Science Fiction as Chivalric Literature?

The chivalric tale of the Middle Ages and after glorified and flattered the feudal warrior-aristocracy. Likewise science fiction has glorified and flattered the scientist, and in much the same way—by presenting an utterly false picture of what they do. Far from the knight-errant doing great deeds in the pursuit of fortune and glory ever having existed, David Graeber suggests in his brilliant anthropological-historical-political economic study Debt that the image may be an adaptation of the merchant's pursuit of his trade for an aristocratic culture. There is, too, the disinterest of such fiction in how wars are actually fought and won (or lost). Such mundane matters as numbers and logistics are given short shrift, while personal heroics are all.

Similarly, instead of endeavoring to depict the reality of science as a cumulative, collective enterprise, increasingly institutionalized, it presents science as a ruggedly individualistic endeavor. The image goes hand in hand with the gross exaggeration of its figures' abilities, presenting heroes and villains alike who, for instance, are unable to go a day without idly throwing together some mind-boggling machine that will change the world, often in the course of action-adventure befitting the knight-errant. (Thus in Skylark Three Richard Seaton, while journeying in a starship of his own construction, builds a machine capable of near-instantly imparting perfect command of a foreign language to its user just to have something to do—and of course, conveniently get the heroes through the obstacles that crop up soon enough.)

Along with the power of the scientist in the lab, science fiction exaggerates the power of the scientist in society, perhaps even more than the old chivalric tale did the power and influence of its aristocrats. The knight, as an aristocrat, was a member of the ruling elite of his day, with even an impoverished nobleman legally set apart from and above the commoners, and as a matter of law enjoying all manner of privileges they do not, with such examples as tax exemption, priority in assignment to government posts and disproportionate voting rights in the legislature enduring fairly late into modern times.

No such claim can be made for the scientist. They have no special legal status, and indeed, not much privilege of any kind at all as anyone familiar with the abundance of underemployed and underpaid adjunct professors and postdoctoral fellows, or the hell the lucky few who land steady work go through to get some grant money, can attest. Indeed, for all the pious esteem for science and its practitioners it is not the genius in the lab but the possessor of great wealth, the head of the vast bureaucratic machine, who wields power and enjoys supreme status. Moreover, to the extent that education was a qualification for the position such figures attained rather than a badge of the privilege that positioned them to achieve such heights, they were far more likely to be trained in law or management than science, of which they frequently know little or nothing.

Indeed, the fantasy epitomized by the Edisonade was arguably that a talented scientist could through their skills win their way to the possession of such wealth, and the headship of such organizations (never mind the fact that, at that point, they would likely cease to do any real scientific work). Or that, even if they do not become a "tai-kun," their knowledge will make them the man or woman of the hour when it turns out that, contrary to what everyone else may have believed, what they were working on all this time was not useless. (Think of every disaster movie, every alien contact movie, every grandiose B-science fiction movie plot, period. Crisis strikes! And then a Man in Black shows up on the doorstep of some scientist who had previously been toiling quietly in obscurity to say "You'll have to come with us" and whisks them off to the White House to tell the President of the United States what to do. Not exactly how things went with climate change, was it?)

Of course, all that being the case, one might wonder: why should anyone bother to flatter scientists in this way? Certainly one reason is that, to a greater degree than later, people who were scientists, or at least had scientific training, played critical roles in establishing science fiction as a genre, while also regarding scientists as an audience worth courting. The individual who might be credited with a greater role than anyone else in bringing that about, Hugo Gernsback, was an electronics industry entrepreneur promoting amateur radio, who began his career as a publisher with what was initially a glorified catalog for his wares, Modern Electrics--in the pages of which he first presented Ralph 124C 41+ to the world. Things worked the other way as well, Gernsback not just using his stories to promote science, but apparently looking to scientists as an audience for his stories, certainly by the time of Amazing Stories. (In his editorials in that magazine he was emphatic about the potential of a writer's speculations, even quite ill-informed and fantastic ones, to inspire a scientist or technologist to the achievement of genuine breakthroughs, a not-so-subtle call on them to pay attention.) During his tenure at Astounding Science Fiction and Fact John Campbell, generally regarded as Gernsback's successor, was likewise scientifically trained (an MIT physics graduate) who saw science fiction as a quasi-scientific enterprise, with his scientist-writers (biochemist Isaac Asimov, aeronautical engineer Robert Heinlein, inventor Murray Leinster) performing thought-experiments and writing up the reports as stories in the pages of his magazine--and Campbell making much of the fact that scientists did read his magazine.

With scientists publishing and writing stories promoted on such grounds, and looking for a readership among scientists and engineers, it was natural enough that there should be a certain wish-fulfillment there, in line with a sense that if the world was not like that, then it ought to be and, perhaps, also that it would be, manifest in the much fawned-over ultra-Competent Men who filled the pages of their magazines. (The plus at the end of Ralph's name was, in his future, the equivalent of an aristocrat's title, an honor bestowed upon the most accomplished of the scientific workers who were society's most esteemed members.) And of course, if the genre changed, much, these editors and their writers had such a wide and enduring influence on the field that it would be unsurprising if others did not follow in their footsteps in this respect (the more so as, again, so many later science fiction writers were scientists as well).

However, where the long run is concerned a more persuasive explanation seems to me to be that even if the scientist's position in society does not rate it, such flattery has been immensely useful to people who do have real power. The powerful today, at the heads of those corporate and government bureaucracies, do need scientific laborers, and they have long looked to tales like these to attract young people to scientific careers in spite of the long and rigorous education required, the scarce economic support for those going this route, and the lack of glamour and modest remuneration generally awaiting them at the end of that road. And certainly the idea that the economic elite have got where they are through scientific-technological genius has been handy in legitimizing the ever-more inordinate wealth and status they enjoy. The boosters of great wealth prefer that Americans picture Silicon Valley rather than Wall Street—and that they think Silicon Valley's billionaires are that because of super-human technical skills rather than the blend of privileged social backgrounds and "street smarts" that let them seize the main chance provided by long government subsidy of the computer field and the unleashed demons of high finance. Indeed, one could say that in the end the glorification and flattery of the scientist has, even on that level, really been all about them.