Note this post is adapted from a 2014 post on my personal blog and looks at where alien life may realistically be found in our Solar System, including possible intelligent life. And what that should mean for science fiction writers, including Christians who write science fiction.

It’s interesting that all the way back to the earliest days of what can be considered science fiction, Lucian in the second century AD talked of traveling to the moon in order to meet intelligent beings living there (though in a satire). Likewise the “The Adventures of Bulukiya,” which is part of the medieval Arabic-language classic One Thousand and One Nights, features travels in the cosmos and interactions with various beings there. It was also a staple of science fiction as we know it that began in the late 1800s to expect at least some of the other planets of the Solar System to be inhabited. Mars especially, because it showed changes in its icecaps in seasons that seemed to be like Planet Earth and had linear features that reminded some people of canals (especially Percival Lowell), became the center of attention for many early science fiction stories, from being the home of invaders of Earth in HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, the home of the people of “Barsoom” in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s science fiction, and also for a lot of other science fiction, including Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles.

Image copyright: Warner Brothers

Mars still fascinates people, in spite of scientific data showing the planet is a far more hostile environment for life than Antarctica and the Atacama Desert combined.  Mars, a beneficiary of being one the planets nearest Earth, remains a focus for most future plans for human interplanetary travel–and sometimes people have even believed aliens must have lived on Mars in the past, even if they don’t do so now (as the Face on Mars was supposedly an alien construct, as featured in the year 2000 film, Red Planet).

We could even say that the lack of clear evidence for life on Mars when the Mariner probes passed by it in the 1960s and the Vikings landed on it in the ’70s changed the expectations of science fiction fans concerning where life would be found in the universe. Instead of moving from planet to planet within our Solar System, science fiction like Star Trek would feature future humans travelling from star to star and finding inhabited worlds around each star (though the aliens found there often shared features in common with creatures previously imagined to have lived on Mars).

It only takes a little scientific knowledge to see how the expectations for Mars probably were always a little inflated, since it was evident as soon as telescopes were first turned on Mars that it lacked the blue we associate with large bodies of water. Mars clearly was a dry place, and deserts on Earth happen to be those places where life is least abundant. And the drier the desert, the less life it has. (Parts of the Atacama desert in South America are so dry that not even microbes live there.) Coupled with its cold temperatures and lack of atmosphere, yeah, expecting to find even microbes on Mars seems to be a long shot.

If alien life is ever going to be found  in our Solar System outside of Earth, Mars almost certainly won’t be the place. A much better place to look for life is beneath the icy surface of certain moons in the outer solar system. This notion has not entirely escaped science fiction writers. But it deserves much more emphasis in stories than it’s received.

I say this for simple, straightforward reasons. Everywhere on planet Earth where water is abundant, life teems. The water can be that of a geyser in Yellowstone Park (or elsewhere), extremely hot, yet life is still found in these geysers. The glaciers of Antarctica support some life themselves, but drilling under the ice to a region where pressure is high enough to preserve liquid water has shown much more abundant bacterial life below one half mile of Antarctic ice.

Jupiter’s moon Europa shows clear signs of having liquid water under an icy surface. The smoothness of the planet (as opposed to being a cratered planetary surface, like the moon) shows cracks that appear to heal themselves as liquid water from below solidifies, as if all the features on the surface were gigantic floating glacier formations on top of a deep, dark ocean under the surface.

Europa, a world whose water has erased most of its craters.

Saturn’s moon Enceladus does even better. Not only does it have an icy surface, the Cassini probe has photographed it shooting out into space what have been verified as plumes of water (reminding me of the geysers of Yellowstone Park).

Enceladus shooting geysers of water into space.

As early as Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two in 1982, science fiction writers have been speculating that the persistent link on Earth between life and liquid water could mean that Europa teems with life under its relatively thin crust. But it turns out that icy moons with liquid water under the surface is a fairly common phenomenon in our Solar System (and possibly would be common around other stars as well). Among Jupiter’s moons, both Ganymede and Callisto may also have liquid water deep under a thick icy crust–rather like Antarctica, though much deeper.

While a number of science fiction writers other than Clarke have noticed the potential of water oceans under icy moons, this notion has barely crept into the science fiction with a broader audience, the sci fi of films and television. If there was an episode of any of the Star Treks where an alien civilization came from underneath an icy crust, or where a crew landed to make contact with or explore the life in a sub-surface ocean, I missed it.

Our expectation in most science fiction remains that life will be found on worlds similar to Earth. And not just in science fiction. NASA officials and other scientists continue to engage in discussions of whether Mars, the most Earth-like planet in the Solar System, may have hidden water remaining from its past and if we should search for life there–public support for searching for life in whatever small bits of water that remain on Mars seems higher than going to other worlds further out that have much more water.

Overall I’d say that the likelihood of life on Mars is very low and the likelihood of life in places like Europa and Enceladus is good. Which is a simple enough notion. As is the idea that where life may be, intelligent life may also exist.

So how should what I said above affect science fiction writers, including especially Christians who write sci fi?

It’s a bit of an oversimplification, but authors who write science fiction while self-identifing as “Christian” generally tend to believe God had some role in the creation of the universe, be it as little as a guiding hand in evolution or as much as creation ex nihilo in a time frame that matches the 6,000-year framework of a straightforward, literal reading of Biblical genealogy. Writers who see God’s hand in creation ought to be thinking about what happens when the watery oceans under these icy moons are finally explored.

If the water under these moons is as sterile as the Normal Saline Solution administered to hospital patients, that would say something about Earth being a special place, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t such a finding support the idea that Earth is the unique place where God created life? Though of course materialists would not necessarily admit that’s what such a finding would imply. Instead they’d search for naturalistic reasons for why planet Earth is different.

But what if life under these icy moons if found, but is found to be genetically linked to life on Earth? Or even perhaps closely related to or even identical to at least some life on Earth? Wouldn’t this point to a common Creator of life both on Earth and these other worlds? Those of us who believe in a form of divine intervention in the creation of life (no mater what kind, even if only providential) would say so. Though of course those with no notion of the existence of a Creator God would be searching for alternate explanations, such as Panspermia.

What if life is found, but it has no genetic relationship to any life on Earth whatsoever? Would this imply that evolution is a strictly naturalistic process that occurs whenever the conditions are right and potentially could turn out many different ways via the chance interaction of forces? Of course for believers in any form of divine intervention in creation, but especially for those who believe God has providentially guided evolution, finding bizarre alien life would not necessarily be a concern. God’s creative acts will simply be seen to be more mysterious that we previously thought by most believers.

Note especially that the conditions that are thought to have influenced the development of human intelligence would not have existed on an icy moon. So I think few people who have a strictly materialistic view of the universe would expect to find intelligent life on these icy-covered ocean worlds. Yet for those who see evidence of the existence of a Creator God, we are not under such limitations. God could create alien intelligence wherever he wants, right? And why not in a place where life is already abundant?

If alien intelligence is found in one of these oceans, what will it be like? Clearly not like dolphins, who need to come up for air (and there’s no way to do that on Europa or Enceladus). But might it be more like an octopus? Or like something we’ve never imagined before? As of now, only God knows.

I personally have never written a science fiction story set on an moon that has an ocean under an icy surface. But perhaps I should do so. Perhaps finding life on one of these moons will be the most important discovery of the 21st Century–and only God knows if in finding life out there (if the human race does find it), that discovery will include meeting intelligent beings we will be able to find a way to converse with. Perhaps it will.

Perhaps the old dreams of meeting intelligent life in our own Solar System will prove to be prophetic–even if that intelligent life won’t show up on Mars like nearly everyone thought. Whether that discovery of life happens or not on the moons this post mentions is something science fiction writers have no direct control over.

But we do have the ability to consider what might be there lurking under the surface of these icy worlds and to craft stories that imaginatively go there. And such stories might even influence how any discovery(ies) of alien intelligence(s) in our own Solar System are interpreted and understood in the future–if any (God willing) should come to pass.

For readers of this post, are you familiar with any science fiction that features exploring oceans under the icy surfaces of moons (in our Solar System or elsewhere)? If so, who wrote it and how did the story turn out?

And what do you think might be found in these deep oceans around other moons or planets?

As is usual, late summer seems to start a variety of awards for fiction. Some nonfiction, too, but I’m more aware of and concerned about fiction awards, specifically speculative fiction. Consequently, I thought it might be helpful to alert spec faith visitors which books are up for award. It’s always good, in my opinion, to take a look at books that others thought were at the top of the list.

Realm Makers actually has two different kinds of awards. First is the type that is similar to other award organizations, only the categories involve speculative titles. Here are the three finalists for the Realm Awards—“among the best speculative titles published in 2018”—which will be presented during the Realm Makers Conference dinner:

Debut

The Story Peddler by Lindsay Franklin
Launch by Jason Joyner
Identity Revealed by J. M. Butler

Fantasy

Seeds: A Christian Fantasy by Rachel Starr Thomson
Dagger’s Sleep by Tricia Mingerink
Fierian by Ronie Kendig

Science Fiction

Through Chaos by Joshua A. Johnston
Fraught by Kerry Nietz
No Road Among the Stars by A. Walker Scott

Supernatural/Paranormal/Horror/Other

Shade: The Complete Trilogy by Merrie Destefano
The Breeding by Avily Jerome
Forsaken by Gina Detwiler

Young Adult

The Story Peddler by Lindsay Franklin
Launch by Jason Joyner
The Wolf Prince by Claire Banschbach

The other type of award is The Alliance Award, a readers’ choice award given for the best book. Here are the finalists:

The Story Peddler by Lindsay Franklin
Fawkes by Nadine Brandes
Mark of the Raven by Morgan Busse

The website also references the Parable Award, recognizing the best book cover of the year. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a list of finalists there or on the Facebook page. Hopefully we’ll be able to announce the winner after the awards dinner, July 19, so stay tuned.

Of course there are many other awards that include speculative fiction. The American Christian Fiction Writers organization offers the Carol Awards while the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association presents the Christy Awards. Both have categories for speculative literature—the former called Speculative and the latter, Visionary. Apparently the finalists in those have not yet been announced.

Other awards are available from various conferences:
Oregon Christian Conference offers the Cascade Awards. The category is Speculative and the awards will be presented at the conference in August. The finalists are
The Ruins of Jienrenil: Helkrom by Randall Rutherford
Konnor the Collector by Pat Schantz
Quest of the Queen by Dawn Shipman

The Blue Ridge Mountains Writers Conference offers the Selah Award. The finalists in the speculative category this year were
Mark of the Raven by Morgan L. Busse (Bethany House/Baker)
Sky Light Falls by Donna E. Lane (Bear’s Place Publishing)
The Revolutionary by Kristen Hogrefe (Write Integrity Press)

The winner, announced last month at the Blue Ridge conference, was Mark of the Raven.

There are undoubtedly other awards and I hate to present an incomplete picture, but I hope this list will start readers thinking about the books that are out there which you could add to your summer reading, ones that have at least reached the finals stage, which means someone has judged them—either professionals in the writing industry or readers, who may be the best judges of all.

The title of this post may get at least a few people upset, because it may smack of “patriarchy” to some, but my conclusion may not be quite what you’d expect. Note I changed what I planned to post today based on looking at what Mark Carver wrote yesterday (not for the first time). His post on Those Meddling Kids points out that families with children are often excluded from speculative fiction, some exceptions notwithstanding. And he’s right that while there are plenty of stories that feature child protagonists like Harry Potter and even Narnia (and teen protagonists in The Hunger Games etc.) and plenty of stories that feature adult protagonists who are married (though I’d say single protagonists are more common), a family of adults and children together is a relative rarity in speculative fiction, outliers like Lost in Space notwithstanding. No doubt there are loads of reasons this is true, but it occurs to me that separating kids from adults in fiction cheats characters from certain types of important interactions that may especially help female protagonists. Or at least some great speculative fiction stories have featured women bearing children and protecting them as major aspects of the story–and perhaps more stories should do so.

Why would the issue of having children be important especially to female characters? Well, in spite of living in an era in which more and more often the tiny, tiny minority of people who arguably could be either gender are treated as if they are role models for everyone, as if everyone could either be male or female according to inner desires and not according to biology (most people are clearly born either male or female, in spite of rare cases of congenital hermaphroditic conditions), women are different from men in that a woman with a healthy reproductive system can bear children, something no biological male can ever do. That’s a pretty significant difference and has profoundly affected the reasons why men have been warriors in many societies and women have not been–bearing and breastfeeding children takes a toll on a human body and raising kids takes decades of effort. So while most families in human history have worked a family business or farm in which dad, mom, and all the kids worked together most of the time, when a war came around, the men left and the women stayed behind. That system wasn’t deliberate oppression of women for the most part, it just was practical–somebody had to be at home and the one with the attached milk bottles was clearly the better choice if babies were in the house, as they usually were for men young enough to fight in combat. Even in societies in which women served as warriors (like the historic Sarmatians), women with children fought less often than women without children.

And most societies traditionally found stories of warriors more interesting that stories of ordinary life, including ordinary family life. We carry this notion of what makes an interesting story with us today, especially in speculative fiction. Hence the interest in women warriors in our genres on the part of people wanting to equalize the playing field between men and women. Because fighting in war has been a “male privilege” and we want to see women who fight! Such as in superhero stories, with more and more women in battle scenes!

From Avengers Endgame. Image Copyright, Marvel.

I happen to think warfare is a lot less fun in the real world that in fiction and am rather against the notion of pretending the use of force (even morally justified force) is something other than what it is. But I’m not against portraying women in combat in fiction, nor am I against women fighting in combat in the real world who able to perform physically at a high enough level, which does happen, but represents abilities only a minority of women are capable of. Nor am I against portraying alien species in which the relationship between male and female is different from our own so that the females may be the stronger gender (this works especially well with egg-laying species on Planet Earth), even though I’m opposed to the notion that gender in human beings does not almost always have an obvious biological basis.  I think implying women can be men or vice versa is a bad idea, yet I’m not opposed to portraying women who are in a situation which allows them to fight.

Though instead of a story in which women voluntarily are allowed to fight alongside men, I think stories in which women are required to fight because they need to are more compelling. This is where inclusion of children benefits speculative fiction stories. Because generally speaking, women will fight for the lives of their children with an urgency unlike any other form of warfare.

Speculative fiction has already done this at times. While Ripley is an interesting character in Alien, where she winds up fighting a monster to save her own life and the lives of her crew, she’s even more interesting in Aliens, in which she’s fighting for her surrogate daughter, Newt. In that story, you would not have been able to substitute a male character in her position and get the same urgency, the same resonance and power, especially given Ripley fights the alien mother queen (which had clear parallels to queen ants and queen bees). And other alien movies played around with the idea of Ripley as the mother to the alien and what that would mean–even though those movies were not as good, you could not have put a male character in that position.

Image copyright: Twentieth Century Fox

The Terminator films likewise cast Sarah Connor as an ordinary woman who becomes extraordinary because of fighting (and preparing to fight) for the life of her son, John Connor. The character’s role as a mother was an essential part of what made her a warrior and fighter. (Terminator 2 was notably one of the speculative fiction films in which a child and parent worked together, even though the film kept them separated a great deal of the time.)

I recently watched a film made for Netflix named I Am Mother, which featured a female-voiced artificial intelligence/robot raising a girl as her daughter in post-apocalyptic environment (I originally planned to post on this movie, by the way). It’s an interesting story in part because of what it does and does not say about motherhood. I won’t say a lot more about it here, but the three main characters in the tale are all women, which was totally natural in the context of the story world. (I do recommend this movie by the way–I found it thought-provoking.)

While this post must at this point surely seem to be making a straight line argument in favor of writing women heroes who have to fight to defend their children, I’m about to deviate a bit. The Road showed a post-apocalyptic world in which a father rather than a mother fought for his son. And I would say the story was more powerful for the inclusion of a child, much more, than if it had been the story of a single man trying to stay alive in a world where everything had gone wrong.

So maybe Mark was right in his focus and I started off on the wrong track. Maybe the inclusion of parents in stories who are desperately afraid for the lives of their children is the phenomenon I’m talking about. I’ve seen more stories with women written in this position than stories with men made that way, but male characters can and do resonate when fighting for the lives of their children, especially when the man has been shown to be vulnerable, as The Road did well. (How nice of me to recommend The Road in time for Father’s Day. 🙂 )

Father and son in The Road. Image Copyright: Dimension Films

As I write this, I realize a reason why so many of the minority of stories that feature children don’t do what I’m talking about. While The Incredibles was lots of fun, a story that features parents with their children is much more powerful if the children are in serious danger, as opposed to cartoon danger. And generally speaking, writers and film producers have been reluctant to create fiction dark enough to give readers (or a viewing audience) the sense of the character’s terror that their child is about to suffer a horrible death. The Road did it and so did Aliens–and I recommend we do the same.

We Christian authors should not only write more stories that feature children, but more stories in which the children are in mortal peril, real danger, provoking real parental terror. Because while Christian-authored stories can be light reading for the whole family, they can also show real rescue from a providential God in times of genuine, terrible fear over the vulnerabilities of children. By the way, Lelia Rose Foreman’s Pacifist War (part of her Shatterworld trilogy) manages to capture that fear–which is part of what makes it a such great story.

What are your thoughts on this topic, readers? Do you agree that Christian authors would do well to include more families in which parents have to fight to save their children’s lives? If you enjoy these kinds of stories, are there examples I failed to include?

It takes just a quick glance at movies, TV shows, and books to realize that our entertainment is packed with attractive and unmarried characters, and a good portion of those that are married look and act like they aren’t married. Fictitious families usually have one or two children, and the only times we see large families are either for comic effect or to provide a challenge for our middle-sibling protagonists to overcome. Depictions of marriage and family vary by genre (you’ll find a lot more husbands, wives, and kids in Western and Amish stories) but it’s interesting to observe how rarely families show up in speculative fiction.

Fantasy, with its medieval roots and settings, naturally has more instances of families featuring prominently in the story, either as the fertile soil from which our hero springs or as a tangled web of secrets and lies, especially if the story centers around a royal family. In quest-based fantasy, our marrying-age hero or heroine is usually still single or must rescue their kidnapped love. Rarely do we see our intrepid traveler leave a wife and children behind to go on their epic quest, and this is for a number of reasons. One, it’s not very realistic (as far as fantasy goes). A man or a woman with a family to care for would not go on a quest unless the survival of the family depended on it, and there are usually more capable and less married people around to do the job instead. Two, it wouldn’t sit well with readers if a spouse and parent left their family in pursuit of the Scroll of Destiny as the Prophecy Foretold. It would be hard to generate sympathy for such a character, especially from readers with families of their own. Three, families are a mental, physical, and emotion burden. A joyous burden but a burden nonetheless. An unattached protagonist is much easier to read and write since they are able to devote themselves to the cause at hand.

Science fiction goes even further. I would have to think long and hard to recall a sci-fi story or movie where a large family was central to the storyline (I’m sure some of you could come with some examples, though). Lost in Space is one of the few instances of where a family remains together for the duration of the series. By and large, the people hurtling through space are either unattached or have left loved ones behind, but these tangential characters exist only to elicit empathic emotions from the audience (and to cry when their intrepid parent nobly sacrifices themselves).

The bottom line is that kids (and to a lesser degree, spouses) get in the way of a good story, or at least that’s the popular perception. Turn on a movie or TV show and take a look at the characters on the screen and ask yourself if these people would be single and/or childless in real life. I believe that as entertainment consumes greater amounts of our time – and we fashion our lives into entertainment thanks to social media – marriage, children, and families are being perceived in an increasingly negative light. The young, hot, wealthy Instagram influencer is able to live that way because she is unmarried and has no children. She is carefree and stretch mark-free. Contrast that with “mommy blogs” where stressed-out moms seek guidance and support to make it through their hectic days. A society that craves the perfect body and the drool-worthy backdrop looks at family life and says, “Ew.” They see how children consume the lives of parents and think of kids as a ball and chain.

This viewpoint naturally features heavily in our entertainment, especially futuristic stories. Granted, it’s hard to have action-packed adventures when you have half a dozen hungry mouths to feed, and single people have often been the heroes of stories since ages past. Yet it’s clear that this antagonistic attitude towards traditional families and children goes beyond entertainment. We see women “shouting their abortions” and hits like The Handmaid’s Tale stirring up imagined persecution complexes, while children are exposed to gay marriage as young as elementary school. At its core, this sentiment is based on hatred of God and His word. The Bible says, “Male and female He created them,” and the world says, “We’ll see about that.” The Bible says, “A man shall cleave to his wife,” and the world says, “Boring!” The Bible says, “Be fruitful and multiply,” and the world says, “And miss out on all the fun?!”

Even among Christians, not everyone will get married, and not everyone will have children. And yes, children would be a bit of an encumbrance in many stories. But despite what we see on the page and screen, marriage and parenthood is a wild and exciting journey, and above all, a blessing from God.

So often writers of speculative fiction focus on worldbuilding, and rightfully so. When a story takes place in outer space or on a planet far, far away, or in a pretend world, or in our world in a future time, the world the author creates must be realistic, believable, textured. But the truth is, characters still make the story, even in our imagined worlds.

For all our intriguing Other Places, readers still read because they care about the characters. I wrote about this nearly three years ago, particularly addressing the way Christian writers portray non-Christian characters. But in truth we need to deepen our understanding of how to develop all our characters.

Here is an excerpt from Power Elements Of Character Development which introduces this topic of developing our characters:

Fundamental to any good novel is a good character, but what makes a character “good”?
When I first started writing, I had a story in mind, and my characters were almost incidentals. Since then, I’ve learned how flat such a story is. Characters make readers care about the events that happen, but in turn, the events are the testing grounds which allow characters to grow.

So which comes first? I believe that’s an immaterial question. A good story must have both a good plot and good characters—the non-flat kind.

In developing main characters, a writer needs to give each something he wants and something he needs. The “want” is generally outside him (to destroy the One Ring, to marry Ashley Wilkes, to escape the Safe Lands), and the need is that internal thing that drives him (to find purpose, to do the right thing, to be loved). The internal may not be something the character is aware of consciously. For example, in Jonathan Rogers’s excellent middle grade novel The Charlatan’s Boy, young orphaned Grady doesn’t go around saying, I need to be loved and accepted, but the reader fairly quickly understands this about him.

Secondly, having given the protagonist a want and need, the author must also put him on a path to gain what he wants. However, as the story moves forward, this initial want may change. If the character wants to reach point A, he may discover upon arrival that his need is not met, so he now sets out to reach point B. Or, along the way he may realize that he only thought he wanted A, but in actuality wants B; consequently, he abandons the quest for A and aims for B.

Another important aspect of character development is the increase of a character’s self-awareness. The protagonist should have strengths and weaknesses, and as the story progresses, his understanding of how to use his strengths and/or change his weaknesses should expand.

Fourth, the character should make progress, both in achieving what he wants and acquiring what he needs. Yet success can’t come too easily or there really is no story. But to make no progress defeats the character, and the reader, dyeing the story in hopelessness.

Notice that all these first character development points have little to do with hair style or eye color. Often those are the things writers settle on as the most important when they start putting a character together. Is he tall? Does he like football? Is she a shopper?

Those things are secondary to the wants/needs understanding. If a character like Grady wants to be loved, then how does that affect his choices—his aspirations, the way he dresses, what he does with the hours in his day, the type of job he seeks, and so on.

Part of understanding these aspects of the character depends on the personality of this individual. Is he a “can do” sort, so he looks at obstacles as challenges, or is he burdened by his wants and needs, fighting to keep from despair?

Notice that in either instance, the character is fighting. In contrast, a character who takes a passive approach to life as opposed to taking action, is not someone readers will connect with easily.

One more important element—a writer needs to think of his character as an individual. What are the quirks that he has that no one else has? Or the gestures, the speech patterns, the thinking style?

Know your character, inside and out. Then put him in any circumstance you wish, and you will know what he will do. Someone as spacey as your character would do something silly when the pressure’s on. Someone shy and retiring would never make herself a spectacle but would probably have a favorite get-away spot where she hides from the world.

Throughout the story, authors test their characters and grow them and change them so that in the end they do more than even they thought possible.

Photo credit: toolboxes by Susan Holt Simpson on Unsplash

Ming the Merciless. Image Credit: Villains Wiki.

Once upon a time in speculative fiction (say in the heyday of Flash Gordon, first published in 1934), most storytellers wrote as if good was good and evil was evil. Writers might use speculative fiction to explore the nature of good and evil by attempting to distill the purest imaginable form of each and set them at war with one another (which is arguably one of the great achievements of The Lord of the Rings) but nobody had to explain why the villain was villainous–Sauron and Ming the Merciless were just bad, period. That “once upon a time” has mostly disappeared–villainous characters today are often given sympathetic backstory treatment which explains how they suffered some form of tragic circumstance which transformed them into the evil being they became. And it happens to be that I’m mostly against the tragic villain backstory as a storytelling device. I’m about to tell you why.

First let me give some credit where credit is due. In some of the old tales of speculative fiction, good and evil were often distilled out to the point where they became…well…really corny. The villainous laugh of the over-the-top baddie not only is a bit silly, it really hasn’t been all that common among historical bad guys (though if, say, Ivan the Terrible were to be laughing at you, you could be sure that you were in deep, deep, deep, deep trouble–so villainous laughter really has been “a thing” sometimes). Plus, isn’t it actually true that most people are a blend of good and evil impulses? Isn’t it fascinating to see a character who exemplifies both virtuous traits like courage and charisma while at the same time being a heartless butcher and abuser of oppressed people? (I’m thinking of you, Gul Dukat, Star Trek Deep Space Nine.)

Gul Dukat
Image Copyright: CBS

Yeah, in many ways, storytelling has become richer in certain aspects by exploring people who are shades of gray and by showing how circumstances can lead a person to switch from one side of the equation to the other…though even the cheesy Flash Gordon stories occasionally showed a good character tempted by evil or a bad character helping someone good. And The Lord of the Rings did this very well at times, showing dividing lines between good and evil in complex ways in places within the narrative, including how Frodo was drawn to evil by the power of the Ring, while Gollum was drawn back the other way.

So my objection to the modern villain’s tragic backstory is not that I’m protesting “gray” characters–at times such characters are very interesting (though I also like good and evil in purer versions at times, too). Nor am I objecting to characters shifting over time in either the direction of evil or the direction of good.

I am a bit put off by the presumption that people are by default good and something needs to happen to make them bad that I see in a tragic villain backstory. No, people in my belief and observation generally have both altruistic and also selfish impulses and while that doesn’t make everyone literally totally depraved (as in Five Point Calvinism) that does make all people helpless to expunge themselves of every form of selfishness by self-effort. People can get better by effort of will, but cannot get all the way good. You can find some few human beings in history who show nothing but utter contempt for other humans at all times, even though that’s quite rare. But I cannot think of any human being who has always been completely altruistic in all moments of life, not even Mother Theresa. In general, human beings round down to bad rather than up to good and in fact someone being a very good person requires a great deal of education and modeling of the example of others, not to mention an extra helping of natural empathy. All things considered, I would say that someone being very good requires more of a story explanation than someone being very bad–though getting this wrong is not what bothers me most about the tragic villain backstory.

What I most find offensive about a tale like Oz, The Great and Powerful, which shows the Wicked Witch of the West becoming evil because of romantic jealously, or Maleficent, which shows the wicked sorceress turn bad because of the a love interest who dies, or the recent Joker movie, which shows the villain (played by Joaquin Phoenix) as an emotionally fragile misfit who turns dark due to a series of slights and misfortunes, is the role these stories assign suffering. Suffering, hardship, something going wrong, someone abusing you–this is what these movies portray as producing evil.

Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker.
Image Credit: GeekTyrant

Why do I find that offensive? Well, not only because I have a rather tragic backstory myself in some ways (and I’m pretty sure I’m not a supervillain), but some of the greatest of all heroes are suffering heroes. Suffering can be the ultimate demonstration of love–Jesus Christ carrying the cross to the place of the skull–Frodo carrying the Ring up the slopes of Mount Doom–both barely able to move under the weight of their burden. Suffering can also deepen empathy and teach someone who never really had any tragic experiences how hard life is for some who walks in different shoes.

Suffering often drives people towards faith in God–many of the poorest and most suffering people in the world are also the most devoted to God, and often are very genuinely kind and gracious people. Yes, rough neighborhoods produce thugs, too, and poor countries can also be violent ones. Yes, sometimes suffering really does seem to harden people and make them worse than they otherwise would be. Yet passing through a great deal of suffering isn’t the most common profile of the scariest people who have ever lived on Planet Earth.

The scariest people on the planet are those willing to make others suffer, while avoiding all forms of hardship themselves. Yes, sometimes this sort of person is born into a rough neighborhood and looks around and notices that joining up with bad men will help protect him from harm–and he is willing to be cruel to others in order to avoid suffering hardship himself (using masculine pronouns because it’s almost always men who fall into this particular pattern of behavior).

But sometimes the worst of the worst are born into privilege and start life with inordinate power. Not having ever deeply suffered themselves, they view the suffering of others with contempt. Caligula and Nero grew up with this kind of power–and grew up in utter indifference to the hardship of others. Ivan the Terrible likewise, while he did suffer hardship and loss at times, was raised to believe he literally represented God on Earth. He believed for a time that he could do no wrong–he believed he was different from all other human beings–and that the lives and needs of other people were not as important as his wants, needs, and desires. Plus of course, some of the worst of the worst not only are poorly raised to see themselves as the center of the universe, they also lack natural empathy for a variety of reasons.

Ivan IV (the Terrible) of Russia. Forensic facial reconstruction by M.Gerasimov.

Note that I’m offering an opinion here about the true nature of evil, but I think it’s a solid one. The wickedness within the human heart springs forth far more when people are handed the power to damage others than when a person is helpless before the cruelty of other human beings. Helpless, suffering people may indeed become bitter and lash back, but normally, it’s those who are not themselves suffering, in an environment where suffering is commonplace, who have something to gain from making others hurt, who show the true depths of wickedness that our species is capable of.

Can I back up my opinion with science? To a degree, yes. Scientific studies on the nature of evil in general would be unethical, but one of the major ones that has taken place, the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zombardo in 1971, in which students were divided into two randomly-selected groups, one of which were prisoners and the other, prison guards, showed those in power turning sinister, not those suffering. Philip Zombardo in fact sees evil strictly in terms of this kind of environment of power imbalance as he explains in his book The Lucifer Effect—I disagree with him about that, because I see evil having multiple causes, but I do agree that an environment where people are given inordinate power over others who are suffering does far more to produce villains than people going through hardship themselves.

Historical events also have demonstrated how the seeds of evil in the human heart (through sin) sprout and grow in an environment of unlimited power over the lives of others. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn noted in his books on Soviet prison camps, The Gulag Archipelago, how guards in power routinely performed evil actions–though he also saw that an ideology justifying cruelty made people worse than power alone:

“The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology – that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes…. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations…”— The Gulag Archipelago, Chapter 4, p. 173

But concerning his own suffering in the Gulag, Solzhenitsyn said: “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”

So if we as authors wish to portray ordinary people (commonly considered good, though they aren’t entirely) becoming blatantly evil because of circumstances, let’s pick the right circumstances. Tragedy and suffering are often ennobling. Whereas power over others made worse when backed by an ideology that justifies treating others cruelly–that is the sort of backstory that routinely cranks out villains. Not tragic events, not suffering and loss–not usually.