TL;DR: Telling a reader what to think will just irritate them.

On morality in fantasy and science fiction

This a repost of an article I did that evaluates morality /ethics in science fiction and fantasy. The same lines of argument can be applied to any genre but my knowledge is in SFF.  This is the moderately less contentious and shorter version. 😉

Ultimately, you want readers to buy your book (really just a consumer product although I secretly pretend it is a work of art) and it doesn’t matter what their views are as long as they buy your book. Not everyone like it, but hopefully some will love it. Under no circumstances would I ever recommend talking down to the reader, any reader. Soap boxing your political (e.g. moral) beliefs is really a no-no. Make the readers emote but do not irritate them.

In this essay I review the judgement of morality as given by the author from the evidence of their texts. I will state my own preferences and understanding of the texts used, and come to a conclusion that is consistent with my appreciation of said texts.

The opening scene of A Game of Thrones

The opening scene of the game of thrones series tells of humans who venture into an unforgiving winter landscape, if nature killed them we would reconcile that as “expected” and even “normal”.

Man fought against nature and lost: this does not require a moral judgement from the reader. As a brief aside, I will acknowledge that some people may assign value judgements of good or evil to nature that requires nature to have a thinking will (more on that later). In this scene one of the characters witnesses the bloody remains of a massacre, of which children and adults have been gore-rotted  and given that it is the opening scene there cannot be a complete understanding of what happened and so we cannot assign blame or make a moral judgement.

Shortly after, we read that some of the characters are killed by an unknown terror that could be an animal, a person or something else unworldly. We don’t learn enough about it from the opening scene to a judgement. When people cannot assign blame to any particular thing then is no judgement of anything to be wrong. There was no wilful killing. This is akin to the statements that psychologist Sam Harris makes with regards to morality;  confer: would we judge a bear to be morally wrong if it mauls a child? I think very few people would assign blame to the animal as it did what we expected and that it did not make a rational decision in the same way that a human does. Similarly, dying of hypothermia does require us to place a value judgement upon nature and to call it evil or wrong.

In the next scene we learn that one of the people who escaped from the opening scene is to be executed as a traitor. I did not fully understand the reason why or how this person escaped, it seemed like a bit of a plot device at the request of a publisher to have action in the opening scenes (IMHO 😉 ); however, not to digress we learn that one of the main characters, a protagonist, has to execute this supposed traitor. It is an act which I also couldn’t quite fathom as to why it was necessary so was reluctant to accept why this should happen. It seemed like a plot device rather than an actual virtue / principle of character.

For now, let’s accept that it was a principle of this society: a human must kill another human as it is required by law. Depending on your ideology, this will either be seen as morally right or morally wrong. We can draw obvious parallels to modern capital punishment but in this essay I wish to state no preference to either, and I wish to state that I have no desire to tell you what to think. The beauty of GRRM is that neither did he; GRRM’s view of morality isn’t necessary, he is writing a story not a diatribe. Not once does GRRM pull you aside and say “Hey reader, Ned Stark had to kill this guy because that’s just how the story works but I really don’t support this viewpoint, just so y’all know: killing is bad m’kay.”

It would be totally redundant.

Evangelism

I abhor idealistic evangelism in story telling. It makes for poor story telling and is thoroughly inane, it is also frowned upon as a valid form of fiction writing yet many authors and story tellers continue to do it. Gods, why? Please stop doing this if you write fiction or ever plan to. Just like the GRRM mock quotation above, it really isn’t a good idea to have anything that reads like the following: “Dear reader, you are too stupid/ unwise to make up your own mind so I will feed you with my ideology and tell you what to think”.

(I realise the irony of that last paragraph… but forgive me please. 😉 )

This is one of the things I appreciate about GRRM’s work, that and I think he has great skill as a wordsmith. In his books people meet unjust ends yet at no point does the author tell you who to side with, nor who you should judge, he leaves that to you as the reader. I’ve had many conversations about the characters in his works and had a lot of fun disagreeing with friends about who is a fun character to follow or who is better than another.

The folly of dualism

You may then wonder where I stand with Tolkien whom is one of the greatest writers yet a central construction is the dualistic,  i.e. binary, nature of good and evil in his works. I cut Tolkien much slack because a simple casting of (say) LOTR’s morality as binary would be a  naive interpretation. Tolkien does use words like “good“and “evil” but rarely does he assign the value of absolute good or absolute evil to any of his characters. Sauron is perhaps the closest when he refers in an absolute way to either value judgement, yet he does not do this with Melkor  (Sauron’s former boss) in the Children of Hurin (or the Silmarilion). Neither is Ungoliant (who appears in the Silmarillion) denigrated in a cheap way as just being a character who is simply evil. All three are described as treacherous or dark but neither appear to be handled in a childlike manner where the author commands you to dislike either character. Admittedly Tolkien treads close to the edge with the dark characters but on the flip side to that argument is that I feel his good characters are shades of grey.

Who is the most good in the lord of the rings? The elves? Perhaps, yet they are reluctant to help the humans, yet they might be ‘more good’ than the humans but given that they have participated in war then are they are pure as the Hobbits?

The Hobbit have no taste for war or conflict yet Bilbo considers killing Gollum (heeds Gandalf’s words and for goes it), Frodo had wished that Bilbo had killed Gollum yet Gandalf points out that not even the wisest can see all ends. Is the explanation there that those particular Hobbits were under the influence of the ring? Perhaps, however, the ring is a plot device in this case, and the underlying fact is that a moral choice is presented as a shade of grey. The good guys are willing to consider killing as a solution but are persuaded otherwise by Gandalf. I will therefore admit that Gandalf is a likely voice of the author and (ergo) his opinion on morality and the inevitability of war (and the deaths that come with it). Recall: Gandalf, Pippin and Merry are present in the battle at Minas Tirith.

What or Science Fiction?

Some of the classics are written in such a way that challenges our knowledge of what is and isn’t acceptable. StarWars rehashes the classic good versus evil style plot, although you aren’t forced to side with the good guys the story portrays them in a much better light. This is where the originals shine and the newer ones are dulled down; older is more varied, while the newer are too simple.

The original SW films at least provided some shades of grey: the rogue is a rogue. Han Solo shot first. We may never behave like Han Solo but that doesn’t mean his charm doesn’t appeal to us.

Contrast to the unforgivable error in episode 3 where Obiwan Kenobi decries that the Sith are evil because they are absolutists. Yet this is at odds with how the Jedi and Sith are depicted, both are depicted in a fairly absolutist light yet it seems that the Sith are more likely to be pragmatic to get the job done rather than depend upon the rigours of scripture as the Jedi would.

Dune is one of my favourite novels. Herbert writes a lot about tyranny and the folly of following powerful and charismatic leaders. That isn’t to say that all leaders are bad, or that all charismatic leaders are bad, but rather we don’t always tend to see the flaws of the president we love the most ( 😉 ). I don’t think Herbert has succumb to dualism either, despite the myriad references to the Abrahamic religions, the author has the foresight to write the book in a fairly neutral light. He does not say which religion is better, or whether religion is good or bad. He points out the problems of blind faith and the power struggles that have surrounded religion: in many cases I do not detect an overly critical personal tone. It is my opinion that he lets you make your own decisions and that he merely presents an interesting set of stories.

… and that is how I think it should be handled by all authors of fictional works.