People typically decide what to say or do by following certain normative principles, two opposing categories of which are the deontological and the consequentialist. Deontological ethics entail an acceptance of some absolute morality, namely, what people have been taught is good and evil. By contrast, consequentialists value the expected outcomes of one’s actions; for them, “the ends justify the means.” Sf sets itself apart by frequently dramatizing the conflict between these two ethico-political positions. Linking the deontological-consequentialist dilemma to an expansion of E.M. Forster’s familiar flat/round character typology—an expansion based on a theory of personality change proposed by William James—the essay argues that literary characters can be more than merely flat or round. They can be “polyhedral” as well: three-dimensional but with multiple facets that fail to integrate smoothly into a convincingly mimetic whole. Such polyhedral characters tend to be unstable, sometimes deontological, sometimes consequentialist. Two works published in 1949, George Orwell’s uber-canonical Nineteen Eighty-Four and Fredric Brown’s provocative first sf novel, What Mad Universe, showcase polyhedral main characters who drift between ethical positions. Focusing on their characterological instability casts the two novels in a new light: Orwell’s is less negative than usually thought, and Brown’s less positive and more ambiguous. To add context to its discussion of the two 1949 novels, the essay briefly examines C.L. Moore’s short story “Shambleau” (1933), Yoko Ogawa’s novel The Memory Police (1991), and Ray Milland’s film Panic in Year Zero! (1962), all of which feature polyhedral characters who demonstrate similar ethical/moral fluctuation.
Frank Cioffi (Sun,) studied this question.