17 pages • 34 minutes read
Lisel MuellerThe End of Science Fiction
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Human Body
In Lisel Mueller’s poem, “The End of Science Fiction,” the speaker references parts of the human body both directly and figuratively. Hands, the back, and the head are all body parts that have multiple meanings in the context of the poem.
The “hands [that] are stopped at noon” (Line 7) presumably represent the hands of time or the hands of a clock, but the phrase also suggests human hands that have been tied. The image calls to mind a prisoner whose hands have been tied above their heads, or hands raised above one’s head in a gesture of alarm or self-defense. This use of the image of hands enhances the darkly otherworldly tone of the second stanza.
The back appears twice in the poem. The first time, in the second stanza, numbers appear on the backs of humans who now “live forever” (Line 8). The numbers are “stamped” (Line 10), implying that the recipient of the numbers have no choice in the matter and the numbers likely function as a way to identify the unit. The back appears again later in the poem, this time in the fourth and last stanza, in the form of “a woman who refuses to turn / her back on the past” (Lines 29-30). The woman’s back has the opposite role to the backs in the second stanza; this back belongs solely to the woman, who wields it as her own, despite dire consequences.
In the last stanza, the speaker asks for humans to exist in their natural form, as they did “before our bodies glittered” (Line 25) with metal, bringing individual body parts together into a whole in the request. A few lines later, the speaker refers to a ruler as “the head of a nation” (Line 32), a figure of speech known as synecdoche, wherein a part of something is substituted for the whole. The last bodily reference in the poem avoids naming the body part in question. Rather, the speaker implies feet when they offer the image of “a child’s / first steps” (Lines 35-36) as metaphor for the challenging “ancient words” (Line 34) of the old stories.
Invention
Invention is a word often associated with advancement, technological and otherwise. Explorers of old are said to have “discovered” new lands, no matter how long that land served as familiar territory to someone else. Gods and artists create. Inventors invent—which is to say, they design and build new things and processes. Mueller’s use of the notion of invention turns the word on itself. When the speaker demands that the reader “Invent something new” (Line 13), the speaker is actually requesting for the reader to discover some newness and vitality in old things—the “ancient words” (Line 34) of Biblical stories and myth.
The call to “[i]nvent us as we were” (Line 24) is a kind of poetic wordplay that bends natural law, as what already exists cannot be invented. The poem implies that if humans allow technology to outpace and ultimately replace human agency, human ways of living will perish. The real call to action is not to invent that which already exists, but to recognize the old parables and myths as evidence of human character at work in the world. The call involves the interpretation of one’s place in the world as part of an ancient communal struggle, empowered by the human body.
Safety and Danger
The concepts of safety and danger create significant tension in “The End of Science Fiction.” The speaker sets a dangerous tone early in the first stanza: “We are the characters / who have invaded the moon” (Line 3). The language alerts the reader to the act of storytelling and the literary genre of science fiction with the use of the word “characters” (Line 2). However, the moon landing is fact, not fiction, and an invasion of the moon puts a violent spin on the event. The rest of the first stanza keeps the tension high with unstoppable technology and the implication that humans are “gods” (Line 5) who are capable of destroying the planet in a few days’ time. The passivity of the second stanza also feels sinister as time stops, the body is no longer made of flesh and bone, and humans can no longer understand one another, as “[w]e hear each other through water” (Line 12).
Safety contrasts with the sense of danger in the poem with mentions of heroes like “a child that will save the world” (Line 16) and the person who saves his parent from a city on fire. As well, “a spool of thread /…leads a hero to safety” (Lines 19-20). However, the hero then “abandons / the woman who saved his life” (Lines 21-22) on an island, perhaps to die, and this image reverts the reader back to the earlier indications that danger still lurks . Danger exists in both the technologized world and in the ancient worlds, but in the old narratives, humans, through human endeavor, have a chance to save themselves.
