Here lies a toppled god;
His fall was not a small one.
We did but build his pedestal-
A narrow and a tall one.
There is an eternal fascination with the Great ‘What-If.’ It has pervaded the human psych since man first stared at the stars and began to wish for a remote to skip through the channels. (“Honestly, do we have to have Mars beneath Orion again? Can’t someone move it over by Taurus?”) It began with stories of gods and heroes, kings and monsters. It is the stuff of legends, myths that move our very souls in the telling.
Today the telling has been diversified. We keep the old myths in new forms, and make new myths in old forms. In the past few decades, much of the twisting turning acrobatics of the imagination of man has been devoted to the murky matters of man’s future- the lovely occupation of Science Fiction.
The great classics- from Starship Troopersto Dune- are frequently being added to. Sifting through the amorphous mass of cheap material destined to compete with generic westerns and pointless romances for space on the collapsing yet infinite shelves of used bookstores there are rare gems whose authors appreciate the purpose of their work. They do not simply fantasize about the glories of genius robots and spaceships --though they love a good idea even more than the next guy-- they expound on the unchanging yet evolving minds of men.
The more men change, the more men stay the same.
I’ve recently become acquainted with Frank Herbert’s masterful Dune Trilogies. His brilliant depictions of scheming foes put humanity to the test, and his search for a truly noble leader to shepherd mankind is an endless topic which I may visit someday with an entire article. Or several, should I be fool enough to think I could give an adequate commentary. The first great impression left on me, however, was left by the unique (in my experience) evolution of combat. Men have always found increasingly effective ways to kill each other, gaining more and more distance to their deadly reach. But Herbert, in considering the effects of escalating weaponry, brought the cycle full circle and back to the beginning –just where Vizzini told us to go. With the creation of the personal Shield, he gave men protection against all but the most deadly weapons- which, if used, would also kill the user. The only things able to penetrate the Shields were simple objects with little kinetic energy; they had to move kinda slowly. SIMPLE machines. Like a wedge.
That’s right. He gives us great warriors descending from the sky in giant ships, rushing into battle on distant planets.. with swords. I tip my invisible hat to the man.
But the return of combat to a personal level gives a fundamental change to human struggle. If you take the distance out of man’s ability to kill, it becomes a personal struggle. Being forced to see your enemy up close humanizes him.
So too does one of today’s finest authors address the dehumanizing of the enemy. Jack Campbell (John G. Hemry) writes a naval science fiction series beginning with Dauntless with a warning view of the effects a prolonged and bloody war can have upon the morale and morals of a military. He throws it into sharp contrast by giving command of a bloodthirsty and headstrong fleet to a Rip-Van-Winkle of a Captain who managed to sleep through a century of war. The greatest challenge he faces is not from the Machiavellian foe, but from the jaded and brutal Captains in his own fleet.
Though, to be fair, it's easy to say 'Damn the torpedos' when you're flying a battleship
Heinlein is no stranger to the topic, addressing it time and time again. When a Mobile Infantry cadet asks why they learn unarmed combat or even HAVE and infantry when they can wipe a planet clean with a touch of a button, his Sergeant responds ‘would you cut off a baby’s head to teach him a lesson?’ When Strength is valued above Prudence, an army is lost morally and militarily.
There is a beauty to the imagination of man at work, creating the pure unbounded ideas inspiring many of our more brilliant inventions. But there is a tendency in the modern reader (or viewer, depending on the story’s medium) to reach for the machines, the gadgets, the devices to be desired while ignoring the entire purpose of the genre- to elaborate on man himself.
