Blishful Thinking

Because so much science fiction is set in The Future, its easy for people to think it’s job is to try to predict the future.  Lots of people have written on this subject (usually in the vein of “prediction is not the job of science fiction”), so I don’t really have a lot to add to the subject.

Except, to note that, every so often, one gets a lineup between fiction and reality that is so close its uncanny.  In this case, it’s the novel They Shall Have Stars, written by James Blish back in 1956.

They Shall Have Stars was the first book of Blish’s “Cities in Flight” series, a future history where a device known as the “spindizzy” allows for people to leave the Earth and travel the universe by turning whole cities into ad-hoc starships.  At the time the spindizzy was invented, the Cold War had gone on long enough that the United States had turned itself into a reasonable facsimile of the Soviet Union, with secret police, massive censorship, restriction of knowledge, and stagnation of scientific progress.  With both sides in the Cold War now so much alike, a Soviet victory was inevitable (and indeed, in the ensuing future history, the resulting US-Soviet merger into a world-state is listed as the Cold Peace).  The Alaskan Senator Bliss Wagoner decides that if the West is doomed, at least its ideals must live on – and so he backs pursuit of various fringe science theories.  In the end, he’s arrested by the FBI and executed, but by then its too late: the spindizzy proved successful, allowing for dissidents and malcontents to flee the Soviet world state for life among the stars.

The year this takes place?  2018.

Now, obviously, we’re nowhere near the development of easy interstellar travel.  Spindizzies and warp drives remain far from practical application, though they no longer seem impossible.   But so much of the political backdrop for the novel seems as if its lifted from today’s headlines.  Restriction of Western freedoms?  Check.  Soviet (well, Russian) meddling in Western affairs, especially elections?  Check.  American Secret Police?  Check – though its not the FBI, but rather Homeland Security and ICE.

Of course, the battle for the American soul is still being waged (though the Midterm elections might give us a good idea on how it will turn out) so we might still avoid the Cold Peace for something much happier.  But Blish’s big concept here was recognizing that society needs escape hatches – ways for people to flee if all else seems lost.  In the book, the spindizzy provides the means, and other planets the refuge.  Modern spaceflight is not quite up to the task, but we’re closer to building colonies on other planets now than we’ve been before.  If there are to be refuges from totalitarianism, Mars or the Moon just might be viable options.

Some forty years after They Shall Have Stars was published, Carl Sagan had similar thoughts, though his concern was more about threats to human survival.  In his book Pale Blue Dot, he writes: “The more of us beyond the Earth, the greater the diversity of worlds we inhabit, the more varied the planetary engineering, the greater the range of societal standards and values – then the safer the human species will be.”  I would add, the freer we will be, too.

For now, though, our options to preserve our rights and freedoms remain fairly open.  But let’s also keep an eye out for our “Bliss Wagoner”… just in case.