Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (68 page)

XII

“So I came back. For a long time I must have been insensible upon the machine. The blinking succession of the days and nights was resumed, the sun got golden again, the sky blue. I breathed with greater freedom. The fluctuating contours of the land ebbed and flowed. The hands spun backward upon the dials. At last I saw again the dim shadows of houses, the evidences of decadent humanity. These, too, changed and passed, and others came. Presently, when the million dial was at zero, I slackened speed. I began to recognize our own petty and familiar architecture, the thousands hand ran back to the starting-point, the night and day flapped slower and slower. Then the old walls of the laboratory came round me. Very gently, now, I slowed the mechanism down.

“I saw one little thing that seemed odd to me. I think I have told you that when I set out, before my velocity became very high, Mrs. Watchett had walked across the room, travelling, as it seemed to me, like a rocket. As I returned, I passed again across that minute when she traversed the laboratory. But now her every motion appeared to be the exact inversion of her previous ones. The door at the lower end opened, and she glided quietly up the laboratory, back foremost, and disappeared behind the door by which she had previously entered. Just before that I seemed to see Hillyer for a moment; but he passed like a flash.

“Then I stopped the machine, and saw about me again the old familiar laboratory, my tools, my appliances just as I had left them. I got off the thing very shakily, and sat down upon my bench. For several minutes I trembled violently. Then I became calmer. Around me was my old workshop again, exactly as it had been. I might have slept there, and the whole thing have been a dream.

“And yet, not exactly! The thing had started from the south-east corner of the laboratory. It had come to rest again in the north-west, against the wall where you saw it. That gives you the exact distance from my little lawn to the pedestal of the White Sphinx, into which the Morlocks had carried my machine.

“For a time my brain went stagnant. Presently I got up and came through the passage here, limping, because my heel was still painful, and feeling sorely begrimed. I saw the Pall Mall Gazette on the table by the door. I found the date was indeed to-day, and looking at the timepiece, saw the hour was almost eight o’clock. I heard your voices and the clatter of plates. I hesitated—I felt so sick and weak. Then I sniffed good wholesome meat, and opened the door on you. You know the rest. I washed, and dined, and now I am telling you the story.

“I know,” he said, after a pause, “that all this will be absolutely incredible to you. To me the one incredible thing is that I am here to-night in this old familiar room looking into your friendly faces and telling you these strange adventures.”

He looked at the Medical Man. “No. I cannot expect you to believe it. Take it as a lie—or a prophecy. Say I dreamed it in the workshop. Consider I have been speculating upon the destinies of our race until I have hatched this fiction. Treat my assertion of its truth as a mere stroke of art to enhance its interest. And taking it as a story, what do you think of it?”

He took up his pipe, and began, in his old accustomed manner, to tap with it nervously upon the bars of the grate. There was a momentary stillness. Then chairs began to creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller’s face, and looked round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar—the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others, as far as I remember, were motionless.

The Editor stood up with a sigh. “What a pity it is you’re not a writer of stories!” he said, putting his hand on the Time Traveller’s shoulder.

“You don’t believe it?”

“Well——”

“I thought not.”

The Time Traveller turned to us. “Where are the matches?” he said. He lit one and spoke over his pipe, puffing. “To tell you the truth…I hardly believe it myself.… And yet…”

His eye fell with a mute inquiry upon the withered white flowers upon the little table. Then he turned over the hand holding his pipe, and I saw he was looking at some half-healed scars on his knuckles.

The Medical Man rose, came to the lamp, and examined the flowers. “The gynaeceum’s odd,” he said. The Psychologist leant forward to see, holding out his hand for a specimen.

“I’m hanged if it isn’t a quarter to one,” said the Journalist. “How shall we get home?”

“Plenty of cabs at the station,” said the Psychologist.

“It’s a curious thing,” said the Medical Man; “but I certainly don’t know the natural order of these flowers. May I have them?”

The Time Traveller hesitated. Then suddenly: “Certainly not.”

“Where did you really get them?” said the Medical Man.

The Time Traveller put his hand to his head. He spoke like one who was trying to keep hold of an idea that eluded him. “They were put into my pocket by Weena, when I travelled into Time.” He stared round the room. “I’m damned if it isn’t all going. This room and you and the atmosphere of every day is too much for my memory. Did I ever make a Time Machine, or a model of a Time Machine? Or is it all only a dream? They say life is a dream, a precious poor dream at times—but I can’t stand another that won’t fit. It’s madness. And where did the dream come from?…I must look at that machine. If there is one!”

He caught up the lamp swiftly, and carried it, flaring red, through the door into the corridor. We followed him. There in the flickering light of the lamp was the machine sure enough, squat, ugly, and askew; a thing of brass, ebony, ivory, and translucent glimmering quartz. Solid to the touch—for I put out my hand and felt the rail of it—and with brown spots and smears upon the ivory, and bits of grass and moss upon the lower parts, and one rail bent awry.

The Time Traveller put the lamp down on the bench, and ran his hand along the damaged rail. “It’s all right now,” he said. “The story I told you was true. I’m sorry to have brought you out here in the cold.” He took up the lamp, and, in an absolute silence, we returned to the smoking-room.

He came into the hall with us and helped the Editor on with his coat. The Medical Man looked into his face and, with a certain hesitation, told him he was suffering from overwork, at which he laughed hugely. I remember him standing in the open doorway, bawling good night.

I shared a cab with the Editor. He thought the tale a “gaudy lie.” For my own part I was unable to come to a conclusion. The story was so fantastic and incredible, the telling so credible and sober. I lay awake most of the night thinking about it. I determined to go next day and see the Time Traveller again. I was told he was in the laboratory, and being on easy terms in the house, I went up to him. The laboratory, however, was empty. I stared for a minute at the Time Machine and put out my hand and touched the lever. At that the squat substantial-looking mass swayed like a bough shaken by the wind. Its instability startled me extremely, and I had a queer reminiscence of the childish days when I used to be forbidden to meddle. I came back through the corridor. The Time Traveller met me in the smoking-room. He was coming from the house. He had a small camera under one arm and a knapsack under the other. He laughed when he saw me, and gave me an elbow to shake. “I’m frightfully busy,” said he, “with that thing in there.”

“But is it not some hoax?” I said. “Do you really travel through time?”

“Really and truly I do.” And he looked frankly into my eyes. He hesitated. His eye wandered about the room. “I only want half an hour,” he said. “I know why you came, and it’s awfully good of you. There’s some magazines here. If you’ll stop to lunch I’ll prove you this time travelling up to the hilt, specimen and all. If you’ll forgive my leaving you now?”

I consented, hardly comprehending then the full import of his words, and he nodded and went on down the corridor. I heard the door of the laboratory slam, seated myself in a chair, and took up a daily paper. What was he going to do before lunch-time? Then suddenly I was reminded by an advertisement that I had promised to meet Richardson, the publisher, at two. I looked at my watch, and saw that I could barely save that engagement. I got up and went down the passage to tell the Time Traveller.

As I took hold of the handle of the door I heard an exclamation, oddly truncated at the end, and a click and a thud. A gust of air whirled round me as I opened the door, and from within came the sound of broken glass falling on the floor. The Time Traveller was not there. I seemed to see a ghostly, indistinct figure sitting in a whirling mass of black and brass for a moment—a figure so transparent that the bench behind with its sheets of drawings was absolutely distinct; but this phantasm vanished as I rubbed my eyes. The Time Machine had gone. Save for a subsiding stir of dust, the further end of the laboratory was empty. A pane of the skylight had, apparently, just been blown in.

I felt an unreasonable amazement. I knew that something strange had happened, and for the moment could not distinguish what the strange thing might be. As I stood staring, the door into the garden opened, and the man-servant appeared.

We looked at each other. Then ideas began to come. “Has Mr. —— gone out that way?” said I.

“No, sir. No one has come out this way. I was expecting to find him here.”

At that I understood. At the risk of disappointing Richardson I stayed on, waiting for the Time Traveller; waiting for the second, perhaps still stranger story, and the specimens and photographs he would bring with him. But I am beginning now to fear that I must wait a lifetime. The Time Traveller vanished three years ago. And, as everybody knows now, he has never returned.

EPILOGUE

One cannot choose but wonder. Will he ever return? It may be that he swept back into the past, and fell among the blood-drinking, hairy savages of the Age of Unpolished Stone; into the abysses of the Cretaceous Sea; or among the grotesque saurians, the huge reptilian brutes of the Jurassic times. He may even now—if I may use the phrase—be wandering on some plesiosaurus-haunted Oolitic coral reef, or beside the lonely saline lakes of the Triassic Age. Or did he go forward, into one of the nearer ages, in which men are still men, but with the riddles of our own time answered and its wearisome problems solved? Into the manhood of the race: for I, for my own part, cannot think that these latter days of weak experiment, fragmentary theory, and mutual discord are indeed man’s culminating time! I say, for my own part. He, I know—for the question had been discussed among us long before the Time Machine was made—thought but cheerlessly of the Advancement of Mankind, and saw in the growing pile of civilization only a foolish heaping that must inevitably fall back upon and destroy its makers in the end. If that is so, it remains for us to live as though it were not so. But to me the future is still black and blank—is a vast ignorance, lit at a few casual places by the memory of his story. And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers—shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle—to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.

Dystopian literature depicts ideals manifesting as concrete nightmares. The two chief roots of utopia are Plato’s
Republic
and More’s
Utopia
. Plato’s
Republic
is the first attempt to describe an ideal state. Yet the state itself is founded on a ‘noble lie’ that undermines family and romantic attachment and fosters loyalty to the state. The violence against parental love and romantic love is the high cost of the ideal.
¹
Thomas More’s
Utopia
describes a purely rational society. There is no opposition between individuals as property is held in common. This obviates class distinctions and channels the acquisitive impulses towards the common good. Crime, religious persecution and war are absent. While clearly advocating the adoption of utopian practices, More does not have any expectation that changes will actually occur.
²
Thus either: 1) the ideal community is founded on a crime against truth, or 2) the ideal community is possible without a crime, but is unlikely to be achieved. If utopian literature features an ideal that may or may not be attainable in practice, dystopian literature is defined by the actualization of the ideal turning out to be a disappointment. Consider, for instance, the three pillars of dystopian literature: Zamyatin’s
We,
Huxley’s
Brave New World
and Orwell’s
1984
.

Zamyatin’s
We
is the original dystopian novel.
³
The setting is the One State which depicts a city constructed entirely of glass; a Green Wall separates the city of the One State from “the irrational, hideous world of trees, birds, animals” (Zamyatin, 93). Individuals have no identities but are known only by numbers. All but .2% of the population perished in a massive war. Food is now derived from petroleum and freedom has been superseded by order. Order stems from the Table of Hours which prescribes the actions to be performed during twenty-two of the day’s hours. Sexuality is rendered impersonal by a voucher system where people can choose any other to partner with on sexual days. On these days only are citizens permitted to draw their blinds, as “We have nothing to conceal from one another” (Zamyatin, 18).4 D-503 fears that eventually a time will come when there will be no more shadows and “The sun will shine through everything” (Zamyatin, 183). With nothing private, everything will be understood in the public sphere.

The novel itself is a collection of papers prepared for the launch of
The Integral,
which is a spaceship intended bring the message of the one state to other worlds. The papers are penned by D-503, one of the ship’s builders. As we read, the builder becomes romantically involved with the woman I-330. D-503’s feelings are possessive and this destabilizes and isolates him from the crowd. D-503 has succumbed to an incurable disease: he has developed a soul. D-503 laments “Never again would I merge into the regular, precise, mechanical rhythm, never again float on the mirror like untroubled sea” (Zamyatin, 83). His passion is not rational, but it enriches his life. Despite this, the complexities of passion lead D-503 to have an operation that makes possible a return to the majority by destroying his imagination.5

The One State commits two egregious errors. First, it regards itself as the conclusion of history. The revolution that produced it is “the final one. And there can be no others.” (Zamyatin, 174). Second, the attempt to render human life purely rational strips it of its worth. By expelling the fantastic and affective from the state, the state has excised the most worthwhile human qualities.

Like
We
,
Brave New World
describes a World State. In
Brave New World
, human nature is malleable and manipulated through genetics and prenatal nutrition. This is supplemented by constant psychological conditioning that upholds the social order. Technology tailors the intellectual and physical capabilities of each individual to their destined social class. Shapely physiques and nimble minds mark an Alpha; a burly physique and low mental capacity signify an Epsilon destined to a life of physical labor. Like the state of
The Republic,
the World State
ensures loyalty through the dissolution of family and romantic love. Test-tube conception has rendered familiar attachment obsolete. Sexual attachment has been diluted by a proliferation of partners. Anything that could compete with the State for the devotion of its members has been eliminated.

One distinctive feature of the World State is drug use in the form of soma, which is described as “Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant. All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects” (Huxley, 64). Soma blunts the reminder of a non-conditioned world outside of humanity’s technological constructs and enables a pleasantly mindless existence. Instead of pondering the past or anticipating a future, soma enables its users to bask in thoughtless contentment. As Lenina puts it, “was and will make me ill, I take a gramme and only am” (Huxley, 122).

John is a savage outsider horrified by the lack of feeling and the stunted minds of the citizens of the World State. They want for nothing; they should want more than the hollow pleasantness of their lives. John argues that human life is only properly such when it experiences depth. Deep pleasures and deep sorrows alike are preferable to a drug-induced neutral pleasantness augmented by consumerist and sexual indulgences. The states of both Huxley and Zamyatin both fail to provide a suitably rich human existence for their citizens.

George Orwell’s
1984
is arguably the apex of dystopian literature and depicts a people of and for the government. Like Huxley’s world state, the regime of Oceania has eroded all objects that could claim the allegiances of individuals. The family still exists in Orwell’s vision, but it is politically undermined as family members (particularly children) are encouraged to inform on each other. Sex is depleasurized as marital unions have to be approved by the state and “permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another” (Orwell, 66). Sex is only permitted to exist because of its usefulness to the state, and in time, even the orgasm will be eradicated.

Words are eradicated as well with the existing vocabulary being reduced so as to limit the capacity for thought and render the private realm of the mind ever less removed from the public life of the superstate. Without words to articulate them, feelings cannot germinate into the fullest depths of the emotional life. There may still be reminders of the world before the one state, but with only words like ‘doubleplusgood’ to describe them, the development of a separate individual consciousness is unlikely to take place. Thoughtcrime will be impossible without the resources of language. As Syme points out “Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness” (Orwell, 54). Without thoughts to animate our speech, language is nothing more than a mechanical blabbering. As Orwell describes Syme’s speech: “It was not the man’s brain that was speaking; it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words, but it was not speech in the true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness, like the quacking of a duck” (Orwell, 55). Even an incongruity between one’s facial expression and the expected demeanor is a punishable offense. The scope for resistance in such a regime is limited. From the onset, Winston and Julia know they are doomed. At one point Winston describes the limitation of state power saying “If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them” (Orwell, 167). A victory to be sure, but it is scarcely less bitter than Victory Coffee.

Whereas
Brave New World
manipulates human nature with science,
1984
uses torture to change human beings. After his ordeals, Winston no longer even dreams of revolt, and genuinely loves Big Brother. The entire manipulation works because of Winston’s own body, its needs and the desire to preserve it against harm. As Winston observes, “the dull ache in his belly made consecutive thought impossible…the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth” (Orwell, 102). The mind inhabits the body and a robust mental life cannot arise in the absence of physical conditions. But the body may also contain within itself the seed of resistance.

Winston hopes that life itself will defeat the power of the state. This hope underlies his delight when Julia admits that she adores the sexual act: Sex represents a “simple undifferentiated desire” that “was the force that would tear the Party to pieces” (Orwell, 127). This rests on the hope that there is some aspect of human nature that cannot be manipulated.
1984
concludes showing Winston, broken in mind and body, readily betraying his love. Winston does not fear death, but torture amplifies his bodily needs to the point where all else is drowned out. In the end, Winston is powerless to resist; love of Julia has been replaced by a love of Big Brother. Both 1984 and We conclude with their chief characters collaborating in their own oppression and descending into the madness of willful subjection. 1984 shows that the internal space of the mind is not immune to political power. Further, the desire to wield power and dominate appears as undifferentiated and unconditioned as the sex drive.

The ruling caste of the super state, the members of the inner party, wields power with no illusions and seeks power for its own sake. The appeal to power strikes at the darkest reaches of human motivation: “the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless” (Orwell, 271). Inviting Winston to picture the future, the inner party member O’Brien invites Winston to “imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever” (Orwell, 271).

Having surveyed classic dystopian fiction, let us now consider some more recent works. Suzanne Collin’s
The Hunger Games
features a society where a small group enjoys luxurious privilege while the majority starves and perishes for the entertainment of the elite. Twelve remaining districts surround the capital city Panem which punishes the districts for their previous rebellion with forced participation in the Hunger Games. Each district must offer forth two tributes, one boy and one girl, who are then “imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland” (18) and left to fight to the death until only one remains. The sole remaining tribute becomes the winner.

Despite the most real violence, the games are contrived. Although apparently in an outdoors setting, the terrain is manipulated. The moon is artificial and the night skies include a standings graphic that displays the results of the latest kills. The course is rife with genetically altered birds, wasps, and dogs. Though the setting is artificial, the genuineness of Katniss’s empathy comes through. When her enemy Cato is eaten alive by the ‘mutations,’ Katniss just wishes his suffering to end. All the while, she is aware that the suffering constitutes first class entertainment for the viewers. The viewers do not connect with the tributes but focus their own feelings while watching the games (354). The disparity between Katniss’ feelings and the viewers’ suggests the interposition of the viewing medium flattens the emotional impact of human suffering. The result is a society that uses its technology for violent domination rather than meeting the most basic of human needs.

Paolo Bacigalupi’s work also shows technology used to worsen the plight of the hungry. The setting is a world that has run out of oil but still has genetic engineering. In “The Calorie Man,” the story’s namesake describes the genetically engineered crop SoyPRO as being a CEO’s dream because it is sterile. SoyPRO is “A genetic dead-end. A one-way street” with the result that “We now pay for a privilege that nature once provided willingly, for just a little labor” (114). The calorie man is transported by Lalji, whose family attempted to grow crops using the new seeds from the calorie company. Despite the family’s prayers and dutiful vigilance to their crops, no amount of patience or care can cause the sterile PurCal seeds to germinate. Lalji recalls unearthing the seeds and finding them “decomposed, tiny corpses in his hand, rotted. As dead in his palm as the day he and his father had planted them” (112). The calorie companies have also eliminated competition from ‘natural’ crops by beefing up plant diseases and blights. Rich or poor alike must purchase ‘one cycle’ seeds from the calorie firms. But Lalji hopes to realize the calorie man’s unlikely dream of sowing fecund seeds amongst outgoing shipments of PureCal and SoyPRO and freeing the world from the grip of the calorie companies.

With the work of Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, the dystopian incorporates elements of film noir and mixes them with the high-tech of science fiction.
⁶
Gritty, urban landscapes predominate and there is no escaping the problems of the city. In
Neuromancer
, the eastern seaboard of the former United States is one massive city known as the Sprawl: a block of neon and concrete wherein all cultures succumb to the value of currency. Every action that takes place in the novel is ordered by a corporation. No one is in charge of their own destiny and no one is able to back out of the job. Survival rather than meaning is the focus of each character. No lasting human connections are formed and no meaningful change occurs in the lives of the human characters.