SCEPTICAL VISIONS AND INDIVIDUAL PERSPECTIVES:

AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION FROM THE 1950s TO THE

1970s AND THE CONCEPT OF UTOPIA

To the artistic imagination, there are no absolute truths, and to the dreamer, visionary

or rebel, the perspective of the individual is paramount in passing judgement on

society: ‘The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of

Heav’n’.1 These are the resentful, defiant words of a fallen angel, who loathes his new

station, written by a resentful, defiant poet, who perceived himself as isolated from

society due to his participation in the failed Puritan utopian project. The English

Revolution can be read as part of the crisis of modernity. The individual’s relation to

authority and society becomes open to renegotiation; the view of what constitutes

utopia or dystopia is dependant on the individual’s position within society, and how

this may be altered. It is part of post-modern discourse that absolute truths are no

longer credible; as McHale argues, ‘In our time…knowledge has had to seek its

legitimisation locally rather than universally’.2 Utopian texts from the Second World

War onwards reflect the tension of modernity, which is individualistic and sceptical,

and how this can be reconciled with utopia, which is concerned with order. The role

of the individual can be considered not only in terms of the protagonist within the

text, and their relation to society, but also in terms of the author who produces the

text, and how their relation to society informs their writing. Hirsch claims for science

fiction that it ‘should be of special concern to the sociologist…it may serve as a

vehicle for social criticism and for the construction of social utopias and counter-

1
John Milton. Paradise Lost, London: Penguin, 1989, 254-255, p12
2
Brian McHale. ‘Telling Postmodernist Stories’. Poetics Today. Volume 9, Number 3, (1988), p546

1
utopias’.3 By analysing American science fiction written from the nineteen-fifties to

the nineteen-seventies, it is possible to demonstrate continuity and concern, contrast

and contradiction, with which the individual and their role in the utopian project came

to be viewed.

The relation of the individual to society, the insistence about freedom, is a very

American concern. The United States of America is the living inheritor of the utopian

ideal, while simultaneously being the nation most concerned with the rights of the

individual. Brogan states, ‘Americanism is a crusading faith, anxious to liberate the

peoples’,4 while Munch argues that ‘Americans mistrust any authority and consider it

as self-interested’.5 To many Americans of the nineteen-fifties, it seemed that Utopia

was truly within their grasp. The United States had overtaken Britain as the major

power of the west, and was undergoing an unprecedented consumer boom. The rise

of, and pride in, ‘The American Way of Life’ co-existed with fear and concern, as

many Americans ‘were often intensely apprehensive about the future’.6 To

intellectuals such as Adorno, the media, instead of interrogating society was helping

to construct it: ‘Films, radio and magazines make up a system which is uniform as a

whole…the aesthetic activities are one in their enthusiastic obedience to the rhythm of

the iron system’.7 Post-war American society was greatly concerned with order, as

can be demonstrated by the televised McCarthy hearings that sought to uncover

Communist subversion. Television, to writers such as Philip K Dick, was becoming a

3
Hirsch, Walter. ‘The Image of the Scientist in Science Fiction: A Content Analysis’. The American
Journal of Sociology. Volume 63, Number 5 (March, 1958), p506
4
Hugh Brogan. The Penguin History of the USA. London: Penguin, 2001, p582
5
Richard Munch. ‘The American Creed in Sociological Theory Exchange, Negotiated Order,
Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency’. Sociological Theory. Volume 4, Number 1 (Spring,
1986), p44
6
Hugh Brogan. The Penguin History of the USA, p588
7
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’. The Norton Anthology of
Theory and Criticism. Ed Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York and London. 2001. p1223

2
mode of social control, turning the gaze of authority onto the audience, who

themselves became complicit in the acts of repression they viewed. Dick states of his

short story, ‘The Mold of Yancy’, that ‘during his reign (Eisenhower’s) we all were

worrying about the man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit problem; we feared that the entire

country was turning into one person’.8

Who is this ‘we’? Eisenhower, a war hero and two-term president, was reasonably

popular. Dick is not speaking on behalf of the majority of Americans – the ‘we’ here

is the minority Berkeley sub-culture, who have tended to view authority with

suspicion, just as they have been viewed with suspicion by authority. Militarism,

consumerism and consent to authority are also the subject of Dick’s Foster, You’re

Dead, in which bomb-shelters are marketed as the ‘must-have’ luxury of necessity. As

Foster senior bitterly comments, ‘You can’t escape this. If you don’t buy, they’ll kill

you. The perfect sales pitch. Buy or die - new slogan’. 9 To placate his son’s fears,

Foster senior buys a shelter which he cannot afford, but which allows his son to be

part of the community. As the boy’s teacher happily remarks, ‘Now you have

everything…I’m glad of that…You’re just like everyone else’. 10 Education, following

Althusser’s argument, becomes part of social control, suppressing dissident ideas to

ensure the continuity of society: ‘children at school also learn the ‘rules’ of good

behaviour, i.e the attitude that should be observed’.11 The author has projected his

8
Philip K Dick. The Days of Perky Pat: Volume 4, The Collected Short Stories of Philip K Dick,
London: HarperCollins, 1994, p488
9
Dick, Philip K. The Father Thing: Volume 3, The Collected Short Stories of Philip K Dick, London:
HarperCollins, 1990, p295
10
ibid, p294
11
Louis Althusser. Essays on Ideology, London: Verso, 1984, p6

3
concerns for individual freedom by expressing distrust of authority through his

characters.

Suspicion of authority, dislike of conformity, informed another science-fiction

writer, Ray Bradbury, who conceived Fahrenheit 451 after minor harassment from a

police officer.12 Dick and Bradbury’s stories – written virtually concurrently – express

the viewpoint of the subversive in a conformist society, the author greatly in

sympathy for, and identifying himself with, the dissident protagonist who wishes to

remove himself from the philistine mob. Regardless of when either text is meant to be

set, they are clearly commenting upon the America of the nineteen-fifties; Bluestone

comments that ‘Bradbury was clearly satirizing the McCarthy period’, 13 while Dick’s

association of consumerism and control, similar to Adorno’s concerns, have been

noted above. Another similarity both men share is in writing protagonists who are, or

become, exiles from their society. Foster senior owns an antique shop; that is to say,

his business is not part of the trashy-mass culture of the present, but involves trading

luxury goods from the past. Montag is a fireman, whose growth into ‘proper’

humanity is marked by his growing literacy and awareness of literature.

To writers, the written word is all-important, and in the media-saturated world of

Fahrenheit 451, literature is the only tool that can make the individual feel, think, and

be human again. The poem Montag reads to his wife’s friends is condemned - ‘Silly

words, silly words, silly awful hurting words…Why do people want to hurt

people?’,14 but this condemnation, this spreading of dissatisfaction, this questioning is

12
See Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451, London: Flamingo, 1993, vi-vii
13
George Bluestone. ‘The Fire and the Future’. Film Quarterly. Volume 20, Number 4 (Summer,
1967), p8
14
Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451, p109

4
precisely what Montag has wanted to achieve. ‘Shock therapy’ has been used to force

the women to think and feel. In ‘The Mold of Yancy’, Yancy is altered from a stolid,

certain American philistine to a more sceptical, doubting enquiring man. 15 The figure

of certainty has become the spreader of doubt; the oppressive has become the

subversive. The fracturing of unthinking hegemony, the spread of individuality and

scepticism, is seen as a heroic act. The fear of the organized society is expressed by

writers such as Kateb, who develops Gray’s argument that ‘there nevertheless are

dangers inherent in the very idea of a society organized to achieve even minimum

social goals’.16 Organisation – conformity – is the enemy; individuality – rebellion –

is heroic.

Both Dick and Bradbury, therefore, privilege the individual over society. Integrity,

goodness – humanity – are to be found in the few, not the many, in the thinking

individual, not the pre-programmed mass. As the individual develops their self-

awareness, so the layers of society are shown, the contradictions, the dark side of the

utopian glory. Consider the epiphany undergone by Mr Tagomi in Dick’s The Man in

the High Castle. As a Japanese businessman in an America that lost the war, Tagomi

cannot help but regard native-born Americans with amused contempt, as they attempt

to behave in the proper – Japanese – fashion.17 Tagomi latterly experiences a vision of

the world where the Axis powers lost the war, and where he is subject to the racial

slur of ‘Tojo’.18 Having had a vision of racial harassment and subordination in the

other (our!) world, Tagomi determines not to continue with this mentality when he

returns to his own reality. Tagomi’s vision has revealed to him the true nature of the

15
Philip K Dick. The Days of Perky Pat: Volume 4, The Collected Short Stories of Philip K Dick, p96-
98
16
George Kateb. Utopia and Its Enemies, Ontario: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963, p15
17
See Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, p4, or p19
18
Ibid, p232

5
society he lives in, and his consequent rejection of, and isolation from, that society is

presented as a heroic act.

Both Disch’s Camp Concentration and Keyes Flowers for Algernon have a similar

theme, a utopian experiment of increased intelligence, with a consequence of enforced

isolation for the subject and a renegotiation of their relation with society. Sacchetti,

the poet-prisoner of Camp Concentration immediately resents his new found

environment, a top-secret military medical facility which he has been illegally

transported too after spending time in prison for anti-war protests: ‘I am being held

prisoner! I have been kidnapped from the prison where by law I belong…Legal

advice is denied me…I am helpless to cope’.19 Sacchetti is immediately aware of the

‘hell’ to which he has been transported. By contrast, Charly Gordon in Flowers for

Algernon only gradually becomes dissatisfied with his world, his growing intelligence

and returning memory revealing to him the extent to which his idyllic existence

largely consisted of being tormented by others. Charly begins to question the very

experiment which has allowed him to develop an interrogative instinct, questioning

the role of the intellect in providing happiness, arguing ‘intelligence and education

that hasn’t been tempered by human affection isn’t worth a damn’20 and lamenting

‘What has happened to me? Why am I so alone in the world?’.21 Isolation may mean

salvation in Camp Concentration, as Sacchetti realises, and reveals to the prison

authorities, that the Palladine drug which he has been infected with has spread

amongst the civilian population, causing the possibility of social collapse: ‘With 30

per cent civilian casualties, an industrial society simply cannot cohere…Consider the

19
Thomas M. Disch. Camp Concentration, New York: Vintage Books, 1996, p9
20
Daniel Keyes. Flowers For Algernon, London: Millenium, 2000, p173
21
Ibid, p176

6
sheer disruptive force of so much undirected intelligence suddenly let loose’. 22 The

containment aspect of the prison, viewed with such indignation at the start of the

novel, has become its saving aspect. Foucault refers to the plague and social control in

Disciple and Punish, the ‘strict spatial portioning…a prohibition to leave the town on

pain of death…Inspection functions ceaselessly’. 23 This is intended as condemnation,

the social restriction of authority subjected to critical analysis. In Camp

Concentration, two opposing views of order co-exist. Palladine threatens the collapse

of society, but has also given the original prisoners the intelligence to search for a

cure. The prison, which has restricted the prisoners and made them test subjects, will

now keep them safe. The fearful has become the hopeful; the prison has become an

asylum from the insanity of society.

Order becomes viewed far more ambivalently; institutions may protect, or be

changed by, the individual. Individualism becomes subject to scrutiny just as much as

society had been questioned by an earlier generation of writers. Charlie’s dilemma is

the realisation, as noted above, that lack of intelligence, and superior intelligence,

equally isolate him from the bulk of humanity: ‘I am just as far away from Alice with

an I.Q. of 185 as I was when I had and I.Q. of 70. And this time we both know it’. 24

The dilemma is a complex one; science, created by society, has transformed a subject,

but his awareness and resentment of the isolation caused by that transformation make

him criticise that society in turn. Note also the departure from the earlier concerns

raised by Dick and Bradbury; to them, science, in the shape of the media threatened

the individual by submerging him within society. To Keyes, science threatens the

individual by isolating him from society. Individualism and isolation are not the same
22
Thomas M. Disch. Camp Concentration, p167-168
23
Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin, 1991, p195
24
Daniel Keyes. Flowers For Algernon, p88

7
thing – to be human, one must balance personal traits with social participation. Munch

argues that ‘the process which allows the individual to find his/her identity…is

participation in everyday interaction’.25 Unhappiness is not based on the nature of the

society, but on the individual’s relation to that society. As Charlie’s intelligence

increases, and he is able to socialise with workmates or college students, he is happy;

as his genius escalates, he discovers he is alone again; as his intelligence decreases, he

locks himself in his room, fearing to be laughed at; in the end, he willingly transfers

himself to Warren State Home, an institution previously despised, but now his only

chance for protection.

Where is happiness or contentment to be found? Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven

demonstrates the dialogic, Hegelian nature of utopia – thesis for social change

adopted or rejected by subsequent writers, ideas and themes accepted or rejected from

one generation to the next - but probably also comments on the America of the

nineteen-seventies, when so many movements were lobbying for their own particular

grievances against society. The interrogative ideal, the principal of attacking authority

and hegemony, once seen as so heroic, was now in danger of causing total social

collapse. McDonald, commenting on the social changes Britain was undergoing at the

same time, comments of such pressure movements that ‘the logic of their drive for

self-determination predicts less social unity, not more’.26 Those who attacked social

conventions in the ‘satire-boom’ of nineteen-sixties Britain often express doubts over

their role in subverting the media and the affect this has had on society: ‘Everyone is

Richard Munch. ‘The American Creed in Sociological Theory Exchange, Negotiated Order,
25

Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency’, p53

26
Ian MacDonald. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties, London: Pimlico,
1998

8
being satirical…There’s an infuriating frivolity, cynicism and finally a

vacuousness’.27 Coherence, or the lack of it, is a matter of concern to a writer in the

late sixties, just as much as a writer of the fifties dreaded conformity. Brogan claims

that the same force that caused such conformity – consumerism – was the same force

now destroying consensus, ‘Alienation from conventional society and its pieties was

reinforced by the effects of prosperity’. 28 The narrative of The Lathe of Heaven is

tragic-comic, each utopian ‘solution’ dreamed by Orr under Doctor Haber’s guidance

subsequently creating a new problem. Orr himself comments on the constant

alterations to reality ‘Out of the frying pan, into the fire’. 29 There is quite a

conservative tone to the text, which distinguishes it very strongly from Dick, for

example. The message of the book would appear to be to accept life as it is, not to try

to change things. Dystopia is not to be found in society, but in the individual –

improve oneself, one’s own perspective, and society will appear to be a better place.

This is indeed a change from the aggressive, consciously individualist, reformist, tone

of Dick and Bradbury, who exalt the eccentric.

However, the departure is not total. Le Guin, like Dick, uses the metaphor of

greyness to describe a society that is sterile. 30 The American scepticism for the

authority figure, noted by Munch above, remains throughout all these texts. The

emphasis has changed from the militaristic to the medical establishment, but the

protagonist is still the subject of scientific/medical intervention and the reader shares

their perspective throughout the narrative. Charly becomes disillusioned with Nemur,

referring to him as ‘an ordinary man…(who) presumes to devote himself to making

27
Cited, Humphrey Carpenter, That Was Satire, That Was, London: Phoenix, 2002, p329. See pages
328-330 for further concerns
28
Hugh Brogan. The Penguin History of the USA. p658
29
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven, New York: Avon Books, 1997, p86
30
ibid, p125-127

9
other people geniuses’.31 Orr repeatedly refers to Haber as ‘benevolent’, 32 but his

irresponsible nature is clearly signalled to the reader when he bellows ‘Don’t worry

about control! Freedom is what you’re working toward’. 33 The authority figure has

changed from being damned for exerting excessive control, to being damned for

unleashing forces they have no control over. The protagonist changes from wishing

freedom but being frustrated by control, to fearing change and needing restriction.

The relationship between protagonist and authority, individual and society has

undergone a series of inversions.

The position of the science-fiction writer, their view on what constitutes utopia or

dystopia, is dependent on social circumstances that exist at the time of writing. This

position in turn informs the attitudes of the protagonist and their relation to society.

Huntington argues that ‘At its core, SF is a powerfully conventional and deeply

conservative…form of literature which…tames the threat of the future’. 34 The texts

analysed and contrasted above change in their respective sympathy to the individual

or to their society, but a consistent feature is the ‘totalitarian nightmare which has

always been an obsession of science-fiction’. 35 Why should this be the case?

Skilliman, in Camp Concentration argues for the aesthetic pleasure taken in hell: ‘At

least it’s possible to believe in hell…Hell is something we can make. That, finally, is

its fascination’.36 Depicting one’s society as hell can be a solace to the embittered

individual, allowing them to reclaim some semblance of power: ‘Better to reign in

31
Daniel Keyes. Flowers For Algernon, p107
32
See Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven, p77 and p83
33
ibid., p88
34
Huntington, John. ‘Science Fiction and the Future’. College English. Volume 37, Number 4
(December 1975), p345
35
George Bluestone. ‘The Fire and the Future’, p8
36
Thomas M. Disch. Camp Concentration, p156

10
Hell, than serve in Heav’n’.37 The delight in being devils advocate was shared by an

early generation of American science-fiction writers, who found themselves at odds

with a society eager to maintain order after the disruption caused by the Depression

and the Second World War. Yet it is also true that individuality and scepticism

became, in turn, subject to reassessment. The ‘gray’ period of Eisenhower and

nineteen fifties America came to be viewed by some with something like affection. 38

The spread of excessive individualism, with the consequent collapse of society, led

later writers to be more sceptical about the individual sceptic. In later texts, as

illustrated above, writers critique the role of criticism and interrogate the act of

interrogation. Individuality changes from symptom to cause of the dystopian vision.

37
John Milton. Paradise Lost, 263, p12
38
See, for example, Hugh Brogan, The Penguin History of the USA, p614, or George Bluestone, ‘The
Fire and the Future’, p5

11
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adorno, Theodor and Horkheimer, Max, ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’. The Norton

Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York and

London. 2001

Althusser, Louis. Essays on Ideology, London: Verso, 1984

Bluestone, George. ‘The Fire and the Future’. Film Quarterly. Volume 20, Number 4

(Summer, 1967), p3-10

Brogan, Hugh. The Penguin History of the USA. London: Penguin, 2001

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451, London: Flamingo, 1993

Carpenter, Humphrey. That Was Satire, That Was, London: Phoenix, 2002

Clarke, Peter. Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-1990, London: Penguin, 1997

Dick, Philip K. The Days of Perky Pat: Volume 4, The Collected Short Stories of

Philip K Dick, London, HarperCollins, 1994

Dick, Philip K. The Father Thing: Volume 3, The Collected Short Stories of Philip K

Dick, London, HarperCollins, 1990

Dick, Philip K. The Man in the High Castle, New York: Vintage Books, 1992

Disch, Thomas M. Camp Concentration, New York: Vintage Books, 1996

Foucalt, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Penguin,

1991

Hirsch, Walter. ‘The Image of the Scientist in Science Fiction: A Content Analysis’.

The American Journal of Sociology. Volume 63, Number 5 (March, 1958), p506-512

Huntington, John. ‘Science Fiction and the Future’. College English. Volume 37,

Number 4 (December 1975), p345-352

Kateb, George. Utopia and Its Enemies, Ontario: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963

12
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers For Algernon, London: Millenium, 2000

Kishlansky, Mark. A Monarchy Transformed: Britain 1603-1714, London: Penguin,

1997

Kumar, Krishan. Utopianism, Bristol: Open University Press, 1991

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Lathe of Heaven, New York: Avon Books, 1997

MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles’ Records and the Sixties,

London: Pimlico, 1998

McHale, Brian. ‘Telling Postmodernist Stories’. Poetics Today. Volume 9, Number 3,

(1988), p545-571

Milton, John. Paradise Lost, London: Penguin, 1989

Munch, Richard. ‘The American Creed in Sociological Theory Exchange, Negotiated

Order, Accommodated Individualism, and Contingency’. Sociological Theory.

Volume 4, Number 1 (Spring, 1986), p41-60

13