When many people think of science fiction,
they think of things like space travel and artificial intelligence, out-there
technologies like nanotech and flying cars. You know – science stuff. And while they would be right in that sci-fi does
contain all these science-y things – yes, I just said science-y – there is much more to the science
part of sci-fi than many might at first believe. One of the most fascinating parts of sci-fi for me, is when
it deals with culture, societies, and people.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the science-y stuff as
much as the next giant nerd, but I also appreciate the philosophy and futurism that many writers
weave into their stories alongside the epic space battles or alien invasions or whatever. These come under a lesser-known science
collectively called the social sciences, which are anthropology, sociology,
psychology, political science, and economics. For this video, I’m going to look specifically at sociology. Sociology is the study of social re
lationships and
institutions, and its subject matter is diverse, ranging from crime to religion, from the family to
the state, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared beliefs of a common culture,
and can look at social stability to radical change in whole societies. Unifying these diverse subjects of study
is sociology’s purpose of setting out to understand how human action and consciousness both
shape and are shaped by surrounding cultural and social structures. At the pe
rsonal level, sociology investigates the
social causes and consequences of such things as romantic love, the family, deviant behaviour,
and religious faith. At the societal level, sociology examines and explains matters
like crime and law, poverty and wealth, prejudice and discrimination. At the global level, sociology studies such
phenomena as population growth and migration, war and peace, and economic development. Sociology offers a way of seeing and
understanding the social world in whi
ch we live and through its principles offers the sci-fi
writer the tools to create strange new worlds with new civilisations and make predictions –
good or bad – of possible futures for humanity. There’s even a genre of science fiction devoted to writing that focusses of these
social elements of a culture within a story, and that’s called social science fiction. Social science fiction is a subgenre of
science fiction or speculative fiction that features social commentary as opposed to,
say,
hypothetical technology in the foreground. These might be classed as soft science fiction because they’re concerned less
with the technological developments in themselves and more with speculation and futurism regarding
society, either human or alien, and how these technologies might impact society. Speculating about human behaviour and interactions
relates in part to anthropology, the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human
behaviour, human biology, cultures, societies, and ling
uistics, in both the present and past. But often, sci-fi will look to the future. Novelist and sociologist Brian Stableford, who
wrote The Sociology of Science Fiction in 1987, says sci-fi can act as…. a) a restorative, serving
as a form of escapism, which Stableford says is unlikely to have a lasting impact on
readers….. b) as a maintenance function, supporting and legitimising the readers’
existing attitudes…. and c) as a directive. Directive refers to directive communications, in that it
conveys information with the goal of
affecting attitudes, or, as Stableford puts it, they “command, exhort, instruct, persuade,
and urge in the direction of learning and new understanding.” Directive communication challenges the
audience, questioning their worldviews. He says: “Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about
how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own in order to investigate,
by way of pleasurable thought-experim
ents, how things might be done differently.” Exploration of fictional societies is clearly an
important aspect of science fiction. It allows the genre to delve into philosophy and futurism
in ways no other genre can and ask the only real question that is important in sci-fi – one
that I bang on about a lot – and that’s… what if? Not only that, but it also allows the author to include commentary and allegory, too, on the state
of society as they see it. They can highlight what they see as inj
ustices or things they see as being
wrong with the world today….. or they can make predictions based on what they see as humanity’s
current trajectory, heralding a warning for what may come if things don’t change fast. We’ve seen this a lot over the past decade
with the emergence of climate sci-fi, also known as cli-fi. We also see this in the social
science fiction better known as dystopian fiction. As Brian Stableford puts it: “Writers can express ideas and emotions that are important to t
hem but
have no other means of expression. Some of these ideas may be fantastic, and some of the emotions
may be given clearer voice in fantastic fiction.” In this way, the social element of sci-fi can be predictive, precautionary,
it can criticise and also offer solutions. The Time Machine by HG Wells, published in 1895,
is one such work that offers a predictive view of the future. Wells tells the story of a man who builds a
machine that can take him so far into the future that humanity ha
s split into two races, the
eloi, who live above ground and have become weak and lazy, or the morlocks, who live below
ground and have become savage and monstrous. We can also see this is books like Arthur C Clarke’s The City
and the Stars, published in 1956, which depicts a humanity over 2 billion years in the future, and
in more modern works such as Diaspora by Greg Egan, published in 2000, which predicts a
humanity following centuries of scientific, cultural and physical development. In
Diaspora, humanity has divided into
three groups: fleshers — true Homo sapiens; Gleisner robots — embodying human minds within
machines that interact with the physical world; and polises — supercomputers
teeming with intelligent software, containing the direct copies of billions of human
personalities now existing only in the virtual reality of the polis. Then we have the cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer,
written by William Gibson in 1984, which predicts how and increase in dependence on tech
nology and
a rise in corporate power might civilisation. Many credit Gibson with predicting the internet
and how technology flows from the most affluent down to the lowest levels of society’s strata. Gibson himself has made it known that he
believes all cultural change is fundamentally technologically driven. So, you can see how sci-fi can be used to
make predictive leaps into society’s future. It can also be precautionary, and this is something
we tend to see a lot of in dystopian fiction.
Brave New World by Aldous
Huxley, published in 1932, is set largely in the futuristic World State,
where citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy.
Within, Huxley comments on the societal impacts that might occur with huge scientific advancements
in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and conditioning. Then in George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949,
we’re warned against the perils of totalitarian states to individua
lism, commenting on the
regimes of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. The novel examines the role of truth and facts
within politics and the ways in which they can be manipulated. More recently, we have books such as The
Handmaid’s Tale and The Hunger Games, which take a similar stance in setting out precautions
against extreme political and religious regimes. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve seen an increase in cli-fi over the past few decades,
as science fiction authors attempt to weave warn
ings of climate change into their stories –
some being very on the nose, while others succeed more subtly. Perihelion Summer by Greg Egan, published in
2019, depicts events following a black hole one tenth the mass of the sun entering the solar
system. As a result, people struggle to adapt to a suddenly alien environment on Earth. The messages in the book are overt and while
more generally I enjoy Greg Egan’s writings, this book left much to be desired compared to his
other work as it sacri
fices story for the ultimate and obvious climate change message. Then we have Kim Stanley Robinson’s
Ministry for the Future, published in 2020. Set in the near future, the story follows a
subsidiary body established under the Paris Agreement, whose mission is to advocate for the
world's future generations of citizens as if their rights are as valid as the present generation's. The plot follows the character Murphy
as she seeks to convince central banks of the threats to currency and market
stability posed by the effects of climate change. At the same time, in Antarctica,
countries cooperate in a geoengineering project to drill to the bottom of glaciers and
pump meltwater up to slow basal sliding. The books blurb pitches it as: “one of the most powerful and original
books on climate change ever written.” As well as acting as cautionary tales, sociology in sci-fi can also be used to criticise
and comment on the world in which the author lives and we can see this in Ursula le Gu
in’s
the Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, which was published in 1974. The Dispossessed takes place on the planet Urras
and its moon Anarres. The ruling powers on Urras gave a faction of rebellious revolutionaries the
right to live on Anarres’ moon two hundred years before the events in the book, where they formed
an anarchist society with no central government – juxtaposed with the main nation on Urras,
which operates under a capitalist society on steroids. While many interpret Le Guin’s
story in
different ways, it seems almost certain, to me at least, that her intention was to hold
a mirror up to society by setting out extremes. At the time of publishing, the cold war between
America and the USSR was well under way and the world as a whole was debating the merits and
problems of both communism and capitalism. In Gulliver's Travels by Johnathan Swift, published in 1726,
Swift used the story to take a satirical stance of the state of European government at the time,
and of
petty differences between religions. He also asked the question: are people
inherently corrupt or do they become corrupted. Then we have Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1961, which tells
the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being
born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The story explores his interaction with, and
eventual transformation of the, Terran culture. Originally titled The Heretic, the book was
written in part as a deliberate attempt
to challenge social customs. In the course of the story, Heinlein uses Smith's open-mindedness to
re-evaluate such institutions as religion, money, monogamy, and the fear of death. You kind of have to read it to grok it. As well as criticising, social sci-fi can also
often present what the author sees as solutions to society’s problems. We can see this in Walden Two by BF Skinner,
first published in 1948. The novel describes "an experimental community
called Walden Two"
located in a rural area which "has nearly a thousand members". The community encourages its members "to view
every habit and custom with an eye to possible improvement" and to have "a constantly
experimental attitude toward everything", so the society of the community can be changed if
experimental evidence favours proposed changes. The community engages in behavioural engineering of young children that aims toward
cooperative relationships and the removal of competitive
sentiments. The community has also
dissolved the traditional family unit through placing the responsibility of child-rearing in
the hands of the larger community and not just the child's parents or immediate family. Similarly, we can look at the work of author
Ayn Rand, specifically her novel Atlas Shrugged, published in 1957. Atlas Shrugged includes elements of
science fiction, mystery, and romance, and it contains Rand's most extensive statement
of Objectivism in any of her works of ficti
on. Objectivism is a philosophical system developed by Rand herself, which is described as "the
concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with
productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute". The book depicts a dystopian United
States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws
and regulations imposed by government. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is “the role of man
’s mind in existence”. The book
explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism.
In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, and capitalism, and depicts
what Rand saw to be the failures of government coercion. The ways in which sociology in science fiction
can be used for commentary and allegory are almost inexhaustive, but I want to throw in a
few non-book examples that really hold a mirror to society. Some might call it
a… Black Mirror. Black Mirror is a British science fiction
anthology series created by Charlie Brooker. The programme was reportedly inspired by The
Twilight Zone and largely explores technology and its effects on humans and society at large. It began on the British television network Channel
4 before moving to the American streaming platform Netflix and has run for five seasons. The episode “Nosedive” is particularly
relevant today because it depicts an increasingly stratified society segm
ented
by credit scores and app rankings. How many of us have described the events over the past two years – or even the
past two weeks – and declared it’s like living in an episode of Black Mirror? I know I have. Black Mirror serves as an
anthology of precautionary tales and has managed to do that very rare thing
of ingraining itself into pop culture. Another, lesser-known works is the 2019 Spanish sci-fi horror film, The
Platform. The film is set in a large tower called a "Vertical Self-Ma
nagement Center". Its residents, who are switched every
30 days between its many floors, are fed via a platform which, initially filled
with food at the top floor, gradually descends through the tower's levels, stopping
for a fixed amount of time on each. The system inevitably leads to conflict, as the residents at the top levels get to eat as
much as they can, with each level getting only the leftovers from the previous ones. If you haven’t seen this one, I urge
you to seek it out. It’s un
forgettable. The sociological elements of science fiction are so important that, in my view, you simply
can’t create good world-building without them. And a work of sci-fi without good world-building
is like eating frozen yoghurt over of full fat ice-cream. It might look the same. You might
even enjoy it at the time. But ultimately, it will be forgettable. As a writer of sci-fi myself, which isn’t really
something I talk too much about on this channel, I know that, to create any type of half
-believable
world, people, culture or race, takes immense thought and effort. You have to consider about things like the social
structure, the family, economics and the reasons for having a particular system, government,
crime and punishment, disease and technology, ideology and religion, language and semantics,
education and equality, environmental factors and their impacts on a people, military and
industrial advances and… so… much… more. If we look at the classic dystopia 1984, the famil
y has been eradicated. In the
Dispossessed, there’s a divide in belief about economic principles. In Dune, the environmental
factors of one planet have economical and societal implications that reach across the galaxy. In Iain
M Banks’ the Culture series, we see examples of different governments: from direct democracies to
authoritarian states. In Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon, we see the direct impact of technology and
industrial advances on a people that have for all intents and purpose
s eradicated death. And in my most recent book, Delphine Descends, I
look at the implications of a society that that has stratified its citizens in order to use
the lowest rank as a form of slave labour to prop up its economy. What they all have in common, is that they use the
teachings in sociology to underpin their stories, to build worlds, to fully-realise characters, to
emphasise points, to make statements and to ask that all important question… What if… Thank you so much for watching, g
uys. Please
like and subscribe in all the usual ways and also leave a comment too. I always love to
read your thoughts on these discussions. Until next time guys, happy reading.
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