958; Starship in the United States). The novel explores life inside the artificial environment of a generational starship that has lost all memory of its mission or even that it is a spaceship at all. Aldiss fans might also be interested in Hothouse (1962), set on a hot future Earth whose new temperature has caused the entire planet to be completely overrun with plant life, as well as White Mars, or,
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