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).[1] 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.[2]
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 Turkey City Lexicon: A Primer for SF Workshops and 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 episodes "Third from the Sun" (1960) and "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.
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.”
2001: A Space Odyssey 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.
References
- Clute, John and Peter Nicholls. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1995
- Science Fiction Writers of America. Turkey City Lexicon: A Primer for SF Workshops.
- SFX "Langford" Column Index
