Literature that is out of this world
From ‘2001 ‘ to ‘The Martian,’ sci-fi novels help us navigate the concept of space exploration
Don’t panic.
That droll twoword motto helped launch Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” which follows a regular bloke named Arthur and his motley companions to the end of the universe, into an intergalactic franchise: four more books, a television miniseries, a computer game, a 2005 film co-starring Martin Freeman and Yasiin Bey (the former Mos Def), and at least one modern-rock touchstone.
An audiobook version of Adams’ novel, based on his own four-part BBC radio drama, became a key element in the creation of Radiohead’s celebrated “OK Computer” album. The recently minted Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame group’s 1997 LP borrows its title from another key “Hitchhiker” phrase; one of its best-known songs, “Paranoid Android,” salutes the sullen mechanical character named Marvin.
“It’s this absolute classic of sci-fi literature,” says Linda Evans, administrator of Rice University’s English department. “A lot of the members of my book club didn’t actually enjoy the humor of that book; it just kind of rubbed them the wrong way, but I suppose I’ve always loved it.”
“Hitchhiker’s” offered a twist on the classic space-exploration novels of the ’50s and ’60s — such classics as Ray Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles,” Robert Heinlein’s “Have Space Suit—Will Travel,” and Arthur C. Clarke’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” — that fed the dreams of a NASA generation longing to travel into space and went hand in hand with science in getting Americans used to the idea of leaving Earth.
‘Terrifying’ tales
Raised on the novels of Isaac Asimov and movies such as “Alien” and “The Terminator,” Evans says her job puts her in charge of everything from Rice English’s website to its coffee machine. For the past four or five years, she’s also run a sci-fi club whose meetings alternate discussing a novel one month and a movie the next.
Evans’ most recent selection was Adrian Tchaikovsky’s “Children of Time,” which won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
“Humanity’s last survivors (are) traveling into space to find a home for themselves, paired against the rise of a new race and civilization on a planet that humanity would like to settle on,” she said. “The two civilizations are ultimately going to collide.”
“Children of Time,” Evans said, touches on a dominant theme in contemporary sci-fi. Humans forced to explore the galaxy following an environmental collapse is not exactly new, but it grows more relevant as climate change and other ecological anxieties dominate the news.
“Terrifyingly, I’d say it’s almost sort of a given that that’s of course why it’s happening, when you look at humanity moving into space,” she said. “On the one hand, there’s this urge to explore, but on the other hand, there’s this idea that we’ve absolutely destroyed our planet. Well, we’ve destroyed our ability to live on the planet.”
Even more recently, civilizations collide with zany “Hitchhiker”-style humor in Catherynne Valente’s Nebula-nominated 2018 novel “Space Opera.” Earth’s fate hinges on the fortunes of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes, who must win a galaxywide singing contest or the planet will suffer dire consequences.
‘Speculative fiction’
Many other authors now working in sci-fi, a genre usually grouped alongside fantasy to create the roomier category of “speculative fiction,” have taken to heart the words of the late Ursula K. Le Guin. Speaking at the 2014 National Book Awards, the author of “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the “Earthsea” series, who died in January 2018, said “resistance and change begin in art.”
Though relatively few of her works are set in outer space — “Dawn,” Book 1 of her “Xenogenesis” trilogy, is — the late Octavia Butler often used tensions between humans and various alien races to comment on humanity’s obsession with political, racial and religious differences. Her books proved heavily influential on the contemporary movement known as Afro-futurism, including Deji Bryce Olukotun’s “Nigerians In Space” trilogy.
Elsewhere, both Dan Simmons’ “Hyperion Cantos” series and Lidia Yuknavitch’s 2017 novel “The Book of Joan” transplant medieval Europe to distant worlds. The former reconfigures Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” into a saga of several characters who interact with a malevolent being known as The Shrike.
“Book of Joan,” meanwhile, peers 30 years into the future to update the Joan of Arc legend. A young girl in an orbital colony fashioned from decrepit space stations leads a rebellion against its leaders, who are determined to finish off the last of the dying Earth’s resources.
Andy Weir’s “The Martian,” published in 2011 and adapted into a 2015 film starring Matt Damon, is altogether more optimistic about future colonization. Pierce Brown’s 2014 novel “Red Rising” adds a hefty dose of Roman mythology. Jack McDevitt, winner of the 2015 Robert A. Heinlein Lifetime Achievement Award, puts a newly discovered comet on track to wipe out America’s first lunar base — unless the vice president can pull off an emergency evacuation — in 1998’s “Moonfall.”
Finally, in C.A. Higgins’ three-volume “Lightless” series, which concluded with 2017’s “Radiate,” a female engineer must fight for control of a research vessel with its onboard computer, an entity not unlike HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey” — or even Adams’ Marvin the Paranoid Android.