Is Lord of the Flies SF or is it not? (and related matters)

Extollager

Extollager

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 21, 2010
Messages
9,055
In 1962, Kingsley Amis, Brian Aldiss, and C. S. Lewis met in Lewis's college rooms to discuss sf. The conversation was recorded (how I wish I knew what happened to the tape) and transcribed.

An excerpt:

Lewis: ...The world of serious fiction is very narrow. [I think he means "literary fiction."]

Amis: Too narrow if you want to deal with a broad theme. For example, Philip Wylie in The Disappearance wants to deal with the difference between men and women in a general way, in twentieth-century society, unencumbered by local and temporary considerations; his point, as I understand it, is that men and women, shorn of their social roles, are really very much the same. Science-fiction, which can presuppose a major change in our environment, is the natural medium for discussing a subject of that kind. Look at the job of dissecting human nastiness carried out in Golding's Lord of the Flies.

Lewis: That can't be science-fiction.

Amis: I would dissent from that. It starts off with a characteristic bit of science-fiction situation: World War III has begun, bombs dropped and all that.... [ellipses in original]

Lewis: Ah, well, you're now taking teh German view that any romance about the future is science-fiction. I'm not sure that this is a useful classification.

Amis: 'Science-fiction' is such a hopelessly vague label.

Lewis: And of course a great deal of it isn't science- fiction. Really it's only a negative criterion; anything which is not naturalistic, which is not about what we call the real world.

Aldiss: I think we oughtn't to try to define it, because it's a self-defining thing in a way. We know where we are. You're right, though, about Lord of the Flies. The atmosphere is a science-fiction atmosphere.


So there we have three sf notables discussing whether or not Golding's book is sf. What do you think? Me, I'm with Amis. If we rule out Lord of the Flies, wouldn't we have to rule out Earth Abides, which one the International Fantasy Award for Fiction? Or McCarthy's The Road -- which some will think should indeed be ruled out as sf? If Golding's book, McCarthy's book, even Stewart's book are not sf, what are they?

I doubt we will come to unanimity on this, but the discussion should be interesting.

Having taught a high school course in sf (over 40 years ago!), I like to think in terms of a course for secondary schools or college, an introductory sf course. I said I was with Amis but I might hesitate to include Golding's novel, where I would think there's no question about McCarthy and Stewart being candidates for the reading list.
 
I would say no, because everything that happens in the story happens in the world as is known. No changes to the real world are needed for the story. No suspension of disbelief is needed to accept the setting. In your Earth Abides example, that is post holocaust ie a world that does not exist. You must suspend disbelief to accept the setting.
If you do end up teaching LoTF, it would probably be good to show the real life example of how a bunch of Polynesian teens lived well in a real life situation similar to LOTF
 
The post-apocalyptic element is only background rather than truly part of the story. It provides a thematic echo to what the boys' makeshift society descends to, and it provides a plot reason why they're not rescued sooner. In my view, that isn't enough to make the story SF.

Naomi Mitchison even called The Lord of the Rings "science fiction". I think the term was probably defined more loosely then, in the UK at least, as the genre hadn't really taken off.
 
I don’t really care much about genre definitions or the circular discussions that inevitably fail to pin them down. To each their own.
I am probably a terrible liberal- minded agnostic in these matters, and I like Kingsley’s approach to the subject in general. New Maps of Hell is a decent book.
 
Last edited:
AllanR wrote, "If you do end up teaching LoTF" -- I retired a few years ago, so no course planning is likely to lie ahead for me.

HB wrote, "Naomi Mitchison even called The Lord of the Rings 'science fiction'. I think the term was probably defined more loosely then, in the UK at least, as the genre hadn't really taken off."

I consider 1887-1912 to be the Golden Age of Modern Fantasy and include works of sf (The War of the Worlds) and horror (Dracula), where I wouldn't be likely to refer to those works as "fantasy" now.

I hope we hear from some more folks about Lord of the Flies, but the tendency so far is definitely to reckon it as not qualifying as sf. What about the question, then, regarding how you would classify it, and perhaps other works that are sometimes regarded as sf but which you wouldn't include? In a different thread we had McCarthy's The Road said to be not sf; so what is it? (Yes, I do think it's "science fiction.")
 
There are elements of SF in LOTF, but just because of that doesn't make it science fiction. In the same way that elements of time travel don't make 'A Christmas Carol' a work of science fiction.

If I had to classify LOTF (other than under the title of 'Classic') it would be as 'survivalism'.
 
HareBrain said:
The post-apocalyptic element is only background rather than truly part of the story. It provides a thematic echo to what the boys' makeshift society descends to, and it provides a plot reason why they're not rescued sooner. In my view, that isn't enough to make the story SF.

Naomi Mitchison even called The Lord of the Rings "science fiction". I think the term was probably defined more loosely then, in the UK at least, as the genre hadn't really taken off.
Click to expand...


Yes, this sounds right. The conflict going on elsewhere is simply a pretext for the setting of the story, the appearance of the pilot and the length of time until they are rescued. It could just as easily have been a storm in the Pacific and them ending up on an uninhabited desert island.

It's antithesis of the 'Boys Own' adventures, and a commentary on how quickly order and discipline can deteriorate into anarchy and superstition when authority is not present. A quick look on Wikipedia suggests that the author's original intention was much different to how things ended up in the book.
 
I see LOTF as allegorical and so it takes a kind of dreamlike spec feeling to cut the island off etc. but the story itself is about humanity and the war and doesn’t require the spec elements to work. So I’d put it as literary allegory.
 
I've started writing a reply to this several times and deleted all of them. I suppose when we come down to it, in my gut calling LotF sci-fi doesn't feel right, but I struggle to think of a decisive reason it's not that doesn't seem to fall foul of stuff I would consider in the genre. It seems to me to be a book right on the borders of the genre. I suppose the reason it doesn't feel right is that the speculative element is stage setting rather than something actively grappled with, but at the same time, that doesn't feel like anything particularly new. A very light speculative element as well as being stage setting?

If sci-fi is a softly defined set, I'd say it is right on the edge, in the fuzzy undefined area. And I prefer a soft definition to a hard, and I certainly prefer the idea that a work can be in several genres and that membership of others is no barrier to being sci-fi.

Extollager said:
I consider 1887-1912 to be the Golden Age of Modern Fantasy and include works of sf (The War of the Worlds) and horror (Dracula), where I wouldn't be likely to refer to those works as "fantasy" now.
Click to expand...

This in itself is a statement that seems very intriguing to me and I'd love to see you expound on it.
 
BP, Here are a couple of passages posted elsewhere in which I expounded on that 1887-1912 period as the quarter century that really was the Golden Age of Modern Fantasy.

A. [posted by me at another online forum]
I'm going to contend that the Golden Age of (Modern) Fantasy was the 25-year period 1887-1912. "Fantasy" here is used broadly to include what we now call science fiction, as well as fantasy and what's often called "dark fantasy." "Fantasy" has come to suggest the kind of thing Ballantine emphasized in its Adult Fantasy Series (1969-1974), while "dark fantasy" seems to me more descriptive than "horror," since when people write about liking "horror" they generally seem to mean fantasy with pronounced horror elements. ...

The 1887-1912 period is bounded by Haggard's SHE at the beginning and Doyle's LOST WORLD at the end.

In between, you have outstanding work in fantasy of such as William Morris (The Well at the World's End, etc.), George MacDonald (Lilith), Dunsany (short fiction -- the Pegana-type stories), etc. You have the fantastic art of the late Pre-Raphaelites such as Edward Burne-Jones and J. W. Waterhouse, which remain influential today on how people imagine fantasy scenes, and Arthur Rackham. In music you have much of Sibelius's work with fantastic associations.

In the 1887-1912 period, science fiction is represented by the masterpieces of H. G. Wells (War of the Worlds, Time Machine, etc.) and W. H. Hodgson (House on the Borderland), etc. There's Stevenson's endlessly-recycled (by other authors) Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. [This was an error on my part -- it seems it was published in 1886.] One can squeak in Edgar Rice Burroughs's Under the Moons of Mars, as I recall -- the magazine version of A Princess of Mars.

And in this period you've got, for dark fantasy, the first volumes of M. R. James's ghost stories, Blackwood masterpieces like "The Wendigo," Stoker's Dracula, Arthur Machen's "White People" and other famous stories, etc. Henry James's superlative novella The Turn of the Screw belongs to this period.

It might be argued that quite a lot of what later authors in these genres did was mostly a matter of combining elements already deployed during the Golden Age. Lovecraft saw himself as working in a James-Machen-Blackwood vein: add some Wells and, especially, Hodgson, and you've got almost everything HPL worked with, not to say he's nothing but a pasticheur or something. But weird tales of cosmic horror are not his unique invention.

This is also the period in which Rudyard Kipling, who is, I think, often overlooked by genre fans, wrote outstanding stories of the uncanny and even, I believe, of science fiction -- I would have to look up his futuristic tales. Walter de la Mare wrote eerie verse in the period.

B. [posted by me here at Chrons in 2012]

I would seriously nominate 1887-1912 as the Golden Age of Fantasy and Science Fiction -- although, like most of us here, I wouldn't say that my very favorite works appeared in those 25 years.

But in that quarter-century you have everything from Haggard's She at one end to Conan Doyle's Lost World at the other. In 1997-1912, among other things, you have H. G. Wells's best; Dunsany's major short stories of high fantasy; all of William Morris or at least all of the great works; all of William Hope Hodgson; notable stories by Machen and Blackwood; Yeats's faerie poetry; George MacDonald's magnificent Lilith; and odd gems like Lucy Lane Clifford's "The New Mother." The period includes more:The Wind in the Willows. Poems by Walter de la Mare. Many of Kipling's most notable weird stories. Many more still-enjoyable romances (not just She) by Rider Haggard. For the ERB fans, Under the Moons of Mars and the magazine serialization of Tarzan of the Apes. You also have the best of Sherlock Holmes!----

My thought is that this really is the Golden Age, because it doesn't just contain so many works that I like, but it contains so many works that embody what we seek in fantasy and science fiction (and, if you read dark fantasy, Dracula falls in this period, by the way). Wells has an importance, as a pioneer, for sf, that I would suggest no one else can have. And at the same time that he is writing sf, you have William Morris and George MacDonald for fantasy. It's not just that they are early explorers of the form, but that they are so amazingly good at it.

And there was so much! Imagine being a youngster of 12 or so and reading She when it appeared in 1887. For year after year as you continue reading fantasy and science fiction, works that would turn out to be classics appear.

I'm not saying that the very greatest work of fantasy appeared in this time -- I see The Lord of the Rings and its satellite texts as that. Nor am I saying that nobody's ever written greater sf than Wells did, in The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and some imperishable short stories, etc. But I have to doubt if even the collective achievement of the Campbell-Astounding stable is, in terms of achievement plus influence, as great....




....I could mention additional titles, but you get the idea.
 
@Extollager - An interesting argument that certainly makes a good case for the importance of the period.

But a golden age?

In terms of sheer volume and legacy, I think there's periods after at the very least have it equalled. 1954 to 1979 gives you the entire LotR, parts of Narnia and Gormenghast, the full series collection of TH White's The Once and Future King, Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword, most of what Leiber and Jack Vance did with S&S, the first three Earthseas, the first half of Zelazny, most of what Delany did, most of Moorcock's and Harrison's S&S, Donald's Thomas Covenant, Powers' first three, plus plenty of different stuff like Moorcock's Gloriana, Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, Yep's Dragonwings, translated Magical Realism, and so on. Plus, an equal comparison to a list including Wells and M.R. James, you'd have to include all of horror adn sci-fi here which is, uh, beyond me.

And the list of noteworthy authors from, say, 1982 on is exhausting.

I think to hold that era up above any others requires you to put a heavy emphasis on originality, and to pin that as the period. But I'm never sure how much emphasis on originality makes sense for a genre whose purpose is literally tapping the tree of myth and history over and over, and you can make reasonably convincing cases that period, or periods after it, drew on the period before. Poe preceded it, and he was wildly influential on the Weird Tales crew. Most of MacDonald's work preceded it. And much of what later fantasists did drew mainly on taproot texts again; Tolkien had a debt to Morris, but more so to the sagas they both knew.

Plus, how formative can it be if what we know as fantasy today looks very different, and largely owes few direct debts to the authors of this period?

But yes. I think it's fair to say this was a very formative period for fantastika, that those living through might well have considered a golden age.
 
I would say Lord Of The Flies is simple social commentary and the most important part of the background is the uninhabited island and how it got that way is not part of the story.
 
TLOTF is part of any thorough literary discussion of how things fall apart. Inevitably that discussion will include some SF. The discussion would be diminished by exclusion of a tranche of books from consideration if genre reasons trump actual merit.

We could similarly argue about JG Ballard's High Rise. Even if it is not SF in the most dogmatic sense, it is still highly relevant to SF in the same way as TLOTF.
 
Very, very technically, I think it is SF (it's set in the future during WW3), but I wouldn't shelve it as such. If anything, it seems like allegory with a slightly fantasy feel, especially in the moment where the pig's head (which, IIRC, is either a hallucination or the actual Devil) starts to talk. I think @hitmouse makes a good point.
 
I would say no, it is not SF, although I can see where the confusion comes from.

Firstly there is the WW3 'setting', where one could say it's an extrapolation into the future. However this is only relevant to the plot in that it just sets it up. It could equally have been set in 1941, say. The time period has no real bearing on the novel.

Secondly, it asks a 'what if' question, which some may suggest is at the heart of a definition of SF. Personally I think it's simplistic to lump all novels that ask such a question as SF. Is alternative history therefore SF? Generally, no I'd say. For it to be SF, the 'what if' has to explore an extrapolation of current times, with a significant change that is central to the plot and characters.*

Thirdly it is a novel of ideas. Again SF is a literature that tends to promote ideas over character, but again, like point two, just because a novel is idea-centric, does not make it SF. Umberto Eco wrote densely idea-packed novels, but there is no way I would ever call them SF.

And so it sort of resonates as SF, but it just doesn't quite reach there. There were quite a few authors in the new wave of SF in the 60s/early 70s that feel like Lord of the Flies. JG Ballard's The Drowned World comes to mind. I also find the 'tone' of the novel - the upper-class English worldview - matches John Wyndham's 'cosy catastrophes', which are clearly SF.

EDIT:

Just looked up Brian Aldiss's thoughts on Lord of the Flies in Trillion Years Spree (A history of SF). He writes:

"...William Goldings novels , Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors....looks towards a definition of man and his status. All of them approach the science fiction condition, just as, on its own side of the fence, science fiction approaches the modern novel."

That's a nice sum up of my position!

=============

* Boys have been shipwrecked on islands since then, and thankfully - as least as far as I can tell - the whole Lord of the Flies scenario did not play out. They cooperated, helped each other and built civilisation instead.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Thread starter Similar threads Forum Replies Date
Pyan Lord of the Rings fan fiction writer tries to sue Amazon for infringing his(!) copyright.. JRR Tolkien 12
ctg Star Wars: Ahsoka - 01:08 - Part Eight: The Jedi, the Witch, and the Warlord Star Wars: Ahsoka 50
Extollager Distances in The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien 8
Ray McCarthy Lord of the Flies over 60 Book Discussion 6
M 9.05 : Lord of the Flies. X-Files 9

Similar threads


Back
Top