Science Fiction, Utopia, and the Icarian Project

A short fable in Bertrand de Jouvenel's 1955 On Sovereignty features two visions of society, Babylon and Icaria. Babylon is a large and complex society with a high level of economic development. Babylonians discarded religious perspectives some time ago. Instead they govern themselves with an "agile intelligence." They enjoy discussing a wide variety of political and ethical systems and support a wide variety of life styles. Their reluctance to pass judgment on other perspectives and their commitment to liberty causes governance problems, but all Babylonians are willing to obey the law in a prudential fashion. Amidst this chaotic society grows a group of citizens who yearn for Icaria, a societas perfectas, in which a common truth is acknowledged and pursued. Not content to live as a sect within Babylon, the Icarians seek to transform Babylonia. They acknowledge that this process will necessitate periods in which repression is high, even total, but this apparatus will disappear as soon as the Babylonians recognize true freedom.

Peter Y. Paik would certainly disagree that de Jovenel's contention that "civilized society" can be shaped to mirror the "unity of a savage society" is a doomed project. Nevertheless, his From Utopia to Apocalypse is a provocative, and often brilliant, mediation on this fable; Paik is intensely interested in the formulation of Icarian alternatives to a liberal society. Very much in the spirit of Engels (who complained that the utopian imagination could only projected "duodecimal Jerusalems" without models of revolutionary change), Paik contends that while utopian thought might provide a "conceptual horizon," it is instead the genre of science fiction which provides the most productive insights. Only it is willing to examine the nature of revolutionary change.

While this critique of literary utopias has some merit, it is certainly overstated by Paik. To cite a few examples, what can be more direct, and more chilling, than Socrates' recommendation at the end of Book VII of The Republic that an ideal society can be achieved by sending all but children under ten from the city? Or consider the actions of King Utopus, the founder of More's ideal society, who used conscripted native labor to create the island of Utopia and ordered the construction of cities—all alike—and set down rules for family life and even dress. Or the overthrow of men by the enslaved women of Perkin's Herland and their subsequent sacrifices. Nevertheless, Paik is correct to focus on science fiction (or at least some of its subgenres), for insights into the costs of founding new societies—"the killing of the innocent, the deception of the ruled, the apodictic institution of authority, and the unpunished crimes of the founders" (23).

While he notes numerous examples in passing, Paik offers close readings of four texts: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbens' graphic novel The Watchmen, the films of Jang Jun-Hwan, the anime of Hayao Miyazaki, V is for Vendetta and the Matrix trilogy. Unfortunately, Paik does not provide his standards for the selection of these texts. Nor does he explain why he focuses on visual expressions of science fiction although perhaps one could assume that this format offers the most vivid scenarios of revolutionary change. The selections, however, do dramatically illustrate Palik's intention to examine the scope and horrors of foundings as emphasized by political theorists from Thucydides to Machiavelli to Carl Schmitt.

Take Watchmen, for example. The plot is so fantastic and dizzying that even the most confident reader might find this graphic novel an interpretive challenge. A group of superheroes aid the West during the Cold War helping the United States win the war in Vietnam which President Nixon promptly makes the fifty-first state. Watergate investigators are assassinated. When some superheroes are briefly captured and another publicly humiliated, the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan and Pakistan and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear war. The angry superheroes introduce an enormous tentacled creature into Manhattan. Panel after panel illustrates destruction and gore...