D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[Hussar]

I don't think I would characterize either writer so simply. The quintessential Wells story for me is, "The Food of the Gods". And while the food is the cause of enormous problems, try reading the end of that story and telling me that Wells is critical of the idea of progress. Heck, not even his more well known "The Time Machine" has that ending.

By contrast consider Verne's "The Purchase of the North Pole".

In SF criticism, these are the terms used to characterize the divide. I have zero interest in yet another pedantic quibbling about terminology. You clearly understand the point that is being made and apparently have no particular issue with the point that there is a divide in SF between the two styles. Why not actually address the point being made instead of spending a bunch of time trying to redefine commonly understood terms?

 

[Hussar]

And, just to add later.

Just because a work or two by a particular author may not fit the concept perfectly isn't really much of a counter argument. The two main streams (or schools if you prefer) of SF are Vernian and Wellsian. The Vernian school is characterized by a view of science as progress and is particularly exemplified by works by Jules Verne like Around the World in 80 Days, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, and, of course, probably the best example, From the Earth to the Moon.

Conversely, while later Wells works may have softened his stance on the dangers of science, the school of literature that is named for him, is exemplified best by War of the Worlds as well as other works.

I am very well aware that not every single work by each author can be neatly categorized like this. Which means that some of Verne's works would be characterized as Wellsian and some of Wells' works would be characterized as Vernian.

Now, hopefully that makes it clear what I'm talking about. I am in no way trying to claim that all of Verne's works fall under a single theme. That would be a silly thing to claim and at no point did I even hint that that would be true. My apparent mistake, I guess, was presuming that people would either know enough about literary criticism of SF to simply accept the commonly used terms, or, if they didn't have the background, could actually ask for clarification instead of immediately trying to tell me how wrong I am.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Wells was writing about social issues, the science fiction was simply a vehicle for that. So War of the Worlds is about colonialism, The Time Machine is about class division etc. No more is the different more evident than in traveling to the Moon. Verne attempts a realistic method (including the acceleration issue that Wells cheerfully ignored in WotW) and finds the Moon barren. Whereas Wells gets his protagonists to the Moon by a method indistinguishable from magic, to tells another allegory about the evils of colonialism.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Just to pontificate for a moment. Not sure if my thoughts are totally organized here.

One of the big divides in SF fiction is Wellsian vs Vernian. In H.G. Well's stories, science is typically seen as the cause of the problems. These stories tend to take a very critical view of the idea of progress and whatnot. The Martians in The War of the World represent science and technology and are defeated, not by science, but by the tiniest of creatures. Vernian fiction, OTOH, tends to be much more optimistic. The protagonists are all men (well, yes, there's that) of science. They solve the problems of the plot through science. The world is made a better place by science.

I wonder if the two sort of general themes might be applied here. A "despair" setting isn't one where things are always bad and are going to get worse, but, rather, a setting where the best you can really hope for is a return to the status quo. A "hope" setting, OTOH, is one where the PC's are capable, and even expected, to make the world better. To change the world (and "world" here can be anything from the very small village to the entire world) in such a way that it's actually better than it was before.

Not sure. I'm just sort of spitballing here and not really making any conclusions. But, it might help to reframe the discussion.

At least for me, much of my exposure to (as you put it) "Wellsian" worlds is that it has to be a world where real change is genuinely impossible....unless it's bad. Bad change is fine. Good change isn't--and anyone who says otherwise is either idiotic, crazy, or lying. Anything good in the world got that way by accident and stays that way only because entropy hasn't gotten around to making that specific bit worse yet.

Conversely, I haven't seen the expectation "oh, we definitely WILL make the world better, we're just finding out how" in "Vernian" worlds, or at least not the ones I've happened to interact with. What I have seen is the expectation that it is possible to make the world better, but you might still fail. Good change is inevitable, but only because change is inevitable. Most change will end up neither mostly good nor mostly bad, but simply different.

If someone goes into a "Vernian" experience believing that good endings are inevitable, sharp black-and-white factions with no ambiguity and no possibility of changing teams, and shallow, borderline-propagandistic presentation, then yeah, I can see why folks wouldn't want that, I wouldn't want it either. But, at least for me, I wouldn't want that because that's a story badly-told, not because "Vernian" worlds naturally have those characteristics.

Perhaps I am overly-harsh on "grimdark" settings. I've just had too many people tell me that hope is stupid and only for babies, while grimdark misery-porn wangst-fests are mature and serious and living in the real world etc., etc. Acting as though that style is immune to the dark mirror of the above: bad endings are inevitable, flat black-and-black factions with no ambiguity and no possibility of forming a new slightly-better team, and shallow, borderline-fetishistic presentation.

Darkness, and grimness, and realpolitik etc. aren't inherently any more realistic, mature, or intelligent than brightness, optimism, and idealism. Unquenchable darkness, unending grimness, and fatalistic realpolitik definitely aren't superior. The flaw in both most grimdark as I've been exposed to it, and most of the "saccharine" things grimdark allegedly was made to defy, is a lack of nuance. Nuance requires contrast and subtlety. You cannot have contrast unless you have some things brightly-lit and other things dimly-lit or even swallowed in darkness. Subtlety is harder to nail down, but "everyone is a terrible person, some just haven't realized that yet" isn't subtle, it's just banal cynicism.

 

[Celebrim]

In SF criticism, these are the terms used to characterize the divide.

No. Maybe someone has but it is not at all obvious to me that the words are commonly used as you use them here.

For example, this is a quote using the term Wellsian from SF literary criticism of 1935.

"How much more courageous realistic and honest to say ‘the dark ages before us’...than to gibber cravenly in Wellsian fashion of vulgar Utopias." M. McLuhan Letter 31 Mar. in M. Molinaro et al. Marshall McLuhan Letters

That quote understands Wellsian to mean pertaining to (presumably in the author's mind simplistic) Utopianism. Wellsian actually is in its common usage only meaning, "like the writings of H.G. Wells", and to be quite frank, you haven't read as much of the writings of H.G. Wells as I have. So, no, it's not at all clear to me that the terms are commonly used to characterize this divide or that there is even this great divide you claim. Wells is more known in literary circles as believing in technological progress towards scientific utopias to the degree that many associate much of his later works with fascism or fascist ideologies.

I mean please read "Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought" if you are going to accuse Wells of believing that Well's sees science as typically the cause of the problems. Wells is a technocratic socialist who believes in eugenics and no more sees the coming scientific revolution as the cause of problems than he say the industrial revolution as the cause of problems. Rather, he's actually tends to see cause of problems as being the reluctance of the uneducated or the superstitious to embrace necessary change and progress.

I have zero interest in yet another pedantic quibbling about terminology.

So stop making up and misusing terminology in shallow ways to make points that aren't particularly credible.

You clearly understand the point that is being made and apparently have no particular issue with the point that there is a divide in SF between the two styles.

No. Have you even read any of the works I mentioned earlier? Science Fiction can no more be cleanly divided into two camps like that than you can say all of fantasy is about nostalgia for the past (or even that science fiction is always about the future, considering how big of a genre alternative history is).

Why not actually address the point being made instead of spending a bunch of time trying to redefine commonly understood terms?

No. Because your terms are not commonly understood and you've repeatedly introduced definitions that seem particular to you (or some one particular author you read perhaps) that aren't in fact commonly used that way. Wellsian doesn't commonly mean pessimism about progress and scientific advancement. And plenty of SF authors and works can't be fit into either of the narrowly defined camps that you just defined.

You want a nice little word, how about Orwellian. That is a word that has to do with attempts to control discourse by redefining words and controlling the meaning of words.

 

[Remathilis]

For me, that's what actual hope looks like. "Good people are good and always will be, bad people are bad and always will be, just keep the good people safe and kill all the bad people and everything will be perfect" isn't hope. It's...plastic, hollow, probably fictive and aggressively similar to real-world propaganda BS. "Good people have been good, but might become bad if things go poorly. Bad people have been bad, but some of them can be convinced to change" is dramatically more accurate--and both of those things are the hopeful take, not the despairing one.

The one thing I tried to do in my musings was point out that hope and despair are trends, not absolutes. Good people fall to temptation; evil can be redeemed. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. But, as the Good Reverend put it: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice". That is hope. Despair is the notion that your best efforts, the best you can hope for is to avoid further slide. Tomorrow cannot be better than today, but it can be as good as today and if nothing is done, it will certainly be worse.

A setting of despair says, "Everyone good is always at risk of becoming horrible--and they'll all get there, sooner or later. Everyone bad will remain bad forever, and most of them will get worse." And I'm so damned tired of that.

I can understand that. So much of our media now seems to bend towards despair. Probably another topic for another day, but I am reminded of a quote I saw on Facebook long ago: "If you are a child of the 80's, you weren't promised flying cars. You were promised dystopia." I tend to think about that and how the model of the future moved from the Jettsons to the Terminator. I give the new Fantastic Four and Superman movies some credit for trying to be more in line with the hope-fueled stories of yesteryear Sci-fi.

 

[Remathilis]

I think the final piece is perhaps what sort of morality the world at large has. For example, Eredane (the setting of Midnight) is purely as Despair setting since Evil has totally won and good is permanently on the backfoot. You can fight battles and win against the forces of Darkness, but you're never moving the needle from the world being Evil. Contrast that with Faerun, where evil certainly exists (and occasionally gains a footprint) but the vast majority of the world is either run by benevolent rulers (like the Simbul) or at least morally neutral (like Lord Neverember) and places like Cormyr or SIlverymoon exist as powerful foils to Thay or Baldur's Gate.