The power of speculative fiction, part 1
Starting with Adrian Tchaikovsky's "Bear Head"
I’ve been an avid reader for as long as I can remember. As a child, I spent my first 11 years as a ward of the State of Indiana and I attended no grade school for longer than a few months at a time. I probably learned more from the books I chose to read than I did from the classes I attended, at least beyond the very basics. Certainly, those books kept me sane.
Starting fairly early, I heavily favored speculative fiction, mainly science fiction with some fantasy sprinkled in. What started out as an obvious form of escapism quickly transformed into something more, though. I’ve read many of the standard literary classics, and obviously they’re classics for a reason. But I’ve found speculative fiction can offer up some important perspectives as well.
In fact, in some cases, speculative fiction presents perspectives that you won’t find anywhere else. For example, are you interested in the hard problem of consciousness? You’ll struggle to find explorations of that problem in literary fiction, likely because the question itself remains wholly speculative as a scientific pursuit. Nobody has the slightest clue what consciousness actually is, or why it works the way it does.
In order to delve into that question, you really need to create an alternative universe where you can compare and contrast — and that’s exactly what Peter Watts has done in his “Firefall” series. I’m not going to try to describe how Watts deconstructs the question of consciousness, both because I don’t want to spend the time necessary to do it justice and because doing so would spoil the story. Suffice it to say that you’ll find more scientific references following the first two novels in the series, Blindsight and Echopraxia, than you’l find in many scientific articles. In a sense, that makes the series very much hard science fiction.
Of course, Robert Louis Stevenson also explored the topic in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. While that novel is a literary classic, it also falls into the genre of science fiction by asking the question of “what if you could drink a potion and it would alter your personality such that you would become a different person entirely?” The topic of multiple personalities has been explored in literary fiction, but the shortcut of the potion takes Stevenson’s novel outside of reality.
In general, speculative fiction explores many of the most fascinating and important questions as literary fiction, including many fundamental questions about human nature. Read enough, and you’ll discover that the best speculative authors not only ask their questions, but they dive into answering them with characters and stories that are intensely human no matter how unreal their settings. They make you care deeply about the answers, because you care deeply about the characters.
Consider the virtue of loyalty and its importance to how people work together to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks, as illustrated by Tolkien’s Samwise Gamgee character in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Frodo would have failed if Sam hadn’t stuck with him against seemingly impossible and thoroughly terrifying odds, and if you’re like me, you felt more affinity with Sam than you did any other character in the books. Sam was the true hero of the story, even as he might have seemed the least consequential.
Of course, some works of speculative fiction have achieved that rarified status of “classic,” and they show up on high school and college reading lists. I just mentioned Stevenson’s work, and then think also of novels like 1984, Brave New World, and Frankenstein. But I’m not really referring to those right now. More so, I’m talking about works that genre readers will recognize but most others won’t. Some straddle the fence, like Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which isn’t quite a classic (but should be) and, in fact, has been banned in some place in the United States — which is a tragedy.
Instead, I’m talking more about speculative fiction that won’t be assigned to a literary reading list, at least not anytime soon. And for now, I’m excluding the masters such as Tolkien, Asimov, Heinlein, Ellison, Dick, Gibson, et. al. (and I’m showing off my predilection for science fiction over fantasy here), which go back several decades or more. Instead, I’m focusing on some of the more recent examples I’ve read.
“Bear Head,” Adrian Tchaikovsky
I’m starting what I hope will be a series of posts with a science fiction novel I recently completed, Bear Head by Adrian Tchaikovsky. It’s a sequel to Dogs of War in the “Dogs Of War” series, which posits a reasonably near future where “Bioforms” have been created that build on particular species (the titular dog, for example) with physical and electronic augmentations that enhance and accentuate each species’ fundamental attributes.
The series is a fascinating “what if” premise on its own, and it explores a variety of heady themes, such as free will and personal agency. I’m going to avoid spoilers here, but I’ll just say that Tchaikovsky has a knack for imagining how different species might think and experience consciousness and therefore how they might act and what their societies might look like. He did just that with his “Children of Time” series, which is a favorite of mine. I can’t recommend it strongly enough for any sci-fi fan, and not only as a study in non-human consciousness but rather as a way of exploring human consciousness, by contrast — including how such things as communication, empathy, and ethics might be impacted by how a consciousness develops.
As I was reading Bear Head, though, I was around 28 pages in when I realized that Tchaikovsky was making a very specific point. I read the following paragraph, and it was instantly obvious that he was being highly topical (note that the book was published in January, 2021).
“He can’t.” But ‘Can’t’ was a word a lot of people used about Thompson, currently frontrunner for the Alabama-Virginia World Senate seat. Can’t, and yet he always did, and then apparently it turned out he could all along. You couldn’t argue with him, because he never put himself where someone could score a point; never quite built a complete windmill you could tilt at. He suggested, he denied, he made outrageous statements that contained so many layers of nested fabrications that you couldn’t ever unpick them all; you ended up tacitly accepting three-quarters of the lies he told in your quest to undo the other 25 per cent. And then the dust settled and everyone loved what he had to say, even though he hadn’t quite said it.
Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Bear Head (Dogs of War Book 2) (pp. 28-29). (Function). Kindle Edition.
I can’t think of a more concise and cogent expression of Donald Trump’s method of communication than this short passage. It encapsulates Trump’s “weave” and his firehose of falsehoods, and it points out that what comes across as pure gibberish is entirely deliberate (if not fully conscious). The last sentence, “And then the dust settled and everyone loved what he had to say, even though he hadn’t quite said it” eerily applies to Trump’s MAGA cult. Everyone else is, at best, perplexed.
Then there’s this, which both identifies Trump’s character and describes the adulation he receives from MAGA:
People thought he was genuine, he said it straight, told them the truth. Despite the fact that he never quite told them anything at all. In the moment when he smiled and shook your hand, though; in the moment when he looked straight at the camera and beamed at the audience, you existed for him, and because his world was tiny, just a single point that was his own being, that meant you’d been admitted into the Divine Presence.
Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Bear Head (Dogs of War Book 2) (p. 31). (Function). Kindle Edition.
To my knowledge, Tchaikovsky hasn’t come right out and verified that he based the Warner S. Thompson character on Trump, but he hasn’t denied it, either. And it’s likely that the character doesn’t only depict Trump, but rather it refers to all such authoritarian, populist, and narcissistic personalities.
I also like the following paragraph, and I could post so much more but I don’t want to abuse Tchaikovsky’s copyright.
Mostly it came down to filtering the information down to clear, simple statements Thompson could digest. Not stupid, that was a mistake a lot of his past opponents had made. Not intelligent, either, exactly. Not as the word was generally used. But very clever indeed in the way he needed to be, to shunt through human affairs like he did. A mind that worked in tangents and laterals, between the cracks of regular thought. But no patience for complexities, not when they didn’t serve him. He needed someone like Carole to tell him what things meant, rather than what they were.
Tchaikovsky, Adrian. Bear Head (Dogs of War Book 2) (p. 32). (Function). Kindle Edition.
I like that description of the character as clever rather than intelligent, and specifically not stupid. I think that’s an important observation.
As it turns out, it’s also a little prescient when you consider that, by some accounts, Trump’s National Intelligence Advisor Tulsi Gabbard is considering presenting intelligence briefings using Fox News-like videos because “Trump… doesn’t read.” Gabbard denies the story, but given how many easily verifiable facts this administration consistently denies, her faux outrage falls a little flat to me. And the story is supported by similar assertions made following Trump’s first term.
It wouldn’t be fair to characterize Bear Head as specifically anti-Trump. It has a wider and deeper meaning that it expands upon from Dogs of War. And as speculative fiction, it goes beyond what Trump is doing today to explore what such a character might do if given the chance — if fully unfettered by laws and customs, as it often seems like Trump would like to be.
But even so, consider the novel’s theme of the demonization of the “other,” which is essential to Thompson’s character in how he uses Bioforms as the chosen group upon which to heap the blame for society’s ills. It’s impossible to set aside how closely that fits Trump’s “alien invasion” narrative, only replacing Bioforms with brown and black immigrants. And of course, one could apply much of the same to other contemporary political figures like Putin, Orban, and others.
As I said earlier, I don’t want to give away any spoilers. The novel is well worth reading for the story alone. I’m quite looking forward to the next installment, Bee Speaker, that arrives on June 3. The book should be on the short list for all science fiction readers, because it’s a ripping good tale even setting aside the political angle. But anyone who simply wants a rather frightening breakdown of Donald Trump should also consider giving it a read. Just make sure to read Dogs of War first.
As an aside for my Objectivist readers, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged fully qualifies as speculative fiction, in my opinion — although perhaps a little ironically, Rand wasn’t a fan of the genre even while she didn’t necessarily dismiss it as literature (as far as I know). But Rand’s world is completely made up, and she asks the speculative question, “what if the men of the mind went on strike?” She even included several science fiction elements, such as Galt’s motor, Rearden Metal, and Project X, that serve various literary purposes.
I’d say that what separates Atlas Shrugged from most other speculative fiction is that it served primarily as a vehicle for communicating Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. She wasn’t terribly interested in exploring how “real” people would react in her fantastical situations. One could say that she didn’t want to describe what might be, as Orwell did with 1984, but rather what should be. Although the setting was a dystopia, the novel’s entire point was that the world needn’t turn out as one, and Rand wanted to illustrate how that might be avoided.
Critics like to point out that her characters weren’t “real,” that they weren’t three-dimensional and fully fleshed out. They were, rather, walking and talking philosophical ideals, which some have called mere caricatures. To an extent, I think that’s a fair critique, at least if you evaluate Atlas Shrugged by the typical literary standards. If you keep fully in mind that Rand’s goal was to bring Objectivism to life, though, then I’d say she succeeded in her goal — whether you or not you agree with her philosophy.