The fantasy of history

I’d like to quickly take note of Body Surfing’s genre, since it pretty clearly lies the farthest from science fiction on its spectrum with fantasy among the books we’ve read thus far. Not only do I not mean to delegitimize the novel in noting this, of course (not being the hardest of hard-sf fans myself); I actually think Peck’s awareness and curiosity about the idea of fantasy presented within the book could go a long way toward convincing any of those who are suspicious of the genre. From Body Surfing’s very first moments in ancient Rome, fantasy begins to look like alternate history, projecting utopia (or at least varieties of embodiment) onto the known past as a way of making its more curious twists comprehensible. By tracking the Mogran through history, mass disasters as disparate as the fall of Rome (186), the slow-motion genocide of witches in medieval Europe (252) and even the Holocaust can be written into a single account. While it may seem peculiar to call this alternate history utopian—since it looks backwards rather than forwards, obsessing over the worst extremes of which people are capable—I think it accomplishes much the same work. By postulating a kind of transhistorical and inhuman (if not posthuman) force for societal disruption, it manages largely to acquit humanity of its own history and reinterpret our own form of life as less imperfect, rather than imagine another as perfect.

Perhaps the best evidence for this reading is the awareness Peck demonstrates of the work fantasy can accomplish, which is actually an awareness on the part of the “Gatherers”: more or less the academics among the Legion, they go about “[r]ounding up the Mogran’s abandoned hosts like stone-age women picking up acorns while their men go out with spears and hunt bears[.]” That’s Lana, the hunter, speaking to the gentle Dr. Thomas—giving some irony to her following aside that “[t]he gender roles might have softened, but the hierarchy hasn’t” (210). Though it might seem a stretch to identify the curiosity of these figures within the plot with that of authors of fantasy within the world—since there are “real” consequences for the Gatherers, and their work heeds the needs of “real” victims—Peck has Thomas align the history of the Gatherers and the Legion with the history of the genre of fantasy. Thus “the so-called Cult of the Child, a literature of symbolic, often surreal stories that evinced an enormous fear of, and fascination with, adult sexuality” is rewritten as the therapeutic fantasy work of three of the Mogran’s most famous victims—Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, and J.M. Barrie (184). Within the world of the novel, fantasy becomes a personal work of recovery, from trauma and of that trauma’s larger history. The lesson for us in ours might be to listen more closely to fantasy, then, and the truth of the history it fabricates.

Queering Utopia

Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” that “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realisation of Utopias.”

Tom Moylan echoes this concept in “Absent Paradigms” (mainly 64-5) - Utopia is not a concrete map; it is a “mapping,” a constant performance. Utopia is unattainable. How can science fiction impart utopian impulses to readers? By positioning the reader in the text, the narrative works on the reader, encouraging the reader “to ‘break out of the passivity and illusionism of the traditional reading experience in an effort to push the reader to work for change.’” (Fitting qtd in Moylan, p 54). The reader must work “from the inside” to fill in the details left out of such utopian science fiction works, glimpsing utopia in the “absent paradigm of the alternative world” (52).

In Crusing Utopia: the then and there of queer futurity, Jose Esteban Munoz writes about the utopian nature of the queer movement. “Queerness is not yet here. Queerness is an ideality…. We may never touch queerness, but we can feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality…. We must strive, in the face of the here and now’s totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there.” (1) Soon after that, he claims that “Queerness is also a performative because it is not simply a being but a doing for and toward the future. Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world.” (1) Munoz opens with Oscar Wilde’s quote for a reason — queerness is a vision to work towards, it may never be attainable. His language may be very different from Moylan’s explanation of absent paradigms, but queerness operates through an absent paradigm.

Constance Penley’s “Nasa/Trek” and Jennifer DeVere Brody’s “The Returns of Cleopatra Jones” both offer queer readings of seemingly heterosexual characters through this framework of absent paradigms. Penley writes of K/S (Kirk and Spock fanfiction) as a way for women to write a space for themselves in Star Trek (Penley describes Star Trek as a supposedly egalitarian world 300 years in the future, but there weren’t any female captains for years). Penley also cites the argument that “science fiction, seemingly the most sexless of genres, is in fact engrossed with questions of sexual difference and sexual relations, which it repeatedly addresses alongside questions of other kinds of differences and relations” (103). In other words, science fiction, because it seems sexless, is a prime target for readers to fill in absent paradigms of sexuality with ideas of queer sexuality. Star Trek “fans recognized that there was an erotic homosexual subtext there, or at least one that could easily be made to be there” (101-102).

DeVere posits a similar argument to explain why (primarily queer black feminist) fans cast Cleopatra Jones as a black queer figure. “In order to (mis)recognize Cleo as a ‘queer’ black heroine, these readers creative have deformed and erased aspects of the film character’s initial reception. In other words, the image of Cleopatra Jones can be ‘queered’ only through a canny counterreading that privileges different desires that result from spatiotemporal distance” (103). In this sense, arguing for a queer reading of Cleopatra Jones involves actively erasing and reworking the initial intent and public perception of her character (as a blaxploitation heroine who had to appeal to an audience of primarily black heterosexual men). Cleopatra Jones is not “sexless” — recognizing a queer subtext in the Cleopatra Jones films requires a utopian performance that overwrites the original perception of her character, building an absent paradigm that wasn’t originally there and filling it in with a queer vision.
In this way, absent paradigms, queer futurity, and utopian visions all have similar trajectories that can find a unique vehicle in science fiction.

Technology and Utopia

I wanted to open this post by noting that I love Star Trek and am going to be using some of Darko Suvin's "On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre" and Tom Moylan's "Scraps of Untainted Sky" to discuss and analyze the futuristic setting of this classic TV series and its sequels (on both the big screen and television). Fundamentally, Star Trek is unique for series from the 1960s in that it appears to sidestep past its major contemporary issues. Much of the readings for the week concern the political commentary possible in Science Fiction works and while Star Trek does incorporate these issues into its narrative, it does so by disguising it as alien.

In the 23rd century, mankind has moved beyond its own petty disputes on Earth over race, gender, and ideology (aka the 1960s) and thus both unified the Earth and joined it and human colonies to the United Federation of Planets. Quite frankly, it is this point in particular that turns Star Trek into a utopian piece as it makes very optimistic (yet desired) assumptions of the outcome of human endeavors over the 250-odd years separating the show's 1960s inception and its setting. Thus the use of actual, relatable humans as the protagonists allows this show the link to our contemporary world while the optimism forces a suspension of disbelief (as in the manner described by Suvin).

While the use of humans as protagonists allowed the audience to more effectively relate to Star Trek as a Science Fiction work, the inclusion of aliens ironically added to this relationship. The existence of sapient life with complex cultures, alliances, and principles is a central reality to the series but this very inclusion also allowed for broader creative opportunities for Gene Roddenberry and his crew. As is now common knowledge, in the original series, the United Federation of Planets appears to symbolize the West while the encroaching Klingon Empire paralleled the Soviet Union. However, the point is not that there is a parallel (as there are debates on Roddenberry's true intentions), but rather that instead of simply setting human problems in orbit, Star Trek made them issues of humans against various aliens, monsters, and secret/terrorist-like organizations. The utopian world of humanity is now set against the less-ideal worlds populated by Klingons and their brethren, allowing not only for the inclusion of an impossible-to-believe foundation, but also for the parallels to the present necessary for good Science Fiction. Tom Moylan described how literature and SF adopted the issues of the present to the their various settings and Star Trek is no exception. If anything, because Gene Roddenberry didn't specifically intend for these parallels, their existence in the series emphasizes the use of Science Fiction to address contemporary issues.

As a side note, Star Trek is unique in that there is only one truly fantastical technology, the transporter. In essence, the Enterprise herself is simply a space-faring exploration/warship while phasers are fancy guns, etc... While one could argue that the TV show was limited by a small budget and thus had to stick to creating technologies which mirrored those in the 20th century, in reality, there is a subtle brilliance to this connection across time. Star Trek is unique in implementation, setting, and technology in that all three contribute both to the "suspension of disbelief" and the necessary parallel(s) to the present so advocated by Darko Suvin and Tom Moylan. So while the viewer must learn to accept these new alien cultures and the technology of space travel, he/she does not have to fully detach from the present, but rather can view and extrapolate on the parallels between the Enterprise's adventures and our contemporary human world.

Butler's Utopia Story

“The Book of Martha” is technically not science fiction at all. It reads as a romantic dream fantasy - Butler calls it her “utopia story” (214), and it ends the second edition of the Bloodchild stories beautifully. It also serves as an excellent way of thinking through some of the concepts Butler discusses in the “Radio Imagination” interview with Marilyn Mehaffy and AnaLouise Keating.

When God offers Martha, an author, a chance to alter one facet of humans in order to prevent them from destroying themselves, she claims that she doesn’t believe in utopias - “[I]t’s [not] possible to arrange a society so that everyone is content, everyone has what he or she wants” (202). God agrees - humanity is dominated by covetousness, the aggression inspired by wanting what one’s neighbor has (and more). This, to me, seems strikingly similar to the “human contradiction” that Butler writes about in the Xenogenesis Trilogy - “human beings have two characteristics that don’t work well together… Hierarchical behavior and intelligence” (“RI” p. 53). Martha hopes that by allowing everyone to have vivid dreams about their own “private, perfect [or imperfect] utopia every night… it might take the edge off their willingness to spend their waking hours trying to dominate or destroy one another” (204). The idea of private dream utopias traces back to Butler’s idea that one utopia cannot be ideal for everyone - a utopia is usually “perfect” only to the person who envisions it.

In “The Book of Martha,” utopia is relative, just as Martha’s image of God is relative - as God first appears as an old white man, then a black man, then a black woman who looks related to Martha, Martha learns that “you see what your life has prepared you to see” (209). That is, I think, the basis of “radio imagination”- Butler mentions in her interview that “I realize that I have been writing about people for years and I’ve never seen any of them. I have the kind of imagination that hears. I think of it as radio imagination” (48). Her interviewers believe that “in radio narration, the socially-built body… in Butler’s fiction…. Is initially displaced and delayed…. The ‘punch’ of such an aesthetics… allows readers to ‘see’ and to ‘hear’ characters’ situational relations and ‘problems’ before classifying those relations within familiar idioms of race, gender, or sexuality” (48). So, in “The Book of Martha,” we can see Butler’s fascinating concept of radio imagination extended to “relative utopias,” which offers a way to subvert the hierarchical/dominant thinking inherent in the “human contradiction.” Beautiful.

And then I became slightly confused about “The Book of Martha” - as God prophesied, Martha will become the lowest rung on the new social hierarchy she creates, simply because she has created “the end of the only career [she’s] ever cared about” (213). She and God (and Butler) seem to take it for granted that “pleasure reading” would suffer in a world where people live inside their own fantasies every night (212). This, to me, seems like a fairly pessimistic view of what human intelligence means - socially constructed worlds that people are born into naturally prevent them from seeing beyond normative ideas of race, gender, sexuality, etc. As Butler claims in “Radio Imagination,” she aims to “stretch minds” (53). Without pleasure reading, the ability to read about alternate possibilities of life, how will people stretch their dreams beyond their daily experiences? I'd like to hope that in Martha’s ideal dream utopia world, the market for pleasure reading (especially novels that present entirely new or speculatively realistic worlds) would actually spike. I hope that the “intelligence” aspect of the “human contradiction” would motivate people to think beyond their own imaginations and strive to understand other people’s. Would individual utopias - more specifically, the inherent “hierarchical” inclination to privilege one’s own utopia above anyone else’s - prevent people from cooperating to enact changes? What would a humanity that doesn't perceive a need for speculative fiction look like? Does the end of fantasy writing in "The Book of Martha" contradict Butler's fictional aims to stretch the human mind?

Like Jasmine, Michael and Kai, I came away from reading Tiptree's fiction feeling depressed and terrified by her visions of the world. However, when reading Houston, Houston, Do You Read?, I found myself more afraid of the present and the past than I was of the future.

In his Introduction, Michael Swanwick comments that this short story is a twist on "a familiar thought-experiment," which went on to demonstrate the "wrongness" of a world without any men. With his comment that "Humanity, despite all final solutions, remains what it has always been" (xi), Swanwick seems to suggest that humanity has a natural inclination to repress and dismiss the "other," that whether man or woman is dominant, they will always consider the other sex as "irrelevant" (216).

However, as I read this story, I had to wonder whether the world Tiptree presented was a utopia or a dystopia, or something in between. Each man on the ship seems to have a different interpretation, as Bud thinks of a utopian world with himself as the only man, where all the women will "worship" his penis (209), and Dave, considering the women "lost children," decides that he also shall "rule over them" to bring them into God's dominion (212). Yet how do the women feel about their own world? Aggression is gone. Wars are gone. There are no struggles for power, and everyone seems connected and content. The only problem with this world, in fact, is that progress is not as fast as the time-travelling men would prefer (although they seem to dismiss the progress that has been made, including great leaps in bio-engineering and space travel, based only upon their biases that "women are not capable of running anything" (212).) Indeed, from our limited glance at the world, there don't seem to be any problems, except the ones created by bringing men forward in time to disrupt this peace.

I therefore think Tiptree's conclusion is even more complex and uncertain than Swanwick suggested. Both Bud and Dave eventually explode in fits of their own superiority, and attempt to dominate over the women, despite their status as outsiders and guests, because they feel themselves naturally superior. Without men, "nothing counts" (211), and so to make things count, they both attempt to commit acts of either sexual or physical violence against the women to bring them in line. Even Dr. Lorimer, the more sympathetic character, explodes in a fit of lost privelege, as he shouts, "I'm angry. I have a right. We gave you all this, we made it all" (215), assuming that his legacy of oppression was a gift. Furthermore, when he bursts out that men built "your dreams," he suggests that even the women's thoughts and goals could only have been created by men. Men "gave" all this to women, not because women were oppressed and forbidden from contributing, but because they would have (in his opinion) been unable to create it themselves, unable to conceive of anything without the other sex. Now the women are literally conceiving by themselves, and conceiving of advancement, of a new structure for society, the men find themselves unable to cope with the hint of irrelevancy that was felt by women for centuries. "They mustn't do that to Dave, treating him like an animal, for Christ's sake, a man - ", Lorimer says, suggesting that Dave deserves better treatment, not because he is a person, but because he is male. He makes no such protests while Bud is abusing Judy.

The short story therefore seems to present the bleak outlook that only one sex can exist without oppression developing. Tiptree cannot conceive of a world where men and women are equal, because men, it seems, will naturally attempt to dominate if found in world where women display any kind of power. If any man finds himself in this utopian world for women, he will have to be removed, or else he will bring back violence, pain and oppression. Similarly, however, women also cannot be trusted not to be oppressors if given a position of power. When Lady Blue confirms that there is no point "taking the risk of giving [men] equal rights," because "what could [they] possibly contribute?" (216), Tiptree presents a role reversal that suggests that humanity has a natural inclination to belittle and dismiss. One sex, no matter which, will always consider the other inferior. There is no "utopia" for one sex, without a dystopia, if not an utter lack of existance, for the other.