What is cowardice? Would you recognize a coward if you saw one? What’s the difference between a hero and a coward, between cowardice and heroism? Does our modern science fiction unlock our inner heroes or is it enabling our cowardice? I wrestled with those questions over the three-day weekend. Now I’m jotting down some notes on the topic of cowardice and science fiction for future discussion.
Okay, so – cowardice – something I arrived at out of desperation. How can close personal relationships be so disappointing? Maybe this has happened to you, moments in your adult life where you need to advocate for yourself, fix a problem, address a topic. You need support from a friend to make it happen. Just like that, they refuse to defend you, start making excuses why they can’t or won’t help. If you woulda, they say. If only things were, they say. Self-respect, the sense of safety and trust you *thought* you were building with them, gone like water off a duck’s back. Ouch.
This wasn’t the first time. No, not the first, the second, or even the fifty-fifth time I’ve been through this with others. I keep running up to social moments like Charlie Brown kicking the football, only to be disappointed in both other people and in myself. How could I have been so stupid?
Please don’t diagnose my problems. That’s a ‘me’ thing. I’ll handle it. Instead, let’s focus on the idea of cowardice. Now that I see it, I can’t unsee it. Cowardice as a cultural phenomenon, especially as it relates to science fiction. We’re all used to the idea that protagonists are heroes and heroes always win but, guess what? We’re not seeing heroic behavior in our modern scifi anymore. If anything, we’re seeing science fiction enable acts of cowardice and justifying anti-heroic behavior at almost every level.
Don’t believe me? Look at Star Trek and Star Wars – they collectively torpedoed their cultural scifi authority with endless reboots, leaning on nostalgia versus exploring new themes. The overwhelming ‘good guys can win’ of ‘A New Hope’ died on the vine with Andor’s gritty realization that the good guys can only succeed when a bad guy’s pulling strings behind the scenes.
Examples of Scifi Cultural Cowardice
Star Trek stopped exploring new galaxies and started focusing on the fact that four hundred years in the future, humans are just as selfish as they ever were. The philosophical challenges of the original series? Dead as a doornail.
90% of the Tobey McGuire Spiderverse movies came down to ‘I’m too much of a coward to tell the truth.’ Kid glides through Manhattan like Superman, but he’s too chicken to tell Mary Jane he’s in love with her? Get outta here.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’ storyline was so underwhelming it made ‘The Fifth Element’ look like Lord of the Rings. Jurassic World’s entire franchise boils down to ‘We didn’t learn the first time, or the second, or the fourth …’
Fan service (Ready Player One, anyone?), reluctance to tackle important social issues (Hello, Gattaca!), shallow exploration of the impact of technology, playing it safe with thematic stereotypes. I could go on, but you get the point.
Innovation, shallow exploration of technology’s impact, insisting on playing it safe. These are all examples of cultural cowardice. I’m not even sure we can get out of it now, if we want to. Part of me really wants to believe that Metropolis will be Coppola’s official act of ‘anti-cowardice,’ but I also have an emotional crisis plan in case it doesn’t work out.
What Does It All Mean?
I see it now, and I can’t unsee it. Cowardice is eating at the heart of science fiction. It’s turning our beloved genre into a timid and disappointing minefield of underwhelming enterprise. We’re not dealing with heroes in the 21st century, we’re dealing with a situation of fear and the craven cowards who exploit it. We cannot defeat an army of cowards through anything but courage and heart and valor.
And what does that mean – to show courage? Does it mean to shout louder than the angry shouts? Does it mean to duel endlessly with online opponents? No. We don’t shout our courage into existence any more than a lion roars respect into the sheep. Our courage comes from values and values come from honesty. Who are we? Who do we want people to know us to be? When we know the answers to those questions, and we show it by our choices – our authority naturally arrives.
But that’s like, vision-related. We didn’t get here through a sudden shortage of vision and rhetoric. Anyone can point at the problem – how do we fix it? How do *we* encourage courage, discourage cowardice, in our science fiction? What will it take so that we’re living our values, encouraging better natures? Sometimes courage requires sacrifice – like Father Octavian in the 2010 episode of Dr. Who ‘Flesh and Stone’:
The Doctor : You’ll die.
Octavian : I will die in the knowledge that my courage did not desert me at the end. For that I thank God, and bless the path that takes you to safety.
The Doctor : I wish I’d known you better.
Octavian : I think, sir, you know me at my best.
Other times, courage requires a quiet determination – the idea that you’re not giving up today, and you’re making the most of tomorrow. Any of this making sense? I’m just a lowly scifi author, but I often look at what’s going on with scifi and asking myself: Are we meeting the moment with courage, or cowardice?
Are we meeting the moment with courage, or cowardice?
The devil’s in the details. A community’s cultural courage is like one big Jenga tower, built a piece at a time. It’s real easy for some loud-mouth sucker to come in and knock it over when your back is turned. Know what I mean?
The price of freedom is vigilance and courage. We can’t afford cowardice anymore. I’m pleased to see that Disney’s drawing a line in the sand when it comes to The Acolyte. I mean, I have no idea if we’ll like the show but at least they’re putting their foot down. We cannot afford to tolerate bullies anymore, nor the cowardly appeasement of fan service.
I’m still thinking about this topic. Science fiction needs brave people, people with heart, grit, and valor. When our most vulnerable members can breathe in safety, confident that disagreement won’t lead to dismemberment, we’ll have passed through the storm. Until then, hands on the rudder and eyes on the horizon. We must be heroes – not cowards – for the culture and genre and community of science fiction.
