Shaggy God story

A Shaggy God story is a minor science fiction genre characterized by an attempt to explain Biblical concepts with science fiction tropes. The term was coined by writer and critic Brian W. Aldiss in a pseudonymous column in the October 1965 issue of New Worlds (magazine). [ [http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/sfx120.html Bibliography Blues ] at www.ansible.co.uk] The term is a pun on the concept of a Shaggy dog story. In its original sense a Shaggy God story features a heterosexual pair of astronauts landing on a lush and virgin world and in the last line their names are revealed as Adam and Eve. The term has now spread into general usage to mean any science fictional justification of theology. It is widely considered a cliché.

The creation of the term is often misattributed to Michael Moorcock. Moorcock edited the issue of New Worlds where Aldiss coined the term in a pseudonymous column. It has been suggested that many assumed Moorcock to be the author of the column. The issue was cleared up in an August 2004 David Langford column in SFX magazine. [ [http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/sfx120.html Bibliography Blues ] at www.ansible.co.uk]

The genre as a cliché

"The shaggy god story is the bane of magazine editors, who get approximately one story a week set in a garden of Eden spelt Ee-Duhn."

--Brian W. Aldiss, writing as Dr. Peristyle, New Worlds October, 1965.

Brian Stableford notes in "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction" (2nd ed.) that “a considerable fraction” of stories submitted to science fiction magazines feature a male and female astronaut marooned on a habitable planet and “reveal (in the final line) that their names are Adam and Eve.”

The genre is also listed a cliché in the Science Fiction Writers of America's [http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html Turkey City Lexicon: A Primer for SF Workshops] and [http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/sfx119.html David Langford's July 2004 SFX magazine column] on the same.

Notable Adam and Eve stories

* Robert Arthur “Evolution’s End” (1941)

* Nelson S. Bond “Another World Begins” (1942)

* A. E. Van Vogt “Ship of Darkness” (1947)

* Charles L. Harness “The New Reality” (1950)

* Hank Janson "The Unknown Assassin" (1956)

* "The Twilight Zone" episode "Probe 7, Over and Out" (1963)

In both iterations of the "Battlestar Galactica" television franchise, the naming of the Fleet Commander "Adama" and the search for the mythical planet of Earth suggest that it is a long-form Shaggy God story. The second series emphasizes this possibility with its exploration of pseudo-Greek mythological figures and concepts, but as the fourth-season midseason finale makes clear, the series is set in the future.

Expansions of the Term

Since Shaggy God themes can be seen as an effort to harmonize religious stories about the origin of human beings with science fiction tropes such as alien races, interstellar travel, genetic manipulation, the uplift of primitive races and man’s place in the galactic life cycle, in can be argued that the works of Erich von Däniken and other proponents of the Ancient astronaut theory are essentially working in the genre.

David Brin’s Uplift Universe is a series of well-regarded science fiction works that deal with the idea of advanced intergalactic cultures who identify proto-sentient species and genetically manipulate them into star-faring cultures in their own right (often enslaving them for thousands of years as “payment.”) In the novels, a proponent of the view that humans were uplifted by a galactic culture (as opposed to evolving into sentience) are called “Dänikenites.”

"" was called this by some, even though no Adam-and-Eve style characters exist. Some people interpreted David Bowman transforming into the Star Child as him turning into a god or godlike being. The plot also involves an alien intelligence "creating" modern man by improving upon mankind's hominid ancestors.

Douglas Adams's "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", a sequel to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", parodies the Shaggy God story with a subplot where the planet Golgafrinchim comes up with a scheme to rid itself of its useless workers, such as telephone sanitizers and insurance salesmen, by sending them off in a space ark that eventually lands on the prehistoric Earth. The marooned telephone sanitizers, insurance salesmen, and other blissfully ignorant societal rejects end up (it is hinted) driving the indigenous Neanderthal-like race to extinction and becoming the ancestors of modern "Homo sapiens".

References

* Clute, John and Peter Nicholls. "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction". New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995
* Science Fiction Writers of America. [http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html Turkey City Lexicon: A Primer for SF Workshops.]
* [http://www.ansible.co.uk/sfx/ SFX "Langford" Column Index]