Abstract
Science fiction takes many forms, including academic work that calls on readers to think about social and cultural problems. This paper takes a piece of science fiction, Kirinyaga: A Fable of Utopia, as an example and discusses the conflicts among globalization, modernization and tradition present in the text, thus highlighting the academic meaning of science fiction as a literary form.
Introduction
When people discuss science fiction, the first idea that often comes to mind is the kind of future life that will be enabled by the rapid advance of high technology. In such an imagined world, high technology can develop to a level far beyond that in the real world, and it can cause various conflicts between humans, or between non-humans (such as aliens), which are often the protagonists of the novel, or between humans and non-humans. This demonstrates the strong interest within science fiction in the future of the world and even the universe, and the special attention paid to modernization based on technological development. As Wu Yan, an expert on science-fiction research in China, said: Science fiction is a cool and fashionable thing. It is born along with science and technology, and always goes beyond its time. It opens the door to another marvellous world with cool, gorgeous, mind-blowing and fashionable high technology. It is a place with thousands of possibilities and countless wonders … Science fiction comes into being with the advance of science and technology, which is a defining feature of modern society. With the shift from manual labour to machine production triggered by the First Industrial Revolution, the invention of the steam engine, the proliferation of factories, and the popularity of machines … In the face of nature, it was as if, for the first time, mankind discovered that it possessed incomparable power. And such a transformation not only powered the lightning-speed evolution of human civilization, but also hastened the birth of science fiction and determined the lifelong entanglement of science fiction and technology. (Wu, 2012: 2–3)
Science fiction and anthropology
It is difficult to provide a general definition of ‘anthropology’ because of the variety of mainstream views in different historical periods and many schools of thought. However, some anthropological concepts, such as cultural relativism and an emphasis on multiculturalism, which differ from contemporary mainstream views, are still very relevant at present. As Wang Mingming noted: Western anthropologists increasingly feel that non-Western human communities, localities and cosmologies, which have been the subjects of study for Western anthropologists since the fifteenth century, have been incorporated into the Western-centred world system at a marginal position. How can we faithfully depict the centre–periphery relationship of our world in anthropological writings? This is a question that many Western anthropological works have tried to answer. Returning anthropology to the historical analysis of the world's political and economic relations has become a trend in Western anthropology. More and more anthropologists are advocating that, while keeping to the ethnographic tradition of anthropology, it is also important to draw on the analytical methods of political economy, so that ethnographic writings can reflect in a two-way manner the modern destiny of marginalized non-Western human communities, localities and cosmologies, as well as the worldwide impact of expanding imperialism and capitalism. (Wang, 2011: 21)
Anthropology as a discipline has had most of its impact in the twentieth century. Though its area of interest includes many of the oldest human questions, it is one of the newer of the social sciences. It studies mankind as a whole, and its major aim is understanding the many facets of that much-studied, much-observed animal. Science fiction shares its subject with anthropology. Science fiction is the literature of man in the future; anthropology is the science of man—past, present, and future. Is it only natural that science fiction should be used as a vehicle to explore some of the ideas of anthropology. (Mason et al., 1974: ix)
In the 1970s, some scholars even proposed the concept of ‘anthropological science fiction’, arguing that, while the discipline of anthropology is still exploring the framework for answering the question: ‘What is man?’, anthropological science fiction is providing answers to that question with rich philosophical meanings. Science fiction is not defined solely by its content, but equally by its methods and positions. There is, in fact, another tradition involving novels of this kind, and many works in that tradition have been produced. The writer with the strongest anthropological bent in terms of technique and discernment is the renowned American Ursula K Le Guin. Her book, The Left Hand of Darkness, is a classic example of this genre. 2 In that book, alien life forms on another planet have been shaped by cultural behavioural patterns appropriate to extraterrestrial biology. In the 1950s and 1960s, some science-fiction novels of this type were even written by professional anthropologists. In the classification of a more general genre of fiction, such novels can also be called ‘social science fiction’, which brought to the public a critical self-awareness of culture that had previously been confined to scientists, including anthropologists (Stover, 1973).
It is in this sense that this paper offers special value. Specifically, it uncovers the allure of science fiction and the anthropological tendency embodied in the novel Kirinyaga and successfully builds a connection between them through the interpretation of the book's recently published Chinese edition.
The science-fiction novel Kirinyaga
Kirinyaga is an amazing utopian science-fiction novel published by the American science-fiction writer Mike Resnick at the end of the last century. 3 The magic of this novel is multifaceted. For example, it is a collection of 10 short science-fiction stories published independently, but those stories are centred on the same theme. Together, they form an interrelated story in which the plot gradually advances to describe how a utopia is inevitably going to disintegrate, despite the painstaking efforts of its founders. The 10 stories have altogether won two Hugo Awards and nine Hugo and Nebula Award nominations. In this sense, Kirinyaga is also the most award-winning science-fiction collection ever. Compared to Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which won the Hugo Award in 2015, Kirinyaga has received far more honours. Of course, the most important aspect is the novel's content. The author places the action in a sci-fi-style context, imagining that, in the future, when science and technology are highly advanced, a group of people on an Earth-like planet establish an immigrant settlement called ‘Kirinyaga’ 4 (a utopia that strives to preserve its traditions) under the leadership of Koriba, a Kikuyu mundumugu (witch doctor) from Kenya.
Although a Kikuyu, Koriba is an honoured graduate of Cambridge University and holds two master's degrees from Yale. He has watched Nairobi turn into a second London, with the same traffic jams and pollution, and Mombasa become another Miami, plagued by poor security and rampant disease. He has witnessed his people forgetting what it means to be Kikuyu and proudly calling themselves Kenyans. Therefore, as the guardian of tribal customs and the torch-bearer of traditional wisdom, Koriba is determined to defend the traditional Kikuyu culture and way of life, which are considered by many to be very ‘ignorant’, in the new utopian immigrant settlement, Kirinyaga.
Koriba and other people in Kirinyaga have Kenyan origins, and they view the country's modernization as a form of ‘degradation’. Such a ‘degradation’, although far from making it impossible for humans to survive, is a ‘development’ that many people dream of. However, in the mind of Koriba, the old way of life is always best. Before the Europeans came, the people lived in harmony with the land. They raised cattle and cultivated the earth. While some of them died as a result of old age, disease or the wars between Maasai, Wakamba and Nandi, they had just the right number of births to fill the gap. Their life was simple, but full. The arrival of the Europeans brought European-style modernization and routines. Their cities were overcrowded and heavily polluted, their land became barren, their animals died, and the water became poisonous. Finally, when the Utopian Parliament agreed to let them move to the world of Kirinyaga, they left Kenya and lived by practising the old ways, which was the most effective option for the Kikuyu (Resnick, 2015).
In the author's portrayal of Kirinyaga, which was built on modern technology, high technology supported the creation of an environment in the immigrant settlement similar to that of the original Kikuyu people in Africa, including such things as frequent hot winds, dust and flies. In such conditions, Koriba, the advocate of the omnipotent and bright-minded Kikuyu god Ngai, mediated disputes, performed magic spells, provided traditional education to children by telling them fables, and cured the sick with traditional medicine. He would even seek help from technology to adjust the orbit of the planet and change its climate, which he used as a curse to punish those who did not live according to the community's traditions.
In this utopia that seemed to be perfect, however, the natural emergence of internal, almost ‘self-initiated’ ideas (such as the quest for knowledge and the invention of tools of production), and the intervention of incidental factors from the outside (such as a European doctor who arrived by chance), constantly threatened the faithful inheritance of traditions. Although Koriba did everything he could to prevent any changes that might break with tradition, such a task was simply beyond his capacity, and a Pandora's box was being cracked open. Even the disciple he trained to succeed him left for university, dreaming of becoming a historian and returning to teach what he had learned. The last straw that crushed Koriba was a European doctor who came to Kirinyaga by accident. He showed the inhabitants the magic of more effective medical skills and deprived Koriba of his authority. The inhabitants, while still respecting Koriba, began to believe that the European gods were younger and stronger than their own. Koriba's fingers could not plug the dyke's growing breaches. Finally, Koriba returned to Kenya, and his thought experiment of preserving the original cultural traditions and ways of life in Kirinyaga ended in failure.
The thought experiment of cultural collision in the context of modernization
Reading Kirinyaga is like reading an anthropological ethnography. The only difference is that Kirinyaga as a science-fiction work describes the author's virtual thought experiment on the clash of culture. However, as some historiographers have argued, there is a sense in which literature may be even more real than history, and thus the theoretical possibilities presented by this science-fiction work deserve attention.
In a broad sense, some of the most famous utopian novels (or ‘anti-utopian novels’) can be categorized as science fiction, such as Nineteen Eighty-four and Brave New World. Some researchers of science-fiction literature have discussed the complex relationship between utopian literature and science fiction, arguing that utopian novels are not only, from a historical point of view, a source of science fiction, but also one of its forms when viewed from a logical perspective (that is, from a counter-historical point of view). Suvin (2011) stated that the utopian novel is not a religious conception of another world, such as heaven or hell, but a construct of alternative thinking. Like islands, valleys, societies and worlds, it is constructed by intelligent beings in the natural world—human or humanoid—under their own power rather than with the support or intervention of transcendent forces. A utopian novel is an alternative world, but it is also embedded in the human world, or at least in the endeavours, dominions and hypothetical possibilities of spiritual beings—rather than in a religious sense of transcendence. This is what distinguishes utopian fiction from myths, horror fantasies and fairy tales that take place outside of history (even a mimetic or hypothetical form of history). Similarly, this is also a feature that distinguishes science fiction from the literature that is related but diametrically opposed to it.
The thought experiment on utopia presented in Kirinyaga, which seeks to preserve the traditional culture and way of life, cannot be detached from the cultural conflict in the background. Inevitably, it also involves the comparison of cultures (and their forces). Suvin has suggested that, in science fiction, the ‘world of possibilities’ introduced by the narrative is conceivable only in the interplay between two elements: the conception of the empirical world by the collective social audience of the text, and the various narrative alterations made to the previous conception in the text. In other words, the alternative reality or possible world resulting from the narrative is not a prophecy or even an inference, but an analogy to possibilities that have not been realized in the empirical world of the audience or implied reader. No matter how empirically unverifiable the narrative agent, the narrative object and the narrative event of the science fiction may be, the assemblage of the three, under all meaningful circumstances, still creates an allegory of ourselves (Suvin, 2011).
The evolutionary view of a hierarchical division of cultures is no longer the mainstream in contemporary understandings of anthropology, and anthropologists tend to reject any notion that a particular race, class or culture is the most superior (Resnick, 2015). The absence of hierarchical division does not mean that no comparisons will be made. Another goal for anthropologists is to understand the inner structure of human societies, and comparative study is a foundational approach in that endeavour. It can be assumed with certainty that numerous societies have already been studied, and that science fiction is providing only an additional realm of imagined societies for comparison (Resnick, 2015). Such an assessment, which is conducted in the form of an imaginative thought experiment and an exploration of possibilities, is the proof of the anthropological feature in science fiction that is highlighted in the book Kirinyaga.
The village of Kirinyaga in the thought experiment, although existing in a relatively closed environment, still cannot escape from the influence of European culture. The question is: When two cultures come into contact (even when the contact is as casual and passive as it was in Kirinyaga), what will happen? Nowadays, it is often assumed that interaction and communication (either physically or spiritually), such as building roads and using the internet, should be encouraged and facilitated. However, for a society that wants to preserve a traditional culture of anthropological value, interaction and communication could also be a threat. What science fiction offers is a type of thought experiment in an extreme and ideal situation, because, when two culturally different societies come into contact, ‘another result of contact between two societies can be the destruction of one of the cultural systems. It is usually the smaller, technologically less efficient society that is absorbed or eliminated’ (Mason et al., 1974: 346–347). Of course, among scholars who follow science fiction as a virtual observational experiment in anthropology, some are more optimistic: Sometimes culture contact can result in what anthropologists call ‘stabilized pluralism’, which means that both partners to the contact manage to survive with their cultures intact. They live in a world where they can exchange ideas, tools, and all kinds of things, but neither is so dominant as to absorb or destroy the other. They are equal members of a cultural interchange that does not threaten either one of them. (Mason et al., 1974: 346–347).
Anthropology, when considered from a position of cultural relativism, is a champion of cultural diversity. This is very different from the globalist view that blindly and unilaterally pursues Western-style modernization. Cultural diversity is a fundamental character of human societies. The various localities and communities across the world have developed their own languages, beliefs, ways of life, shared philosophies and values in their unique natural and social habitats and across a long span of time. Cultural diversity is a valuable asset accumulated by humanity over the long course of history and in complex habitats. It is also an indispensable driving force for the sustainable progress of human societies. Cultural diversity promotes effective growth, empowers individuals and communities with a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional and moral–cultural life, stimulates inexhaustible creativity and ingenuity, and provides an indispensable reference for cultural reflection or ‘cultural criticism’. In this sense, cultural diversity is as crucial to humanity as biodiversity is to the maintenance of biological balance. (He, 2016)
As can be seen from his writing, Resnick seems to be attempting to describe and document this thought experiment in a more transcendental way from a so-called ‘etic position’ in anthropology. However, once the story unfolds, it has its own logical dynamics; and the author apparently has a preference for Koriba. As a matter of fact, the author's experience is also quite revealing. He has long been fascinated by Africa and has spent most of his life studying African history, culture and animals. It is such a background that has enabled him to write this virtual ethnography of the Kikuyu tribe in the form of science fiction, although what he has prepared for the novel is still a tragic ending.
As one scholar argues in a discussion on anthropological science fiction, ‘How can a discipline still popularly associated with the salvage of tradition survive in what Michael Fischer 5 has called a “proleptic” future? It is more relevant than ever to reflect critically on anthropology's temporal perambulations’ (Collins, 2003). For the grand ideal of preserving cultural diversity, what Kirinyaga offers is a more intriguing challenge. Although this is only a thought experiment in a sci-fi context, is not it quite the same as what we have witnessed from the past to the present?
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Notes
Author biography
Bing Liu is a professor at the Institute of Chinese Medical Literature and Culture, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. He is also the director of the Center for Science Communication and Popularization of CAST−Tsinghua University. His research interests include the history of science and the communication of scientific culture.