The New Prism

In the last part of his serial, James Colvin (Webmaster Note: the serial is The Wrecks of Time, Colvin being Moorcock's Pseudonym) seems to be suggesting what would be to many people the outrageous idea that science is replacing religion as the focus for mankind's hopes and fears.

At one time, superstition and then a sophisticated religion were about the only things that could offer an explanation of why things were as they are; nowadays, as our sciences become more sophisticated, we have an alternative explanation. Naturally many believe that science compliments religion and they see no significance in the progress of man's scientific knowledge other than that we are learning better to interpret the works of God. Of course, to any religious person who is not a fundamentalist, God is an abstract ideal and to us this suggests that therefore any religious person not a fundamentalist is not a religious person in the strict sense. A good fundamentalist must for one thing believe that science is the Devil's instrument. In fact, once religion becomes sophisticated and leaves the realm of mere superstition, its intellectual followers, at least, must automatically become agnostics, particularly if they have elected to take a creed whose message is "Know Thyself".

We are inclined to believe that religion has served its function in civilisation; that it is a crutch that we shall soon be able to throw away. Religion was at one time the finest prism through which humanity could focus their hopes and fears. By means of this prism they were able to develop increasingly refined arts, sciences and ethical attitudes, all of which bought them eventually to the point where they found that the prism itself not sufficiently fine enough for their use.

It appears that without a prism, we lose dynamism. Art is too personal to supply a prism for the world to use; strong political creeds apparently refuse to allow sufficient range to the imagination (and in this respect mirror the unenlightened early Church). We are left, it seems, with science. Science is an excellent prism since it encompasses so many aspects - indeed virtually all of the aspects - of the human condition. Physics answers questions concerning our environment; psychology answers questions concerning our behaviour as individuals; sociology answers questions concerning our behaviours as a race. We even have a science which strives to understand the essential nature of things: ontology. A true religion offers permanent remedies, and therefore, we feel, it is a step forward in our progress towards understanding ourselves and our environment when we relinquish the old benefits of religion for the new benefits of science. The symbol of the ambivalent Bomb shadows the symbol of the crucifix nowadays but the Atom Cloud offers salvation as well as retribution and is therefore a more potent symbol for our times than a crucifix. The only conflict between these symbols is between the old and the new, not between the good and the bad. Christ died for them. The people of Hiroshima died for us.

The Atom Cloud causes us to reconsider our motives and our ambitions. We ask: Why is it there?

We were once exhorted to learn to know God, to understand Him; and we were told that we should find this understanding within ourselves, and that once we found it that we should not fear God, but love Him. We saw the crucifix and asked: "Why is it there?"

Whereas we have every cause to be disturbed by one of the things the Bomb symbolises - the destructive aspects of scientific knowledge - a negative fear of science can only aggravate and encourage the result we fear. Through our arts, through our philosophy, we can learn to understand science; through our understanding of science we can understand ourselves, our fundamental fears and hopes as human beings. We can understand more clearly why we express ourselves by creating or turning to works of art, science and philosophy.

In S.F., for nearly two thirds of a century, we have despaired. We have produced a literature of despair. We have produced a literature that might, in itself, be vital, but which has reflected that despair in works of an apparently cynical or hopeless and where we have supplied answers they have been confused.

This was natural in a century that had produced world wars, insane political creeds, H-Bombs; but the time has come when we are beginning to stop worrying about it and starting to worry what we're going to do about it.

The sciences, we are told, offer remedies. These remedies cannot be accepted without question (the 19th century made that mistake) and nowadays a good scientist in any field will never offer a positive remedy, only a possible one. We were too quick to relinquish trust in God for trust in science and politics. Faith, apparently, is not enough, unless it is a faith in oneself and faith in the personal creation of the work of art or philosophy. But the information keeps coming in. It is up to us to sift it and give it form and direction in art and politics.

There is an increasing atmosphere of positive and hopeful thinking in the world of art (and even in the political sphere). Young artists, in particular, seem to be fed-up with simply expressing how fed-up they are. They accept, like scientists and politicians, that things are bad, but they're trying to work out how things could be better.

Coupled with this is the improvements in standards of popular art as the general standard of education improves (television often seems as much responsible for this as the schools). With luck, we should soon be experiencing a climate similar to the climate in England at the time of the Renaissance when there was little divergence between vital art that was good and vital art that was popular.

For a long time, the fusion between good literature and popular escapist fiction has been approached in the best science fiction. As the climate improves and our general attitude towards science becomes more rational, perhaps we shall see S.F. creating not just a fusion between "serious" and "popular" entertainment, but coming into its own as a literary form best suited to making full use of the new prism.

Michael Moorcock