Science Fiction’s Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Мы (We)

Abstract

Can genres have an intrinsic predisposition to a particular politics? Critics who ask this question of science fiction (SF) often arrive at different answers. Carl Freedman, for example, posits that SF is a "privileged and paradigmatic genre" for Marxism and critical theory, having "the deepest … affinity with the rigors of dialectical thinking," which would explain the genre's attractiveness to Marxist critics such as Darko Suvin, Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson. 1 By contrast, Aaron Santesso claims the genre leans in a more regressive direction, replete with "fascist energies and ideas." 2 In this chapter, I ask whether SF has a predisposition to a particular ethical outlook, exploring the dominant ethical modes of the SF genre. As with the question of politics, which resurfaces throughout this essay, how this question of ethics is answered depends on how SF is defined and, centrally, the significance given to the American SF pulp magazines, which are central to Santesso's study but excised from Freedman's. However, establishing a systematic definition of SF today-one that would include works generally considered SF, exclude (if desired) those of other genres, and navigate a growing body of "post-genre" or "slipstream" works that blend different conventions-would be impossible. It is thus more accurate to speak of SF's multitude of literary traditions, which provide it with what Samuel R. Delany called SF's "historical, theoretical, stylistic, and valuative plurality." 3 Rather than seek a single answer to this question of SF's ethics, I will examine two classic SF works and the traditions they