# History is More Like Science Fiction Than Fantasy

Source: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/04/01/history-is-more-like-science-fiction-than-fantasy
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/History-is-More-Like-Science-Fiction-Than-Fantasy?index=0x660bad488ed330ed2f8832299ba50ed77c9f8d17fc57aa2554a4b4a4defa8be19712fcc3
Submitted by misha on 2024-04-02 UTC, 1 upvote, 0 comments

## Summary

The author argues that history is closer in kinship to science fiction than to fantasy, because good history, like science fiction, assumes one lawful universe that applies equally to everyone, with no Chosen Ones. Drawing on Ted Chiang's distinction between the two genres, the piece contends that explanations invoking "greatness" or specialness are unsatisfying and that hagiography is the history-writing equivalent of fantasy. The piece uses Bettany Hughes' Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities as an example, noting that its account does not rest on the presumed greatness of figures such as Alexander, Catherine and Suleyman.

## Article

I’ve been slow-reading Bettany Hughes’ Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities for months now, ever since I visited the city (on Kindle, so I didn’t realize when I started that it’s 600 pages plus another 250 odd notes). It’s dense and absorbing and I’ll probably do a reflections post when I’m done, but the fact that I’ve stuck with it made me think about how good history books scratch the same itch as good science fiction. The past is an alien planet. They do things differently there. Yet you recognize signs of the same lawfulness in the universe that governs life in your own time. You can feel kinship with people in 18th century Istanbul. Or 6th century Constantinople. Or Trantor in 47,000 AD.

Though history has a stronger cosmetic resemblance to fantasy (the past had actual knights and wizards, and unironic belief in magic), I think it has a deeper kinship to science fiction. Ted Chiang’s much discussed distinction between science fiction and fantasy (he’s made versions of this point in different speeches and interviews but I can’t find a canonical source or quote) makes this kinship legible. He argues that science fiction posits a lawful universe that may have strange laws but they apply to everyone, while fantasy posits a universe that recognizes some people as “special,” with special laws applying to them. Chosen ones. This is the essence of “magic” as the chosen mode of escapism, as opposed to “time travel” or “hyperspace jumps.” I almost made the same point in a 2007 post, Harry Potter and the Concept of Magic, but ended up making an adjacent less provocative and less interesting one.

At a certain level, science fiction is more true than fantasy. The universe really is lawful (though not in ways we might prefer in our idle speculative fancies). The universe really is not magical, in the sense of recognizing specialness in some living beings and responding differently to them.

Aside: I think the appeal of the Three-Body Problem is that it posits not just a lawful universe, but an inconveniently lawful one. Instead of fun affordances like time travel, the universe lobs 3-body chaos and dark forest shittiness on its living beings. Not only is nobody special, everybody is actually worse off than we imagine because the universe is lawful in a shittier way than we imagine. It’s a sort of hyper science fiction.

Good history may not offer clean-edged lawfulness, but it at least obliquely suggests a universe that’s some mix of noisy lawfulness and path-dependent arbitrariness. There is no room for magic. There is no room for Chosen Ones. Or Chosen People. Or Manifest Destiny type narratives. While there is of course plenty that is uncertain in any work of history, it is not uncertainty of the sort that opens the door to magic. Despite the desperate belief in magic that suffused Istanbul through the millennia, the city never actually enjoyed the workings of magic.

In good history books, as in good science fiction, there are no Chosen Ones. There may be characters who believe other characters are Chosen Ones, but you as reader don’t have to (to really appreciate and enjoy Dune, you kinda have to recognize Paul Atreides is not actually special, whatever the Bene Gesserit nuts and Fremen think, but to enjoy Lord of the Rings, you kinda have to buy into the specialness of elves and wizards, even if Frodo is not that special).

There is a genre of history, if it deserves that label, that resembles fantasy: hagiography. Any approach to history that posits the existence of “greatness” of some sort (Great Man theory, Great Nation exceptionalism narratives, One True Religion, One True Ideology) is hagiography. Unsurprisingly, hagiography sells better than history, just as fantasy sells better than science fiction.

Not surprisingly, I don’t enjoy fantasy much, and can’t stand hagiography at all. To fans of those genres, this probably comes across as some sort of weak-spirited reluctance to recognize greatness or Chosenness, and resentment over my own ordinariness, but that’s really not it. Greatness is simply deeply unsatisfying as a feature of an explanation for anything. It’s a deus ex machina. I’m happy to acknowledge and admire exceptional accomplishments by individuals and groups. I’m happy to admit I’m in the wrong half of distributions of many, perhaps most, desirable traits. I just don’t find explanations in terms of greatness (or Chosenness, or Specialness) to be explanations at all, let alone satisfying ones. In both natural and human laws, if you're forced to posit two kinds of laws for two kinds of people, you’ve basically failed to make sense of your world. (There are two kinds of people in the world — those who divide people into two kinds and those who don’t).

There are kings, knights, gods, saints, and wizards aplenty in Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities, but it is not a story about magic or their specialness. There are many characters parading through the book who had “Great” attached to their names (Alexander, Catherine, Suleyman…), but the account of history does not rest upon a presumption of axiomatic greatness possessed by some actors. That many saw them (and continue to see them) as “great” certainly affected the course of history somewhat, but it’s not part of the explanation. It’s not even particularly important as a feature of the story needing explanation.

At most, in good histories, belief in “greatness” helps explain the actions of some actors, just as belief in god helps explains the actions of others. Neither god, nor greatness, is necessary for good history writing, and in fact unironic belief in either on the part of the historian weakens, often fatally, the quality of the history. The effects on fantasy literature aren’t as bad. Positing greatness (or Chosenness or any of many equivalent traits that divide humans into two types based on laws that apply to them) can make for fun narrative premises. Preferring hagiographic histories centered on greatness suggests intellectual weakness to me (the primary failure of Straussians), but preferring fantasy over science fiction seems more like a harmless preference for a particular mode of escapism.