What We Can Learn About Life From Science Fiction

By DONALD DeMARCO

It is paradoxical that science fiction writers can teach us something about life that is nonfictional. On the other hand, politicians can, and often do, turn the nonfictional into fiction. Science fiction writers, imaginative as they are, never lose sight of reality. Politicians, in their eagerness to win the approval of the masses, often stray from reality.
In contrast with the politics of convenience (and what is more inconvenient than morality?) one of science fiction’s important lessons is that size does not diminish the value of human life. No matter how small a person is, he remains a person.
In the 1966 movie, Fantastic Voyage, a surgical team is microminiaturized and injected through a hypodermic needle into a sick patient. The members of this greatly truncated team endure a harrowing odyssey as they maneuver to the location of the pathology where they apply the needed remedy. The miniaturization process does not affect either their intellectual or physical capabilities. They are simply smaller, but no less effective and no less human.
These courageous and competent “micro-biologists” finally make their exit from the patient, appropriately enough, through a teardrop which, from the patient’s viewpoint, seems to be a spontaneous expression of gratitude.
In Jonathan Swift’s 1726 novel, Gulliver’s Travels, the protagonist, Lemuel Gulliver, visits an island inhabited by people who are, on average, only six inches in height. These small-sized creatures, nonetheless, possess all the arrogance and self-importance of full-sized men. The fact that these Lilliputians are exceedingly small does not imbue them with a sense of humility.
In Dr. Seuss’s 1954 book, Horton Hears a Who, Horton the Elephant hears a small speck of dust talking to him. The speck of dust turns out to be a minuscule planet that is populated by microscopic-sized creatures known as Whos. Horton, thanks to his large elephant ears, is able to hear the Mayor of the Whos quite well and agrees to protect them from harm.
Throughout the story, Horton proclaims that “even though you can’t see or hear them at all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.” The point here is more philosophical than biological. Size is relative, and it is prejudicial to assume that being too small is a disqualification for being a person. Given what science knows about the inner workings of the atom, there seems to be no known limit to how small something can be and still exist.
In the 1989 movie, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (titled The Micro-Children in its Japanese version), a struggling inventor accidentally shrinks his kids, along with the neighbors’ kids, down to the size of a quarter of an inch. Mom and dad, of course, still love their tiny offspring even though the “kids” become so small that a single Cheerio in a cereal bowl adequately serves as their life raft.
No matter how tiny they are, they are still the lovable children of their frantic parents.
Universal Studio’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of the best science fiction movies of the 1950s and has become a cult classic. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
Despite its implausible story line, it presents what may be an unparalleled cinematic example of how miniaturization cannot abolish personhood. Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams, passes through a strange radioactive mist while boating. There is no discernible immediate effect, but in time, he slowly begins to shrink. His wife notices that his clothes are unexplainably too large for him. His wedding ring slides off his finger. He resides in a doll house until it is too small for him, tussles with the house cat, and engages in mortal combat with a spider. His shrinking process is relentless.
In the climax of the movie, Scott has climbed on a basement windowsill. From this vantage point he looks out at a starry night, “God’s silver tapestry — spread across the night,” while wondering whether someone as small as he is can still be a human being. Existential screenwriter Richard Matheson provides the movie’s closing words:
“So close — the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly I knew they were the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away.
“And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!”
Existence, St. Thomas Aquinas states, is the perfection of perfections. It represents the infinite distance between existence and nonexistence. In his book, An Interpretation of Existence, Joseph Owens makes the comment that “‘It is’, can spark a philosophical procedure that leads to the most sublime and relevant truths attainable by unaided human reason.” Indeed, the only infinite power that can overcome the distance between non-being and being is God.
When Hamlet ponders the question, “To be or not to be?” he is faced with the infinite gap between existence and nonexistence. It is a terrifying question. At the same time, it imposes on the Danish Prince the unfathomable significance of existence, a reality that allows him to say, “I exist.”
That life exists, no matter how small, even as a zygote, is what matters most. This is what so many science fiction writers are telling us and, oddly enough, what so many politicians are denying.

• + + (Dr. Donald DeMarco is professor emeritus, St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College. He is a regular columnist for St. Austin Review and is the author of 41 books. He is a former corresponding member of the Pontifical Academy of Life. Some of his recent books, The 12 Supporting Pillars of the Culture of Life and Why They Are Crumbling, Glimmers of Hope in a Darkening World, and Restoring Philosophy and Returning to Common Sense are posted on amazon.com. His two latest books are Let Us not Despair and The Road to a Better World. He and his wife, Mary, have 5 children and 13 grandchildren.)