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THE SCIENCE FICTION CONNECTION

An alternative look at the enduring role of science fiction

in today's global defence and security

 
It is an old cliché, with its many permutations, that history tends to repeat itself.

Despite the events of the past 2,500 years having undeniably demonstrated, time and time again, that wars, conflicts and intolerance (each with its spurious justification for existing in the first place), achieve nothing bar further destruction and human degradation, we find ourselves in 2021 still faced with the same wars, conflicts and intolerance. Only this time they have taken on new forms, such as nuclear proliferation, potential conflicts in outer space, cyber warfare, nations bickering with other nations, governments pointing the finger at other governments for things that they themselves are doing, environmental destruction and so on.  The subject of defence has become completely jumbled up with war and security, yet the three are far from being the same thing.

We could tentatively say that knowledge has been selectively transferred along the centuries, with some subjects – such as making better weapons - carried forward much better than others; a sort of selective “learning from experience”. But what about ethics, morals, humanity, tolerance?

The technology now exists which can see to it that clean running water, proper sanitary conditions, access to adequate medical treatment, food, energy and shelter be available to the entire world population, and yet this is not happening. While billions upon billions of various currencies are spent on warfare, security, defence and space exploration, millions of people are regularly displaced during conflicts, millions more have no access to proper education, and hundreds of millions live in abject poverty and dismal conditions, with the natural environment being destroyed concurrently. What is happening to the flow of knowledge for the betterment of all and for a flourishing and inclusive civilisation?

In his classic 1925 treatise on tolerance, Tolerance – The Story of Man’s Struggle for the Right to Think , renowned historian Hendrik Van Loon explains how “ A sudden and apparently spontaneous outbreak of a very high form of civilisation is only possible when all the racial, climatic, economic and political conditions are present in an ideal proportion or in as nearly an ideal condition and proportion as they can be in this imperfect world. ”

Van Loon goes on to describe a number of early civilisations such as the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Phoenicians etc. and how in every one of these early centres of civilisation, certain necessary elements for success were always lacking.

“When the miracle of a perfect balance finally did occur, in Greece, in the fifth century before our era, it lasted only a very short time … in the colonies of the Aegean Sea. A few hundred years before the Trojan war, this narrow bit of mountainous territory, ninety miles long and only a few miles wide, had been conquered by Greek tribes from the mainland who there had founded a number of colonial towns of which Ephesus, Phocaea, Erythraea and Miletus were the best known, and it was along those cities that at last the conditions of success were present in such perfect proportion that civilisation reached a point which has sometimes been equalled but never has been surpassed.

“In the first place, these colonies were inhabited by the most active and enterprising elements from among a dozen different nations. In the second place, there was a great deal of general wealth derived from the carrying trade between the old and the new world, between Europe and Asia. In the third place, the form of government under which the colonists lived gave the majority of the freemen a chance to develop their talents to the very best of their ability…”  There was no warring, but instead an atmosphere of intellectual and spiritual freedom, in a city [Miletus] filled with the pungent smell of ships from all the seven seas, rich with fabrics of the Orient, merry with the laughter and well-fed populace.  No wonder that a race composed of such sublime individualists offered great scope for the development of a very independent spirit of thought.

The works of the many great thinkers of that era have come up the line, some unaltered from their original form, through 2,500 years of history to this present day: a testament to the “sudden and apparently spontaneous outbreak of a very high form of civilisation… only possible when all the racial, climatic, economic and political conditions are present in an ideal proportion” .

But what has this got to do with science fiction I hear you say?

In the last few decades, we have witnessed technology evolving at a vertiginous rate. The emergence of a new cyber age, with the rapid and significant developments in the fields of computing (quantum and traditional), communications, big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning – to name but a few – has opened the door to a new form of battlefield where warfare no longer takes place with solid weapons or troops but instead is fought across the ether.

However, whichever way you look at it, warfare and conflict between individuals, groups and nations or groups of nations are still taking place – only the format has changed. No longer with swords, axes, poison, siege engines, bows and arrows or Greek fire, but with computing technology, nuclear bombs, biological weapons, guided missiles, social media and a whole plethora of destructive, covert or overt,  methods.  The instigation of conflicts between people, groups and nations by a hidden third party for vested interests has not changed – it is as prevalent and real now as it was in ancient times and throughout history.

Therefore, since we seem to have been unable to learn from the destructive actions of the past, allowing history to repeat itself over and over, perhaps we can learn from the future and make the right choices for posterity. Science fiction can help us look at many different kinds of futures, each with their potential outcomes – good or bad or anywhere in between.

Science fiction creativity does make significant contributions to defence and security strategists, groups and academics around the world not only in setting up a wide range of potential scenarios but also in describing and predicting their likely outcomes, good or bad.

This paper takes a brief look at the current status quo of global defence and security and the role of science fiction within it from the viewpoint of the urgent need to change course once and for all and avoid ghastly future consequences so often fictionalised in sci-fi literature and films.

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

MEDITATION XVII
Devotions upon Emergent Occasions
John Donne, 1624

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