{"id":188,"date":"2018-01-21T18:42:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T00:42:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lfs.org\/blog\/?p=188"},"modified":"2024-03-28T22:39:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T03:39:08","slug":"futures-in-collision-fireflys-divided-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/futures-in-collision-fireflys-divided-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Futures in Collision: Firefly’s Divided Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Actor Nathan Fillion, who played Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds. Creative Commons photo by vagueonthehow.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

By William H. Stoddard<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the decade and a half since Firefly<\/em> came on the air, it\u2019s emerged as one of the high points of television science fiction, both for its characterization, and for the unusual depth in which its setting is imagined. In fact, that depth helps explain the characterization. The crew and passengers of the Serenity<\/em> come from different places in a complex world, and their motives and relationships reflect this.<\/p>\n

On a first viewing, they\u2019re inevitably two-dimensional, inviting the watcher to see them as dramatic stereotypes. Fitting the description of Firefly<\/em> as a \u201cspace Western,\u201d they often seem like Western stereotypes: the cynical veteran, the glamorous dance-hall girl, the preacher, the na\u00efve city dweller out of his depth. But over the course of the first (and only) season, viewers came to know their backstories, and to see their actions in more depth, in relation to their pasts as well as their presents.
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Their society is an internally divided one. Unlike Star Trek<\/em>\u2019s United Federation of Planets, it isn\u2019t a unified organization with only external foes; unlike Star Wars<\/em>, with the Empire facing the Rebel Alliance, it isn\u2019t neatly divided into heroes and villains, who see each other only from a distance.<\/p>\n

Both sides are represented on board the Serenity<\/em>: the Alliance by Inara Serra, Simon and River Tam, and probably Derrial Book, as part of his mysterious past; the Independents or \u201cBrowncoats\u201d by Malcolm Reynolds, his loyal ally Zoe Washburne, and Kaylee Frye. The two main romantic tensions within this group, between Mal and Inara and between Kaylee and Simon, both cross over this split.<\/p>\n

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The situation can be read as part of the \u201cspace Western\u201d aspect. Many of the classic Westerns took place in the years following the American Civil War, a struggle between the central authority of the Union and the rebellion of the Confederacy.<\/p>\n

The Independents could very well have adopted the motto of the American South, \u201cAll we ask is to be left alone.\u201d It\u2019s noteworthy, though, that Whedon has inverted one aspect of that struggle: His Alliance, after the war is over, maintains what amounts to slavery, with many people held legally in bondage (at one point Inara claims Mal as her \u201cbondsman\u201d), whereas the Browncoats appear to have defended independence for others as well as themselves. This allows Mal to be a sympathetic figure, and helped lead to the show\u2019s fans calling themselves \u201cBrowncoats.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to it than that. The \u2018Verse, the setting of Firefly<\/em>, also reflects a quite different conflict, one within science fiction itself.<\/p>\n

How do we envision the future? Much of science fiction is set in imagined futures. Of course the human imagination can produce all sorts of things, and science fictional futures are diverse. But are there common patterns?<\/p>\n

One common pattern can be seen in the fiction of H.G. Wells. Wells is a deeply ambivalent writer at times, one whose work often is deeply pessimistic, as in the grim visions of humanity\u2019s evolutionary future in The Time Machine<\/em> and The War of the Worlds<\/em> (where the vampiric Martians are described as the inevitable end state of intelligent life) or of the imperfectly humanized creatures of The Island of Dr. Moreau<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But he also hints at a different future in novels such as The Sleeper Awakes<\/em> and A Story of the Days to Come <\/em>and in the final paragraphs of \u201cThe Star.\u201d This Wellsian future is highly urbanized, with large, centralized populations sustained by advanced technology. At his most optimistic, Wells hoped to see this technology developed and controlled by scientific elites, such as the \u201csamurai\u201d of A Modern Utopia<\/em>. Visually, this is a world of clean, well ventilated, brightly lit cities, usually with urban planning that ensures a consistent architectural style \u2013 in other words, it\u2019s what James Scott (in Seeing like a State<\/em>) calls \u201chigh modernism,\u201d as exemplified by Le Corbusier.<\/p>\n

Wells\u2019s vision was picked up, after him, by Hugo Gernsback, who made it part of his vision of the future. Isaac Asimov portrayed several such urbanized futures\u2014in the Earth of The Caves of Steel<\/em>, for example, and in Trantor, the planet-spanning city of the Foundation stories; he also portrayed scientific elites, such as the Council of Science of his juvenile \u201cLucky Starr\u201d series, the Eternals of The End of Eternity<\/em> (though they were a deeply flawed elite), and the psychohistorians of the Second Foundation. Disney\u2019s Tomorrowland started out offering a similarly shiny high-tech future, and the original Star Trek<\/em> helped bring it to a mass audience: The Enterprise<\/em>\u2019s voyages might take it into all sorts of dark, dangerous places, but the ship itself, with its clean, brightly lit corridors, was like a Wellsian city of the future in miniature.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a different image of the future was emerging. If space really was \u201cthe final frontier,\u201d as Star Trek <\/em>described it, its people could be envisioned as frontier dwellers\u2014explorers and colonists struggling for survival and perhaps wealth in a rough, dangerous environment.<\/p>\n

E.E. Smith hinted at such a vision in his Lensman novels, with their portrayals of \u201cmeteor miners\u201d and of a uranium mine on a remote planet (with two different heroes assuming the role of miners during undercover investigations); but it was Robert Heinlein, in his juveniles, and later Poul Anderson, who gave us a fuller vision of space travel as a continuation of the American westward movement. Their stories also reflected American ideas about constitutional government and free enterprise, in contrast to the more planned worlds that Wells and Asimov thought were inevitable.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s striking about Firefly<\/em> is that its setting combines both visions of the future. Most of the episodes take place in \u201cfrontier\u201d worlds, with relatively small populations leading hardscrabble lives and having little access to technology on a day-to-day basis. But elsewhere in the same interplanetary community are the wealthy, high-tech, shiny worlds of the Alliance. Alliance military ships travel the same regions of space as the Serenity<\/em> and other beat-up small spaceships, imposing the authority of the central government. And the political and cultural elements of both futures are also present, perhaps best captured in the opening of the film Serenity<\/em>, which shows a very young River Tam in a high-tech classroom questioning the rationale for Unification, the Alliance\u2019s imposition of its control over the outer worlds.
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Curiously, Joss Whedon, the show\u2019s creator, is definitely progressive politically, and opposed to the libertarian or conservative ideas the \u201cfrontier\u201d setting suggests; and it\u2019s not uncommon for the show\u2019s fans to share his political outlook. But Whedon made Malcolm Reynolds, a staunchly libertarian independent, the show\u2019s hero, and the \u201cBrowncoat\u201d fans of the show largely seem to identify with him.<\/p>\n

Firefly<\/em> seems to offer, as J.R.R. Tolkien put it, not allegory, which imposes an interpretation on the viewer, but applicability, which sets views free to find their own understandings of it, and to like it even while disagreeing with aspects of it. And this is also the case for libertarian viewers, who can appreciate Whedon\u2019s making such an eloquent case for values he doesn\u2019t entirely share. (The Libertarian Futurist Society awarded Whedon a Special Award in 2006, for Serenity<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

As for the \u201cscience fictional\u201d aspect of Firefly<\/em>, here, too, its two colliding futures embody two different understandings of science itself. The Alliance reflects science as an organized body of knowledge, on whose basis rational plans can be made and order imposed on the world, in Scott\u2019s \u201chigh modernist\u201d style. This is science as the application of existing knowledge. But frontier settings, which the independent worlds represent, confront things that aren\u2019t yet known or ordered, that have to be discovered, and thus reflect science as a process of discovery, one in which we don\u2019t yet know what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

And at the deepest level, the revelations of Serenity<\/em> show that the Alliance, in important ways, didn\u2019t and doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s doing, and needs to be open to discovery, and to the free communication of what has been discovered.<\/p>\n

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IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE PROMETHEUS AWARDS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

* Prometheus winners:\u00a0<\/strong>For the full list of Prometheus winners, finalists and nominees \u2013 including the annual Best Novel and Best Classic Fiction (Hall of Fame) categories and occasional Special Awards \u2013 visit the enhanced\u00a0Prometheus Awards page<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>on the LFS website, which now includes convenient links to all published essay-reviews in our Appreciation series explaining why each of more than 100 past winners since 1979 fits the awards\u2019 distinctive dual focus.<\/p>\n

* Read \u201cThe Libertarian History of Science Fiction,\u201d<\/strong><\/a>an essay in the international magazine\u00a0Quillette<\/em>\u00a0that favorably highlights the Prometheus Awards, the Libertarian Futurist Society and the significant element of libertarian sf\/fantasy in the evolution of the modern genre.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Watch <\/strong>videos of past Prometheus Awards ceremonies (including the recent 2023 ceremony with inspiring and amusing speeches by Prometheus-winning authors Dave Freer and Sarah Hoyt),Libertarian Futurist Society panel discussions with noted sf authors and leading libertarian writers, and other LFS programs on the Prometheus Blog\u2019s\u00a0Video page.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

* Check out the Libertarian Futurist Society\u2019s Facebook page<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0for periodic updates and links to Prometheus Blog posts.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0Join us! <\/em><\/strong>To help sustain the Prometheus Awards and support a cultural and literary strategy to appreciate and honor freedom-loving fiction, \u00a0join<\/a>the Libertarian Futurist Society, a non-profit all-volunteer association of freedom-loving sf\/fantasy fans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actor Nathan Fillion, who played Captain Malcolm “Mal” Reynolds. Creative Commons photo by vagueonthehow.\u00a0 By William H. Stoddard In the decade and a half since Firefly came on the air, it\u2019s emerged as one of the high points of television science fiction, both for its characterization, and for the unusual depth in which its setting … Continue reading Futures in Collision: Firefly’s Divided Society<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,41,8],"tags":[566,11,1058,567,1368,536,2306,2305,371,1309,873,1350],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay","category-movies","category-review","tag-e-e-smith","tag-firefly","tag-h-g-wells","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-joss-whedon","tag-liberty","tag-malcolm-reynolds","tag-serenity-space-western","tag-slavery","tag-star-trek","tag-star-wars","tag-tolkien"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe8nGl-32","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7257,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions\/7257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lfs.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}