Tony Keen
Critics of science fiction wishing to explain the genre often fall back upon mythology as a hermeneutic tool. For instance, Friedman (1968, 37) claims that “Science fiction will presently be shown to have contrived a ‘mythology for our times.’”
However, the basic idea is surely too simplistic, and must be subjected to criticism and clarification. Though some SF1 critics (e.g., Fredericks 1980, 89, 103) embrace this formulation, others often object. James Blish argued that myth was “static and final in intent and thus entirely contrary to the spirit of sf, which assumes continuous change” (cited in Nicholls 2012b). Ursula Le Guin (2005) writes:
It’s often said that science fiction is the modern mythology. In the case of the rare science‐fictional creation with archetypal power, such as Shelley’s Frankenstein, this becomes an arguable statement, but in general I think it’s meaningless. Myth, legend, and folktale are ancestral to, not forms of, modern fiction. Elements of myth and legend may be used consciously or unconsciously by fiction‐writers, but we don’t write myths. The nearest we come to it is fantasy.
(See also Le Guin [1976]; by 2005 her attitude to the claiming of science fiction as the modern mythology had considerably hardened.)
Influential though Blish and Le Guin are as critics, it is not necessary to accept their arguments. Blish’s comment, in particular, seems to me to misunderstand myth’s ever‐changing nature (Woodard 2007, 1), while Le Guin’s argument that SF writers can only write stories that use myth, rather than stories that are myths themselves, rests on an assumption that myth‐making has ceased, an assumption I believe to be false.
The critic Roz Kaveney in the 1970s devised the notion of the Big Dumb Object, a term to describe a mysterious object in a story that is a source of wonder (Nicholls 2000, 13; Langford and Nicholls 2011; the earliest record of her using it is in Kaveney 1981, 26). She later expanded this into the term Big Dumb Narrative Object, a term she applied to large narrative continuities, such as that of the Star Trek franchise. Nick Lowe conceives of all of SF and fantasy literature as a Big Dumb Narrative Object (cited in Kaveney 2005, 3–4). Peter Nicholls (2012b) has made a case that SF creates its own mythological tropes that cross from story to story. An example of this is the picture of the planet Mars, which is created by no single author, and is not related much to the real planet, yet recurs largely unchanged across many otherwise unconnected works (Nicholls cites the works of Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury). These tropes and stylistic ticks could be seen as constituting a shared mythology, which writers may draw upon, knowing that their readers will understand and fill in the background to stories through their comprehension of these. Nevertheless, the entirety of SF literature is broad, multifaceted and fragmented and shares tropes rather than characters and background. It is hard to see that this could be considered as a single mythology as coherent as that of the Greeks and Romans, for all the inherent contradictions that Classical mythology encompasses.
There is more truth in the idea that large commercial franchises, such as Star Trek or Star Wars, create their own individual mythologies, in the sense of creating a series of heroes and villains, adventures and backgrounds, all of which interconnect within the franchise. These broad narrative constructs (Kaveney’s “Big Dumb Narrative Objects”) can capture the imagination of readers, often to the point of inspiring them to create their own new stories within the mythologies. It is important to note the pluralities of these, as each franchise creates a separate mythology, and these rarely interact with one another, outside the realms of cross‐over fanfiction. This situation is not analogous to that experienced by the Greeks and Romans, where new stories, such as Plato’s myth of Er (Resp. 614b2–621d3), would be incorporated into the overarching framework of Olympian mythology (albeit with scant regard for any contradictions). But it is more analogous to the experience of Renaissance and post‐Renaissance painters, where mythological paintings could draw for their subject matter upon Classical, Biblical, and (later) Norse mythology, without there being any possibility of Pan appearing to Christ in Gethsemane.
The longer‐established a franchise, the more like a mythology it starts to appear. So, the British television series Doctor Who (running on television from 1963 to 1989, and since 2005, with books, comics, audios, and other spin‐off material keeping the franchise going when the show was off the air) looks very like a mythology (on this see Harvey 2010). Most like mythologies are the two superhero universes presided over by DC and Marvel Comics. Over more than seven decades of publishing, these have created the largest shared narrative continuities, or Big Dumb Narrative Objects, that have ever existed (Kaveney 2008, ix; and see Keen 2008). In particular, the “rebooting” (Willits 2009) of various stories over the years, together with their retellings in other media, has resulted in a number of different versions being available. To take only the most famous example, the origin of Superman has been told in different ways in comics in Action Comics no. 1 (Siegel and Schuster 1938), and John Byrne’s 1986 Man of Steel mini‐series (Byrne and Giordano 1987), in movies in Superman: The Movie (USA, Richard Donner, 1978) and Man of Steel (USA, Zach Snyder, 2013), and on television in Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (“Strange Visitor (From Another Planet)” 1993) and Smallville (“Pilot” 2001), to name only a few instances. A similar pattern can be seen with characters such as Batman and Spider‐Man, and these retellings parallel the various different versions of the characters of Greek and Roman myth (further on superhero comics and their relationship to mythology, see Willis, Chapter 7, this volume)
It appears, then, that SF as a whole cannot be treated as a modern mythology, only individual continuities within the broad spectrum of SF. But in a sense, this is actually a red herring for this chapter, concerned as it is with the reception of Classical mythology in SF, rather than the creation of mythology within SF. As Nicholls (2012b) says, much confusion arises from failing to distinguish between SF being mythology, and SF using mythology.
It is clear that SF has strong links with Classical mythology. Indeed, how could it not? SF is, of course, a product (largely) of western culture, and Greece and Rome lie at the heart of western culture. Nicholls (2012b) makes this point extremely clearly: “Mythology in sf reflects a familiar truth, that in undergoing social and technological change we do not escape the old altogether, but carry it encysted within us.” Though it is probably going too far to claim that the Odyssey (or the Epic of Gilgamesh, as suggested by del Rey 1979, 12) are SF, there is a clear line in the literature of the fantastic leading from Homer’s Odyssey to modern SF (Nicholls 2012a; Stableford 2013 is more skeptical), and to the related genre of fantasy; space, however, does not allow here a full discussion of fantasy, which uses mythology in both similar and very different fashions (see Ashley 1997, and Bernstein 1997 on Greek and Roman Classics and fantasy).
It is impossible in a single chapter to cover all the ways in which SF employs Classical mythology. These can go from the use of names drawn from Greco‐Roman myth in both the original (1978–1979) and re‐imagined (2003–2009) Battlestar Galactica (Porter et al., 2008, 205–214),2 to the wholesale reuse of ancient plots in modern texts, such as Robert Silverberg’s The Man in the Maze (1969), which draws heavily upon Sophocles’ Philoctetes. (Further examples can be found by consulting the “Guide to Further Reading” in the following, especially Nicholls 2012b). What I will do in the remainder of this chapter is examine three particularly iconic mythical figures, who are closely connected in the ways in which SF employs them. (I have chosen, for reasons of space, to focus upon those SF texts that explicitly mention a Classical myth. There are, of course many SF texts where the mythological reception is unspoken. For example, there appears to be considerable implicit reception of Homer’s Odyssey in H.G. Wells’ 1896 novel The Island of Dr Moreau (Wells 2005).
The Prometheus myth is well‐covered in other parts of this volume (especially Michael O’Neill’s Chapter 28 on Percy Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound), and it might appear otiose to consider it here. But in the context of SF, it is absolutely necessary. If there is one Classical myth that is key to SF, one figure that SF has adopted as its (literal) torchbearer, then that figure is Prometheus (Fredericks 1980, who divides all SF into “Promethean” and “Odyssean” modes).
Prometheus has always been a symbol of progress, even in ancient times (Dougherty 2006, 75–78), and remains a contemporary touchstone for scientists (Dougherty 2006, 119–122). Humphrey Davy was described as “the chemical Prometheus” (Adams 2009, 45, 302 n.24; Paris 1831). So, it is hardly surprising that Prometheus, as the teacher of man found in the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound (the most Science Fictional of all Greek tragedy), is also cited in SF. Few go as far as Hal Duncan’s SF/fantasy Vellum (2005), which embeds Prometheus Bound in its own plot (Duncan and Keen 2009, 11; Keen 2009, 16–18). The annual award given for libertarian SF is the Prometheus Award. Many fictional spaceships are named Prometheus, usually experimental and/or pioneering vessels, for example, in Stargate (“Prometheus,” 2002), Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (“Second Sight,” 1993), Star Trek: Voyager (“Message in a Bottle,” 1998), and most recently, Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (USA, Ridley Scott, 2012), which featured an eponymous spaceship, sent out to contact humanity’s progenitors, the Engineers. Scott has explicitly linked the name of the movie to the theme of the mythological Prometheus:
The film’s central metaphor is about the Greek Titan Prometheus, who defies the gods by giving humans the gift of fire, for which he is horribly punished … When you talk about the myth on which the title is based, you’re dealing with humankind’s relationship with the gods – the beings who created us – and what happens when we defy them.
(Quoted in Inquirer Movies 2012)
Of course, Scott’s interpretation is based on a reading of the myth that sees it primarily as a warning against challenging the gods. Such a reading is understandable, given the survival of the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound and the loss of the following Prometheus Unbound, leaving the Titan punished on the Caucasus as the myth’s dominant narrative (see Morford et al. 2011, 24, for the forming of dominant versions of myths). It does, however, overlook Prometheus’ eventual release and redemption (already foreshadowed in Aesch., PV 771–774).
However, for SF, another aspect of the Prometheus myth is even more significant than the Titan punished for his presumption. This is Prometheus who helped to create mankind. This is a comparatively late addition to the story, at least insofar as can be told from the literary accounts; it is absent from Hesiod’s story of Prometheus in Theogony (507–569), and does not seem to appear until the fourth century BCE (Heracleides Ponticus apud Hyg. Poet. astr. 2.42.1; see Gantz 1993, lxv n.31). It is best‐known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1.82–83).
This is of interest to SF because the creation of artificial life is a major theme of SF (Stableford 2012). The story of man’s relationship with Nature eventually becomes an account of his attempts to overcome nature’s restrictions. Such attempts are often explored and extrapolated through SF. The ultimate expression of this is the supplanting of nature in the creation of new life. Additionally, stories dealing with such a theme often moralistically address the dangers of such attempts, which in a Judeo‐Christian context would be seen as challenging the Creator. Because Prometheus embodies both the creator and the challenger of the gods, he is a particularly appropriate figure to draw upon in these circumstances.
Such appropriations of the Prometheus myth by SF go back, of course, to Mary Shelley’s 1818 work Frankenstein (1992), with its subtitle The Modern Prometheus. Frankenstein has been identified by some as the first SF novel, notably by Brian Aldiss (Aldiss and Wingrove 1986, vii, 3–37, repeating a suggestion first made by Aldiss 1973a, 3; Scholes and Rabkin 1977, 6–8), though others (e.g., Clute 2013) are more skeptical. Whether or not it can be taken as SF, Frankenstein clearly anticipates SF’s themes. Victor Frankenstein is the Prometheus figure, creator of life, and the man who will be punished for his presumption (though Sparke 1951, 134, argues that the Creature can also be seen as taking a Promethean role; for more on the Prometheus myth in Frankenstein, see Dougherty 2006, 108–114).
This use of Prometheus by Shelley continues to resonate with modern SF, perhaps most obviously in Brian Aldiss’ Frankenstein Unbound (1973b), whose title harks back to the lost Aeschylean play, via Percy Shelley. (On Frankenstein Unbound, see Fredericks 1980, 95–96; Martin 2003; Mathews 1977. For more uses of Prometheus in SF, see Fredericks 1980, 96–99.)
Prometheus is not the only mythological character who is invoked in the exploration of the creation of life. Often the purpose behind that creation is the sexual gratification of men; this is something that SF has addressed from very early on. It is already found in Frankenstein, where the Creature demands that Victor Frankenstein provide him with a mate.
A myth that is often a touchstone for this sort of story is that of Pygmalion, the artist who carved an ivory statue with which he fell in love, and which then “blest” him by coming to life, marrying Pygmalion and bearing him a child. The story is best‐known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (10.243–298), though the statue’s name, Galatea, is post‐Classical (Reinhold 1971).
SF uses this myth for asking questions about the morality of such acts of creation and manipulation. The relationship of this myth to Frankenstein has been observed (Hindle 1992, xxiii), and there is a sense in which Shelley is reworking Pygmalion as much as she is Prometheus. However, in Shelley’s version the artist, Victor Frankenstein, is not creating a mate for himself, but for the monster, and in the end Frankenstein destroys the bride.
A more modern reworking of the theme is found in Alfred Bester’s 1979 story “Galatea Galante” (Bester 1997, 292–333; originally published in the April 1979 issue of Omni). Here Galatea is created not for her creator, Regis Manwright (clear nominative determinism), but for Manwright’s client. Nevertheless, Manwright ends up with Galatea, as he and Galatea sleep together when neither of them is fully conscious, and conceive a child. This story is replete with other references to Classical myth; for another client Manwright makes a Siren, and the story begins in a freak show including a centaur, sphinx, hydra, Cerberus, and so on.
As with many recent versions of the Pygmalion myth, “Galatea Galante” is filtered through George Bernard Shaw’s 1912 play Pygmalion (Shaw 2003). This introduces the element of education to the mythic framework, and this is to be seen in Bester’s story. The educational element is even clearer in Chris Beckett’s novel The Holy Machine (2004). Here the protagonist George, who becomes the lover of the Galatea figure (here called Lucy), has no role in her physical creation (she is a synthetic being created to be a mindless sex toy), though it can be argued that his interaction with her is the spark that gives her independent thought (the equivalent of the “breath of life” found in some versions of the Pygmalion myth, such as those painted by Edward Burne‐Jones). And once she has shown this independence, George tries to educate her. The story further deviates from the Pygmalion myth when George betrays Lucy, and ends with her stripped of her gender, something that was always imposed by those around her. (For The Holy Machine, see Keen 2014.)
In Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 (1995) the Pygmalion figure is split between two men, Philip Lentz, who created her, and “Richard Powers,” who educates her. Here the Galatea figure does not have a physical form – she is a series of computer programs, exploiting SF’s ability to develop the Pygmalion theme beyond the physical body. A central theme of the novel is whether this computer actually has any independent consciousness – for this reason, it is important that the novel is told in first person narration. (On the reinscribing of the Pygmalion story in this novel and other examples, see Liveley 2006, 282. Other screen SF versions of the Pygmalion myth are discussed in James 2013.)
The Galatea figure in Galatea 2.2 is named Helen. This leads to the final myth I want to discuss in this chapter. If a man is going to create his own ambulatory sex toy, then it stands to reason that he will want to create that toy in the image of his ideal woman. So, it is not surprising that he would choose to name her after the most beautiful woman in the world (for the general reception of Helen see Hughes 2005 and Maguire 2009).
Another example of the use of Helen as a symbol is Lester del Rey’s 1938 story “Helen O’Loy” (1970). In this story Helen is a robot made to appear female, who is then brought to sentience by the protagonists Dave and Phil. Though she is described as a “beauty” and a “young goddess,” this is once again more a variant on Pygmalion (Helen falls in love with Dave, and eventually they marry) than Helen of Troy (see further Huntingdon 1989, 95–100).
Other science fictional uses of Helen tend to engage with the actual person, such as in Dan Simmons’ novels Ilium (2003) and Olympos (2007), though there is a 1968 Star Trek episode “Elaan of Troyius” (discussed in Keen 2007).
As noted earlier, this chapter has done little more than scratch the surface of the multifarious uses of the iconic figures from Classical mythology. I have found little space for the many SF works that take their inspiration from Homer (for examples: Fredericks 1980, 99–103; Nicholls 2012b). Nor have I been able to discuss Gene Wolfe, the author who, according to Nicholls (2012b) “makes the most sophisticated use of myth of any modern sf writer,” though Wolfe’s clearest and most effective uses of myth, the Soldier series (1986, 1989, 2006), are strictly speaking fantasy.
What I have tried to show is that the relationship between SF and classical mythology is close and productive. Mythology and SF are both modes of writing about the fantastic, and classical mythology provides a number of touchstones for themes that are central to SF. Sometimes this is done in an extremely sophisticated fashion, such as the use of Greek tragedy in the works of Hal Duncan (2005; 2007; see Keen 2009), and sometimes rather crudely, as in the wholesale lifting of Greek mythological plots in 1970s Doctor Who (Keen 2010, 108–110).
Given all that has been argued here, it is quite clear that SF will continue to draw heavily upon ancient mythology, and there will be more stories, and more uses of mythology, to examine in the future. Both SF and classical mythology seize the imagination of the reader, and provide multilayered universes for people to explore.