"That Fantasy Fiction has had a demonstrably greater impact on world culture than Science Fiction"
Speech for the negative – Conflux 2005
Well, so we’re looking at impact on world culture. That’s a pretty broad canvas and when you think about all the
things competing for our attention in the world today – everything from MacDonalds' ads of the archetypal happy
family type to CNNs live coverage of operation ‘Shock and Awe’ its hard to imagine that something as relatively
small as our combined genres could really have much of an impact at all. But we’ll persist with the idea that it
has.
My colleagues will show that Science Fiction is indeed the victor if we are to compare impacts on our cultural
development, wiping the floor with the elven-eared ravings of our esteemed opposition. My proposal is that while
you may measure magnitude of impact as a qualitative yardstick, surely the greater measure is that of the quality
of the impact – that is, what that impact has in fact achieved.
A very dear friend of mine said that I was bound to lose this debate because as fantasy came first, beginning as it
did with the fables, myths and legends of old, science fiction is in fact a sub-genre of fantasy! I nearly dropped
my beer when she laid that one on me. But conversely, if we take Arthur C Clarke’s axiom that any sufficiently
advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic to a less advanced race, I could happily state that all
fantasy is just incredibly technologically advanced science fiction!
SF has achieved a great deal. It’s prepared us in the best way possible for future contact with alien cultures,
aliens indeed that can’t wait to embrace us warmly, insert their young into our body cavity and then burst from our
chests in the worst possible after dinner faux-pas. It’s also showed us the great benefits to mankind to be derived
from enabling technology driven by artifical intelligence – ‘open the pod bay door, Hal. Hal?’ Probably,however,
its crowning achievement is in social engineering, ensuring that those socially adept, warm, and emotionally well-
balanced human beings known as trekkies, keep themselves to themselves in perennial Star Trek conventions where
they can’t pollute the wider gene pool.
But let me concede here and now, ladies and gentlemen, that Fantasy has indeed had a greater impact on our culture
and society. Yes indeed – an impact that is both pernicious and damaging. Look if you will at the panel for the
affirmative. Look closely, and see – if you will – the wickedness that lurks within. I think we can all agree that
it is at Fantasy’s door that the blame heavily rests for the creation of the Society of Creative Anachronisms, yes
the SCA, surely the most historically confused bunch of pseudo-knights who ever raised a rattan cane in a fit of
pique. But Fantasy is blameworthy of a worse evil in our society than this.
Fantasy my friends has but one real purpose. To obfuscate, confuse and frighten – to bend our collective wills to
fallacious arguments and make us agree to the worst excesses possible perpetrated on innocents. Hitler knew the
value of fantasy, yes indeed. And John Howard knows it too. Politicians, after all, deal in fantasy continuously.
Fantasy has as its foundation the myths and legends of old, the ‘received wisdom’ of the ancients. Surely the most
pernicious tenet of these legends and, as a result of Fantasy, is that there is such a thing as pure evil. Pure
evil. Think about that for a moment. And because there is pure evil, there is also pure good. There is ‘us’ and
there is ‘them’. There is the pure, good, strong and brave knight and the perfidious, lying, skulking dark mage.
The good ‘coalition of the willing’ and the wicked ‘axis of evil’. How simple the world is. How good we are: how
bad they are. How easily the brave knight will smite the dark lord and undo all his works. Yes, it’s fantasy, but
fantasy is dangerous when applied to the real world. It’s laid the groundwork for the worst tabloid journalism, the
gutter press lean on the archetypes Fantasy propounds to prove their argument without the need for proof at all:
the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 leads by fantastic logic to a war against Saddam Hussein based on what
we now know to be LIES. The panel for the affirmative should hang there heads in shame. Shame, shame, shame.
And is it coincidence that Science Fiction has fallen out of favour with the modern reading public? Real life is
very complicated. It’s scary. There’s no black and white, no absolute good and absolute evil, only shades of grey.
How much more comfortable it is to believe in the old folk tales, but as Leonardo Da Vinci and his ilk, helped drag
Europe out of the dark ages into the Age of Reason, the age of scientific discovery and the banishment of
scaremongering half truths, fables and superstitions, so Science Fiction in its purest form also seeks to
interrogate reality and bring out the truth.
1984 showed us what damage a government run media machine can do to the human spirit, and made us forever wary of
that fiction becoming a reality. And as counterpoint, Pohl and Kornbluth’s The Space Merchants is a cautionary tale
of marketing and over-servicing gone wild – sound familiar? Or Fahrenheit 451 where society is television-oriented,
individualism is banned and scholars are regarded as criminals. Brave New World warned us of the dangers of
eugenics, well before World War II. Dr Strangelove, based on Peter George’s novel Red Alert, showed up the idiocy
or mutually assured destruction between the superpowers. And The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy proved once and
for all how important it really is to hang on to your towel.
Science Fiction continues to serves a purpose in the here and now, by opening up the debate in a truly accessibly
way on the cutting edge scientific discoveries which threaten us greatly or promise us much, depending on your
individual viewpoint. As a genre, it is constantly shifting as the pace of human invention and it tackles the big
issues head on – gene therapy and engineering, cloning, artificial intelligence, the nature of humanity in an
increasingly dehumanising world. Look at Arthur C Clarke, George Orwell, Phillip K Dick, Isaac Asimov. They all
strove to imagine the future, to show us the benefits and to warn us of the pitfalls. That’s a quality impact which
has done much to strengthen our present humanity, our culture and our social structure than that.
So I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, when the time comes to cast your vote for truth and enlightenment, not
darkness, deceit and confusion – cast your vote in the negative. Thank you.
Copyright by Keith Stevenson © 2005