Rather like Gothic fiction, what might be called "disease science fiction" is something of a disease itself, infecting other literatures and entertainment.
Sorry for being a tad obtuse, but I think I'm missing the point here. There are all these works of popular culture incorporating disease as menacing agents within the plot structure, but somehow sci-fi is 'missing' the significance of this thematic element or failing to give disease its proper form of attention. The point being? Diseases are seldom treated as representing diseases but more often metaphors for something else? Or the issue is ongoing categorizing mistakes, diseases are not treated as sci-fi but supernatural agency? A problem of categorization for librarians?
I feel like I'm not part of the insider cult here, not recognizing the obvious. Of course, disease has long 'plagued' human societies. So when disease shows up in popular culture it should be recognized as...what exactly? How does the evidence of 'fixation' equate with the evidence of 'ignoring'? Again sorry to be fixated, but I seem to be missing the point we've apparently all been, ah, ignoring.
There's no doubt about it: the author is concerned with something that never actually crossed my mind in 54 years of reading SF, and accumulating about 12 shelf-metres of it: whether his favourite SF has been done justice by "Science Fiction History Books".
I only have one of those, unless you count the huge hardback devoted to every tiny thing about "Firefly" or the *two* companions to "The Prisoner" (1960s version). That would be "The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History", by Franz Rottensteiner, not mentioned in the article. And, yes, I can confirm for Mr. Van Wynsberghe that Rottensteiner ALSO neglected any mention of any disease-related SF.
Though I was able to take a University course in SF way back in 1977 that was already treating it at literature, I hadn't noticed it had become this whole Serious academic discipline where it would be a Bad Thing to be overlooked by it. But why not? SF is now the source of what feels like half our movies and TV. Including TWO movie versions of "I Am Legend".
He's put his finger on something, for sure: clearly, we fear both external threats, and internal. But, given a choice of topics, we'd rather discuss the external aliens of "Independence Day", than the Fear-All-Your-Own-Friends kind of threat.
Perhaps we prefer to fear that which we can see with the naked eye. If viruses really got their act together they could take over the world, but they'd have a hard time being taken seriously, it seems, because the current virus and its offspring get very little respect by many. I blame their small size. They need to work out.
Still not sure I follow. So the topic of depopulating diseases in SF is the ignored thing here, specifically by historians of SF, not by writers and readers of SF who have been, in fact I gather, fixated with it. That's the argument. Correct?
Of course, depopulating diseases are a real topic in the real world. Medieval Europe was massively depopulated by disease. The Americas were massively depopulated by disease. So it's not surprising that the human collective memory and imagination is more than open to, if not haunted by, the concept of the terror of depopulating diseases. So clearly an easy topic ripe for emotionally-involving, fear-drenching fiction.
What I'm missing is, given this collective memory and imagination, what is it that SF historians are missing about this theme? I'm genuinely curious. What's the missing SF-thing here? Is there a unique SF treatment of depopulating diseases that goes beyond history and epidemiology? Something SF historians need to pull out that writers and readers have been sharing, and apparently, secretly enjoying (without SF historians noticing), or insufficiently appreciating and calling for a more thorough treatment?
What's the nature of this lacuna amongst SF historians that represents an actual lacuna? As opposed to, is there a catalogue of the roles of cats and dogs in SF? In other words, is this a significant or insignificant lacuna? Not to disparage lovers of cats and dogs and their appearances in SF.
And regarding internal-external threats, are diseases internal or external? Is their ambiguity on this point in fact a feature of their terrorizing effects? But again, would this be a topic unique to SF or just as appropriate to any discussion of depopulating diseases?
I required computer assistance to count all 11 question marks, and will only answer the first: Yup, this is a whole article about how SF scholarship - not SF itself - has neglected one (huge) topic, shame on SF historians.
Yes, it's a small part of the whole world, if not as small as "SF dogs". But, hey: Sherlock Holmes did a small monograph on 117 types of cigarette ash. And The Line needed feeding.
Nothing would give me greater reading pleasure than for The Line to dredge up controversies at right-angles to the usuals. I would be tickled pink to find myself in a foxhole with two rabid anti-vaxxers and a Poilievre cryptonut, flinging abuse at my (political) allies over their unconscionable hatred of the Game of Thrones final season, which was too brief but otherwise brilliant, and the necessary ending. <ducks>
I sense a lengthier piece about 'disease sci-fi' might be getting trial-ballooned here, or perhaps a pitch for publication being warmed up in the bull pen. The 'blindspot' argument sounds like a claim that there is a need to fill a void with a catalogue of...hey, just so happens, here it is...as a manuscript's thunderous weight lands upon the editor's startled desk! Just sayin' ; )
This is very interesting indeed, but I think the writer neglects the way that the real Covid (not actually very serious or contagious, especially by the standards of any of the SF diseases he mentions) has caused the very thing that Body Snatchers was reputed to be a metaphor for: hatred, paranoia (can be construed as irrational fear of the virus or irrational fear of the harmful measures taken to avoid it, your choice), tyranny, and a (quite possibly, at least here in Ontario) permanent change in society to one of discrimination, hypochondria, and authoritarian technocracy.
If only I (and millions of others) weren't being actively discriminated against by our government, I would be able to drop it. Even you wouldn't be happier with that than me! :-)
I can hardly wait for the new sci-fi novellas, short stories, feature films, etc, that will explain our pandemic to us all. Some focusing on the dystopian future of governments run amok, some withholding life saving medicines, others forcing medicines on unsuspecting citizens in their weekly take-out. I can even imagine a story where almost everyone believes there is a virus (a plague of misinformation) but there really isn't but still civilization as we know it ends and those who know there is no virus still go insane in the end.
I guess if you are sitting in the cheap seats you might consider Covid not actually very serious or contagious. The US has just topped over 1 million Covid deaths and Canada 45,000. Now you can slice the numbers any which way you want (and I know you want to) but each of those deaths was real people and not just old folks who were going to drop soon anyway. Your disrespect and exaggeration are tiresome. Unless you live up in a tree, it's very possible that the people who followed the rules and mandates, even while being mocked by the likes of you, saved your sorry-ass life.
This article was a much-welcomed treat in what would otherwise have been just a bog-standard Wednesday. When I was doing my English Lit degree back in the early 2000s, Gothic and SF were mainly treated as rather unserious genres if they were acknowledged at all, which I thought was unfair. Scott's concept of disease science fiction is intriguing and has reawakened my inner Gothic/SF geek just in time for the long weekend. Thanks! :)
I was wondering if Scott would mention The Stand, but I think it's a real stretch to call it sci-fi — and I say this as a guy whose favourite novel is the extended version of The Stand (the recent Amazon adaptation was trash, sadly, after the second episode).
Some books are truly un-filmable, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
And yes, it is a stretch but not too contorted of one I'd say. We tend to treat the zombie cannon as sci-fi rather than horror these days - or at lest technical horror rather than spiritual horror. But that said, I think one of the things that really makes The Stand work is the idea that confronted with a global disaster caused by humanity, science run amok etc, humanity turns to religion very quickly to get through it -for good or for ill. In some ways, that's the missing piece from so many other Sci-Fi books: that confronted with disaster people still keep the spiritual at arms length.
Ah, those tantalizing one-season failures. I'll throw in a shout to the one-season show "Threshold" (2005) that had alien invasion being some kind of biological sneaks that were both physical parasites, and could also invade your brain with something like a computer hack - don't stare too long at the TV signal they sent.
Notable for having hired Peter Dinklage as one of the investigating scientists, where the character was not written as anything but average height. They just changed the character description because he was so good at playing a super-smart, irreverent, sardonic guy.
It seems that, perhaps, science fact has crossed the threshold of disease being a relevant science fiction topic.
We may even have a cure for the zombie apocalypse and future plagues. It's mRNA technology. The technology that made it possible to develop COVID-19 vaccines within days.
Please take a gander at Melissa Moore's April 2022 TED talk. Moore is Moderna's chief scientific officer. https://youtu.be/h5D3mv8ewCY
I enjoy stumbling upon the work of an English major, wherever I find it. This is a magnificent essay and I enjoyed it for its scope and authority, and especially for the mania which went into it.
It should be noted that Heinlein's "Puppet Masters" is surely also a source for the Body Snatchers movie - and was referenced by the characters in the movie "The Faculty" as being slighted by lack of references. (Before the high-schoolers go on to using their Heinlein/Jack-Finney SF-reading expertise to defeat the alien invasion. These alien invaders have to stop hitting high schools first, those kids are vicious. Poor Jon Stewart got his eye poked out in his only dramatic role.)
The "Puppet Masters" is unquestionably a cold war metaphor. The parasites in the novel are also an inspiration for the Borg, you see: every time two parasite-ridden humans meet, their Masters have a "direct conference", where they exchange all their minds, becoming two copies of one mind, so that the overall parasite population is a single, slow-moving, hive mind. Heinlein has an explicit paragraph where the American alien-fighter wonders if they'll get into the Soviet Union. Then if they already have. Then wonders *if we could tell*. Zinger! on the commies.
A couple of reviewers have eye-rolled that Heinlein was not at all subtle about the cold war thing, citing that paragraph. (His biggest hit, Starship Troopers, also featured a hive-mind enemy, described as a "natural communism" - of "bugs" used by a the hive as so many disposable biological machines. Again, subtlety was left behind.)
Lastly, *Russian* spies, beside you on the bus, may be a Cold War fear, but fears of lurking spies among us date at least back to the fascinating history of MI5:
...which had its inception in a 1910 fantasy of embedded German spies, hiding amongst us. The stories were so popular, people began fearing they were real, and a government department was set up to look for them. No, I'm not joking.
Quibbles done, wonderful article! A desperately-needed break from the news. Many thanks.
In Starship Troopers, Heinlein did suggest that communism might work in a species actually adapted to it. Perhaps he was making a reference to New Soviet Man?
I just want to say that this was an incredibly fun read! That is all - carry on.
Sorry for being a tad obtuse, but I think I'm missing the point here. There are all these works of popular culture incorporating disease as menacing agents within the plot structure, but somehow sci-fi is 'missing' the significance of this thematic element or failing to give disease its proper form of attention. The point being? Diseases are seldom treated as representing diseases but more often metaphors for something else? Or the issue is ongoing categorizing mistakes, diseases are not treated as sci-fi but supernatural agency? A problem of categorization for librarians?
I feel like I'm not part of the insider cult here, not recognizing the obvious. Of course, disease has long 'plagued' human societies. So when disease shows up in popular culture it should be recognized as...what exactly? How does the evidence of 'fixation' equate with the evidence of 'ignoring'? Again sorry to be fixated, but I seem to be missing the point we've apparently all been, ah, ignoring.
There's no doubt about it: the author is concerned with something that never actually crossed my mind in 54 years of reading SF, and accumulating about 12 shelf-metres of it: whether his favourite SF has been done justice by "Science Fiction History Books".
I only have one of those, unless you count the huge hardback devoted to every tiny thing about "Firefly" or the *two* companions to "The Prisoner" (1960s version). That would be "The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History", by Franz Rottensteiner, not mentioned in the article. And, yes, I can confirm for Mr. Van Wynsberghe that Rottensteiner ALSO neglected any mention of any disease-related SF.
Though I was able to take a University course in SF way back in 1977 that was already treating it at literature, I hadn't noticed it had become this whole Serious academic discipline where it would be a Bad Thing to be overlooked by it. But why not? SF is now the source of what feels like half our movies and TV. Including TWO movie versions of "I Am Legend".
He's put his finger on something, for sure: clearly, we fear both external threats, and internal. But, given a choice of topics, we'd rather discuss the external aliens of "Independence Day", than the Fear-All-Your-Own-Friends kind of threat.
Perhaps we prefer to fear that which we can see with the naked eye. If viruses really got their act together they could take over the world, but they'd have a hard time being taken seriously, it seems, because the current virus and its offspring get very little respect by many. I blame their small size. They need to work out.
Still not sure I follow. So the topic of depopulating diseases in SF is the ignored thing here, specifically by historians of SF, not by writers and readers of SF who have been, in fact I gather, fixated with it. That's the argument. Correct?
Of course, depopulating diseases are a real topic in the real world. Medieval Europe was massively depopulated by disease. The Americas were massively depopulated by disease. So it's not surprising that the human collective memory and imagination is more than open to, if not haunted by, the concept of the terror of depopulating diseases. So clearly an easy topic ripe for emotionally-involving, fear-drenching fiction.
What I'm missing is, given this collective memory and imagination, what is it that SF historians are missing about this theme? I'm genuinely curious. What's the missing SF-thing here? Is there a unique SF treatment of depopulating diseases that goes beyond history and epidemiology? Something SF historians need to pull out that writers and readers have been sharing, and apparently, secretly enjoying (without SF historians noticing), or insufficiently appreciating and calling for a more thorough treatment?
What's the nature of this lacuna amongst SF historians that represents an actual lacuna? As opposed to, is there a catalogue of the roles of cats and dogs in SF? In other words, is this a significant or insignificant lacuna? Not to disparage lovers of cats and dogs and their appearances in SF.
And regarding internal-external threats, are diseases internal or external? Is their ambiguity on this point in fact a feature of their terrorizing effects? But again, would this be a topic unique to SF or just as appropriate to any discussion of depopulating diseases?
I required computer assistance to count all 11 question marks, and will only answer the first: Yup, this is a whole article about how SF scholarship - not SF itself - has neglected one (huge) topic, shame on SF historians.
Yes, it's a small part of the whole world, if not as small as "SF dogs". But, hey: Sherlock Holmes did a small monograph on 117 types of cigarette ash. And The Line needed feeding.
Nothing would give me greater reading pleasure than for The Line to dredge up controversies at right-angles to the usuals. I would be tickled pink to find myself in a foxhole with two rabid anti-vaxxers and a Poilievre cryptonut, flinging abuse at my (political) allies over their unconscionable hatred of the Game of Thrones final season, which was too brief but otherwise brilliant, and the necessary ending. <ducks>
Thank you, that helps. So a cult-debate for rabid librarians of SF. Kind of figured that, but glad to have it confirmed.
I was reading it as a non-member, so my 'missing the point' was a form of recognition after all : )
I sense a lengthier piece about 'disease sci-fi' might be getting trial-ballooned here, or perhaps a pitch for publication being warmed up in the bull pen. The 'blindspot' argument sounds like a claim that there is a need to fill a void with a catalogue of...hey, just so happens, here it is...as a manuscript's thunderous weight lands upon the editor's startled desk! Just sayin' ; )
This is very interesting indeed, but I think the writer neglects the way that the real Covid (not actually very serious or contagious, especially by the standards of any of the SF diseases he mentions) has caused the very thing that Body Snatchers was reputed to be a metaphor for: hatred, paranoia (can be construed as irrational fear of the virus or irrational fear of the harmful measures taken to avoid it, your choice), tyranny, and a (quite possibly, at least here in Ontario) permanent change in society to one of discrimination, hypochondria, and authoritarian technocracy.
I don't think he neglected it, Mark. He just doesn't share the urge some others do to talk about the same thing at every opportunity.
If only I (and millions of others) weren't being actively discriminated against by our government, I would be able to drop it. Even you wouldn't be happier with that than me! :-)
Charming euphemism.
All done here, guys.
I can hardly wait for the new sci-fi novellas, short stories, feature films, etc, that will explain our pandemic to us all. Some focusing on the dystopian future of governments run amok, some withholding life saving medicines, others forcing medicines on unsuspecting citizens in their weekly take-out. I can even imagine a story where almost everyone believes there is a virus (a plague of misinformation) but there really isn't but still civilization as we know it ends and those who know there is no virus still go insane in the end.
I guess if you are sitting in the cheap seats you might consider Covid not actually very serious or contagious. The US has just topped over 1 million Covid deaths and Canada 45,000. Now you can slice the numbers any which way you want (and I know you want to) but each of those deaths was real people and not just old folks who were going to drop soon anyway. Your disrespect and exaggeration are tiresome. Unless you live up in a tree, it's very possible that the people who followed the rules and mandates, even while being mocked by the likes of you, saved your sorry-ass life.
That's enough. This part of the thread has reached a natural conclusion, all of you.
This article was a much-welcomed treat in what would otherwise have been just a bog-standard Wednesday. When I was doing my English Lit degree back in the early 2000s, Gothic and SF were mainly treated as rather unserious genres if they were acknowledged at all, which I thought was unfair. Scott's concept of disease science fiction is intriguing and has reawakened my inner Gothic/SF geek just in time for the long weekend. Thanks! :)
It's a shame that SF wasn't/isn't treated as literature. It is. The subject matter should never be the reason we don't appreciate the writing.
Well that buffered my genre reading list. No mention of Chuck Wending’s Wanderers though…
TY for Wending's Wanderers. It was on my list but somehow misplaced.
Surprised that Stephen King's 'The Stand' wasn't mentioned. Should also add that Counterpart was such a superb show - a real shame it was cancelled.
I was wondering if Scott would mention The Stand, but I think it's a real stretch to call it sci-fi — and I say this as a guy whose favourite novel is the extended version of The Stand (the recent Amazon adaptation was trash, sadly, after the second episode).
Some books are truly un-filmable, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
And yes, it is a stretch but not too contorted of one I'd say. We tend to treat the zombie cannon as sci-fi rather than horror these days - or at lest technical horror rather than spiritual horror. But that said, I think one of the things that really makes The Stand work is the idea that confronted with a global disaster caused by humanity, science run amok etc, humanity turns to religion very quickly to get through it -for good or for ill. In some ways, that's the missing piece from so many other Sci-Fi books: that confronted with disaster people still keep the spiritual at arms length.
Ah, those tantalizing one-season failures. I'll throw in a shout to the one-season show "Threshold" (2005) that had alien invasion being some kind of biological sneaks that were both physical parasites, and could also invade your brain with something like a computer hack - don't stare too long at the TV signal they sent.
Notable for having hired Peter Dinklage as one of the investigating scientists, where the character was not written as anything but average height. They just changed the character description because he was so good at playing a super-smart, irreverent, sardonic guy.
It seems that, perhaps, science fact has crossed the threshold of disease being a relevant science fiction topic.
We may even have a cure for the zombie apocalypse and future plagues. It's mRNA technology. The technology that made it possible to develop COVID-19 vaccines within days.
Please take a gander at Melissa Moore's April 2022 TED talk. Moore is Moderna's chief scientific officer. https://youtu.be/h5D3mv8ewCY
I enjoy stumbling upon the work of an English major, wherever I find it. This is a magnificent essay and I enjoyed it for its scope and authority, and especially for the mania which went into it.
It should be noted that Heinlein's "Puppet Masters" is surely also a source for the Body Snatchers movie - and was referenced by the characters in the movie "The Faculty" as being slighted by lack of references. (Before the high-schoolers go on to using their Heinlein/Jack-Finney SF-reading expertise to defeat the alien invasion. These alien invaders have to stop hitting high schools first, those kids are vicious. Poor Jon Stewart got his eye poked out in his only dramatic role.)
The "Puppet Masters" is unquestionably a cold war metaphor. The parasites in the novel are also an inspiration for the Borg, you see: every time two parasite-ridden humans meet, their Masters have a "direct conference", where they exchange all their minds, becoming two copies of one mind, so that the overall parasite population is a single, slow-moving, hive mind. Heinlein has an explicit paragraph where the American alien-fighter wonders if they'll get into the Soviet Union. Then if they already have. Then wonders *if we could tell*. Zinger! on the commies.
A couple of reviewers have eye-rolled that Heinlein was not at all subtle about the cold war thing, citing that paragraph. (His biggest hit, Starship Troopers, also featured a hive-mind enemy, described as a "natural communism" - of "bugs" used by a the hive as so many disposable biological machines. Again, subtlety was left behind.)
Lastly, *Russian* spies, beside you on the bus, may be a Cold War fear, but fears of lurking spies among us date at least back to the fascinating history of MI5:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460
...which had its inception in a 1910 fantasy of embedded German spies, hiding amongst us. The stories were so popular, people began fearing they were real, and a government department was set up to look for them. No, I'm not joking.
Quibbles done, wonderful article! A desperately-needed break from the news. Many thanks.
In Starship Troopers, Heinlein did suggest that communism might work in a species actually adapted to it. Perhaps he was making a reference to New Soviet Man?