Science fiction and professional profiling — A surprising link

NOTE: It is a creative translation of an article by Vitaly Kalashnikov

Science fiction experienced a boom of popularity in the twentieth century and has since matured into a respectable literary genre. There was a time, however, when it was up to debate whether it could be called “real literature”, or should rather be classified as “light reading”.

The truth is that writers, irrespective of the genre they work in, are in essence addicted to their craft

they simply cannot get by without writing

But only some of them, due to their individual talent, create “real literature”, while others produce tons of literary garbage, or pulp fiction, at best.

The writer’s talent is defined by his capability to endow the story with a purpose. In art, and in literature in particular, this purpose manifests itself as the central idea of an artwork. And if its sole purpose is entertainment, then this is rather pseudoart — which also has its place in the world, but doesn’t introduce anything new into it.

Real art and real literature are the instruments of personal development — their main purpose is to help an individual understand himself and the world around him, and to promote the awakening of his creative impulse.

One can gain knowledge of the world by using either one’s reason or one’s senses. And if science represents a movement from reason to senses, art, on the contrary, paves a path from senses to reason. The goal of real literature is not to verbally describe certain images per se, but rather, with the help of these images and the emotions triggered by them, to provoke certain thoughts in a reader.

A work of science fiction is always based on a certain assumption that defines its problematics and the scope of its narrative, such as the possibility of time travel, interstellar travel, extraterrestrial contact, etc.

Apart from this fantastic assumption, a science fiction novel should adhere to the conventions of a “normal” literary work, including the presence of certain narrative structure, authenticity of described psychological phenomena and philosophical depth.

According to a Soviet science fiction author Dmitri Bilenkin, science fiction introduces a literary problem (or, as he calls it, a metaproblem) that is bypassed by other genres. Whereas most works of literature deal with three metaproblems, including one’s relationships with the world, with other people and with one’s own psyche, science fiction addresses the fourth metaproblem — namely, one’s relationship with the unknown, such as the future.

Interestingly, the three “traditional” metaproblems describing the connections “a man — the world” (actions), “a man — another man” (relationships), “a man — his psyche” (spirituality) correspond not only to the classic literary forms, such as epos, lyric poetry and drama (which we could colloquially refer to as books “about adventures”, “about love” and “about an individual’s experiences” respectively), but also to the phenomena of matter (body), psyche (feelings) and spirit (information). In the mystical teaching of Gnosticism these phenomena were put in correspondence with three types of people — the matter-bound hylics, the soulful psychics and the spiritual pneumatics.

The three traditional metaproblems also reveal a correspondence with the tripartite professional classification introduced by Eugene Klimov — the transformer (one who transforms matter and information by creating new products, working in logistics, teaching, healing, etc.), the gnostic (one who identifies and assesses situations, including those that pertain to human relationships) and the inventor (one who generates new ideas, schemes and solutions, creates works of art, etc.). This suggests that different aspects of human experience, ranging from taste in literature to professional preferences, have an underlying common nature. And all of them are addressed by science fiction!

Works of science fiction shed light on all possible modes of interaction between the individual and the world, and on the professions corresponding to these modes of interaction.

It’s not an accident that science fiction became that special literary genre. It was developed under the influence of scientific and technological progress that prevailed in the nineteenth–twentieth centuries. Since then, humanity has witnessed a lot of changes, and the idea of humanity itself has become more complicated — now we understand that no new achievement comes without a price. That makes the pondering of science fiction novelists over human existence in the face of new, previously unknown, situations all more meaningful. Science fiction must become the prevailing literary genre of the modern era, because it is the only genre that can address in-depth the ever growing acceleration of technological advancements that transform not only machinery, but each and every one of us.

Only science fiction can offer an adequate perspective on the current state of human affairs and make predictions about our near and distant future.

As noted by literary critic George Gurevich, science fiction can be used both as a subject and as a literary device. When used as a device, its main goal is to “rejuvenate” a traditional genre — be it an adventure, history, action, detective or even a love story, This is a typical ploy in fantasy novels (with the exception of masterpieces created by J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula Le Guin and a select few other authors). These works have no literary value.

If, on the contrary, science fiction is used as a subject as defined by Gurevich (or as a metaproblem, in Dmitri Bilenkin’s terms), it narrates not so much the story of an individual, but the story of humanity facing the unknown. The emphasis is placed on the ideological/philosophical/sociological problems, and the story line and relationships fade into the background. Sometimes it makes a novel a bit dry and makes it read like a scientific or philosophical dissertation (which happened to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky’s space travel novels and, in some measure, to Ivan Yefremov’s futuristic stories).

Literature can deal with abstract ideas only by providing concrete examples.

So, inevitably these ideas are conveyed by means of thoughts and feelings, actions and relationships of a novel’s characters. While science fiction works may incorporate adventures, challenging relationships, etc., all these story lines are subordinate to a certain idea, which is built upon an arbitrary fantastic assumption.

This ideological/moral weight of a science fiction work, in concert with its psychological and pragmatic authenticity, promotes it from “pulp fiction” to “real literature”, i.e., makes it an artwork.

But what does it have to do with professions (leaving aside the profession of science fiction writer itself)? The problem is that the world, in all its complexity, remains mostly unknown to humans. Many of the universe’s mysteries are far from being unraveled, and at the same time we are equally in the dark about the minds of people that surround us (and, while not everyone may acknowledge it, one’s own psyche is almost as mysterious as that of another person). So it follows that through the metaproblem of relationship with the unknown science fiction addresses the other three metaproblems posed by “real literature”.

This leads us to the conclusion that:

Science fiction is the quintessence of literature

Not only it addresses all of the four literary metaproblems, it also reflects all basic aspects of existence and human psychological (and professional) profiles. Everyone can find in science fiction something to suit their needs — there are adventures and futuristic technologies for transformers (hylics), social and philosophical ideas for gnostics (psychics), and spiritual ideas and models of the universe to nurture the mind of inventors (pneumatics). Ergo, Science fiction reflects the world like a mirror.

One may try to make sense of this world not only by using their physical senses, but also by gazing into the “crystal ball” of science fiction, which reflects the foresights and insights of numerous writers. This is bound to make one’s vision of the world more acute and colorful, and will bestow one with the ability to anticipate the changes in their own life. And last but not least, if you want to know which professions will be in demand in the near future, you should read science fiction!