Science Fiction as Moral Allegory

Abstract

An extraordinary amount of science fiction (SF) carries significant content of a moralistic nature consistently reflecting concerns about social becoming nested within the context of the times the works were written (Blackford, 2017). As a rule it is perilous to lump an entire genre into any single orientation, but in the case of SF and ethics there are strong connections especially in the classic works familiar to the general public. It makes a lot of sense when one considers that ethics is much about consequences and SF is much about illuminating them. “Moral literature” is a term likely to set off associations with various scripturally based “just so” stories, often written for children as digestible lessons in the faith, or as with Aesop’s fables, intended to carry explicit principles of human relations. These tales were explicitly meant to justify existing conventions as well as highlight key social principles. The favored genres of this literature are fable and apologue through which the normative world is justified in contradistinction to parable (“It has been written, but I say unto you...”) and satire; which are the genres of subversion. Layered over this stratum of edification literature were the now archaic studies in character development that held popular attention in the 18 and through to the early 20 century. These were exemplified in the works of Charles Dickens, and in America through the Horatio Alger stories. These coincided with a strain of “muscular Christianity” that manifested itself in both the YMCA and Boy Scouts in response to the societal consequences of concentrating large numbers of young men in the manufacturing centers where drunkenness, gambling and prostitution were corroding civilization itself in the eyes of the churchmen of the day. These series relentlessly pressed the theme of triumph over adversity. Weakness of the flesh rigorously suppressed through sport was also a well-worn theme persisting well into more recent times as this author recalls arguments in favor of school athletics programs for males as a means to dampen sexual impulse. Thus this moralistic literature was much shaped as a response to industrialization and its resulting initial in-migration of young single men. These emphases on moral virtue would wax and wane as industrial urbanism began to mature and new mediums were introduced. A kind of dialectical struggle for hearts and minds would play out in the early 20 century with the rise of the novel. The novel itself as a literary form had a reputation for titillation in the eyes of the straightlaced, but its broad popularity determined that titillation might be okay if it was well written by, say, a D.H. Lawrence. In Europe surrealism and the explosive works of Sigmund Freud would mark the contradictory shadow side of imperial order, and rigid rationality that marked a wide swath of Western Europe from Victorian London to Vienna. Ultimately it would be World War I that would bring the biggest challenge to moralist apologue. Overtly