Science Fiction: Threat Or Menace

Tyler Austin Harper grossly overstates his point, but he's not wrong.

I think it needs to be expanded to all forms of literature, however.  Genre fiction (particularly of the pulp variety) are among the worse offenders but even major mainstream works can wreak havoc.

Case in point, Atlas Shrugged is a science fiction novel.  Regardless of its literary quality, it served as objectivist propaganda.  We've seen a couple or three generations of economists and politicians who are adherents of Rand's narcissistic sociopathic philosophy wreak untold havoc on the world.

Even if confining his argument to that example alone, I'd say he proved his point.

But wait -- there's more!  19th and early 20th century literature are chockablock with social Darwinism and eugenics advocacy.  Every time a fictional adventurer of European ancestry encountered an "exotic" foreign culture, on Earth or off, they either soundly thrashed the natives and subjugated them or the natives recognized the adventurer's inherent superiority and willingly submitted to them.

Children read that again and again and again then grow into adults to don't merely believe they're superior in all ways, but can't imagine anyone not recognizing that as an incontrovertible fact.

And the blade cuts both ways.  H.G. Wells was a proud socialist, but his idea of a well run society was one where he and a class of elite "samurai" (his term) would tell all the benighted proles what to do.  (He even assumed it would be possible to eradicate all religion around the globe in less than a generation, and I don't care if you’re an atheist or what, if you don't recognize the inherent real world absurdity of such an idea, you're one thumb duck.)

Literature can serve positive or negative objectives.  Uncle Tom's Cabin got three million people around the world to start reappraising their view on chattel slavery, Gone With The Wind sold thirty million readers on the idea that white plantation owners were the true victims of the Civil War and went down fighting for a noble cause.

Most science fiction, despite its speculative basis, is reactionary.  There are brilliant forward thinking stories, but too often it's just thinly disguised 19th century jingoism cosplaying as the future.

© Buzz Dixon