Month: March 2016

That! Is an excellent question! 😀

Science fiction is usually (and I say this with full knowledge that defining an entire genre off the cuff is a dangerous, foolhardy venture even for those who know what they’re talking about) an exploration of the unknown, an extrapolation of current ideas across new boundaries, a proposed explanation for things not well understood, a construction of the recognizable world but with different boundaries, or a different world but with recognized boundaries, or an escape into pure whimsy and invention.

Given this, I note that the elves have: A) science, B) unknown quantities in their universe, C) plenty of unpleasant realities they might wish to escape from, and D) a strong literary and oral tradition. 

That seems like a setting ripe for the development of science fiction to me! But I also note that -all- elves do not view the world the same way. 

Many of the elves living in Aman, for example, probably exist in a culture that discourages probing into aspects of the universe that can’t be explained by the Valar. They live at the literal feet of the gods who created the world, and inventing new ways of looking at it, or possible explanations for phenomena that do not have a clear origin, might smack of ‘Melkorism’.
On the other hand, the Valar themselves don’t know everything about the world they made, and are said to be frequently delighted by the discoveries of the Eruhini.
On the other other hand, sometimes looking a gift horse in the mouth on Arda will get you a face full of Doom or Cataclysm. : 

Back on the continent, however, we have several groups of elves who aren’t looking up every day at the inept primordial custodians of earth, so they have a little more freedom and inclination to make things up.
The Noldor are of course particularly inclined towards science, and they have a rebellious streak to boot, so they’re obviously strong candidates, but the Sindar and the Teleri also have grounds for mythmaking and explaining the unknown. They have all the right elements in place, I think it’s mostly a question of whether or not they’d be so inclined to write intentionally fictitious stories about how stuff might work/how stuff might happen/what stuff could do, etc.  

I want to say that the elves seem less inclined to do this than human people. Humans have a more limited perspective on the world than the elves– they live shorter lives and see fewer things; their origin is unknown and their trajectory as a species is unknown, whereas elves pretty much known everything about where they came from and where they’re going. Does that make elves less imaginative? They write a lot and sing a lot, but the subject matter seems to mostly be retellings of the past. They like to write poems about themselves, and about their history, but what about their future? I don’t remember seeing any narratives from the elves that I’d describe as fiction (if someone has an example of elven myths or fiction, please do add them! 😀 ). 

Anyway, that’s painting the issue with a very broad brush– my thought is that probably the elves are less inclined to have a tradition of science fiction as a literary genre, but I absolutely think that they make up stories about things like any other speaking people.
I mean… the basics of science fiction are as easy as a Baby Noldo fitting together bits of scrap metal and going “WHOOSH ITSA FWYING MACHINE daddy tell me a story about my fwying machine” and Daddy Noldo having to sit down and explain “Well Child this is obviously a flying machine just like Mergendil the Precocious made when he went to visit Tilion in the sky, but missed and ended up exploring the Outer Dark where the Void Spiders live…” 

I mean. It happened.