Oathkeepers and Vagrants: Meliorist and Reactive World Views in Science Fiction

Abstract

Oathkeepers and Vagrants:Meliorist and Reactive World Views in Science Fiction Joseph O. Milner (bio) At a recent meeting of the International Federation of Teachers of English, Charmaine Pountney asked, "Why are we so completely wed to a view of the future offered by men like Huxley and Orwell and so oblivious to those projected by women like Ursula LeGuin?" As I pondered this male/female dichotomy, I found myself turning to another opposing pair, one which I feel is even more comprehensive, trenchant, and evocative: the meliorist/reactive world views expressed by various writers of science fiction. Broadly defined, the meliorist view celebrates the progress of man and the hope that civilization is in some broad fashion moving toward an almost Edenic state. Jacob Bronowski projects this near-utopian vision of man's journey in his film series The Ascent of Man. The reactive position is a more skeptical view of man's pilgrimage. It sees mankind as basically flawed, unable to progress, and forever caught in the tension between its angelic and bestial nature. Like Shakespeare's Bottom, man appears to be angelic but carries the head of an ass on his shoulders. This view contains a basic fear of what the future might hold for us. Many books could be used to illustrate these opposing world views, but the differences show up particularly clearly in Sylvia Engdahl's Enchantress From the Stars and John Christopher's The White Mountains. Four basic features common to most works of science fiction separate the views of these authors: their conception of human naturetheir understanding of historytheir perception of science and technologytheir use of the formal and contextual elements of fiction. Their understanding of human nature most severely separates the two writers. Engdahl clearly feels that people can be better than they are now. In her array of full and believable characters to aspire to be good, but which also urges readers to higher levels of moral understanding. When we see Kevan kill Andrecians for sport we are sure that Engdahl is not ignorant of the fact that such viciousness can lurk within all men; she offers no specific explanation for his behavior. She also shows us a Dulard, who dehumanizes what he considers to be lower life in a much less physical and less blatant manner; by his thorough attention to the requests of his exploitive colonizing government, however, he may do more eventual harm to the Andrecians than the spontaneously destructive Kevan. The even-tempered Dulard is the natural product of a culture that mechanically, rationally sets out to control and to drain other human beings. Even within this self-seeking culture, however, something—we don't know exactly what—has impelled Jarel to rise as far above his culture's moral norms as Kevan has fallen below them. He has transcended his culture, and Engdahl is clearly pleased to let us know that such transcending is possible. She even sets Jarel in bold relief against the simpler evils of his brothers: their thirst for power, wealth, and regal women. From the first Jarel possesses a virtue far beyond his culture's, and in the course of his relationship with Elana, he moves toward a very high level of moral thought and action. The Oathkeepers represent the possibility that a civilization might approximate moral perfection. From the first Illura demonstrates wholehearted adherence to her oath, an analogue to Jesus' Golden Rule or Kant's categorical imperative. She consciously gives her life to maintain a distant and altruistic goal for another civilization. Elana's father is a near parallel to St. John's construct of God who so loved the world that He gave his only child. Clearly Engdahl is presenting a vision of humankind that includes the capacity to produce, under the right conditions, truly good people capable of Niebuhr's standard of the moral man: self sacrifice for a higher good. In The White Mountains, Christopher projects a less hopeful view of man's basic nature. He is concerned that a basic evil in man threatens to dislodge us from our place between the spiritual and the bestial worlds and to cast us into that...