Occult Science Fiction, an Original Sub-Genre?

A great deal of my blog has been devoted to examining how the science fiction and fantasy genre’s can progress, by both internalizing more progressive political ideals and by progressing beyond recycling the exhausted binary of medieval-oriented fantasy and future-oriented science fiction.  Fantasy does not have to simply be about wizards, castles elves and dragon nor does science fiction need to be committed to robots, aliens, scientists and space-ships.  I think it is perfectly legitimate to have a futuristic fantasy story and equally permissible to have a medieval science fiction narrative.  What distinguishes the two genres is not the historical period in which they are situated (fantasy is in the past while science fiction is in the future), nor even the rationale of their world-building (fantasy is magical and irrational while science fiction is scientific and rational). 

What I do think distinguishes the two genres from one another is how we understand the history of their world in relation to our own.  If we can construct a narrative “bridge” from our world-history to the imagined history within the text, then the story is science fiction; but if the world-history of the text cannot be reconciled with our own history, then the story is a fantasy.  I have addressed this in significantly greater detail in my essay “Subversive Speculation of the Future of Scientific andFantastic Speculative Fiction.”  In this essay I want to briefly detail a unique and unexplored (to my knowledge) sub-genre of science fiction that deviates from the standard model.

I believe the standard model of science fiction to be future oriented and revolve around the imagery of aliens, spaceships, experiments, robotics, space exploration, human augmentation, genetic modification, etc.  Not only is such imagery (near) future-oriented but it is also externally-oriented in the sense that the genre is about going out into the world and exploring new worlds and experimenting with as-yet-understood phenomenon.  Even when the world-building lacks scientific credibility and could more accurately be described as pseudo-scientific sci-fi magic (nano-bot magic, genetics magic, alien techno-magic, etc) I still believe that the genre narrative tends to revolve around exploring and experimenting with the world.  I believe that one can incorporate such a focus onto any historical time period and one could still consider the story science fiction proper. 

There has been a trend in recent years for science fiction to become more near-future focused, exploring more the implications of more mundane technological and scientific advances for our future just over the horizon.  But one could even extend this logic back into past history.  Some forms of the steam-punk aesthetic and alternative history stories would fit into this form.  For example, what if the inventive mind of Leonardo Da Vinci had resulted in a Renaissance-era technological revolution which significantly altered the course of history there-after?  But such stories need not even be alternative history but could also be stories of hidden history: stories made possible because they occupy discrete spaces in our history that do not upset the order of our historical narrative.  For example, what if aliens crash-landed in medieval Europe and existed briefly among rural villagers who interpreted them to be angels (or demons).  Unfortunately the villages die after being exposed to an alien disease harbored by one of the aliens and fearing further contamination of the human population, the aliens hastily escape back into space.  Because the story closes with no wider consequences for our history it could be considered a part of history hidden from our awareness and thus would not be a truly alternative history of our world. 

This approach to history as one of layers is often employed in the urban-fantasy sub-genre of fantasy.  Situated within some contemporary cityscape (it seems like it is almost always London), there is a magical world hidden from the mundane population with its own history weaving around our own.  Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, China Mieville’s Kraken and JK Rowling’s Harry Potter come to mind as some of the most popular examples within this sub-genre.  Since these fantasy stories occur within our world, they are not secondary world fantasies.  This is true despite the inclusion of magic, a force that deviates from our understanding of the world we inhabit, since the magic of the world is hidden from the wider population.  The story serves as a secret glimpse with the narrative following an individual privileged with exposure to that magical world.  This world, in which you are reading this blog essay, could be that world, if only you could discover the magic occluded from your perception.  In the same way, the world is not truly alternative history, regardless of the inclusion of impossible magical elements, since the history and magic of the secret world are alike occult to the general population.  If the elves or vampires were walking around the city for everyone to see as is the case in some other forms of urban-fantasy then we would be dealing with a magical alternative-history of our world if not a secondary world entirely. 

Now transfer this logic of a hidden world within our contemporary environment from a fantasy setting to a science fiction one and you have the sub-genre of science fiction I am working to define.  For lack of better words, it will be called occult science fiction.  Rather than trolls living in secret in the sewers of Los Angeles or wizards working magic behind closed doors in New York City, there are robots and aliens living and working amongst us without our knowledge.  The future imagined by science fiction is already here, we simply are not aware that it is going on around us. 

A series that may come to mind for this sort of world-building is the Matrix trilogy of films since the world we think we inhabit is actually a computer simulation we are enslaved by for the benefit of sentient machines.  Yet this is an imperfect representation of what I am trying to convey since the trilogy reduces our world to a mere illusion and since it is revealed that the real world takes place in what we would recognize as the future relative to the world portrayed in the computer simulation.  A better example would be the Men in Black series of films since it involves a contemporary setting with aliens coexisting with humanity in secret except for the clandestine Men in Black agency which possesses technology far more advanced than we would consider possible.  In Men in Black the contemporary city is real, but there is an entire history of aliens on our planet hidden from us; the world, and its history, is far deeper and stranger than we understand it to be. 

As with all sub-genres, they occupy a niche that makes them revolve around more specific imagery appealing to a more specific audience.  Occult sci-fi is best focused upon technological advances that can be concealed from the general population and would thus likely incorporate some form of nano-technology, cloaking field or polymorphic capability.  Because such technology is concealed from the general population, the question arises as to why it is concealed and the narrative could be weaved around issues of technocratic or alien conspiracies, the dangers of technological progress or widespread proliferation of technology, and the conflict between the privacy and security of information.  Occult science fiction neither recognizes the world of science-fiction as a far-future possibility nor accepts technological advances in wide-ranging availability in our near future but portrays a disparity already present within our world that has been hidden from us. 

Perhaps the genre standard for science fiction is itself a tool of alien overlords or corporate and government elites to manage us.  If we focus upon the future as the site new technologies and hold onto the hope that such advances will be made widely available to us, then perhaps we will overlook the way in which technology controls us now and has shaped our perception of our own history, hiding its own influence from us.  Perhaps we will ignore that history and technology may progress without us and that the failure to question the narratives provided to us by those in power renders us impotent to their control.  Or perhaps such concerns merely make for entertaining, if not paranoid, speculation.  Either way, I see this as an open possibility for the science fiction genre to explore and experiment with further, and given that the focus of so much of the genre is exploration and experimentation I believe such progress to be inevitable.  Especially if economic and technological disparity increases along with government surveillance and dissatisfaction with those in power, I believe just such a sub-genre may become a refuge to escape into.