I was spurred by Simone’s apodeixis presentation to look further into whether Lucian’s True History could be considered sci-fi by the modern standard. When searching for articles that explored this question, I found a paper by Jennifer A. Rea titled “From Plato to Philip K. Dick: Teaching Classics Through Science Fiction,” containing an abstract syllabus and reflection for a course introduced at the University of Florida. The course, which continues to be offered to this day, seeks to discover how science fiction in both the past and the present reflect fears and futures for the world. One of the very first activities in this class, which we also performed a version of in our introduction to Lucian, was to attempt a definition for the genre of science fiction. Rea emphasizes what I believe we found out in our discussion–that science fiction evades defining. In its most general sense, it may be summarized as a “literature of change” (à la James Gunn) in that it takes things from everyday life and transforms them. This particular description invoked in my mind the strange and wonderful creatures described by Lucian as he travels through space–three-headed vultures, vine women, and lettuce creatures, to name a few. They are created from everyday ideas that Lucian’s audience would be able to easily imagine, but in combinations and ways that seem completely ridiculous.
One of the characteristics that the course syllabus touches on is science fiction as a way to present a kind of technology as the downfall or destruction of society. Because Lucian does not focus on or even mention his current society, or even that of the character’s, it seems as though this aspect of more modern science fiction may not be completely present, at least not as directly, in True History. He does continue to take objects and customs that would have seemed completely normal in the Greek world for which he pretends to be writing and alter them slightly or completely flip them upside down. A few of these instances we discussed in class, including when he mimics the language of the peace treaty written up between the Moon-people and the Sun-people–a treaty whose contents would be perfectly normal except for the fact that they include barrels of dewdrops and a floating stele. [After discussion in class on Thursday, I find that I can better understand the argument for True History being sci-fi in this way based on the depictions of a woman-less moon and the ensuing relations that would be deemed unbecoming and even illegal in Lucian’s Roman world.]
The article also has a section of the class entitled “Fantastic Journeys, Wondrous Beings,” in which Lucian is a core focus. This is where the classification of True History as a science fiction makes itself apparent. Lucian is part of the first group of writers studied as those who illustrated the “voyager’s tale” which I believe is a perfect description of True History. The course from the article would discuss how the adventurer in such tales interacts with “outsiders” and how those interactions would feel to a contemporary (a Roman, in Lucian’s case) reading the story. Meeting these so-called outsiders is the crux of the character Lucian’s journey through space–his interactions with beings from other planets are both the comedy and the plot of the story. Another thing that the course seeks to explore is how this setting, with a character meeting outsiders, could be used as a tool for social criticism by the author. Lucian’s writing may be difficult to pin down on this front as he avoids any mention of or allusion to his modern society of the Roman Empire, however I do not or cannot see much societal criticism peeking through his words [Again, my perspective has shifted slightly on this from Thursday’s class–I still hold that a majority of the content we have read thus far does not hold up as science fiction under scrutiny]. I believe his writing may be classified as science fiction, but mostly to the extent that it is the tale of a journey to other worlds. To me, though my knowledge of Roman culture is patchy, Lucian’s writing reflects what he wanted to explore, which he lays out so nicely for us in the beginning paragraphs–simply a story that is not true in any way.
