November 20, 2015 - 15:53
The Sixth Extinction and The Collapse of Western Civilization both have ominous sounding names – and true to expectations, they both foretell a somewhat dark future. They each delve into historical fact, base the majority of their claims on current events and research, and study the impact of humans in the environment. However, one of them is true. The other one isn’t.
What exactly defines “fiction” in today’s world? Merriam-Webster Online defines fiction as “written stories about people and events that are not real: literature that tells stories which are imagined by the writer: something that is not true”. Non-fiction, on the other hand, is “writing that is about facts or real events: all writing that is not fiction”. In other words, truth finds the basis of its definition as anything that is not untrue. This, in turn, begs the question: what is fiction (and truth) in writing? And who decides that? And when?
Kolbert’s work is a clear example of what we commonly call non-fiction. Written in a style reminiscent of investigative journalism, it’s smart-sounding and informative, with touches of wry humor and sentences that pack a punch. The Sixth Extinction explores the impacts of human civilization on the environment through past examples and current sciences. It speculates on the future of mankind and the earth, it challenges commonly held assumptions, and it suggests new ideas for the reader to contemplate and reexamine. However, as is important in any informative report, it analyzes the past and centers itself squarely in the present. Yes, Kolbert believes that humans should accept the responsibility for the Sixth Extinction, and she says so… but she’s unclear as to what the future holds, because current-day scientists are too. She criticizes the various actions that people are taking, and she makes it apparent that the present is in process. The Sixth Extinction notes all of this, attempting to persuade the reader but also attempting to provide them with truth.
In other words, it’s something we’re used to.
Oreskes’ and Conway’s work, on the other hand, is a unique form of storytelling in that it’s written almost like a textbook– although it professes to be fiction, it presents otherwise, and this begins to blur the lines between truth and story. Purposed to be “a view from the future”, The Collapse of Western Civilization jumps nearly 400 years from the current-day and speculates on possible history as chronicled by a fictional historian in 2393. There’s no love triangle, no hand-to-hand combat with laser blasters, no deep reflection on life and the purpose of humanity—in short, The Collapse lacks the personal narrative that dystopian novels normally carry. The style of writing is similar to that of any history textbook, and although heavily biased, it appears to be an internally consistent and reliable source. In fact, other than the clearly obvious reason that the publication date precedes the histories within, the novel presents itself as fact.
Perhaps that means that it isn’t, by all traditional definitions, simply a work of fiction: The Encyclopedia Britannica defines fiction as “literature created from the imagination, not presented as fact, though it may be based on a true story or situation”. But then what is it? Our books, songs, and records tell stories of the past, skewed by the perspective of the present. What, then, is the difference between a story of the present, skewed by the perspective of the future?
One might say that The Collapse is simply fiction written to be more effective than a simple novella. After all, the threat of a destroyed ecosystem—and a more-easily-imagined future, thanks to the matter-of-fact way that Oreskes and Conway relay their “facts”—is a quick and powerful way to disturb the reader. Effectiveness isn’t to be discounted, either; according to several students in our class, The Collapse of Western Civilization was a bit of a wakeup call, if delivered in an unorthodox way. It’s an artful use of untruth to help us imagine what a world where these things were true would look like. Such a “science-based fiction” has the potential to come across as alarmist, heavily biased, and presenting a skewed version of the world to come.
Then again, perhaps it should be biased. The nature of the text, as a “view from the future”, is meant to present things from a specific perspective: namely, that of an already demoralized “sadder but wiser” generation on Earth. By presenting other perspectives and contrasting viewpoints, The Collapse would lose an integral part of its nature – and possibly render itself pointless in the process. After all, the average textbook doesn’t offer other possibilities as to “how things might have turned out had 1810 gone differently”. Should it? Of course not, one reasons. It would be silly—after all, everyone knows how events of the past turned out! But the future—that’s simply speculation, and any guesses as to its nature are pure fantasy.
So, we have reduced truth to what we know (the past and the present) and storytelling as what we don’t know (the future). But is this an accurate assessment? Textbooks are written with bias, and writers influence the truth with their retelling of fact. For instance, in Kolbert’s text, she interprets the stories of the past and translates them into the impacts of the present. The writing is heavily biased (there’s a definite agenda she pushes, a point she’s trying to make), and yet we say her stories are true because they exist in past experience. Oreskes’ and Conway’s work interprets the events of today and translates them into the foretelling of the future. We say their stories are false because they’re biased, because they’re simply hypothetical and we have not (yet) experienced them. Maybe the line between fact and fiction is not one of truth vs. lies, but of the known vs. the unknown; in other words, their separation is simply a question of time.
Or perhaps we’re using the wrong words to categorize these two pieces. Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction seeks to explore ways in which humans can create a new future. Oreskes’ and Conway’s The Collapse of Western Civilization provides us with a portrayal of a possible future and a reason to build our own. And perhaps, a reader might think, this is good. With the recognition that sometimes the gap between them is only a little space and time, one learns to approach all reading—fact, fiction, or the in between—with questions.
After all, writing today isn’t what we’re used to.