Hollywoodwunderkind J.J. Abrams’ television drama “Revolution” imagined Earth afterelectricity, without explanation, abruptly died. Reading Quentin Meillassoux’sScience Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction, one wonders whether Abrams wasfamiliar with the obscure French fiction that buttresses the book’s thesis,Rene Barjavel’s 1943 science-fiction novel Ravage. In it, “electricity stopsexisting overnight… yet remarkably, Barjavel does not really attempt to explainthe phenomenon; he merely describes its cataclysmic consequences.”
Meillassoux,a Sorbonne philosophy professor, apparently doesn’t follow American televisionand draws no connection between the Vichy-era novelist and the postmodernproducer. He is onto more challenging subjects, describing a potential genrewithin a genre, a subcategory of science fiction he calls extro-sciencefiction. By “extro” he means “outside,” as in outside science where the laws ofthe physical universe have been repealed. He asks a metaphysical question: “arethere worlds where, in principle, experimental science is impossible.”
Herelates his question to the philosophical problem of induction or our abilityto know. Building on Hume, Meillassoux wonders how we can ever be certain thatthe physical laws we understood from previous observation will always remainconsistent. Science Fiction and Extro-Science Fiction may not be easy readingbut the writing is elegantly phrased; Meillassoux doesn’t allow bad prose toobscure an already difficult subject.
