Ecocritical Explorations in Literary and Cultural Studies by Murphy Patrick D.;

Author:Murphy, Patrick D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739131756
Publisher: Lexington Books

CONCLUSION

Some of the works that I have discussed in this chapter either briefly or in detail provide what I would call “alibis,” invoking Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the “non-alibi” in Toward a Philosophy of the Act. By that I mean they provide loopholes and ways out to justify ethically questionable behavior or else to sidestep the ethical questions. Brunner, I think, does that with Bedlam Planet, so too Sterling in Heavy Weather and Goonan in The Bones of Time. David Brin in Earth, a novel I have not previously mentioned, does so also in three very damaging ways, although he tries to ameliorate those novelistic actions through a nonfiction afterword that calls on people to take responsibility for the planet and even provides the names and addresses of various environmental organizations. But the alibi is invoked when Brin uses a deus ex machina device to resolve the plot of the novel. First, it turns out that the black hole at the Earth’s core apparently threatening the planet’s very existence has been introduced there by a benign alien intelligence that has even sent one of its own to Earth to aid the protagonist. Second, through the aid of this alien force, a planetary Gaia consciousness is established as an all-powerful artificial intelligence that can henceforth limit and punish ecological destruction. Human beings, then, are not required to assume full responsibility for their actions in this novel. Third, the psychotic ecoterrorist, presented as the only truly evil person in the entire novel, annihilates millions of people before the Gaia consciousness destroys her, thereby ameliorating the population pressures on the planet’s ecology long enough for humanity to get its act together under granny Gaia’s guidance.

In contrast, the strengths of such works as Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Robinson’s Mars Trilogy are precisely that they provide no deus ex machina alibis. Human beings have to act in ethically responsible ways while realizing that they are not ever in control of the overall situation and that what they understand to be ethically justified or technically correct today may prove erroneous tomorrow. Such works as these can turns readers’ attention toward the major socioenvironmental issues facing humanity today. And in the case of Robinson’s work, SF can through near-future extrapolation orient readers to thinking about ethical questions just over the horizon but rapidly coming into sight, such as the colonization of Mars.

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