Exploring Alternate Worlds

Exploring Alternate Worlds ELLIOT G. McINTIRE* We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. —T.S. Eliot Major advances in knowledge are frequently made, in Einstein's words, "by questioning axioms." New relationships frequent ìy emerge when the basic assumptions of a system are examined. The difficulty, of course, is in obtaining the necessary objectivity and detachment to determine what, in fact, those assumptions are. In the realm of human geography there has been a tradition, at least in some subfields, of trying to reach that goal by means of immersion in the culture and society of an unfamiliar group, preferably non-Western, where the set of cultural assumptions is somewhat different. "To know ourselves and our own culture, such a point of reference in other lands, in other cultures and even other times puts us on much firmer ground" (Parsons 1954, p. 4). Stepping outside our own set of cultural assumptions for a time makes it much easier to identify them when we return. It is much more difficult to step outside die assumptions underlying our physical environment, however, since the consequences of the physical factors are frequentlyworldwide in their manifestations. There are, nonetheless, alternate environments available for exploration that can provide at least a measure of this detachment, in fiction. Most *Dr. Mclntire is a professor of Geography at California State University, Northridge . 93 94ASSOCIATION OF PACIFIC COAST GEOGRAPHERS geographers readily concede that the best landscape descriptions are found in such works. Authors such as Steinbeck or Hardy are often cited as evoking a strong sense of place. However, there is surprisingly little critical examination of such material by geographers, and such studies as do exist have: for the most part concentrated on "serious literature" and...left to comparative neglect writing that the arbiters of literary standards have decreed to be popular entertainment or escapist reading. (McManis 1978, p. 319] One kind of "escapist" literature, science fiction, can be of particular use to geographers because it allows us to examine some of the unstated (and often unacknowledged) assumptions about our surroundings, by "stepping outside" of our own environment and exploring another. Parenthetically, examining the consequences of differences in the physical characteristics of a planet almost inevitably leads to some examination of the interaction between such features and the social and cultural characteristics of the planet's inhabitants. A few types of environments created by science fiction writers are examined in this study, with an attempt to make a rough classification of them and to look at some of their characteristics from the perspective of the geographer rather than that of a literary critic or the casual reader. The works included are only a small sample of the vast range available, but they are representative of the field. Most are fairly recent and generallywell known (at least amongthe readers ofscience fiction), although some less well-known works are included to illustrate particular points or because of idiosyncratic personal preference. Suggesting that geographers might find it useful to read works of science fiction is certainly not original with me. Most of a paper session at the 1978 meetings of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers was devoted to the subject, and in 1974 William Rabiega proposed using such works for classes on the environment, since "they represent entertaining portrayals of possible futures against which current environmental information and trends may be compared to teach about these contemporary situations" (Rabiega 1974, p. 2). But such works have use well beyond the YEARBOOK · VOLUME 44 · 198295 examination of environmental trends. They also can be used to examine basic assumptions about the way our planet works. We accept many of the physical characteristics of the earth with little examination and give little thought to the links between them and other features of our surroundings, both physical and cultural. In many cases this inattention is caused by the fact that the earth's physical characteristics are uniform and constant, such as the earth's axial tilt or the force of gravity. In addition, there is no way of varying these factors in order to...