Martians, Democrats & Republicans

"What social science is properly about is the human variety, which consists of all the social worlds in which men have lived, are living, and might live." -- C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959)
And there you have it. Sociology and science fiction out of the mind of one of our most prolific theorists. Just because science fiction is the domain of nerds and geeks doesn't mean that it doesn't have social significance. Sociology is the study of groups and group interaction and it influnces science fiction because the genre posits the interactions of group in future social realms given the impact of certain social factors (destroyed environments, lack of human reproduction, or the advent of sentient machines).

"Science Fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together." -- Ray Bradbury (1950s)
Most often, the discussion centers on utopias, or their antitheses, dystopias. The fact that much of science fiction plays upon this dichotomy is commentary on society. As with most of socialized human thinking we fall into an "either/or" schema. Some view the society as so poor that they conjure a society in which all is perfect, but in these utopias, there is usually a catch. Authors, and filmmakers posit that the perfect society usually sacrifices something of our humanity. Posing the question, "Is it really perfect if we are no longer human?" Others view societies as hurtling down the path of destruction and imagine the worst of that destruction.

"I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say." -- Rod Serling
In my personal nerd, geek story, the current incarnation of the television series Battlestar Galactica is one of my favorite shows, ever. It was revived 5 years ago and the vision of creators Eick & Moore took the premise of the 70's show and molded into a social morality tale for the modern era. It isn't the best science fiction show on television. It's the best show on television because it examines the social conventions, ideologies and values of U.S. society in forthright ways. During a time in this country when our military officials and intelligence officers were torturing people percieved to be enemies of the U.S. (against moral and legal conventions) those who spoke up about these acts were silenced, punished and/or roundly criticized. Even most other elected officials were cowed into silence. Battlestar Galactica, in the most direct way, dealt with this issue and others surrounding it. Martians indeed.

Discussion Questions

1. What impact does the sociological perspective have on the genre of science fiction & vice versa?

2. Discuss the importance of projecting the future of a society to the study of sociology.