THE GERNSBACK REFERENDUM: SEND MORE SPACE OPERA
© Cover art for issue 6 of Forbidden Futures by Mike Dubisch
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here’s a persistent bit of Hollywood apocrypha about how Stanley Kubrick included a replica of the Discovery spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey amid the burning rubble in the concluding scene of Full Metal Jacket. I’ve never spotted it myself despite repeated attempts, and I’ve failed to corroborate the legend, which I recall reading in a published edition of the screenplay, but whether it was even a real rumor or just some critic’s conceit, such an objective correlative would only make literal something palpably conveyed in the rest of the film.
SOMEWHERE IN THE MID-CENTURY, WE LOST THE RAYGUN, JET-PACK FUTURE THAT WAS OUR BIRTHRIGHT, EVEN AS SCIENCE FICTION LOST A POWER IT ONCE EXERTED OVER EVERY ASPECT OF AMERICAN LIFE, A CERTAINTY THAT FLYING CARS, ORBITAL CITIES AND INTERPLANETARY ADVENTURES WERE OUR MANIFEST DESTINY.
Way back in 1981, just as he was gearing up to tear down everything that came before, William Gibson called it. In “The Gernsback Continuum,” a story that was itself an anachronism next to his street-lethal cyberpunk yarns, he evoked the utopian visions of the 1930’s as a dymaxion phantom haunting the modern world with tantalizing glimpses of all the future’s failed fantasies. And while those visions were as threatening as they were uplifting, they haunt him as a broken promise.
I grew up in the shadow of that post-utopian hangover. The 70’s were a period of ferment and self-doubt for space opera that tested Sturgeon’s Law to destruction, with the genre retreating into “hard” sf math-stravaganzas, solemn predictions about the future and a lot of warmed-over Flash Gordon nostalgia. Occasional gems like Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Spinrad’s The Iron Dream or Harrison’s Bill The Galactic Hero injected subversive satire into the solipsistic positivism of classic space opera, but offered no way forward. The New Wave advanced by Ellison, Dick, Farmer and others had upended the problematic hogwash of Heinlein, Campbell and Hubbard in the 60’s, but like the larger cultural revolution, it only left us insecure, uncertain if we deserved a future at all.
But that period of pessimistic burnout yielded dirty gold, if you knew where to look: comics like Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Eerie, Alien Worlds and 2000 A.D., RPG’s like Gamma World, Traveller, Star Frontiers and Car Wars, B-movie revelations like Barbarella, Dark Star, THX-1138 and Alien and simpler, sleazier delights like Star Crash, Flesh Gordon, Laserblast, Galaxina and Galaxy Of Terror.
We all watched Star Trek and Twilight Zone reruns, but for me, a newer show just felt more like life in the 1970’s than anything else on TV. Space: 1999 followed Moonbase Alpha as it hurtled on a runaway moon through space envisioned as an endless chamber of horrors. TV back then did SF on the cheap, and mostly for kids.
Yes, in its heyday, pulp sf was just another sandbox in the white male playground of pulp, offering new arenas for cleft-chinned, honky ramrods to demonstrate their superiority over green savages and alluring space-vixens alike. It may have made a hash of the science, but it inspired working people and kids to think about the future as something that could be shaped by our unfulfilled desires. Dreams rendered impossible by even basic scientific literacy were just bigger dreams.
WE FULLY COMPREHEND THAT TASTES CHANGE AND EVOLVE, AND MANY OF THOSE WHO WELCOMED THE GRITTY CYBERPUNK DYSTOPIAS AND MAD MAX KNOCKOFFS ARE THE SAME ONES FRETTING THAT THEY NEVER GOT THEIR FLYING CAR OR A VACATION ON THE MOON TODAY. BUT WE LOST SOMETHING WORTH SAVING, IF NOT IMITATING.
It would be disingenuous to lament the passing of pulp space opera, when tributes to the rocket opera serials of yesteryear so thoroughly rule our imaginations, today. But looking at the two biggest influences on modern science fiction in mainstream pop culture should give us a fix on why so much of what passes for modern space opera continues to be greasy kid stuff.
Star Wars boldly reimagined space adventure to become a ubiquitous cultural staple with its first cinematic trilogy and armadas of tie-in novels, games and TV shows, but its creators retreated from engaging with criticism by saying it was made for kids. While the first wave of Star Wars fandom captivated young and old alike, a sense persists that this is childish destiny porn that fudges the complexities of human nature as blithely as it screws up the physics, even if it’s also inspired thousands of hardcore fans to discover their inner essential selves by cosplaying as tupperware-clad space Nazis.
Star Trek, likewise, offered a utopian vision of space adventure, but its successive incarnations have scrubbed away most of what makes humans recognizably human. Its idealized Starfleet crews are weird mutants that have evolved beyond religion, capitalism and any ideology beyond the prime directive. Who are these alleged people, and how did we become them? The show never says.
Can unapologetically fun science fiction that’s inarguably for adults find a foothold? Of course it can. New TV series every day prove that science fantasy that treats adults like adults can thrive (even if Hollywood can’t seem to make big-budget SF films at the moment, without relying on and wrecking major recognized franchise brands, for too many reasons to list here), and both mainstream and indie publishing are gushing new takes on science fiction that bring back vintage thrills retrofitted with mature themes, diversity awareness and at least a frisson of scientific literacy. If you follow Image and IDW and the revamped Heavy Metal, there’s even some damned fine science fiction comics, again.
But ours are louder.
We hope, with this issue, to reclaim the classic tropes of bygone rocket opera as everyone’s playground, and to subvert the hell out of them while rekindling a visceral hunger, if not hope, for the future. We realize Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell would probably be disgusted, but even if you apply Sturgeon’s Law to this issue, we think you’ll still have gotten your money’s worth.
