Representations of Technology in Science Fiction for Young People

Noga Applebaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781138828384
• eBook ISBN: 9781135255169
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

In this new book, Noga Applebaum surveys science fiction novels published for children and young adults from 1980 to the present, exposing the anti-technological bias existing within a genre often associated with the celebration of technology. Applebaum argues that perceptions of technology as a corrupting force, particularly in relation to its use by young people, are a manifestation of the enduring allure of the myth of childhood innocence and result in young-adult fiction that endorses a technophobic agenda. This agenda is a form of resistance to the changing face of childhood and technology's contribution to this change. Further, Applebaum contends that technophobic literature disempowers its young readers by implying that the technologies of the future are inherently dangerous, while it neglects to acknowledge children's complex, yet pleasurable, interactions with technology today. The study looks at works by well-known authors including M.T. Anderson, Monica Hughes, Lois Lowry, Garth Nix, and Philip Reeve, and explores topics such as ecology, cloning, the impact of technology on narrative structure, and the adult-child hierarchy. While focusing on the popular genre of science fiction as a useful case study, Applebaum demonstrates that negative attitudes toward technology exist within children's literature in general, making the book of considerable interest to scholars of both science fiction and children's literature.

Chapter One
But Only God Can Make a Tree

Technology and Nature in Young SF

In the middle of a room with no walls or roof sits a smashed television set, its innards overgrown with chickenweed and dandelions [ … ] nature has reclaimed the ruins of the human world. (Exodus: 137)

The relationship between child and nature has a long and complex history to which children’s literature has contributed through a diverse range of texts, from the sense of freedom that nature offers children in adventure stories such as Richard Jefferies’ Bevis, The Story of a Boy (1882) and Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons (1930), to its dark, metaphoric function in Alan Garner’s The Owl Service (1967) and David Almond’s Kit’s Wilderness (1999). Young SF as a genre engaging primarily with technology and its impact on society might be expected to renegotiate the conditions of this child-nature relationship, which plays a significant role in many of the texts explored in this chapter, and it is the extent of this renegotiation that is central to discussion here; a discussion that reveals the enduring, if not retrogressive, influence of some of the earliest theories of childhood.

In Émile, his philosophical novel discussing the appropriate pedagogical methods of child rearing, Jean-Jacques Rousseau advises mothers to “cultivate and water the young plant before it dies; its fruit will one day be your delight” (1762: section 12).¹ This metaphor, in which a growing child is compared to an element taken from the natural world, signifies the connection that Rousseau asserts between childhood and nature. Published in the mid-eighteenth century, Émile is a groundbreaking work in which childhood is established as a significant and legitimate stage of life, and parents are encouraged to “observe nature” and “follow the route that it traces” when educating their children (section 65). Carolyn Sigler rightly observes that, “nature in Rousseau’s anthropomorphic ethos serves as a metaphor for the innate goodness, simplicity, and freedom of childhood” (1994:148). Émile is a ‘natural child’ in the sense that he is encouraged to “cultivate a sense of self by turning to this idealized natural environment, as a moral guide to all that is humanly ‘good’” (149). Rousseau’s construction of the ‘natural child’ resonates in Romantic poems such as William Wordsworth’s “There Was a Boy” (1800) and “ Lucy Gray”(1800) and William Blake’s Songs of Innocence (1794), in which the poets depict children roaming carefree in a wild landscape. Such poetic images still influence the public discourse on childhood today (Higonnet, 1998:16–17; James, Jenks and Prout, 1998:13).

In her essay on the development and implications of the myth of the innocent child, Marina Warner explains that “children are perceived as innocent because they’re outside society, pre-historical, pre-social, instinctual, creatures of unreason, primitive, kin to unspoiled nature” (1994:44). Warner here echoes Jacqueline Rose, who compares Rousseau to the acclaimed children’s author Alan Garner, concluding that they both define childhood as existing “outside the culture in which it is produced,” and being “a primitive state where ‘nature’ is still to be found if only one gets to it on time” (1984:44). According to Karín Lesnik-Oberstein this preconception, that a fundamental link exists between children and nature, is popular among other adults writing for young readers, as evidenced by the many children’s books engaging with environmental issues (1998:208). Indeed, ecological messages can be found in texts written for children as early as the eighteenth century (Sigler, 1994:149–50).

While Rousseau’s Émile and Wordsworth’s Lucy Gray roamed freely through hills and dales, children living in high-tech societies in the twenty-first century are more likely to roam urban or cyber spaces, equipped with mobile phones and PlayStations. This change, however, does not mean that today’s children are disconnected from the social and personal skills which Rousseau believed could be internalised by observing nature, but somewhat counter-intuitively that modern communication technologies offer them similar opportunities to acquire the same skills. Henry Giroux notes that “new electronic technologies allow kids to immerse themselves in profoundly important forms of social communication, produce a range of creative expressions, and exhibit forms of agency that are both pleasurable and empowering” (Giroux, 2000:13). Despite the obvious opportunities for personal and social development which technology offers young people, adults often view it as a threat to children’s innocence (James, Jenks and Prout, 1998:7; Giroux, 2000, 11–13).

Ecology has also progressively become a significant theme in both Adult and Young SF (Clute and Nicholls, 1999:365).² Pastoral SF, which “depicts an apparently simple and natural way of life, and contrasts it with our complex, technological, anxiety-ridden urban world of the present,” set in our world, or other planets, in the past or future, is also a fully established sub-genre (915–16). However, SF pastoral writings for adults frequently celebrate “the joy and triumph of technological rediscovery and redevelopment” rather than dismissing technology altogether, as exemplified by the works of authors such as Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke (1203). Contemporary Young SF authors do not share this celebratory stance by and large, as their novels reflect adults’ tendency both to contextualise childhood within a natural framework and to posit technology as a corrupting force.³

There is a risk in setting up technology and nature as binary opposites, depicting technology as the enemy of the natural world, in books intended for a technologically savvy generation. Young readers, internalising this technophobic message, are in danger of learning to fear the future and the technologies that they simultaneously depend on, rather than viewing technology as their ally in the creation of sustainable living. Moreover, the persistent bias towards nature and against technology in Young SF sheds light on the extent to which the myth of the innocent child still influences adult ideas on childhood.

The Nodelman–May Debate

In 1985 Perry Nodelman published an article discussing themes of nature and technology in Young SF, focusing on four novels published in or before 1980 (Nodelman, 1985). The novels discussed in the article are Andre Norton’s Outside (1975), H.M. Hoover’s This Time of Darkness (1980), Suzanne Martel’s The City under Ground (1964) and Ann Schlee’s The Vandal (1979). Nodelman discovers many similarities between the four texts as they all “deal significantly with ideas of constriction and freedom by representing them with closed environments and the open spaces outside them” (1985:285). The closed environments described in these novels are technological cities, separated from the world outside, which is considered, for various reasons, too dangerous to explore. The people living in the cities are closely monitored, conforming to restrictive laws in exchange for the comfort of security (286–87). The young protagonists, rebelling against the closed mindedness of the society surrounding them, venture out of the city to discover that a new and exciting world awaits them.

Nodelman considers this schema to be a slightly clichéd “metaphor for growing up and leaving the protected world of childhood” (286). However, his main concern is with the message embedded within these books regarding modern technology. The repressive and sterile environment of the cities is clearly linked to their man-made artificiality and their “avoidance of the natural” in favour of the technological. In contrast, the world outside is a natural paradise, unspoiled by human development (288).⁴ Thus, claims Nodelman, the authors of these SF novels “express a clear prejudice against scientific knowledge” and are “close-minded about technology” (290). Moreover, by presenting the pre-human natural world outside as an ideal place, the authors insinuate that “the past is not just better than an imagined technological nightmare of the future, but also better than what we have now.” The protagonists are initially praised for their aspiration, self-reliance and creativity, the virtues which enabled them to break away from conformity. However, they arrive at a place in which these same virtues must be suppressed lest they spoil nature and recreate another doomed man-made world similar to the one they left behind (292). Nodelman concludes that the ambivalence of the Young SF novels he analyses sets them apart from distinguished SF written for adults because instead of demonstrating a “positive interest in possibility and change,” they merely promote “acceptance of things as they are” (294).⁵

In her response, Jill P. May accuses Nodelman of making inappropriate generalisations (May and Nodelman, 1986). May claims that the books chosen do not appear in any known bibliographical sources, and therefore are not typical (May and Nodelman: 225). Furthermore, she brings forward several examples of books which allegedly undermine Nodelman’s theory that Young SF promotes complacency (227–28).⁶ In May’s opinion, Young SF celebrates “youth, imagination, curiosity, and even denial of tradition, in the hope for future change” (228); however, she does not respond to Nodelman’s claim that Young SF demonises technology and idealises nature. In the ongoing debate carried out in Science Fiction Studies, Nodelman insists that the books he chose to focus on do represent examples of a wide-spread phenomenon. He further comments that although the young protagonists in the books brought forward by May rebel against the system, “the revolutionary fervor is always directed at destroying sophisticated and repressive technology and replacing it with trees and sunshine and flowers” (May and Nodelman: 229).

Nodelman’s essay reflects his anxiety over the value system that adults communicate to children through the books they write and publish for them, or in his words “what we think they need to know” (Nodelman, 1985:292). However, his essay focuses on books written before the use of personal computers became widely spread, and the negative attitudes that these texts display may simply reflect the anxiety which is associated with the anticipation or recent arrival of new technology.⁷ Also, the narrow scope of the texts that Nodelman analyses has already resulted in doubts being cast on the validity of his findings. To counter these criticisms, this chapter focuses on a wider selection of texts written during the years in which a growing percentage of the population in developed countries started to use new communication and information technologies, and people have become accustomed to the existence of these technologies in their lives. These texts were created amidst changing attitudes towards the relationship between humanity and nature and the role of technology within this equation, specifically among environmental scholars trying to assess the current global situation and reflect on possible paths for the future. The outpouring of environmental scholarship, especially in the last decade, renders an in-depth review of the current discourse surrounding ecological issues impossible within the scope of this chapter. I have, however, selected a few studies which offer indicative insight into past and present modes of thinking about technology and the environment rather than suggest a pragmatic plan for action.

Perceptions of Nature Past

In Reinventing Eden (2003) the eco-feminist Carolyn Merchant argues that “Nature, wilderness, and civilisation are socially constructed concepts that change over time and function as stage settings in the progressive narrative” (Merchant: 143). In the pre-Industrial era, the predominant narrative was that of the fall from heaven and salvation—nature and humanity were both subservient to natural law. Humans strove to return to a pre-lapserian harmony with the natural world. As part of a primarily agricultural society, humans had to struggle to cope with nature and adapt in order to survive (Heinonen, 2000:207, table 6). Merchant highlights two opposing images of nature which simultaneously dominated pre-Industrial culture. On the one hand, nature was identified as a “nurturing mother,” who benevolently provided for the needs of humanity. On the other, nature was increasingly perceived as a ferocious female capable of wreaking havoc in the world by inflicting natural disasters on humans. Merchant notes that “the metaphor of the earth as a nurturing mother gradually vanished as a dominant image as the Scientific Revolution proceeded to mechanize and to rationalize the world view” (Merchant, 1995:77).

The conflicting representations of nature as illustrated by Merchant correlate with popular perceptions of the child. In his study of social constructions of childhood Chris Jenks distils two modes of “conceptualizing the child” which he suggests exist throughout history and literature (Jenks, 1996:70). Jenks chooses to represent these modes by the oppositional mythological gods Dionysus and Apollo. The Dionysian approach perceives children as a “wilful material force,” potentially evil, wild, seeking self- gratification and in need of taming (71), while the Apollonian approach worships children as the “source of all that is best in human nature,” possessing a “clarity of vision” lost to adults (73). Clearly, Jenks’ proposed concepts of childhood correlate to Merchant’s two images of nature previously mentioned: the Dionysian child resembles the image of nature as wild and in need of taming, while the Apollonian child is idolised as “The father of the man,”⁸ recalling the way nature is conceptualised as a nurturing mother. Thus, childhood and nature may be perceived as socially constructed interlinked paradigms.

In the seventeenth century, known as the Age of Reason, the narrative of fall and salvation was replaced with the modern idea of personal and collective redemption. Francis Bacon, an influential philosopher of the time and an ardent advocate of scientific progress, declared in 1620 that:

[ … ] there cannot but follow an improvement in man’s estate and an enlargement of his power over nature. For man by the fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and scienc...

Table of contents

• Children’s Literature and Culture
• Contents
• List of Permissions
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One But Only God Can Make a Tree
• Chapter Two The Last Book in the Universe
• Chapter Three The Road Not Taken
• Chapter Four The World Upside Down
• Chapter Five (Tech)Nobody’s Children
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index