At the nadir of despair, Freya, the protagonist of Kim
Stanley Robinson's Aurora begins asking the advanced artificial intelligence
running her generation starship, conveniently named Ship, for uplifting
suggestions to keep up the morale of survivors of a failed interstellar
colonization effort. The Ship dredges up accounts of similar survival
situations, describing an entire genre as Dark Realism, a term it uses for
literature incorporating a style of pessimistic naturalism. Examples such as
Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated expedition to Antarctica among others describe a
style of narrative concerned with survival against incredible odds, where every
misstep might invite disaster.
Robinson's idea of Dark Realism stuck with me this past
year. Perhaps it’s the tenor of the times but I've found myself increasingly
interested in apocalyptic themes and dystopias. It's always been an interest of
mine but one that has increasingly occupied my creativity for the past two
years.
Dark Realism, as I've come to understand it, is a body of
literature, some of it self-aware, other parts of it operating in isolation,
that describes a pitiless, inhospitable universe in direct opposition to human
existence. A big thread of this would be familiar to any fan of Cosmic Dread but
I've been working to investigate more traditional speculative genres as well. I
plan to do more work on this concept as the year goes on, but at the moment I
offer up this essay as an introduction to what I think Robinson was getting at.
First off, the idea that the universe is an implacable foe
of humanity and life in general is obviously a very old one. Skim through the
Old Testament and find any number of examples of God having it out for his own
creation. Nihilistic urges run through classics as diverse as the Illiad,
Medea, and Chekhov's Three Women.
However, the body of literature I'm attempting to describe
reaches it full flower in the wake of Weird Fiction's invention (Blackwood,
Machen, and, of course, Lovecraft) of Cosmic Horror. As expressed in works as
varied as "Willows," and "Mountains of Madness," this
literature describes mankind's insignificance in the face of vast, impersonal
forces that control the universe or await in precarious slumber. Later science
fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and James McDevitt wove those elements
of existential dread into work that might be considered a bit more plausible
than the workings of Elder Gods with unpronounceable names.
One early example of this is the 1954's "The Cold
Equations" by Tom Godwin. The short story itself concerns the fate of a
young girl who stows away on the wrong space ship and has generated a fair
share of discussion and criticism over the years. The basic criticism of the
story, that it represents an egregious failure of engineering rather than any
universal "nature's law," holds water with me. And yet, the aesthetic
experience of the story, the idea that comparatively small mistakes are
punished with fervor by physics and mathematics, transcends its icky political
subtext.
In more recent years, this strain of science fiction has
cropped up in one of my favorite writers - Peter Watts. Watts is a complicated
figure in modern SFnal literature. His nihilistic worldview makes for
depressing reading, and his version of the future is largely
unadulterated by gestures towards piety and sentimentality. And yet,
for the purposes of this essay, it's also instructive as a catalog of what Dark
Realism looks and sounds like.
Watts, as a Dark Realist, portrays a world seized by
entropy, marked by decline and erosion of meaning. As the universe slides
farther and farther into disorder, the only revelation is how little the
universe cares for human assumptions. Sentience, free will, and value of
catharsis are laughable concepts to the author and the universe he describes,
barely worth the effort of derision.
More recently, Dark Realism seems to have embraced two big
topics. The first is the Fermi Paradox and the other is Global Climate change.
The Fermi Paradox is the mystery of how, in a world filled
with countless stars and planets, it should be that we have no evidence of life
out there. Where are all the aliens? One cannot scrape the surface of this
question without being confronted with the humbling scale of the universe and
the terrifying possibilities its apparent emptiness suggests. Is there some
force, or Filter as some term it, that culls advanced civilizations before they
have a chance to spread out to the stars? Or is there something innate in the
nature of life and intelligence that suppresses it?
Watts answer was blunt: intelligence is not the same thing
as sapience and the universe prefers the former.
Stanley's Aurora gave an answer that still strikes me as
horrifying, plausible, and somewhat reassuring for all of that. Also add as examples
the Ship's realization that many human bromides such as "every bit
helps," have little traction in the harsh reality of Newtonian physics.
In his Academy Series (Engines of God, the first novel, is
the only one I've read) James McDevitt goes with a force that actively destroys
civilizations, a power attracted by one of the most basic products of
intelligent beings. In addition, Engines of God includes an updated Cold
Equations scenario.
Liu CiXin, the author of Dark Forest, rivals Watts in his grim
appraisal of the universe. Unfortunately, his central argument is bound up
heavily in the resolution of his second novel so I'll simply say that Dark
Forest is one of the best hard science fiction depictions of Cosmic Dread I've
read so far.
To be clear, Dark Realism is something distinct from
apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, and dystopian literature, and from cosmic
horror. The first three genres tend to include dark and nihilistic themes but
are mostly concerned with comparing our world to some horrific vision of an
alternate reality. Dark Realism describes the universe itself as being hostile.
And while this is close to Cosmic Horror, Dark Realism bends more towards the
plausible, using existing science to point out the ways in which our world is
not as human-friendly as we tend to think.
I've got my work cut out for me. I hope to collect together
work towards the end of this summer to offer a more complete appraisal of this
body of literature but for the moment I'd strongly suggest anyone interested in
this idea to read one or all of the works mentioned above.
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