On Theme in Science Fiction

Today I want to talk about themes in science fiction.

Themes, thematic statements, morals, messages. For simplification, I’d say these are essentially the same thing and use the umbrella term theme.

Conventional literary theory states that a theme of a book or movie is what it’s about. It’s the message, the moral, the observation on the human condition that tells us where we might be headed in the future. For example (and this is not specific to science fiction) True love conquers all. That’s possibly the most popular literary theme of them all. Just ask the Happily Every After segment of the romance genre.

When I started writing in the early naughties, I picked up a load of ‘how to write a novel’ books. And they always made theme out to be a big deal.

“Have you found your theme?”

“If you story doesn’t have a theme, you haven’t finished writing it.”

And so on…

For many years, I used to believe this.

I don’t now.

Occasional literary scholar and victory gardener, JR Handley, has something to teach us on this. Themes, he tells us, are included in stories to give English teachers something to talk about.

I refer to this sage wisdom as Handley’s Theory. (By the way, JR Handley’s blog is always well worth reading, which you can do so here. Better still, subscribe to his newsletter on the site, which he updates more regularly.)

Themes are also a way for an author to signal their tribe in a hyper-partisan world. In Anglo-American publishing, some of society’s tribes and some ideas are lauded, others are suppressed. If you want a book deal, make sure your book’s theme matches the prejudices of your potential agent and publisher.

“Capitalism is a merciless rapacious evil. In the future, corporations will become ever more exploitative.”

 That is a popular theme that will resonate with some tribes and jar with others. Personally, I’d say that theme is so ubiquitous in mainstream science fiction that I’d be more interested in a novel with a theme that suggests the opposite:

“Carefully harnessed capitalism is the only way toward a better future.”

As a political statement, I’m not sure I’d agree with either, but the latter could be an intriguing theme to read. Or to write.

It won’t happen in mainstream Anglo-American publishing industry, though. Attempting to get a book with such a theme published would be career suicide.

However, I’ve just contradicted Handley’s Theory. I’m sure he’s right in many cases, but not for all.

And I’ll disagree with my friend again. One of my all-time favorite books is The Forever War. It has several powerful themes and one of those is the alienation of combat veterans from the civilians back home. It was written in 1974 by Joe Haldeman shortly after his return to America from the Vietnam War. The alienation in his book feels personal, and I’m sure it was.

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Haldeman heightens the reading experience by linking the alienation to the extreme relativistic effects of travelling at near lightspeed to the combat zones and back. It’s brilliant work and inspired me to write one of my earliest short stories: The Meandering Mayhem of Thogron Throatbiter (which is available here).

Themes can be a powerful factor in a great book, but the author doesn’t need to write any themes for it to be great. And where the author does write themes, the reader may not consider them to be of great importance.

For example, in researching this topic, I came across a suggested theme for The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown:

“Over time all organizations acquire dark secrets, and therefore it is always important to question authority”.

I can see how that could be a part of the book, but I read that novel, and I didn’t get a sense of that. For me it was about the protagonist coming across a girl in Paris and spending the entire book running away from bad guys. That was what made it a page turner for me.

Or The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. A suggested theme is that it’s about the way authoritarian regimes use spectacle to control populations. Again, I can see that fits, but for me it was about the hero playing a rigged game and winning anyway (Which felt personal; I’ve experienced a few RPG campaigns like that