Laurie Eckhart

May 10, 2004

Shifting Sands: The Literature of Space and Exploration

            Human beings will go to profound lengths to be the first, to do the impossible and scale the improbable in order to feed the need that resides somewhere deep inside us. Heroes like Columbus, Shackleton, Scott, Gagarin, Armstrong, etc. provide us with vicarious thrills, inspiration, and pride. Explorers have been used as national symbols to represent the hopes and dreams of entire populations. Successes in space have even been referred to as belonging to the whole of humanity.

            When the course began, I didn’t give much though to the division of exploration – polar occurred in the first part of the semester and space in the second. I assumed that it was imposed simply for chronological order and clarity, but after I read Norman Mailer’s Of a fire on the Moon and various texts for my project on Russian polar and space exploration, I changed my mind. It’s difficult to emphatically arrive at any conclusions based on a survey course, but I did get general impressions-- the hint of potential patterns that deserve of a little exploration of their own.

            I tend to separate exploration into two categories—old and current. Old explorers discovered new countries and entire animal species (that weigh more than a few ounces). Old explorers wrote books and spread stories that were eagerly digested by curious individuals who still possessed notions of world edges, monsters and the fantastic. Unless you count the unexplored terrain deep under the ocean, there are no longer countries to be found and though cryptozoologists are always “hot on the trail” of some new, fascinating, creature, the creature is usually something from mythology, such as Yeti or Nessie. Current explorers are astronauts, not the astronauts who fix broken telescopes or crumbling space stations, now I reserve the title for future astronauts who might some day be selected to visit Mars. Right or wrong, why would I make such a distinction? As the course began to wind to a close I began questioning myself and the assumptions that I made about the literature of exploration.

            It seems like the 1960’s were a time of transition for exploration literature. Rapid communication, technology and a changing culture not only translated into new means of exploring frontiers, but it changed something about the audience of exploration literature as well. Mailer summed the experience up -- “It was the event of his lifetime, and yet it had been a dull event” (130). Despite the historical gravity and significance of the moon walk, it came as no surprise to me when Aquarius grew bored with the televised lunar landing:

It was a Twentieth Century audience when all was said, and quick in its sense of fashion. By an hour and a half of the moon walk they were bored—some were actually slipping out. All over the room was felt the ubiquitous desire of journalists for the rescue of a drink. Boredom deepened. […] Even Aquarius left             before the end. (129-130)

The same technology that gave the journalists the opportunity to be with the astronauts as they explored the lunar surface was part of the reason they grew bored after only an hour and a half. Novelty was becoming a commodity and in the ultra-fast world of technology novelty had a quick shelf-life:

In the decades since we first gazed at Earth from space, however, the pace of exploration slowed remarkably. We assumed a "been there, done that" attitude toward geographic discovery and began pursuing mere adventure in lieu of genuine exploration. (Paulsen)

Assume, for a moment, that I’ve presented a decent argument and accept that exploration literature is being nosed aside in favor of travel and “adventure” literature.  We included science fiction in our definition of Space and Exploration Literature this course. It might be obvious to others, but what has become recently apparent to me is that just as the face of exploration has shifted, so has the way in which we, as armchair explorers, engage exploration. More on science fiction follows below. Of course, there are still books about modern exploration, but travel books that focus on “modest adventures you can afford”-- or the odd memoir written by the spouse of a bored scientist out in the field seem to be more prevalent. While they fall into the broad category of exploration literature, I think it is science fiction that might have actually “replaced” the old, hard core exploration accounts.

            Most of the texts I studied for my Russian exploration project revealed that both America and Russia were engaged in a heated race to space. Amundsen set a precedent when he beat Shackleton in the early twentieth-century. After Russia put Yuri Gagarin in space, the United States President became determined to put a man on the moon, once that occurred Russia publicly claimed they were interested in space stations all along and beat the Americans by placing one in orbit and manning it. Then once that was done the Russians began a who-can-stay-in-space longer contest. Thankfully, Russia and America now work together and hope to put man on Mars. Today first-foot-in-the-region exploration has been replaced by a similar competitiveness:

Mountaineers competed not to scale new heights, but to summit well-known peaks faster and with less gear. Deep ocean discovery was all but abandoned while the hunt for prizes such as the Titanic consumed popular imagination. And NASA confined space travel to flying laps around the planet -- something the Soviets had already proved a well-trained dog could do. (Paulsen)

Travel literature is geared towards people with time, money and an adventurous spirit. Those who can travel to places and have little mini-adventures use these books as guides while those that can’t. . . they, at least, get to read about it:

Adventure proved easier to orchestrate -- and market -- than the far less predictable pursuit of exploration. A sprawling adventure-entertainment complex emerged during the peaceful and prosperous decades since the moon missions, and the industry perfected the art of selling magazines, television shows, high-tech equipment, and prêt à porter apparel. (Paulsen)

Exploration takes a lot of money. I think that maybe the shift in literature accounts for a money making concern. How much more profitable is it to write about adventures that people are likely to take, which encompasses a much broader audience, than one which is unique and not likely to be reproduced? An even cheaper way to market literature to people who have the itch to explore and who want fresh, virgin worlds to explore comes in the often formulaic, but sometimes wonderful form of science fiction.

            Science fiction has come a long way. Though it has been around in different forms, for thousands of years, it began to take on the conventions that we recognize today during the 19^th century. It has been evolving ever since.  Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, published in 1912, in what might be considered the early part of the Golden Age of science fiction. His characters are more caricature than anything else and the plot is pretty sketchy. It has been described as a “wild west tale set on Mars.”  Magic accounts for events that science (or Burroughs) could not deal with and more than one implausible escape just in the nick of time occurs. The book is an entertaining read, but it is beyond obsolete by both science and literary standards.

            Eighty-four years later Mary Doria Russell’s book The Sparrow was written and added to the list of soft science fiction. Though there is little to compare between Princess and Sparrow, Russell does, ironically, write one character who approaches caricature, and that is a D.W. Yarbrough the gun-totin’, adage-spouting, Texan. But, he is surrounded by a cast of characters that are more fully fleshed out and believable. Instead of magic, spirituality and faith are explored in Sparrow. The book has plenty of twists for a demanding reader while still managing to be straight-forward enough to read pleasantly No one manages to escape in the nick of time. The exploration that does take place is done in private, “there was no place in history at stake here, no plan to record this event” (187). The mission is not carried on for national glory, or at presidential behest, or for material gain. It occurs in a future in slightly different society:

No reporters, no photography or AV feed to the nets. From a culture gone mad with documentation, publicity, broadcast, narrowcast and pointcast, where every act of public and private life seemed to be done for an audience, the voyage of the Stella Maris had begun in privacy, and its mission would be carried out in obscurity. (187)

Whether Russell intended to nod towards the insanity that surrounded early space endeavors or not, she hits on a vital aspect of human nature. The exploration that takes place in Sparrow is not done for an audience and that seems to maybe change the focus of the story. How much space would have been sacrificed if the expedition had had to exist in the public realm? It is, after all, the human element in exploration that fascinates us. The thrill of the “first” whatever is fleeting, the struggle to get there is not. I think that a lot of exploration that takes place today is done by collective effort (no hero figure heads for us to idolize) and done, mostly, in the name of science. And science typically isn’t gobbled up by the general masses.

            Early in the book Anne asked “a mission or do you mean a mission? Are we talking science or religion?” (96). Nowadays most exploration is done in the name of science, instead of glory, and science has a very narrow audience. Before technology made the world so very small, dreamers and heroes risked their lives to be the first to explore uncharted regions, afterward scientists followed them and set up shop, but no one cared about the scientists. Popular science fiction shows, Stargate SG-1 for example, show a new planet every week… but, they never devote episodes to the scientists that supposedly go to the newly explored planets to quietly make their discoveries. People aren’t interested in watching that. They want the first sight of alien territory; once it’s tamed it is no longer the domain of explorers and heroes, but men more mundane.

            The Literature of Space and Exploration is in flux. Like a desert the general scenery will remain the same, but the lay of the land is constantly shifting, reorganizing itself into different patterns. Any student interested in the genre must be ready to follow the changes and willing to constantly reorient himself with the new psychology of exploration.

Works Cited

Burroughs, Edgar Rice. A Princess of Mars.  New York: Del Rey, 1979.

Mailer, Norman. Of a Fire on the Moon.  Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1970.

Paulsen, Monte “Why We Explore: Discovery, not adventure, is the spiritual urge that beckons to us all” Conscious Choice, June             2002<http://www.consciouschoice.com/issues/cc1506/whyweexplore1506.html>

Russell, Mary Doria. The Sparrow. New York: Ballantine Publishing Group, 1996.