The only dragon present failed to sign, which is why they don't get mentioned
Drawing the line between fantasy and science fiction isn't always easy. When people look at science fiction and fantasy, they tend to get fixated on specific elements. Orcs, elves, swords, and dragons equal fantasy. Spaceships, energy weapons, and unflattering unitards equals science fiction. The really persnickety go after plausibility, quickly removing from their sci fi pool anything that reeks of not abiding by general relativity, quantum, and simple conservation of common sense. Those things found floating out there with lots of "then a miracle occurred" in their technological trees are flung back to the slough of fantasy, or into that much shunned bog of "science fantasy."
Drawing and erasing that line is a favorite pastime of those who want to keep their speculative fiction categories nice and tidy. Sure, Star Wars has swords, but they're light swords, and they have magic powers, but there's a (much hated) semi-scientific explanation for the source of those powers, and there are, after all, space ships. Plus robots. So is Star Wars science fiction? What about that other famous Star? Is Star Trek fantasy carefully covered in a deep layer of technobabble sauce? After all, it has faster than light travel and a ridiculous number of humanoid aliens who all seem to be marching in technological lockstep despite having evolved independently on planets light years apart (and yes, I'm aware that there's another—much hated—explanation for that). I mean, for a purist even the idea of a starship that can accomplish its journey in less than a lifetime is enough to kick the offender out of proper sci fi.
It's all much ado about ... well, something, actually. Something we should all be concerned with even if we think Yoda is a brand of root beer and Mr. Spock is that guy who gives child advice. In fact, understanding how that line is drawn could help define, not the next Hollywood blockbuster, but the future of the United States.
YOU SHALL NOT PA... No wait. Yes you shall. Pass right on inside and I'll explain.
There's an easier way to define the two biggest categories of speculative fiction, and it has nothing to do with which one has pointy-eared people called elves and which one features equally mucronate Vulcans. Instead, it's all about time. More specifically, it's about Time's Arrow.
By that term, I don't mean the marvelous and deservedly award-winning little book by Martin Amis. Though if you've not read it, please go do so now. I will wait. I'm also not talking about the short story by Arthur C. Clarke. Which, though Clarke is decidedly a sci fi author, might not pass muster with the pickiest classifiers as it features (shudder) a time machine. And I'm definitely not talking about an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, which also used that extremely popular title.
No. When I talk about Time's Arrow, I'm talking about the concept. Back in 1927, astronomer Arthur Eddington put forward the idea that time moves in a single direction. Or at least that there are a lot of processes in which time certainly seems to have a preference.
This is one of those ideas that may seem immediately obvious to the casual observer (or patently obvious to those of meanest intelligence, take your pick) but for astronomers, physicists, and other scientists, it's quite a big deal. Much of physics is based around the idea of time being "symmetrical." That is, looking at a physical process in forward or reverse, all the physical rules should be preserved no matter which direction you run the test. Forward and backward are both "right," even if we have a bit of prejudice about which seems right to us.
At a microscopic level, this is true. But at a macroscopic level—including everything from events significantly smaller than dropping a tea cup to those larger than initiating a new universe—it certainly doesn't appear to be so. If you watch a movie of most anything running forward or reversed, you can most definitely tell the difference. It may fit the rules, but busted crockery has very rarely been known to fly off the ground and reassemble. That the energy transfer among the component particles is symmetrical seems less important than wondering if you have enough glue in the drawer to mend that cup before mother finds out.
Believe it or not, shoving an expanding and aging universe back down into a bright little point is even more difficult to contemplate than mending a cup. No matter what physics says, time very much seems to be moving in one direction.
Determining the why of that apparent direction has spawned a quiver full of arrows with more elaborate names. There's the Cosmological Arrow of Time, the Thermodynamic Arrow of Time, the Quantum Arrow of Time and several others. All of which may be trumped by the Perceptual Arrow of Time—times moves in one direction because we experience it that way.
Whatever the reason, time certainly seems to keep speeding on, and whether it's expressed biblically (the grass withers, the flower fades...), poetically (The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on...) or Parton-ically (Honey, time marches on and eventually you realize it is marchin' across your face.) we all have the shared experience of seeing that the present becomes the past, the future becomes the present, and suddenly it's 2015 and you still don't have a jet pack.
But what does any of this have to do with making a ditch between orcs and warp drives And what the holy Heinlein does any of that have to do with democracy?
It's like this: fantasy works backward. That's not to say that fantasy fiction is filled with self-assembling tea cups. In fantasy, what's reversed is progress.
Progress is simply the idea that the world becomes better at making buildings, better at making gadgets, better at medicine, better at communicating, better at explaining the world, better at providing a decent life for everyone. Better ... over time. And surely the future shall be better for thee than the past, etc., etc.
In fantasy worlds, that's often not the case. In many fantasies, there was once a time of Great Ones, a category including Noble men, Stately Elves, Impressive Giants, Personally Involved Gods, Bearded Wizards, and Interstellar Mollusks of Ill-Defined Colors. In this past time Great Deeds were done. Great Deeds that include raising of Impregnable Castles that stand still on lonely peaks, the digging of Great Mines that delved deep into Unknown Depths, the weaving of Great Spells that worked Mighty Wonders, the construction of Darkly Towering Towers that shielded deeds of unforgivable self-aggrandizement, and the forging of Great Items that no artisan today can match (this paragraph brought to you by Fantasy Capitals. Fantasy Capitals, lending Terrible Significance to ordinary words for a Very Long Time).
If you're a wee little fellow in a fantasy tale, you can be sure that the most impressive architecture in your neighborhood will be that which is found moldering among the trees and along riverbanks. Lots of lichen-covered faces and giant fingers reaching up from the ground. Ozymandias, it seems, had a lot of kin in fantasyland. In fantasy, progress is only possible relative to the current state. No one expects to reach the vaunted heights of experience that nth great-grandpappy once enjoyed. In fantasy, the Progress Arrow of Time is directed off stage at the Age of Heroes Who Were Better Than Us.
Science fiction, that is proper science fiction according to this 100 percent not original definition, has its arrow firmly pointed toward progress. Yes, things may be worse than they once were due to war, famine, or alien invasion, but it's perfectly possible for our spunky audience surrogates to match and exceed previous achievements. You can build that spaceship, plant that flag, go where no one has gone before without regard to pedantic protectors of infinitives. Star Trek is science fiction not only because it imagines a future world where things are better than today, but because that world is firmly anchored in the idea that things can be better still. Transporters will transport over greater distances. Warp drives will be warpier. And both captains and crew expect to end their lives in a world that is measurably better than the one they were born into.
Lord of the Rings is fantasy because everything of import originated Long, Long Ago. Our characters move against a backdrop of awe-inspiring ruins toting swords, armor, and rings embued with power by people that Knew Stuff. Stuff the likes of us are unlikely to ever cipher. Yes, we can demonstrate tremendous moral fortitude and the decisions and actions still shape the future, but that future is in bounds set back when people were more important. The best future we can look forward to is one that's like the best parts of the present.
Look forward or look back. It's as simple as that.
Stepping out of the shrinking realm of book stores into what passes for reality, Time's Arrow still plays a big role in how we view the world. It's not hard to find those things that we expect to continue racing toward improvement. Computers will get faster, broadband will get broader, and surely thine iPhone will be better next year. In all the small and large physical things that make up our lives, we rightly expect that progress will drive toward not just change, but improvement. Sure, we may pine for buildings, boats, or cars of yore, but as someone who spent his formative years under the two-acre hood of a '73 Mustang, there are very few instances in which I can argue that past offerings are actually "better" than their modern counterparts.
Despite idiots on the History Channel, we don't discover medical secrets buried in dusty tomes. They come out of shiny labs, using research, built on research. Even if we don't know exactly how the Egyptians moved every stone in building the pyramids, we know how to build better than they did. We don't need Valyrian steel. We have lasers.
The accumulation of data turns into increases in information and that eventually becomes improvements in knowledge. That's not only true, but the amount of both data and knowledge is steadily increasing. We're getting better, and we're getting better at getting better. Isaac Newton acknowledged that the scientists of the past had been giants, but he didn't stand in their shadow. He stood on their shoulders and saw further.
But there's a problem with our politics. Somehow, for reasons that are not at all clear, we doubt the existence of progress.
Too often we treat an 18th century quote as if it's the final card in an argument. Too often we look at yellowing documents as if they came not from politicians as venal and self-important as anyone on the stage today, but from marble demigods. Too often we weigh the best possible data available today, discover the best possible course of action available today, then say to ourselves, "Now how would a guy in a powdered wig have handled this?"
Oh, progress happens. There's a sweet relationship between Time's Arrow and the Arc of the Moral Universe. Greater knowledge has brought not only increased acceptance, but increased freedom. Only the arc isn't just long, it's much, much longer than it need be. A big part of that all too often we live in fantasy democracy ... Fantocracy.
How do you know you're in Fantocracy? If you've ever cited Adam Smith or Benjamin Franklin as an authority in an economic debate, you've put a foot in Fantocracy. If you believe no politician today can match the erudition and political brilliance of Thomas Jefferson, you're in at least knee-deep. If your philosophy of good governance is based on George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or even a Roosevelt to be named later, you're fully in Fantocracy. If your argument for the Second Amendment is based on anything said by Noah Webster, James Madison, or anyone else who died before the invention of the rifled slug ... well, Mr. Bilbo, let me see if I can rustle up some taters.
That's not to say we should discard what those figures out of the past gave us. Of course we shouldn't. It's not to say we shouldn't value our history. Of course we should. But if we value the past more than the present, we won't just be in a fantasy democracy, we'll be in a dying democracy. Of late, we've been a little sickly around the edges.
Our knowledge is steadily increasing. That includes the knowledge in how to form and manage a stable government. That includes the knowledge in how to run an economy. That includes the knowledge of how to regulate business, how to manage the environment, how to provide the greatest freedom to the greatest number.
We need to honor our Constitution not because it's holy writ pass down on stone tablets by Very Smart People who had insight and knowledge we can't match today, but because it was a very good working document, a platform from which to sally forth into democracy, with the expectation that changing conditions would require responsive, progressive legislation.
We need to respect the "Founding Fathers" and the other figures of our history not because they had a pipeline into secret knowledge, but because they knew less than we do and still did so much. We should respect them for doing what they did with tools, knowledge, and experience that was much worse than what we enjoy today. We should respect their struggles, enjoy their insights ... and be ready to correct their frequent, huge, clearly visible mistakes. We should admire them for what they did compared to others of their time ... but only that.
You. You. Yes, you. You can understand economics better than Adam Smith. You can grasp the relationship between church and state better than Washington, fathom the balance between legislative and executive branches better than Jefferson, and wrestle with a thousand, a million, ideas they never knew existed.
All those people may be giants. Your job is not to stand behind them. It's to climb up on their shoulders.
And see further.