Dearest Readers: This week we’re trying something new with Blog For A Beer. You seem to enjoy the posts that spark lively conversation and friendly debate the best, and we enjoy watching these conversations evolve. So from now on, most of the Fantasy Friday posts will be actual blog posts for you to respond to. The beer money is still on the table, though! The participant that provides the most insightful, funny, or entertaining commentary will be awarded the prize. Comments close at 5PM PST tomorrow (Saturday).
Today’s guest blogger is Mike Brotherton, author of Spider Star. He’s also the administrator of the Launchpad Workshop.
Science vs. Fantasy: A False Dichotomy
There have been a number of books, movies, and tv shows presenting apparent conflicts between the scientific world view and that of the believers in the fantastic. Characterize this dichotomy on a science vs. fantasy spectrum, if you will.
I submit that many of these stories, with a few notable exceptions, have been unfair.
Science is a methodology for developing reliable knowledge about the world, and all it depends upon is that there is an objective reality that behaves consistently. Science works in our world. We have a world of technology that demonstrates this in no uncertain terms. It should work in any consistent world, particularly worlds resembling our own. Any world with magic, assuming the magic system is consistent, should be understandable through science.
A conflict under these situations, pitting a logical scientific type against a wild-eyed believer, reason against belief, is a false conflict. Scientists are not dogmatic and their measurements, experiments, and observations can and do change their minds. Or not, in too many cases. How many times have you seen the skeptical scientist character in a story with fantastic elements mutter something like, “There must be a logical explanation,” and then go on to offer something feeble and likely stupid in face of the reality of the story? Let me illustrate this with some TV series that regularly pitted science against the fantastic. The first never really played fair, the second is currently running and there’s hope, and a final case where the appropriate character change finally did come to the skeptical scientist (thanks to smart writers and a long run).
I recall watching Northern Exposure on TV some 15 years ago, more or less. It was an interesting show about a doctor with a fellowship compelled to serve in Alaska for several years to pay off the debt. What was stupid was that he represented a scientific point of view, while the locals provided a new age, fantasy-based point of view, and he never took into account the data of his experiences there in adjusting his outlook. The show didn’t play fair. They cheated. Science takes into account information from the environment, experiments and observations, in reaching conclusions, having an objective fantastic reality. For the majority of the show, Joel just looked like an ass denying the events that occurred based on his past experience rather than the physical evidence he was presented with week after week. It wasn’t science. It was a believer’s version of science.
This is happening on Battlestar Galactica to a certain extent. Baltar is our scientist there. He’s making the rationalist argument, but he’s also being swayed. I’m okay with that, because on the show the faith-based perspective has numerous facts in support of it, with rather unambiguous visions regularly coming true on a regular basis. It isn’t really religion as we know it when the writers can make the visions and prophecies clear and true every week. We call that fantasy. I’m very sympathetic toward Baltar. He’s a smart guy, like me. He has a weakness for women, like me. He just wants to survive, like me, and probably you, too. He’s too often made to be the bad guy. I hope he’s redeemed in the end. He hasn’t been immoral as I’ve seen it. He’s been rationally human. The final verdict hasn’t quite come in yet.
Perhaps one of the best cases, in the end, of how science can tackle the fantastic occurred on the X-Files. In the beginning we had the classic and poor false dichotomy: Mulder the believer against Scully the skeptical scientist. Her job in the early seasons was to disbelieve Mulder’s wild ideas with a more “scientific” explanation, which she did dutifully even in the face of compelling evidence. Eventually, however, her character and the show grew, although it took a very long time for them to move away from the false dichotomy at the heart of the original formula. The data started leading her to agree with Mulder’s notions. The scientific evidence supported them, in the show’s reality, and science got her there.
Look. In a piece of fiction I’ll buy into the realities of that fiction. Just make them clear and honest. Too often we have idiocy. Characters like Joel Fleishmann who keep on with a modern, scientific worldview despite events that he sees and experiences, repeatedly, regularly, and can collect evidence about. Change the rules, and science will figure it out. Stories that fail in this respect represent stories that fail to properly portray science.
I’m not claiming that science is the be all and end all on all matters. Life is about much more than that. But if you want facts to cling to, rules to understand, and live in a consistent world (fantastic elements or not), stick with science.
Where science conflicts with other paradigms, the other paradigms are probably wrong. This is just based on how science works. Science doesn’t work everywhere, but where it works, pay attention. And it should work in any self-consistent fantasy, too. If it doesn’t, someone isn’t playing fair.
Agree? Disagree? More examples of the false dichotomy? Any other reaction? Have at in the comments! But please do keep this a civil discussion. You don’t have to agree and you don’t have to back down from your position, but you do have to abstain from being a jerk (which we know you all will, because you’re awesome).
1 • Michael Gordon said:
May 9th, 2008 at 9:55 am, permalink
I agree with your points and I think this dichotomy is often made too absolute in other areas as well (not going to get into a Science vs. Religion discussion).
However, I think the reason the scientist characters refuse to believe (at first) is not because they are poorly written or dogmatic, but because science is more than observation, it’s repeated, experimental, empirical clinical observation. You don’t get those opportunities in most contemporary fantasy works.
The story changes profoundly when you’ve got the werewolf strapped to a vivisection table and a team of scientists running blood tests and taking tissue samples.
I know a lot of people are strongly against the kind of fantasy where you can study the supernatural like science, and maybe that’s related to why so many scientist characters are completely out of their depths.
2 • Jeremiah Tolbert said:
May 9th, 2008 at 9:59 am, permalink
Michael, why do you think some people are strongly opposed to the kind of fantasy where the supernatural can be studied like science? Is it that, once proven to be understandable in that way, it loses that which makes it fantastic and exciting? Fantasy is only fantasy if the events and elements within are unreal? Anyone else have thoughts on that?
Personally, the more mixed up my science and fantasy is, the happier I am. Perdido Street Station is my favorite example of this.
3 • Michael Gordon said:
May 9th, 2008 at 10:14 am, permalink
Hi Jeremiah. I totally understand where people are coming from with that perception of what makes fantasy Fantasy, but I judged from the article that the author did not necessarily agree. Hence: “Any world with magic, assuming the magic system is consistent, should be understandable through science.”
Personally, I think supernatural (compared to our world) events and elements are fantastic to me (as a reader and writer) even if they are not so to the characters.
(On that note if anyone has recommendations of magazines that publish this kind of science fantasy I’d be super grateful.)
I really do must add China Miéville to my reading list…
4 • Dan Percival said:
May 9th, 2008 at 10:33 am, permalink
In response to the query about “science fantasy,” Charles Stross’s “The Concrete Jungle” is one example that comes quickly to mind.
5 • Dan Percival said:
May 9th, 2008 at 11:02 am, permalink
…Or Stross’. Or Stross’s’es. Point being, I hold this story up as an example of the kind of world you get when the author takes the notion of fully consistent magic seriously. In sort of a converse of Clarke’s Law, any sufficiently reliable magic would be indistinguishable from a natural phenomenon, with technologies based on it almost certain to follow.
Ted Chiang has made the observation somewhere (given time, I can probably dig up a link) that it’s useful to ask whether the physical universe of a story recognizes personal will as a special quality: does it matter if a magical rune is painted by hand or printed out by the ream? Alongside that question, I think it’s also worth asking whether the physical universe of a story is observably consistent.
6 • Clint Harris said:
May 9th, 2008 at 12:24 pm, permalink
I’m a little weird. A lot of fantasy that is out there isn’t weird enough for my tastes. They play up the tame things like dragons and unicorns, elves and dragons. And magic that follows the rules.
Read some writers guidelines out there and you will see what I mean. Established systems of magic are crucial.
Why?
The thing is that real magic doesn’t need to abide by rules. A good writer creates their own limitations for magic to create conflict and maintain tension. I think this is what the editors mean by a “system of magic”. They don’t want a lot of stories with magic rescuing the characters at the last minute, with magic whisking characters away or solving problems that arrise, when they could have just used that magic in the first place to end the story. It makes for bad storytelling.
Adding consistency and predictability to magic just means a unicorn is a horse with a horn. An elf is just a person with pointy ears. A dragon is a big lizard. Etc.
I like it better when the dead king comes to life and his moldering bones attack the hero. Or when the creepy reflection comes through the mirror to choke someone. These instances defy physical reason. They are what play at the corners of our minds. Our irrational fears that we still hold even though science tells us they are impossible.
Fantasy resides in that place that still believes they are possible even though they shouldn’t be. Those quick moments where we do a double-take and say “this isn’t happening.”
That’s the world Joel Fleishmann lived in. In a way I envy Joel, because these experiences still gave him pause. The rest of the characters had become jaded. Their system of magic was predictable. It was more of a mundane thing, whereas Joel had to find his science challenged every week.
I like my sense of wonder to be ignited in such ways, and don’t think that consistency or applying rules to a system of wonder is important unless it negatively affects telling the story. We buy the ticket to the roller coaster to be frightened. Not to have a good place to rest from standing in line for two minutes. Same should be true of magic.
When you understand the limits of magic, it isn’t as interesting. It just becomes high school chemistry. Same as monsters. When you realize Dracula can be killed with sunlight, wooden stakes, etc. you don’t understand why all those eastern European villagers lived in fear of him.
As a reader, I want to be kept guessing. And if I learn the reasons, I want to be amazed by how little I still know.
7 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 3:11 pm, permalink
I used to be much more right –brained in my approach to writing (and reading) fantasy. I did not question how homo-sapiens sprung up on entirely different worlds, or that they had miraculously developed along similar lines as we Earthianitonians, or that they frequently developed a pseudo-European medieval culture and technology. I just went along for the ride.
But (until we find otherwise), the fact is that humans and horses and rats evolved uniquely and specifically on Earth.
So, at some point a need for suspension of disbelief regarding human existence outside of Earth has crept into my writing. I find I have to build a back story based on transplantation, or multiple dimension theory, or a colony of interstellar travelers that has somehow lost touch with their ancient home world. Same is true for the horses and mosquitoes and rats that live alongside them.
Sure, McCaffrey’s _Dragonriders_, Keyes’ _Kingdom of Thorn and Bone_ series, Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy, even (arguably) Feist’s Riftwar series, just to name a few, they all provide plausible back stories along these lines explaining humans existing on other worlds, and the presence of “magical” creatures. But in many such cases, the background turns out to be science fiction, regardless of how purely “fantasy” the narrative is.
I think this nagging need to justify my fantasy world is perhaps because I don’t want intelligent readers to dismiss my story as ridiculous if I don’t explain how it is possible. Which is kind of, well, ridiculous. It is fantasy after all, not hard sci-fi.
Frankly, I don’t like it. I want my simple acceptance of the magical back, please.
8 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 3:53 pm, permalink
Explaining _too_ much can strip away the wonder from fantasy. I enjoyed the first Highlander movie, focused on the wonder and the sorrows of immortality, but I certainly didn’t enjoy Highlander 2 making immortals into cheesy aliens. Since my youth, I would occasionally, in idle moments, attempt to move objects with the force. But now I find I need miticlorians to do so?
Would you have the Tolkien estate approve a new book that explains that Sauron was really a space alien that employed Strange Attractor quantum entanglement to link the rings, and cloning to return from the dead or bioengineering to create the orcs and goblins, and that elves were a race of super-evolved time traveling humans from the distant future? How would that in any way add to or improve the Lord of the Rings?
Would Bilbo’s encounter with Smaug have been as wondrous if he’d been ruminating on how amazed the original middle-earth colonists from true Earth would be to see the end result of their dragon breeding program, and how far the species had come from its roots as a genetically manipulated iguana? Even if the fumes from the volatile mineral that lined these caves, and which the dragon ate to feed its chemical-energy fires, had mutated and stunted the dwarves into their current unfortunate shape, of course.
9 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm, permalink
As for science vs. magic, I recommend Lyndon Hardy’s “Master of the Five Magics.” This novel, while average in many ways, is a real gem when it comes to its magic systems. There are, as the title implies, five different forms of magic, each with its own laws and limitations, and the best part is that most of those laws are magical laws, not scientific laws.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have Stephen R. Donaldson and his Thomas Covenant stories. Covenant’s magic, called forth through his white gold wedding band, is the Wild Magic. Covenant has little or no control over the Wild Magic, which itself is a form of energy that is unbound by the laws of time or space in the magical Land.
Yet that very wild quality of the magic is exactly why the big bad wants Covenant’s ring in the first place, and is a critical aspect of the story (and Convenant’s character). Rules are not only unnecessary, but would completely ruin and transform the story.
So fantasy, and magic, need to make sense internally (have consistency and limits, even if it is consistently uncontrollable and wild) but it doesn’t need to somehow follow OUR rules. A fantasy world should evoke wonder, and feel real to the reader, but not need to be OUR reality.
10 • Clint Harris said:
May 9th, 2008 at 4:56 pm, permalink
Very nice examples, Randy. Thanks! See, THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about right there!
Some people just have to have these systems spelled out for them. I don’t. I’m with you that LotR would have suffered and died a very “plausible” death. To paraphrase Dr. Freud. Sometimes a dragon is just a dragon.
11 • Michael Gordon said:
May 9th, 2008 at 5:20 pm, permalink
I usually think of those issues of fantasy being turned into sci fi in terms of vampires. So many authors turned them into aliens, which robs them of all the dark power and allure of being Undead. But on the other hand, many authors who stick with the fantasy version don’t have any internal consistency in terms of the powers and weaknesses given to their supernatural creatures.
So while I never think that fantastic events and elements should be given SCIENTIFIC reasons, I do think they should have something similarly constructed based on the magic/myths of that world.
Of course, I’d have done a thesis on vampiric metaphysics if I could have.
12 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 5:55 pm, permalink
Well, normally I’d agree about the alien vampire thing, except that I really enjoyed the movie Lifeforce in my formative years. Of course, I’m sure that was all based on Patrick Stewart’s pre-fame performance, and had nothing to do with the fact that the lead vampire was an incredible hottie.
As far as vampires go, I most often see it explained scientifically from genetic and infection terms. It is a retro-virus of some kind, etcetera.
In some cases, this is fine. It depends on the style of story. Dracula is a figure of seduction and power and tragedy, and needs no explanation for why he is a vampire.
The Blade comics and movies, or Underworld, on the other hand, are about wars between humans and vampires in modern times, and understanding that vampirism is a virus opens the door for plots, character storylines, and weapons based on the struggle to control, spread, enhance or cure the virus.
13 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 6:06 pm, permalink
To be clear, I actually agree with Mike’s dichotomy argument. He is not saying that a magical world needs to follow our world’s scientific laws and theories. Or even that in the fiction itself, you have to give scientific justifications for the fantastical.
He is saying (I think) that in a well-constructed fantasy world that has its own consistency and rules (even if they are magical), a person who applies the scientific method would not be an automatic foil, fool, or disbeliever.
And conversely, a “scientist” character who simply dismisses the fantastical, regardless of evidence as to its existence and nature, is indeed a one-dimensional fool and not, in fact, a scientist.
So if Einstein had traveled to the Land with Thomas Covenant, he might have realized that Wild Magic is, in fact, the cosmological constant (duh).
Darwin would have loved Pern, with its dragons and fire lizards. I did. Though have you ever tried to get fire lizard poo off your shirt?
If Pavlov had traveled to Narnia, he might have got a rather nasty shock the first time a dog said, “I don’t care how many times you ring that bell, do you really expect me to drool over this slop?” But he would not have then dismissed the dog as unreal just because dogs on Earth have neither the cognitive nor biological development to speak.
And if the world’s leading scientists traveled into the realm of the Never Ending Story, they would no doubt come to a consensus and publish a report stating that the Nothing was, in fact, rapidly growing and consuming the realm, and a contributing factor was the clear loss of human imagination.
Unfortunately, King Bush would then edit their report to replace “the Nothing” with “a Minor and Unconfirmed Absence of Something,” and the term “rapidly growing and consuming the realm” with “possibly affecting minor outlying regions.” And of course, any reference to human imagination would be removed entirely.
But then, that is the difference between scientists and “believers;” scientists are constrained by nasty little things like observable and repeatable facts — whether it’s that on Earth an apple will always fall if you drop it, or that in Middle-Earth a ring makes the wearer invisible every time they put it on, exactly when they put it on, and only when they put it on.
On the other hand, a reckless scientist might also say, “Hmmmm. I wonder if the ring would have the same effect on non-humanoids? Like, say, a dragon? Perhaps I should conduct a controlled experiment …” (cue ominous music)
14 • Mike Brotherton said:
May 9th, 2008 at 7:34 pm, permalink
Randy wrote:
“As for science vs. magic, I recommend Lyndon Hardy’s “Master of the Five Magics.” This novel, while average in many ways, is a real gem when it comes to its magic systems. There are, as the title implies, five different forms of magic, each with its own laws and limitations, and the best part is that most of those laws are magical laws, not scientific laws.”
I’ll second that one. It’s a good book with a great and consistent magic system that is subject to scientific development.
I also liked Joel Rosenberg’s Heroes of the Flame series. The world is something you’d find in D&D, but one of the characters from our world brings engineering into it, to great effect.
I’m not at all saying we need science in fantasy, or vice versa, but to pretend that there’s a conflict when there isn’t fails to portray science accurately and builds in misunderstanding in our society.
Interesting comments and good points!
15 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 8:32 pm, permalink
Ah yes, Heroes of the Flame – a guilty pleasure.
Although technically it is sci-fi, if you are looking for applications of modern engineering in a medieval setting then you could also check out Leo Frankowski’s “The Adventures of Conrad Stargard” series (aka the “Cross-Time Engineer” series).
It is about a modern Polish engineer who is accidentally transported back to Earth’s medieval Poland by a time machine. I enjoyed its discussions and applications of modern engineering to prepare feudal Poland for the invasion of the Mongol Hordes. The writing and characters are a tad chauvinistic, but arguably that fits the time period being written about.
16 • Clint Harris said:
May 9th, 2008 at 11:18 pm, permalink
Guardians of the Flame, guys. Guardians.
Actually one of my first exposures to fantasy outside of Tolkien. Well done. His evil baddies were slavers. His good characters made terrible mistakes. I really dug those books, especially when Walter Slovotsky became the main POV character. Totally jumped the shark with “Not Exactly the Three Muskateers.”
So I’m not completely off-topic here, the system of magic was very cool. It wasn’t explained in much detail, but it was obvious there was a price to be paid. The use of healing potions throughout were nice ways to keep the characters alive, and inexplicably escape death on numerous occasions.
Now I’m way off topic.
17 • Randy Henderson said:
May 9th, 2008 at 11:51 pm, permalink
Doh! Guardians.
Healing potions are cool. But I can’t stand the aftertaste. It’s like, I don’t know, licking the inside of a unicorn’s nose? Or the ear of an unfortunately sweaty elf maid? Well, you know what I mean, right?
And by the way, if you were going to respond “how would you know what licking a unicorn’s nose or a sweaty elf maid’s ear tastes like,” well, okay, you got me.
I’ve only done one of those things.
18 • Michael Gordon said:
May 11th, 2008 at 12:16 pm, permalink
Methinks the title of this feature should be changed to something like Weird Weekend, since no one posted on Saturday…
I think Dan’s mention of the importance of personal will is really a key distinction to make, because if reality is even the slightest bit affected by human thought then the whole scientific process falls apart, doesn’t it?
19 • Dan Percival said:
May 11th, 2008 at 10:14 pm, permalink
A late follow-up: to be clear, I didn’t mean to imply that stories set in a self-consistent physical universe are a better — just that there are different stories to be told and different reader responses to be had depending on how reliable the characters can expect their world to be.
A couple of posters above have expressed that their appreciation for magic involves it being inherently mysterious and exceptional in ways that are difficult for a scientific perspective to incorporate. In those kinds of worlds, persistent skepticism alone wouldn’t necessarily be lazy characterization of a scientist. It might raise a warning flag to me, but as long as the character is well-developed and doesn’t exhibit other cardboard characteristics — like sneering, you can always tell the straw scientists by their sneer — I think the presence of intelligent disbelievers, however mistaken, can make for a richer world.
20 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
May 16th, 2008 at 8:00 am, permalink
You all make this really hard, you know. Seeing as you all made really good points and provided excellent discussion. However, I think the prize will go to Clint for his contributions. I was particularly struck by this: