Pastoral

Entry updated 23 September 2024. Tagged: Theme.

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The term "pastoral" can be understood in various ways, perhaps most usefully as being descriptive of a mode, where Arcadia [seeTheEncyclopedia of Fantasy underlinks below] may be thought of as a particular location where the pastoral mode can unfold. The term can refer to the Classical or Shakespearean tale of courtiers holidaying among nymphs and shepherds, flirting with a condition of exile; it can refer, as WilliamEmpson and other modern critics have argued, to the proletarian novel or to the story which contrasts childhood innocence with adult experience. Or, as inThe Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Idea (1964) by Leo Marx (1919-2022), the pastoral can now be best studied in its dynamic relationship withTechnology, which transforms it into commodified nostalgia; Marx's definition of pastoral as inhabiting a "middle landscape" where lives might be lived in harmony, momentarily unburdened by history, anticipates the concept of the Middest as its appears inThe Sense of an Ending (1967) by Frank Kermode (1919-2010). InSticking to the End (coll2022), JohnClute attempts to use this complex of ideas to underline the drama of twenty-first century sf. In essence, to return to basics, a pastoral is any work of fiction which depicts an apparently simple and natural way of life, and contrasts it with our complex, technological, anxiety-ridden urban world of the present. Pastorals can be full of moral earnestness or they can be utterly escapist.

Of the many versions of pastoral in sf, the most obvious is the tale of country life as written by Clifford DSimak, ZennaHenderson and others. Such stories usually involve the intrusion ofAlien beings (frequentlyTelepathic) into rural landscapes peopled by farmers and small-town tradesmen. Examples are Simak's "Neighbor" (June 1954Astounding), "A Death in the House" (October 1959Galaxy),Way Station (June-August 1963Galaxy as "Here Gather the Stars";1963),All Flesh is Grass (1965) andA Choice of Gods (1972), and Henderson'sPilgrimage: The Book of the People (fixup1961) andThe Anything Box (coll1965). Fantasies in a kindred mode include RayBradbury'sDandelion Wine (fixup1957), WardMoore's and AvramDavidson'sJoyleg (1962) and Manly WadeWellman'sWho Fears the Devil? (coll of linked stories1963). What these works have in common is an emphasis on the virtues (and sometimes the constraints) of the rural way of life. They are, explicitly or implicitly, anti-city and anti-Machine; they frequently extol the values of living close to Nature, of being in rhythm with the seasons. The idealNew York reachable viaTime Travel in more than one of JackFinney's novels, though most famously inTime and Again (1970), conveys an analogous (and in this case explicit) longing. This bucolic and Luddite strain inGenre SF has its origins in some major works of US literature such asWalden (1854) by Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) andWinesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), as well as in such UKUtopias and romances as RichardJefferies'sAfter London; or, Wild England (1885), with its vision of theCity reconquered by forest and field, W HHudson'sA Crystal Age (1887) and WilliamMorris'sNews from Nowhere (1890).

A variant form of this version of pastoral is that in which the contrast between city and country is made quite explicit. Stories of this type, discussed more fully in the entry onCities, have a long history, going back beyondAfter London. In this variant urban life is depicted as cruel, oppressive or sterile, while the country represents freedom; the genre-sf archetype is Arthur CClarke'sThe City and the Stars (November 1948Startling as "Against the Fall of Night";1953; exp and much rev vt1956). DamonKnight's "Natural State" (January 1954Galaxy) ironically contrasts cityTechnology such as rapidTransportation with "natural" rustic equivalents enhanced byGenetic Engineering – including a hybrid racing animal which may not be quite as fast as the city representative's expensive flying car but continues to breed year after year at minimal cost. City versus country is a particularly popular theme inChildren's SF, as in JohnChristopher'sWild Jack (1974) and IsobelleCarmody'sScatterlings (1991).

A second version of pastoral, again taking its cue from Jefferies and Morris, is exemplified by George RStewart'sEarth Abides (1949) and LeighBrackett'sThe Long Tomorrow (1955), both tales depicting the rise of agricultural and anti-technological societies after some sort ofHolocaust. Although this type of story is set in the future, the future becomes a clear analogue of the pre-industrial past (seeCosy Catastrophe). A particularly fine example is FredricBrown's "The Waveries" (January 1945Astounding), a tale in which the modern USA is forced back into a horse-and-buggy economy by invading aliens who prevent the use of electricity. Other examples of this kind of story are PatFrank'sAlas, Babylon (1959) and EdgarPangborn'sDavy (1964). This sort of pastoral is not always simple; the pastoral post-holocaust world can itself be seen with a little irony, as in JohnCrowley'sEngine Summer (1979), which is suffused by an elegiac melancholy. (Another ambiguous pastoral, not really sf, is Crowley'sLittle, Big [1981], where the ultimate pastoral values of Faerie are teasingly impossible to reach and, if reached, might mean death.)

A third version of sf pastoral is the story set on another world, often Edenic or, at the least, satisfying. Such works usually depict benign alienEcologies which support nontechnological societies. Humanity is often seen as a destructive intruder upon these planets, although frequently the protagonist is "accepted" because he or she is capable of seeing the wisdom of the alien ways. The ideological thrust of such stories is anti-anthropomorphic and anti-xenophobic. Examples are Robert AHeinlein'sRed Planet (1949) – and, by implication, hisStranger in a Strange Land (1961; text restored1990) – Bradbury'sThe Martian Chronicles (coll of linked stories1950; rev vtThe Silver Locusts1951), MarkClifton'sEight Keys to Eden (1960), H BeamPiper'sLittle Fuzzy (1962), RobertSilverberg'sDownward to the Earth (1970) andThe Face of the Waters (1991), LloydBiggle Jr'sMonument (June 1961Analog; exp1974), CherryWilder'sSecond Nature (1982), JoanSlonczewski'sA Door into Ocean (1986) and JudithMoffett'sPennterra (1987). Ursula KLe Guin'sThe Word for World is Forest (inAgain, Dangerous Visions, anth1972, ed HarlanEllison;1976) is an outstanding treatment of this theme, the sourness of the narrative reflecting the realities of the Vietnam War. Brian MStableford'sThe Paradise Game (1974) andCritical Threshold (1976) are clever variations; both are about planets which are apparently Edenic but which turn out to be rather more sinister. This is also the case in IanWatson's "The Moon and Michelangelo" (October 1987Asimov's), in which a pastoral alien society has been wholly misunderstood but offers a form of ironic transcendence nevertheless. RichardMcKenna's "Hunter, Come Home" (March 1963F&SF) and JohnVarley's "In the Hall of the Martian Kings" (February 1977F&SF) are both good treatments of the ultimate in benign ecologies: bio-systems that enfold and preserve the sympathetic human characters against all dangers.

The fourth version of sf pastoral is perhaps the commonest: the escapist adventure story set in a simpler world, whether it be the future, the past, another planet or in another continuum. If the portrayal of "Nature" is an essential element in all pastorals, then this is the version of them that prefers its Nature red in tooth and claw. Edgar RiceBurroughs'sTarzan of the Apes (1914) belongs here, as do hisA Princess of Mars (February-July 1912All-Story as "Under the Moons of Mars" as by Norman Bean;1917),At the Earth's Core (4-25 April 1914All-StoryWeekly;1922) and all their various sequels.Tarzan is an archetypal twentieth-century pastoral hero; his freedom of action, affinity with animals and innocent capacity for violence represent an amalgam of daydreams, Rousseau married to Darwin. One could go further and say that the whole subgenre ofSword and Sorcery is in a sense pastoral. As urbanization increases and free space diminishes on the Earth's surface, so the pastoral dream of simpler worlds in harmony with (or in enjoyable conflict with) Nature becomes ever more compelling.

In the 1980s (there are earlier examples) pastoral themes were used by a number ofWomen SF Writers to image the values ofFeminism, as in Slonczewski'sA Door into Ocean. The prime example here, though, is Le Guin'sAlways Coming Home (1985), an extraordinarily rich and dense exercise in speculativeAnthropology, largely set in a post-holocaust pastoral culture whose values are the values of women. A cruder exercise in the same vein is Sally MillerGearhart'sThe Wanderground: Stories of the Hill Women (coll of linked stories1980), in which the women's society's embrace of Nature and the men's society's despisal of it are both so diagrammatic as to approach caricature. Sheri STepper achieves the balance inRaising the Stones (1990), with plenty of melodrama but also with plenty of real life, when she contrasts two agricultural societies on two planets, the one society patriarchal and brutal, the other deriving its strength from the realism (and, in the main, the kindliness) of women, a confrontation between the bad pastoral and the good.

Pastoral has always been an attractive theme, but its simpler pleasures can pall after a time. The most interesting uses of pastoral in sf, many of which are cited above, are those in which the pastoral values have their cost, or in which the urban/pastoral or civilized/primitive oppositions are seen with some sort of irony – that is, with the recognition that life is not always as neatly dualistic as we would sometimes wish. Some of the poignant qualities of HilbertSchenck'sAt the Eye of the Ocean (1980) andA Rose for Armageddon (1982), pastorals whose pastures are the field of ocean, derive from this recognition. Behind the greatest pastorals is often a sense of loss, for Nature herself often throws up images of decline and decay as well as of growth and harvest, and to invoke Nature is to invoke a world whose benisons are ephemeral (although they will always return). This may be why some of the finest pastorals are seasonal or cyclical; Brian WAldiss'sHelliconia trilogy (1982-1985) is many other things as well, but at root it is a pastoral whose burden is that Winter always comes. [DP/PN/JC]

see also:Children in SF;Islands;Living Worlds.

further reading