Hi,
This is an essay I wrote for school about two months ago. It analyzes three major authors of science fiction and two of their works (Fahrenheit 451 and Ender's Game). I know it's long but if you like the books then I hope you enjoy it .
-----------
The Progression of Science Fiction
The Twentieth century has seen numerous new genres and subgenera of literature emerge in a highly diversified society. Science fiction, pioneered in the late 1800s and then brought to life through its masters in the mid to late 1900s, was one of these important new genres. Science fiction is a very exciting genre of literature, which is constantly evolving as new writers take science fiction motifs to greater heights and merge science fiction with other genres of literature, such as historical writing. Authors such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Orson Scott Card have shaped and transformed the world of science fiction through their books and imagination.
The genre of science fiction found its coming of age in the voice of Isaac Asimov, widely considered the greatest science fiction writer of all time. Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russia, on January 2, 1920 (the official date is not known), and immigrated the United States with his family when he was three years old. The Asimov family opened a candy shop in New York, but Asimov quickly taught himself to read and write and begin writing science fiction stories and selling them to magazines. Asimov graduated from Columbia University in 1939 and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry there in 1948. Asimov joined the faculty at Boston University in 1948, where he worked full-time or part-time until 1958, at which time his income from writing greatly exceeded his academic salary. Asimov died on April 6, 1992, from AIDS, which he contracted from an infected transfusion during heart bypass surgery in 1983 (www).
Asimov produced an incredible volume of books and other writing during his long career, writing over 350 books. Asimov?s early career was ted by science fiction short stories, with ?Nightfall? (1941) considered the greatest science fiction story ever written by the Science Fiction Writers of America (www). His science fiction works embrace some of the most celebrated works of the genre, including The Foundation Series (Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), The Robot Series (The Caves of Steel, The Sun, The Robots of Dawn, Robots and Empire, and The Positronic Man), and I, Robot (1950). After the publication of The Sun in 1958, Asimov shifted to nonfiction works, publishing countless popular science and historical novels, such as Asimov?s History of the World, Asimov?s Chronology of Science and Discovery, and Asimov?s Guide to Shakespeare. Possibly Asimov?s most famous popular science novel is Asimov?s Guide to the Bible, covering both the Old Testament and the New Testament in 1981. After 1981, Asimov dedicated the remainder of his life mainly to the publication of more science fiction, beginning with Foundation?s Edge in 1982, a novel adding to his Foundation Series. Asimov was an avid Democrat and a staunch supporter of both nuclear power and population control. In the later years of his life, he blamed the deterioration of life in New York City on the flight of the middle-class tax base to the suburbs and wrote on many sociological issues (www).
Taken with his Robot Series, Asimov?s Foundation Series is considered his greatest work. The trilogy, later expanded with several additional books, describes the collapse and rebirth of a vast empire consisting of over a million planets inhabited by mankind and the efforts of a small group of people known as the Foundation to preserve human knowledge using a pseudoscience known as Psychohistory. Although the series did not originally have robots, a scientist eventually creates a host of ?Platonic guardians? known as the Second Foundation to protect the plan.
Asimov wrote many robot short stories, the majority of which were begun at the same time and were collected in I, Robot. In these stories, Asimov created a series of rules for robots to follow known as the Three Laws of Robotics, which greatly influenced other writers and thinkers in their treatment of the subject of artificial intelligence. The Three Laws of Robotics are: ?1.) A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2.) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3.) A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.? (www). One of these robot stories, ?The Bicentennial Man,? was made into a movie starring Robin Williams.
Though Asimov may be the greatest science fiction writer of the twentieth century, other modern writers, such as Ray Bradbury, have also written works that help revolutionize and reinvent science fiction. Ray Bradbury was born on August 22, 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois, the third son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury and Marie Moberb Bradbury. Chris Jepsen and Richard Johnson assert that Waukegan is represented in many of Bradbury?s stories as ?Greentown, Illinois?- a symbol of safety and security in contrast to tales of fantasy or menace. Bradbury?s family moved to Los Angeles in 1934, where young Ray befriended many gifted people, such as Ray Harryhausen, a special effects genius, and George Burns, a radio star. In high school, two teachers, Snow Langley Housh and Jeannet Johnson, discovered Brabrury?s natural talent in writing, and gave him training in writing that left an immeasurable impression on his writing style.
Bradbury?s first paid work of literature was a short story entitled ?Pendulum,? submitted to Super Science Stories in 1941. However, the story in which Bradbury discovered and put forth his distinctive writing style was ?The Lake? (1942) (Jepsen and Johnson). Shortly after the publication of this work, Bradbury gave up selling newspapers and began writing full-time. Dark Chronicles, Bradbury?s first collection of short stories, was published in 1947. Despite these early successes, however, the book that catapulted Bradbury to national fame and recognition as a leading science fiction writer was The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950. The Martian Chronicles tells the story of man?s attempt to colonize Mars, deal with the Martians, and the colonists? reaction to a worldwide nuclear war on Earth. This book greatly reflected American sentiment in the late 1940s and early 1950s by describing the threat of nuclear war, the fear of foreign powers, reactions to censorship, and the civil rights movement, and more than anything, the longing for a simpler life. In 1953, Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451, a book about censorship named for the temperature at which paper burns, which is widely considered his masterpiece.
Bradbury has won numerous awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award (1954), the World Award for Lifetime Achievement, and The Grand Master Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America. Perhaps Bradbury?s most unusual honor is having a crater on the moon named Dandelion Crater in honor of Bradbury?s book Dandelion Wine (1957) (Jepsen and Johnson). Bradbury has also served as an ?idea consultant? for various projects and concepts. He provided the concept and script for the Unites States? pavilion at the 1964 World Fair in New York, helped design Spaceship Earth at the EPCOT center, and devised the Orbitron at the Disney parks at Paris and Anaheim. Today, Ray Bradbury lives in California and still writes daily, occasionally lecturing. As an essayist, storyteller, author, screenwriter, poet, and visionary, Bradbury is considered one of America?s greatest creative geniuses.
In his criticism ?Bradbury?s Fahrenheit 451,? Rafeeq O. McGiveron writes that Fahrenheit 451 revolves around the imagery of hands and what they are capable of with or without the guidance of sufficient thought. The story is told from the point of view of Guy Montag, a firefighter living in a typical American suburb. Montag?s firefighter crew burns down the houses of people who keep books instead of saving people from fires. America?s t government has outlawed owning and reading books. These so-called ?fanatics? are arrested and taken to ?asylums?, where they are reeducated. To aid the firemen in subduing these people, all fire departments own a mechanical Hound, which can separately identify ten thousand chemical complexes, run extremely fast, and, when their prey is caught, insert lethal doses of morphine or provocaine into its system.
Fahrenheit 451 can be seen as a criticism of our own society. As mass popular culture has absorbed Americans over the years, they have become increasingly illusioned and uniformed about the world around them. In the novel, Montag?s fellow citizens are completely focused on entertainment and leisure, instead of worrying about work and knowledge. People indulge in ?parlor walls,? wall-to-wall television screens that show programs such as the ?White Clown? to amuse them, and also features the ?families,? television dramas in which one part is left out for a person reading a script to act out at home (Fahrenheit 451). These dramas, while at first seemingly ludicrous and even funny, closely resemble many of the reality TV shows that have become quite popular in recent years. In school students are taught virtually no useful information beyond reading and writing, as teachers on videotape throw answers to meaningless questions at unmotivated students. The youth of Montag?s time do not care about anything but the thrill of adventure and pleasure, just like their parents. While our reality may not be this extreme, people today, especially the younger generation, focus more on entertainment than on learning, often refusing to participate in ?boring? school activities. Almost all people in the story possess a Seashell radio, a radio that is put in one?s ear in order to hear the news, radio dramas, or music (Fahrenheit 451). The Seashells have become simply another tool the public uses to drown out the painful reality of a totalitarian government, decaying society, and nuclear war after nuclear war. The behaviors of most of the people in the novel can be summed up by Montag?s wife, Mille, and her appearance as he enters their bedroom at night:
?Without turning on the light he imagined how this room would look. His wife
stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a
tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And
in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic
ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the
shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty. Every night the
waves came in and bore her off on their great tides of sound, floating her, wide-
eyed, toward morning. There had been no night in the last two years that Mildred
had not swum that sea, had not gladly gone down in it for the third time.?
(Fahrenheit 451, pg. 12).
As the quote illustrates, Millie is an extremely self-centered and shallow person. Throughout the novel, her behaviors, and those of her friends, help exemplify the decay of society and how easily their government manipulates them. While not exactly an antagonist, Millie?s actions and attitudes serve to slow down, but not stop, Montag?s rebellion against the social order.
Not only are the citizens of Montag?s America apathetic, but also so are the services that allow the society to function. Ten minutes after a person dies, their body is whisked away in a helicopter to a giant incinerator, with no funeral, no cremation, no memorial to that person?s life or (Fahrenheit 451). Doctors and emergency responders treat their patients as if they were routinely fixing an appliance. A paramedic treating Millie for a sleeping pill overdose can sum up this attitude: ?Sure, she?ll be ok. We got all the mean stuff right in our suitcase here; it can?t get at her now. As I said, you take out the old and put in the new and you?re okay? (Fahrenheit 451). After treating Millie, they quickly left to go take care of another person that had ?jumped the cap off a pillbox.? (Fahrenheit 451).
Montag eventually becomes dissatisfied with his life, and begins to wonder what is in the books he and his coworkers are so dedicated to burning. During a trip to a fanatic?s house, Montag?s ?hands? steal a copy of The Bible, an action that marks the beginning of his rebellion against society. Montag?s captain, Beatty, realizes that Montag has gotten the ?itch? that all firefighters get at least once-to know what is in the books. He tells Montag that he has a day to return the book he stole, and Montag seeks the advice of an old, retired English professor, Faber. Faber represents society as it used to be, informed and aware of its surroundings. He cherishes books for the knowledge they give, and keeps scores of them in his house. His house has no parlor walls at all, and he even wears earplugs to drown out the advertisements when he rides the subways (Fahrenheit 451). After meeting with Faber, Montag tries to return to his normal routine and life, but is unable to do so. Now that Montag, with the help and guidance of Faber, has seen what is wrong with society, he cannot accept its faults or live in it. Although Montag had been stealing books from fires for quite some time, at this point in the story, Montag is no longer a willing participant in the further destruction of society, but a force trying to change it for the better. Montag confronts the problems of society head-on when he reads poetry to some of his wife?s friends, who are over to watch the ?families? with her. Although the poetry is harmless, the women shriek with agony at hearing the words, because to them they are nothing but utter nonsense and mystery. Their reaction to Montag is indicative of how deeply their society is flawed; never mind their ?dozen abortions and kids who their guts? (Fahrenheit 451).
Eventually, Montag is caught hiding books in his home, mainly due to his reading of poetry to Millie?s friends. Beatty, snickering at Montag?s ?foolish? love and trust in books, forces Montag to burn down his own house. Although such a gesture was meant to be ironic and humiliating, Montag accepts the job more than willingly:
?A great nuzzling gout of fire leapt out to lap at the books and knock them
against the wall. He stepped into the bedroom and fired twice and the twin beds
went up in a great shimmering whisper, with more heat and passion and light than
he would have supposed them to contain. He burnt the bedroom walls and the
cosmetics chest because he wanted to change everything, the chairs, the tables,
and in the dining room the silverware and plastic dishes, everything that showed
that he had lived here in this empty house with a strange woman who would
forget him tomorrow, who had gone and quite forgotten him already, listening to
Seashell Radio pour in on her and in on her as she rode across town, alone. And
as in the fire, , rend, rip in half with flame, and put away the senseless
problem. If there was no solution, well then now there was no problem, either.
Fire was best for everything!? (Fahrenheit 451).
Beatty, taunting Montag after his job is done, is killed when Montag burns him alive with the flamethrower. Beatty wanted to die, because he provoked Montag when he was pointing the flamethrower used to burn down his house at him. His represents the eventual fate of everyone in the society he has sworn to protect: to be unwept, unhonored, and forgotten. Despite being ?bitten? by his own Mechanical Hound, Montag escapes on foot with the help of Faber. As he escapes, Montag throws off the final shackles of society as he plans to live with groups of hoboes that wander along the railroad tracks, talking of books and days when they could be read freely. After his escape from the city, it is blown up by a nuclear , an action representing a fear countless Americans shared at the time Bradbury published the novel during the Cold War. The is a catalyst of the ultimate destruction of the decaying society Montag used to be a part of. Together, Montag and his newfound friends hope to be able to change the attitudes of the people left alive in the city, now that they have been forced to wake up from their dreams and .
Fahrenheit 451 is a powerful book dealing with censorship and the decay of society through technology and popular culture, and is as relevant today as it was when it was written over fifty years ago. Though containing many machines and items that seem to be impossible to create, like all good science fiction novels, it also remains true to its purpose as a social criticism and a sort of wake-up-call for society.
Orson Scott Card, an established and innovative science fiction writer, spearheads the world of modern science fiction. Card was born in Richland, Washington in 1951. After a few moves back and forth, the Card family settled in Santa Clara, California, where Card enjoyed walking through orchards and the countryside, and first explored science fiction by sneaking into the section of the library. Card was deeply influenced by several books during his childhood, including The Prince and the Pauper, Gone With the Wind, The Army of the Potomac, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, The Bible, and The Book of Mormon. Card moved with his family to Orem, Utah when he was 16, and entered Brigham Young University as an archeology major a year later, which he quickly switched to a theatre major. After a two-year mission to the Sao Paulo area of Brazil for the LDS church, Card
returned to Orem and completed his Bachelor?s degree in theatre. Card began a theatre company, which produced plays at ?The Castle?, an amphitheatre in Provo, Utah, which he was forced to fold after two years. Because of this apparent failure at playwriting, Card tried his hand at science fiction, submitting a short story destined to become Ender?s Game to Analog magazine in 1977.
Card?s most famous novels are his Ender?s Game series, consisting of eight novels, the most famous and award-winning of which are Ender?s Game (1985) and Speaker for the (1986). Card was the first writer to win the Hugo and Nebula Awards for best science fiction novel two years in a row, winning both awards for these two books. Some of Card?s other books and series are The Tales of Alvin Maker fantasy series, The Worthing Chronicle, The Homecoming Saga series, Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus, Character and Viewpoint, and Lost Boys.
Card frequently breaks new ground with his books, which often involve moral and ethical dilemmas set in unusual settings and motifs, such as the ghost story (Hatrack). The Homecoming Saga, for example, is a retelling of ancient scripture in a science fiction setting. Pastwatch is a groundbreaking alternate history novel; but Card?s innovative style is especially seen in The Tales of Alvin Maker, which is set in a magical version of the American frontier.
Ender?s Game tells the story of Ender Wiggin, a young boy who is extremely intelligent. Ender is the third child in his family, something which is usually not allowed, and is relentlessly taunted, not only for being a ?Third?, but also because he still wears a special monitoring device of the government to test his abilities for military service. One of Ender?s greatest enemies is Peter, his older brother. Peter, like Ender and his sister Valentine, was tested by the government due to his brilliance, but failed because he was far too aggressive. Card writes in his plot summary ?Peter had been to merciless and cruel to enter Battle School, while his sister Valentine had been too sensitive.?
When Ender is six years old, the monitoring device is removed, and he is forced to defend himself at school from a gang of bullies:
??Hey Third, hey turd, you flunked out, huh? Thought you were better than us, but you lost your little birdie, Thirdie??This would not have a happy ending. So Ender decided that he?d rather not be the unhappiest at the end?Ender kicked out hard, catching Stilson square in the breastbone. He dropped?the others backed away as Stilson lay motionless. They were all wondering if he was .? (Ender?s Game)
Stilson was indeed , but the s simply told him he was in the hospital. After his victory, Ender is sent to a military academy in space, designed to train space pilots and the officers to command them. The school is appropriately called the Battle School. Its teaching revolves around a game that all students play, called the Battleroom. The game involves a type of laser tag in null-gravity, with two armies attempting to freeze all of the other team?s troops and win the game. The game forces its commanders and platoon leaders to conceptualize intricate strategies for defending and attacking their opponents. At Battle School, Ender is quickly isolated from the other children by the school?s leaders in order to ?foster his creativity?. He is promoted from a beginning ?Launchy? group to an army named Salamander Army years ahead of schedule. His commander, Bonzo Madrid, is described eloquently by Card as ?(ruling) Salamander by fear, and Ender observes that his desire for total control makes him a less effective leader.? Ender and Bonzo quickly become enemies when Ender disobeys him in the battleroom, but ends up winning the game for Salamander.
Eventually Ender is given command of his own army. However, this army is comprised of ?Launchies? who know nothing of battleroom tactics or strategy, and the worst soldiers in the school. ?Dragon Army?, as Ender?s army is called, is molded by Ender from a band of rejects and castoffs into the greatest force the game has ever seen. Even though the teachers twist the game around and make life hard for Ender, his army never lost a single game, Ender and his men set school records for games won, most soldiers kept unfrozen, and hold the top 40 individual soldier records (each army had only 40 people, so Ender?s men were the top students of the school).
Throughout his time in Dragon Army, Ender had a sneaking suspicion that the teachers were messing with his army because they expected Ender to go on to Command School to fight the Formics. The Formics, more commonly called the Buggers, are insect-like organisms who have twice attacked Earth, and though their ships represent great technological know-how, they appear to communicate to each other telepathically (Card). Ender learned a great deal of his strategy from them:
He began to use the video room, filled with propaganda?(about) the forces of humanity in the First and Second Invasions?Most of the vids were useless?But Ender began to see how well the buggers used seemingly random flight paths to create confusion, how they used decoys and false retreats to draw the I.F. ships into traps. Some battles had been cut into many scenes, which were scattered throughout the various videos; by watching them in sequence, Ender was able to reconstruct whole battles?Human fleets were sluggish; fleets responded to new circumstances unbearably slowly, while the bugger fleet seemed to act in perfect unity, responding to each new challenge instantly?So it was from the buggers, not the humans, that Ender learned strategy.? (Ender?s Game)
After a horrific fight between Ender and Bonzo in a bathroom, in which Ender killed Bonzo, the school?s administrators sent Ender to Command School. Command School is located on Eros, a former bugger base in the Asteroid Belt. There, Ender meets Mazer Rackham, the commander of the human fleet in the Second Invasion who won the war for the humans. Mazer and Ender train on a simulated video game for hours each day, where Ender controls a squadron of ships and fights simulated bugger fleets. Eventually, his friends from Battle School join him in his training. However, by this point, unbeknownst to him, Ender is actually commanding real ships, which are invading the bugger?s home worlds in hopes to eradicate them once and for all. Battles are frequent and long, and Mazer becomes more and more harsh with Ender as he is forced to watch his old friends die by Ender?s commands. Ender becomes extremely distressed and one night wakes up after chewing on his hand. Eventually, the group, commanded by Ender, faces a battle at the Bugger?s home world:
?The enemy outnumbered them a thousand to one; the simulator glowed green with them. They were grouped in a dozed different formations, shifting positions, changing shapes, moving in seemingly random patterns through the simulator field?Ender dodged downward, north, east, and down again, not seeming to follow any plan, but always ending up a little closer to the enemy planet?Then, suddenly, Ender?s formation burst?they had, with terrible losses, passed through-and now they had covered more than half the distance to the enemy?s planet?Then he whispered a command and the ships dropped like rocks toward the planet surface. They were starships and fighters, completely unequipped to handle the heat of passage through an atmosphere?they were focusing their Little Doctors on one thing only. The planet itself?Then the surface of the planet, which filled half the simulator field now, began to bubble; there was a gout of explosion, hurling debris out towards Ender?s fighters. Within three seconds the entire planet burst apart, becoming a sphere of bright dust, hurtling outward.? (Ender?s Game)
After destroying the bugger?s home world, Ender learns that the battles he has been fighting have been real, not simulated. He collapses, but is eventually revived. Though he wishes to return to Earth, he cannot, because every country in the world would fight to use him to fight there own battles. Never wanting to command anyone ever again, Ender boards a starship to help colonize one of the former bugger?s worlds. After arriving on this new planet, Ender is led to a special, symbolic building that the buggers had built for him by watching his dreams. There, Ender finds the cocoon of a bugger queen, begging him telepathically to be released somewhere. Ender writes a book about the majesty of the bugger race in a way that even the soldiers who fought to destroy the buggers can understand. Ender signs his book Speaker for the , and his story of interstellar travel and protecting intelligent species from humanity is continued in the other seven books of the Ender?s Game series.
Science fiction has experienced tremendous growth over the past century and a half, with authors such as Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Orson Scott Card leading the charge. Their novels and other works of literature have created and transformed the world of science fiction, and continue to influence writers and thinkers to this day. As the incredible world of science fiction moves forward, the modern writers of the genre will continue to explore new horizons and change how the world views science fiction.
---------
