Science Fiction a Mythos

By Daniel Blair Stewart, CAW & Feraferia

Every culture needs a mythos, a body of stories that explains our human relationship to the Universe. Our mythos embodies our beliefs, the knowlege, vision, ideals, even the purpose of our entire civilization. Additionally, a prerequisite for any myth is that it be entertaining, whether told around a campfire or enacted in a temple-theatre.

During the Renaissance, subversive groups of scientists struck what would turn out to be death-blows to the prevailing creation myth of medieval Europe. The opening chapter of the Bible, the account in Genesis of the Garden of Eden, placed a flat Earth in a univers created in six days by one God. Instead of confirming this, these early astronomers and physicists demonstrated that the Earth was in fact round, it orbited the Sun and was not the center of a Universe only six thousand years old.

The coupe de grace was ultimately delivered by Charles Darwin with the publication of his books The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man. After a furor that lasted a century, the scholars of the world were finally forced to agree; literal interpretation of the Biblical creation myth was dead and with it died the notion that other Biblical stories were factually true.

This left Western Civilization without a mythos.

Nature hates a vaccum; thus the void was filled almost immediately. More than a century ago an intrepid young Frenchman left his home and journeyed as a cabin boy on ships to remote lands in quest of adventure. He must have found it, for he brought back epic tales of imagination and science which speculated upon the future of science, the place of humankind in the Universe, as well as the big questions of war, ethics, and the morality of emerging 19th century technology. The stories of Jules Verne served the same purpose in his culture as mythologies had in former cultures.

H.G. Wells picked up the ball and ran far with it. He pushed the limits of science even deeper into the realms of speculation and ethics. For example, recall the names of the main characters in The War Of the Worlds; there are none. The narrator is only 'me, myself, and I', his wife is 'my wife', his brother is 'my brother'. He encounters 'the soldier', and 'the curate'. None of the characters are ever identified by name. Could Wells have been writing the myth of 'Everyman'? Could he have wanted his readers to search for symbolism? Did he have a Universal Truth to tell? And, if so, does this make his story a myth?

If it looks, sounds, and acts like a myth and serves the social, cultural, and psychological function of a myth, can it be a myth?

Mythic themes figure prominently in contemporary science fiction. Both Dune by Frank Herbert and Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein are science fiction parables about messiahs. (It is interesting to note that the 'saviors' in both of these novels found it morally permissable to kill people.)

The messiah in Dune is named Paul Atriedes. Christianity was not founded by Jesus, but by Saul of Tarsus, who changed his name to 'Paul'. Christianity is a desert religion, as are Judaism and Islam, all fanatically messianistic, so Dune, a desert world, was the right planet for a jihad, a messianic holy war.

Stranger in a Strange Land is the futuristic parable about a man named after two saints, Valentine and Michael, with the last name of 'Smith', a very common name, a recurring Heinlien character name, and a word that means 'one who forges tools or jewelry out of metal" (as blacksmith, silversmith, goldsmith). Heinlein has made it clear that he chooses the name of his characters symbolically, one more quality that places his novels in the realmm of myth.

Today there exists a legion of devotees to the television science fiction series Star Trek, which first aired over 25 years ago and was created by Gene Roddenberry. The Olympian quality of the characters, the circular mandala of the bridge of the starship Enterprise, with its Zodiac of characters (Kirk is an Aries, Mr. Spock an obvious Virgo) and the procession of mythical adventures addressing issues important to a scientific society, all combined to make the show endure from one decade to the next, persisting due to it s pure mythological staying power.

When George Lucas read Joseph Campbell's The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and was inspired to film the Star Wars trilogy, he knew he was playing for keeps¹. Lucas needed a sure fire success to sevure his career as a film maker. Campbell showed him what ingredients go into the creation of myths. In filming the movie hit of the century, Lucas also related an enduring myth for our culture and further elevated science fiction to the realm of the mythic.

The mythic power of science fiction has shaped other art forms. When the rock group The Jefferson Airplane changed their name to the Jefferson Starship, they released an album entitled Blows Against The Empire, about countercultural 'freaks' (i.e., 'mutants') who leave an ecologically devastated Earth on a starship. They create a perfect world on another planet in deep space. For this, guitarist and songsmith Paul Kantner recieved a Hugo award, traditionally given only to science fiction writers.

Was rock group Yes referring to an ice age in their song 'Starship Troopers', wherin they describe 'long winters, longer than time can remember'? Considering the third movement of that science fiction rock composition is entitled 'Wurm', it would seem lyricist Jon Anderson was setting forth a science fiction creation myth of the last glacial epoch of the Pleistocene, just before our modern era.

Movies and rock'n'roll music were made for science fiction.

In ages past, entire civilizations collapsed when their mythical cosmologies could not be assimilated by rising civilzations they contacted. This phenonmenon is called 'culture shock'. Today a global culture exists that is rapidly assimilatiing all existing socieities. This phenomenon is called 'future shock'. It affects everyone on this planet, from the affluent elite to the indigenous peasants, although in vastly different ways.

Science fiction helps us anticipate the future. It addresses the questions posed by simply living in a technicological age. It re-examinens basic philosophical questions from the scientific view. Most importantly, it fulfills our cultural need for mythical archetypes that satisfy metaphysical problems. Science fiction will continue to be the literature of the future because it is the literature of constant change. No other culture has produced a literature of the future.

'Once upon a time there was a Martian...'

'Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away....'

Enter-The Dream Time.

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1. It is also very interesting to note that the vast body of the plot of Episode 4 was culled/inspired by a film by Akira Kurasawa entitled The Hidden Fortress. Kurasawa's cinematic style has had far-reaching influence in the areas of Japanese media storytelling. --Kinjou

Daniel Blair Stewart joined Feraferia in the early 1970s, thus beginning a career as a Pagan and shaman-of-the-arts. Since then he has written articles and contributed artwork to Green Egg, among other publications. He was resident artist aboard the the ERA Mermaid Expedition to New Guinea in 1985 and is the auther of the science fiction epic Akhunaton: the Extraterrestrial King.